Free Republic

The Netherlands will ban Iranian students from studying nuclear technology, a source of tension between Iran and world powers, at its universities, the government said Friday. "It is forbidden... to grant Iranian nationals access to special training or teaching that could contribute to nuclear proliferation activities in Iran and the development of systems for transmitting nuclear arms," the foreign ministry said in a statement. Some powers including the United States suspect Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at producing energy to serve a growing population. Friday's measure adds to a Dutch...

Science and Race by: Amanda Busse, January 22, 2008 Identifying race as a source of disease may seem like a practice from the Jim Crow era, resolved after scandals like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study; however, current studies linking genetics with disease could have similar implications for race, according to a report recently published by the Center for American Progress. “The problem with including race in gene-based medical research is that recent scientific developments undermine the notion that race, as a biological fact, is still in question,” said Jamie Brooks, the project director on race, health and justice at the Center...

Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey. The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations — pointing out flaws in the justice system — has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago. What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to...

Lawyer: Suspension recommended for prof. 16 minutes ago A University of Colorado committee has recommended that a controversial professor accused of faulty research be suspended for one year rather than fired, his attorney said. Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, touched off a national firestorm with an essay that compared some of the 2001 World Trade Center victims to Adolf Eichmann, a key planner of the Holocaust. It was some of his other work, however, that led an interim chancellor of the Boulder campus and an another committee to recommended Churchill be fired. The professor was accused of...

Recently, two lengthy immigration studies were released that made headlines across California for their unbelievable claims made by the authors on the impact of illegal immigration in our state. These so-called immigration experts at the Public Policy Institute of California and the Immigration Policy Center came to the misguided conclusion that illegal immigrants living in California actually help American workers earn higher wages, and break fewer laws than other demographic groups in our state. When asked about his conclusions, the co-author of one of the reports, Ruben Rumbaut, told a newspaper that he hoped his work would "reduce prejudice" ----...

Recent analyses have documented bias in pharmaceutical studies funded by industry. Now, an analysis from Children's Hospital Boston finds a similar phenomenon in scientific articles about nutrition, particularly in studies of beverages. The analysis -- the first systematic one performed on nutrition studies -- found that beverage studies funded solely by industry were four to eight times more likely to have conclusions favorable to sponsors' financial interest than were studies with no industry funding. Findings are published online in the January 9 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine. David Ludwig, MD, PhD, the study's senior author and director of the...

TUESDAY, Jan. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Before you take to heart any research about the health effects of beverages such as milk, fruit juice or soft drinks, find out who paid for the study. If a beverage manufacturer or industry group funded the research, the finding may be biased, researchers report."When a food company sponsors a study, it is much more likely to be positive" about the health effects of the product, said Dr. David Ludwig. He's the study's senior author and director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston, the pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard...

One study shows that milk can help people lose weight. Another shows that tomato juice might prevent cancer and a third shows benefits to fizzy sodas. But consumers should take those studies with a grain of salt, researchers reported on Monday. If a study was industry-funded, it was far more likely to have a positive finding than if it was paid for by the government or an independent group, the researchers found. "We are not singling out any industry or any particular study," said lead researcher Dr. David Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard University. "Our first look shows...

Islamic studies 'letting down' multicultural needs Press Association Wednesday October 25, 2006 Guardian Unlimited (UK) Islamic studies in Britain's higher education institutions are failing to meet the needs of a 21st-century multicultural society, according to a report published today. Academics at Dundee's Al-Maktoum Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies examined 55 UK higher education departments and centres currently offering courses in the study of Islam and Muslims. They claim education structures are "letting down" Muslims and are calling for a "new agenda" offering education which is more relevant to contemporary British society and takes a more multicultural approach. The report,...

Oxford archaeologists want to join studies on Iran's salt men TEHRAN, Sept. 27 (Mehr News Agency) -- The director of an archaeological team working at the Chehrabad Salt Mine in the Hamzehlu region near Zanjan said that a group of Oxford University archaeologists is interested in participating in the study on the salt men found at the mine. "A group of Oxford University archaeologists has prepared a plan, asking to participate in the study, and the Center for Archaeological Research is investigating the plan," Abolfazl Aali told the Persian service of CHN on Wednesday "The archaeologists will be invited to...

