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A former American overseer of Iraqi prisons says several dozen inmates who were members of Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence forces boasted of helping transport weapons of mass destruction to Syria and Lebanon in the three months prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Don Bordenkircher – who served two years as national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq– told WND that about 40 prisoners he spoke with "boasted of being involved in the transport of WMD warheads to Syria. A smaller number of prisoners, he said, claimed "they knew the locations of the missile hulls buried in Iraq."...

While carbon dioxide has been getting lots of publicity in climate change, reactive forms of nitrogen are also building up in the environment, scientists warn. "The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world's peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge," University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway said in a statement. "We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

nitrogen the Vikings left behind 11 September 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. Discovering ancient settlements is often rather hit and miss, but the odds would be improved with a bit of chemical analysis. Plants growing over old sites of human habitation have a different chemistry from their neighbours, and these differences can reveal the location buried ruins. Plants mostly take in nitrogen from the soil as the isotope nitrogen-14, with just a dash of nitrogen-15. Plants growing above archaeological sites in Greenland, however, seem to have absorbed a larger dose of nitrogen-15. Rob Commisso and Erle Nelson from...

As prices at the pump continue to rise, drivers are always looking for new solutions for savings. The use of nitrogen is rising in popularity in the Bay area and costs less than a tank of gas. "Fuel savings for an automobile is the highest priority right now, I think," Olin Mott Tires President Rick Mott said. "One of the advantages of nitrogen, of course, is the fuel savings." Race car drivers and airlines have been using it for decades and so are an estimated 10 percent of tire shops around the country. Auto experts said nitrogen is retained in...

Small but perfectly formed, Pelagibacter ubique is a lean machine stripped down to the bare essentials for life.Humans have around 30,000 genes that determine everything from our eye colour to our sex but Pelagibacter has just 1,354, US biologists report in the journal Science. What is more, Pelagibacter has none of the genetic clutter that most genomes have accumulated over time. There are no duplicate gene copies, no viral genes, and no junk DNA. 'Chicken soup'The spareness of its genome is related to its frugal lifestyle. The shorter the length of DNA that needs to be copied each generation, the...

A USC oceanographer's long-term study shows that the marine food chain depends in large part on atmospheric nitrogen. The finding also demonstrates the oceans' massive absorption of greenhouse gas. A decade-long USC study has written the ending to a long-standing mystery: Where do marine organisms in the tropical oceans get the nitrogen they need to grow? In the process, the study also may help to explain how tons of carbon dioxide disappear into the ocean every day, slowing the progress of global warming. Nitrogen is a building block of life and an essential nutrient for phytoplankton and other aquatic life....

WASHINGTON - Insects that emerge every 17 years in the eastern United States provide valuable nutrients to forest ecosystems when they die, an ecologist says. The Brood X cicadas emerge from their burrows on a regular cycle, sing to attract a mate and lay eggs before dying on the forest floor. Cicadas cling to a leaf after crawling their way above ground(AP Photo) Last spring, the insects swarmed forests, raising concerns about their effects on the ecosystem. Scientists had noticed forests tended to have higher levels of the nutrient nitrogen in their leaves after cicadas emerged and tree growth tended...

SANTA FE, N.M. (Reuters) - Mary had a little lamb; It's fleece was white as snow; And every time the lamb got fed; It gobbled up its nitro. Shaboom the sheep's favorite meal consists of animal feed made from nitrogen-based chemicals and other dismantled gun propellants -- one of the more creative uses Albuquerque company TPL Inc. is finding for unwanted military munitions. Shaboom, named after the comic book phrase for an explosion, was the "guinea-sheep" for TPL's experiment with feed made from spent munitions, and found it delicious. "I referred to Shaboom as the world's second most famous sheep...

Scientists Urge Improved Nitrogen Management DENVER, Colorado, February 17, 2003 (ENS) - New strategies and opportunities for improved nitrogen management must be developed in order to meet future needs and preserve the environment, according to scientists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) being held in Denver through Tuesday. "Given the critical need for nitrogen in food production and the sequential nature of the effects of too much nitrogen, it is imperative that strategies be developed to optimize nitrogen management in food and energy production and in environmental protection," James Galloway of...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 5 Voyager Views Titan's HazeCredit: Voyager Project, JPL, NASA Explanation: Launched in 1977, 25 years ago today, the Voyager 1 spacecraft's historic tour of the outer Solar System took it past Saturn in late 1980. On November 12, 1980, Voyager 1 recorded this view looking across the edge of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, from a distance of about 22,000 kilometers. Seen in false color, the moon's...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 September 4 Halo of the Cat's Eye Credit: R. Corradi (Isaac Newton Group), D. Goncalves (Inst. Astrofisica de Canarias) Explanation: The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color picture, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material, over three light-years...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 June 15 MyCn18: An Hourglass Nebula Credit: R. Sahai and J. Trauger (JPL), WFPC2, HST, NASA Explanation: The sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula. With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star's life occurs as its outer layers are ejected - its core becoming a cooling, fading white dwarf. In 1995, astronomers...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 May 12 At the Edge of the Helix Nebula Credit: R. O'Dell and K. Handron (Rice University), NASA Explanation: While exploring the inner edge of the Helix Nebula with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, astronomers were able to produce this striking image - rich in details of an exotic environment. This planetary nebula, created near the final phase of a sun-like star's life,...