Free Republic

NEW YORK - Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over. The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969. The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions,"...

Source: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Date: March 28, 2007 Johns Hopkins Researchers Examine Why People Eat The Foods They Do Science Daily — People purchase foods based on their income level, their belief in a food’s health benefit and cost. However, ethnicity and gender also impact people’s food choices, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study, published in the March 7, 2007, advance online publication of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, reports that food choice is also influenced by environmental factors, such as reliance on fast food, food...

Purdue researchers have come up with a handheld device they say can determine the chemical composition of an object or detect trace elements on its surface, sort of like the tricorder that the actors used to whip out on Star Trek. The chemical analysis tool sprays a fine mist of charged water droplets onto an object. The water droplets cling to particles on the surface of the object. The ionized particles are separated and dried out; the chemicals that remain thus provide a chemical map to the surface of the item tested or the object itself. If there are skin...

Source: American Institute of Biological Sciences Date: March 2, 2007 Improved Predictions Of Warming-induced Extinctions Sought; Species Persist More Than Models Assume, Researchers Say Science Daily — In the March 2007 issue of BioScience, an international team of 19 researchers calls for better forecasting of the effects of global warming on extinction rates. The researchers, led by Daniel B. Botkin, note that although current mathematical models indicate that many species could be at risk from global warming, surprisingly few species became extinct during the past 2.5 million years, a period encompassing several ice ages. They suggest that this "Quaternary conundrum"...

Researchers re-create Washington's face Fri Feb 16, 7:02 PM ET PHOENIX - Researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Pittsburgh have mixed technology, art and science to re-create the real face of George Washington. Using anthropology, 3-D scanning and digital reconstruction, the 2 1/2-year project has culminated in new life-size figures of the nation's first president and some say the images are the most accurate yet of Washington at a younger age. There is Washington at age 19 as a land surveyor, Washington at 45 during the Revolutionary War, and Washington at 57 when he took the presidential...

Scientists reported Sunday they had found a plentiful source of stem cells in the fluid that cushions babies in the womb and produced a variety of tissue types from these cells sidestepping the controversy over destroying embryos for research. Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells. They reported they were able to extract the stem cells without harm to mother or fetus and turn their discovery into several different tissue cell types, including brain, liver and bone....

A fault line beneath Lake Tahoe could rupture at any time and unleash a massive earthquake that triggers an underwater landslide and sends 30-foot waves crashing into nearby parks, campgrounds, homes and marinas, researchers said. Such an event along the West Tahoe Fault, the biggest of Lake Tahoe's three geologic faults, could also send waves over a dam that regulates water flow into the Truckee River, according to research presented last week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The West Tahoe Fault, which skirts the lake's western shore and runs through Fallen Leaf Lake and...

Source: University of Kentucky Date: December 14, 2006 Researchers Complete Seismic Borehole In Kentucky Drilling has been completed on the deepest borehole for seismic instruments in the eastern U.S. The four-inch diameter hole for the Central U.S. Seismic Observatory (CUSSO), located at Sassafras Ridge in Fulton County, Kentucky, reached a depth of 1,948 feet, where bedrock was encountered. The location is near the most active part of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the source of at least three major earthquakes in the winter of 1811-12, before the region was heavily populated and developed. This location will allow instruments in the...

Unnatural success Aimee Cunningham Chemists report the first synthesis of a promising antibiotic that other researchers recently discovered in nature. With the recipe in hand, scientists can pursue modifications that might make the compound more effective. Earlier this year, a team from Merck Research Laboratories announced the discovery of platensimycin, a small molecule produced by the bacterium Streptomyces platensis (SN: 5/20/06, p. 307: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060520/fob1.asp). Platensimycin killed certain drug-resistant pathogens by disrupting their synthesis of fatty acids. After seeing that "exciting report," K. C. Nicolaou of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, he and his colleagues devised a strategy...

Drug can help cut diabetes risk, say researchers By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent (Filed: 16/09/2006) A drug that improves the body's ability to turn sugars into fuel can substantially reduce the chances of people at risk of Type 2 diabetes developing the disease, according to research published yesterday. In a large international trial volunteers with "pre-diabetes" taking rosiglitazone, sold under the brand name Avandia, were 60 per cent less likely than those on placebos to develop the full disease. The drug, already prescribed to those with Type 2 diabetes, was also found to help patients return to normal blood sugar...

President Bush's veto of a bill to ease restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem-cell research will hinder California's $3 billion voter-approved effort to turn stem cells into cures, backers of the state-funded research effort said Wednesday. Bush's rejection of the legislation -- his first-ever veto in his 5 1/2 years in office -- shows his continued support for those who oppose, on moral grounds, destroying human embryos to create stem cells in research intended to develop new treatments for grave conditions such as Parkinson's, diabetes and spinal cord injuries. --snip-- The veto was a crushing blow for advocates who hoped...