10) MARIJUANA USE HAS NO EFFECT ON MORTALITY: A massive study of California HMO members funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found marijuana use caused no significant increase in mortality. Tobacco use was associated with increased risk of death. Sidney, S et al. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 87 No. 4, April 1997. p. 585-590. Sept. 2002. 9) HEAVY MARIJUANA USE AS A YOUNG ADULT WON’T RUIN YOUR LIFE: Veterans Affairs scientists looked at whether heavy marijuana use as a young adult caused long-term problems later, studying identical twins in which one...

Last week was a deadline week in the California Legislature. That means the Senate and Assembly worked to get bills out of their respective houses to “make new laws” for this year. As a believer in small government, that means I had absolutely no bills up for a vote this week. But—the socialists in the Legislature did. In fact, the Assembly approved bills that would initiate 32 new studies, 13 new commissions, 4 new task forces, and a variety of new regulatory powers in government. We wanted to study everything from Asian food to flood plains, and we set up...

WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department is studying whether legal immigrants seeking citizenship and other benefits should pay higher application fees. The fees now charged don't reflect the full cost of doing business, Emilio Gonzalez, director of the department's Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Wednesday. Applying for citizenship now costs $330. Applying for a green card conveying legal residency costs $325. Applicants also now pay a $70 fingerprinting fee in each case. "American citizenship is priceless," said Gonzalez, a naturalized citizen. "I think people will pay." The study will review costs of facility improvements, training, equipment and technology and determine...

London - Iran could be able to produce between 20 and 25 kilos of highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by 2010, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London said Wednesday. 'The IISS estimate of 2010 remains valid,' the institute said in its report The Military Balance 2006 published Wednesday. Other estimates of an Iranian nuclear weapons capacity by 2009, or even 2008, were 'within the margin of error, given the number of unknowns', the report said. It stressed that the limited access of the IAEA nuclear watchdog to Iran's facilities required policymakers 'to rely on worst-case assumptions...

Ethnic studies — a relatively new field — could be harmed by the plagiarized passages and made-up facts discovered in University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill's work, a panel found. But scholars of ethnic studies, and those who have been closely watching the investigation, have varying opinions on whether there will be a "Churchill effect" on the field. The stinging report that became public last week rejected Churchill's assertion that there are different research standards for ethnic studies scholars. Panel members also found that the tenured professor strayed from the "bedrock principles" of scholarship. The five-member investigative panel arrived at...

Stanford Islamic studies grow too slowly for critics ... Four years after Stanford University announced plans to expand its Islamic Studies program, students complain that its curriculum still lags far behind that of other elite universities. Dismayed by the departure of three key professors since 2002 and the slow pace of replacing them, some Muslim students say the university isn't moving fast enough on its promise to build a world-class program focused on the Middle East. They also seek the creation of a Muslim Community Cultural Center, where students could socialize. Although Muslims make up only 2 percent of Stanford's...

Contrary to popular belief, middle-aged and older people enjoy sex, and will do so into their 80s, research suggests. A study of 300,000 people aged 40 to 80 in 29 countries also found couples with greater equality in western Europe were more likely to enjoy their sex lives. Highest satisfaction levels were reported in Austria and Spain and the lowest in the more male-dominated societies of the Middle East and Asia. The study is due to appear in journal the Archives of Sexual Behaviour. Study author and professor of sociology at the University of Chicago said people aged 40 to...

If you're a scientist working for private industry, it helps to invent something useful. But if you're a scientist trying to get funding from the government, you're better off telling the world how horrible things are. And once people are scared, they pay attention. They may even demand the government give you more money to solve the problem. Usually the horrible disaster never happens. Chaos from Y2K. An epidemic of deaths from SARS or mad cow disease. Cancer from Three Mile Island. We quickly forget. We move on to the next warnings. This is the story of a looming disaster...

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2006 – A new Defense Department Web site that debuts April 3 will feature government-funded scientific studies of medical issues experienced by military members during deployments, a contractor involved with the project said here today. The DeployMed ResearchLINK site will initially contain 1991 Gulf War-related medical research that's been compiled by government researchers, Dr. Francis L. O'Donnell, a physician and DoD medical consultant, said. Around June, additional medical information gathered from Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom will be added. The site contains "information that you really can't find anywhere else about what's going on within not only...

