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WHAT'S NEXT In mint condition, the knee is a biomechanical marvel, an intricately linked interaction of bones, ligaments, tendons and cartilage that produces smooth, stable motion. But as professional athletes and weekend exercisers know only too well, the knee is also a classic weak spot, vulnerable to damage and slow to heal. Strengthening it after injury or surgery may require hours on the bulky machines of a hospital or gym. Now a mechanical engineer at Northeastern University has devised a small portable device that people may be able to strap onto their knees to rehabilitate them as they walk around...

[Snip]In the mid-1980s, the National Science Foundation warned that the nation would soon lack enough scientists and engineers to fill the necessary posts in academe -- a forecast that turned out to be wildly inaccurate. Instead, over the past decade, thousands of frustrated researchers have labored in postdoctoral positions at low wages because they could not find jobs in academe or industry.[Snip] Current data suggest that the new predictions may fare no better than earlier ones. In fact, contrary to prevailing wisdom, which fixes blame on poor training in science and mathematics from kindergarten through the 12th grade, record numbers...

THERE IS BOTH good news and bad news in the flurry of reports describing the decline of American preeminence in science. Falling numbers of scientific papers and prizes, as well as the relative drop in levels of funding and students, provide evidence of this decline. The good news is that it means other governments across the globe have begun investing heavily in basic scientific research. It also means that foreign companies have been investing in research and development, creating opportunities that make more people want scientific careers in their countries. More research anywhere creates more possibilities for innovation everywhere. Yet...

U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences By WILLIAM J. BROAD Published: May 3, 2004 The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals. Foreign advances in basic science now often rival or even exceed America's, apparently with little public awareness of the trend or its implications for jobs, industry, national security or the vigor of the nation's intellectual and cultural life. Advertisement "The rest of...

Two teams of researchers, working separately thousands of miles from each other but both defeating incredible odds, have made stunning finds in frozen Antarctica -- so stunning that the National Science Foundation calls their discoveries evidence of a lost world. The researchers found what they believe to be the fossilized remains of two species of dinosaurs previously unknown to science. One is a 70-million-year old quick-moving meat-eater found on the bottom of an Antarctic sea, while and the other is a 200-million-year-old giant plant-eater that was found on the top of a mountain, reports Reuters. The lost world in which...

Americans are about to be reminded again how much they need sleep — and sleeping pills. A new effort appears to be developing to expand the use of sleeping pills, which because of their potential for abuse have long had a reputation as being in some ways more dangerous than the insomnia they are meant to treat. Some sleep experts say newer pills are safer than the ones that once caused deaths from overdose. Moreover, some say, there is growing evidence that insomnia is a serious medical condition, not just a nuisance. "Slowly, we are beginning to identify that insomnia...

Any discussion of a permanent return to the Moon (RTM) must be centered on two overriding questions: “why?” and “how?” The answers to each of those questions are interrelated. If we go for the wrong reasons we will fail. If we go for the right reasons and do it the wrong way, we will fail. And if we don’t go at all, then we will have failed in a way that will send ripples down through the ages. There are many different answers to “why?” They include: far side observatories to seek life on other worlds; studies of Earth’s history...

AP • New York Times • CBS • MSNBC • AP Medical • MSNBC Space New Network to Link U.S., Russia, China   Dec 23, 10:10 AM (ET) By JIM PAUL CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - Soon scientists in the United States, China and Russia will be able to collaborate in cyberspace over a new high-speed computer network that includes the first direct computer link across the Russia-China border, developers say.The network, expected to go online next month, will ring the Northern Hemisphere, connecting computers in Chicago with machines in Amsterdam, Moscow, Siberia, Beijing and Hong Kong before hooking up...

The limitless promise of nanotechnology -- and the growing peril of a moratorium. "The best way I can describe it is if you close your eyes and dream. You could never be hungry, never be sick, have all the energy you need, all the water, all the food and no diseases. There is no aspect in the world economy or your personal life that is not assumed to be transformed by this new technology." The amazing development that is supposed to usher in this utopia is nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the molecular and atomic level. But the man...

Dec. 4 — The number of doctoral degrees awarded in U.S. science and engineering programs continues to drop, but women are earning a growing share of them, according to survey results published Thursday by the National Science Foundation. About 24,550 science and engineering doctorates were earned by students attending U.S. universities in 2002, down from slightly more than 25,500 in 2001, according to the NSF, a federal agency that supports science and engineering research. ... The number of doctoral degrees conferred in most other fields remained roughly the same last year, and has hovered around 15,400 annually since 1998, the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A growing percentage of scientists and engineers in the United States come from other countries, the National Science Board reported on Wednesday. While saying it was not necessarily alarming to have foreign-born scientists working in the United States, the Board said the government should look at ways to train more citizens in these fields. The board, appointed to advise the federal government, used National Science Foundation figures taken from Census estimates of foreign-born workers. It found that foreign-born workers with bachelor's degrees represented 17 percent of all science and engineering positions held by people with bachelor's degrees,...

Eight scientists and engineers have been named the 2002 National Medal of Science winners, and another eight people and one company have been named National Medal of Technology winners, President George W. Bush announced on Oct. 22. The science medals are going to John I. Brauman of Stanford University for chemistry; James E. Darnell Jr. of Rockefeller University and Evelyn M. Witkin of Rutgers University for biological sciences; Leo L. Beranek of BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Mass., for engineering; and James G. Glimm, of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, for mathematics. Other winners in the physical sciences are...

Teamwork Needed to Decipher Environmental Science ARLINGTON, Virginia, January 8, 2003 (ENS) - A new internal report calls on the National Science Foundation to embrace a more interdisciplinary approach to its work in order to provide the public and policymakers with the information and tools to address critical environmental challenges. Advances in science have expanded the horizons of what can be studied, the report's authors wrote, and have created the demand for collaborative teams of engineers and natural and social scientists to move beyond current disciplinary research and educational frameworks. The report, "Complex Environmental Systems: Synthesis for Earth, Life,...

Well, the world is going to end, yet again. And CNN will be the liars of choice to tell you all about it. C-18, another large break-off ice burg from the Ross Ice Shelf is free floating now. And would you believe that its obvious Ronald Reagans fault?? After all, it MUST be global warming that has caused this one and since it was Ronald Reagan that started to reverse the trend of fighting this global tyranny known as global warming he must be to blame for it. George Bush only causes it to get worse and Bill Clinton tried...