Japanese researchers discover remains of what appears to be 4,800-year-old temple in Peru 06/20/2006 The Asahi Shimbun CHANCAY, Peru--Japanese researchers said they have discovered--with the unintended help of looters--what appears to be a temple ruins at least 4,800 years old that could be one of the oldest in the Americas. The temple is believed to have been built before or around 2600 BC when Peru's oldest known city, Caral, was created, the researchers said. The ruins were found in the ruins of Shicras located in the Chancay Valley about 100 kilometers north of Lima. The team started full-scale excavation work...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A meteor's roaring crash into Antarctica -- larger and earlier than the impact that killed the dinosaurs -- caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history and likely spawned the Australian continent, scientists said. Ohio State University scientists said the 483-kilometer-wide (300-mile-wide) crater is now hidden more than 1.6 kilometers (one mile) beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. "Gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out," the university said in a statement Thursday....

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A radiation sensor inside a cell phone was used with a network of tiny computers spread out around Vanderbilt Stadium on Thursday to detect a fake radioactive "dirty bomb." The experiment was a test of a system that could represent a leap forward in homeland security technology, said researchers from Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory who have been working jointly on the project. On Thursday they set their equipment up in the stadium press box and watched as a red dot moved across their computer screens. The dot represented the real-time movements of researcher Janos...

Japanese researchers find new giant picture on Peru's Nazca Plateau The new Nazca Plateau image discovered by the research team from Yamagata University. (Photo courtesy of Yamagata University)A new giant picture on the Nazca Plateau in Peru, which is famous for giant patterns that can be seen from the air, has been discovered by a team of Japanese researchers. The image is 65 meters long, and appears to be an animal with horns. It is thought to have been drawn as a symbol of hopes for good crops, but there are no similar patterns elsewhere, and the type of the...

Researchers Describe How Natural Nuclear Reactor Worked In Gabon The Oklo natural nuclear-reactor site in Gabon. St Louis MO (SPX) Nov 01, 2004 To operate a nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island, hundreds of highly trained employees must work in concert to generate power from safe fission, all the while containing dangerous nuclear wastes. On the other hand, it's been known for 30 years that Mother Nature once did nuclear chain reactions by her lonesome. Now, Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have analyzed the isotopic structure of noble gases produced in fission in a sample from the...

Mayan underworld proves researchers' dream By Tim Gaynor Mon Mar 20, 8:49 AM ETReuters Photo: Divers make their way through a freshwater sinkhole, known as a cenote, in Mexico's Yucatan... " TULUM, Mexico (Reuters) - The ancient Maya once believed that Mexico's jungle sinkholes containing crystalline waters were the gateway to the underworld and the lair of a surly rain god who had to be appeased with human sacrifices. Now, the "cenotes," deep sinkholes in limestone that have pools at the bottom, are yielding scientific discoveries including possible life-saving cancer treatments. Divers are dipping into the cenotes, which stud the...

WEDNESDAY, March 15 (HealthDay News) -- As medical technologies improve, researchers are rooting out more information about possible causes of common diseases, such as asthma.One new finding, reported in the March 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, is that immune system cells long thought to cause asthma may not be the primary culprit behind the disease."We found that asthma is caused not by T-helper 2 cells as has been previously thought, but by a novel class of cells called natural killer T cells," said one of the study's authors, Dr. Dale Umetsu, a professor of pediatrics at...

WASHINGTON - A new variety of unusually powerful Internet attacks can overwhelm popular Web sites and disrupt e-mails by exploiting the computers that help manage global Internet traffic, according to security researchers. First detected late last year, the new attacks direct such massive amounts of spurious data against victim computers that even flagship technology companies could not cope. In one of the early cases examined, the unknown assailant apparently seized control of an Internet name server in South Africa and deliberately corrupted its contents. Name servers are specialized computers that help direct Internet traffic to its destinations. The attacker then...

NASA's Spirit Mars rover has arrived at a site dubbed "Home Plate" within Gusev crater. But what the robot found has left scientists puzzled. As the Mars machinery relays images of the area, the sightseeing has sparked healthy debate within the team running the mission. "Well, so far it has been great," said Steve Squyres, lead Mars Rover Exploration scientist at Cornell University. "It's the most spectacular layered rock we've ever seen at Gusev," he told SPACE.com. The images relayed so far by Spirit of Home Plate "really are stunning," Squyres added. "Many of us were pretty much reduced to...