I need some freeper help. I was having a discussion with a friend about equal pay for women (she is earning less than she should, but that is not the immediate issue) and I mentioned I had read an article that referred to a study that suggested that the disparity in women's pay may be due - at least statistically - to women having less time at the job because of child care, etc. i can't find the article. Does anyone remember seeing it? If so, can you please send a link? Thanks

Human activities are releasing greenhouse gases more than 30 times faster than the rate of emissions that triggered a period of extreme global warming in the Earth's past, according to an expert on ancient climates. "The emissions that caused this past episode of global warming probably lasted 10,000 years. By burning fossil fuels, we are likely to emit the same amount over the next three centuries," said James Zachos, professor of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zachos will present his findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science...

In the fog-shrouded forests of California's remote North Coast, winemakers believe they've found the perfect terrain to grow the notoriously fickle pinot noir grape prized by connoisseurs. Vineyard developers are snapping up thousands of acres of redwoods and firs in Sonoma County, with plans to clear the trees and plant the once-obscure varietal made famous by the wine-fueled road trip film "Sideways." Environmentalists and residents in Annapolis, a tiny town about 140 miles north of San Francisco, are trying to rein in the pinot lovers. "If you've seen the movie, you've seen the glassy-eyed stare they have when they talk...

New studies show Fourth Salt Man is 2000 years old TEHRAN, Dec. 23 (MNA) -- The most recent studies on the Fourth Salt Man indicate that the body is 2000 years old, the director of the Chehrabad Studies Center announced on Friday. Recent radiography and CAT scans of the body indicate that the Fourth Salt Man was 15 or 16 years old at the time of death, Abolfazl Ali added. Discovered in the Hamzehlu Salt Mine in early March 2005, the Fourth Salt Man is the most intact of the “salt men” discovered in the mine, which is located near...

WASHINGTON - Government studies released Thursday show a broad range of potential costs if the United States were to regulate carbon dioxide to curb global warming, from relatively cheap to expensive. The Environmental Protection Agency said its analyses show the superiority of President Bush's plan for cutting air pollution from the nation's 600 coal-burning power plants. But Bush's plan, which wouldn't regulate carbon dioxide at all, has been stalled in Congress since its introduction in 2002. Nonetheless, EPA compared it with current regulations as well as competing legislative proposals by Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and James Jeffords, I-Vt. None of...

WASHINGTON - In an aggressive push by the Bush administration to open more public land to oil and gas production, the Interior Department has quit conducting environmental reviews and seeking comments from local residents every time drilling companies propose new wells. Field officials have been told to begin looking at issuing permits based on past studies of an entire project, even though some of those assessments may be outdated. The instructions are in a directive from the department's Bureau of Land Management expected to cover hundreds of anticipated new drilling applications. President Bush and Congress authorized the streamlining as part...

My daughter has asked me to ask you all to recommend books on foreign affairs for her college course on International relations. My understanding is they must be non-fiction and pertain to the US relations with other nations, but other than that the field is wide open. They can be about any time in our history, any country, wide ranging or very specific and, of course, excellent writing always preferred. Thanks in advance to all who care to respond!

At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.” The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. This was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York. The observance of Women’s Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment, but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality....

Because the universe is an energy system and has an inherent order, there is always a response to prayer. This is not belief, supposition, or simply wishful teaching. Prayer has been extensively studied and proven in double- and triple-blind studies. Prayer is energy, and has definite action observable in the external consensual world. There are numerous reference materials on this fascinating subject. Dr. Harold Koenig, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University and the country's leading authority on faith-and-medicine studies, performed academic research that shows that prayer has beneficial health effects, primarily for the person who does the praying....

CAMP BLUE DIAMOND, AR RAMADI, Iraq (August 6, 2005) -- Navy personnel have traditionally worked closely with the Marines, either as corpsmen healing combat wounds or as chaplains healing the spiritual gashes. But one Navy ‘doc’ with the 2nd Marine Division took it a step further and trained to become one of the few Sailors who have earned a black belt in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. Lieutenant James Morris, a 32-year-old Kearny, Ariz., native who coordinates all medical evacuation in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq, is the top man on the Patient Evacuation Team. The officer-in-charge is...

Unusual things are happening in the feminist world. The Hungarian representative to UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) said that, in the future, abortion will be viewed by women in the same way that torture is now viewed by human rights advocates. Now, given how often the UN turns a blind eye to torture, Saddam Hussein’s regime being a fine example of the carefully shielded glance, we may justifiably wonder if this means torture will become acceptable or abortion unacceptable. But even so, the possibility that CEDAW members are beginning to question the practice is telling....

Today’s Washington Post is reporting: A new analysis of the most recent abortion data shows that the number of U.S. women having the procedure is continuing its decade-long drop and stands at its lowest level since 1976. In the year 2002, about 1.29 million women in the U.S. had abortions. In 1990, that number was 1.61 million. But as usual the mainstream media has left out much of the story. For example, this study, which was conducted by Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health® (PRCH) and The Guttmacher Institute acknowledges that 96% if all abortions are performed as a...

Studies prove people of Madagascar came from Borneo and Africa mongabay.com July 8, 2005 Studies released earlier this year found the people of Madagascar have origins in Borneo and East Africa. Half of the genetic lineages of human inhabitants of Madagascar come from 4500 miles away in Borneo, while the other half derive from East Africa, according to a study published in May by a UK team. The island of Madagascar, the largest in the Indian Ocean, lies some 250 miles (400 km) from Africa and 4000 miles (6400 km) from Indonesia. Its isolation means that most of its mammals,...

Success has many parents; failure is an orphan. That's the kind of fickle armchair opinions offered by some public figures and media commentators who are waffling supporters or critics of our mission in Iraq. Without embarrassment, their speeches and writings bounce around with the day's headlines. Who cares? They're just a bunch of talking heads anyway. And, with the expansion of choices in media, people are able to choose which ones reinforce their own dispositions. Surveys show that supporters tend to watch Fox, and opponents tend to watch CNN. The importance is two-fold. First, the larger middle is affected and...

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the humanities in Washington "don't get no respect." Not as much as they should, anyway. We're a company town and the company makes politics. But like a blind squirrel who finds an acorn once in a while, politicians and the journalists gather occasionally with others who crave more profundity than the noise in political rhetoric to listen to the annual >Jefferson Lecture. "The training of the intellect was meant to produce an intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction but it also had practical goals of importance to the individual and the entire community, to make the humanistically trained individuals...

Researchers: Gay Men React to Scent Like Women By E.F. Winslow Posted 5-10-2005 It’s Official. They really are “Girlie Men”. Scientists in Sweden have found that a compound taken from male sweat stimulates the sexual area of the brains of gay men and straight women, but not heterosexual men. In the study, which has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, scientists monitored brain topography while administering varied scents to a group of 12 heterosexual men, 12 homosexual men, and 12 heterosexual women. They reported a correlation between the reactions of the women’s brains with that...

As Gov. Rendell and state legislators consider a proposal for a $7 an hour minimum wage, they should also bear in mind Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's warning that such a move "prevents people who are at the early stages of their careers... from getting a foothold in the ladder of promotions." Wage-hike proponents often argue that minimum-wage employees haven't had a raise since Congress last increased the national rate. But few entering the workforce at the minimum wage stay there for long. Nearly two-thirds get a raise within one to 12 months. Most low-wage earners simply don't need...

Two new studies looking at the feasibility of space-based solar power - orbiting satellites that would serve as high-tech space dams - suggest the concept shouldn't be readily dismissed and could generate both Earth-bound and space-based benefits. These "powersats" would catch the flood of energy flowing from the Sun and then pump it to Earth via laser or microwave beam. On earth it would be converted to electricity and fed into power grids to be tapped by terrestrial customers. The thought of beaming energy to Earth via satellite was first brought to light in the late 1960s by Peter Glaser,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to...

Testosterone has a bad reputation. The public image of it is closely linked to the idea of dumb aggression, to the caveman. But this is a far from complete image. In recent years new research is starting to show that it would be more accurate to associate this much maligned hormone with Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein and Edison than the rough and brutal Neanderthal. Testosterone, it seems, could be the true driver of our civilisations. Satoshi Kanazawa at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, studied the biographies of 280 scientists and plotted their intellectual achievements against their ages. He discovered...

STANDARD VIEW 1. Recession causes businessmen to be cautious. 2. Talented leaders make the population happy. 3. A rising stock market makes people increasingly optimistic. 4. Scandals make people outraged. 5. War makes people angry. 6. Happy music makes people smile. 7. Nuclear bomb testing makes people nervous. SOCIONOMIC VIEW 1. Cautious businessmen cause recession. 2. A happy population makes leaders appear talented. 3. Increasingly optimistic people make the stock market rise. 4. Outraged people seek out scandals. 5. Fearful and angry people make war. 6. People who want to smile choose happy music. 7. Nervous people test nuclear bombs....

Asbestos and Alar are only two of many instances where vast sums were spent on hypothetical risk while science was ignored. In the past we used our natural resources freely. We took great pride in our ability to convert resources into products with a direct benefit to the public. We turned trees into houses, coal and iron into automobiles. Today we hear that we must stop using our economic resources. Scale back! Harvest fewer trees. Drill fewer oil wells. Use less fertilizer. Build no new power plants. Encourage the government to buy back land it once offered to its people,...

IMPERIAL JAPANESE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: Witness Account "C" Test How Long a Human Being Could Survive With Just Water and Biscuits Imperial Japanese Medical Orderly Ishibashi witnessed: (Translation) "I saw the malnutrition experiments. They were conducted by the project team under the technician Yoshimura. He was a civilian project team under the technician Yoshimura. He was a civilian member of Unit 731. The purpose of the experiments, I believe, was to find out how long a human being could survive just with water and biscuits. Two individuals were used for this experiment. They continuously circled a prescribed course within...

We did it... We protested churchill. There was a collection of pro-Churchill moonbats that showed up, and we protested them as well.

About a year ago, the Centers for Disease Control issued a highly publicized report stating that obesity-related health problems kill 400,000 Americans every year -- an "epidemic" second only to smoking in causing preventable deaths. The story was big news. A host of outside skeptics, however, such as the Center for Consumer Freedom, questioned the findings, and their efforts eventually forced the CDC to admit that at least part of the study was flawed. Now, despite even more critical evidence, the CDC says its mistakes don't matter.

TROUBLE SPEAK Ward Churchill copied 'original' art piece Takes a swing at TV reporter who confronted him -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 26, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Professor Ward Churchill Adding to a growing list of allegations, controversial University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill appears to have violated copyright law by claiming a reknowned artist's work as his own. Churchill, whose integrity has been challenged since news broke earlier last month of his paper blaming victims of 9-11 for the attacks, made an Indian-theme serigraph in 1981 called "Winter Attack" and printed 150 copies. But one of the buyers,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A parcel of studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, people are to blame, and the weather is going to suffer, climate experts said on Thursday. New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well underway, said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (news - web sites), Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are...

PUT SOME PRESSURE ON PROF CHURCHILL AND U OF C ACT NOW: Please express your concerns about Professor Churchill by sending POLITE AND THOUGHTFUL emails to the Department of Ethnic Studies - The University of Colorado, Boulder, to UC’s Board of Regents, to UC’s Interim Chancellor, and to Colorado’s Governor. Please also contact Colorado’s state house members and U.S. House and Senate reps. Remember, being rude and hurling insults will get you nowhere. Intelligent and thoughtful comments will have an impact. For more info, click here.

The Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia at Princeton University Announces Its Theme for 2005-2006 and Invites Applications for a Research Fellowship 2005-2006 Theme: "Society under Occupation: Contemporary Palestinian Politics, Culture and Identity" Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has now persisted for over thirty-seven years, during which time the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has grown to hundreds of thousands and Israeli control over the territories has been strengthened by the use of checkpoints, by-pass roads, military engagement and, most recently, the construction of...

JUST two or three visits a week to a fast-food outlet may be enough to put you under threat of obesity and diabetes. Despite claims by the fast-food industry that its products can form part of a healthy diet, participants in a major US trial showed signs of significant weight gains by eating at fast-food diners more than twice a week. The study, published today in the British medical journal The Lancet, covered more than 3000 young people for 15 years from 1985, to investigate the link between fast-food consumption, weight gain and insulin resistance. The researchers found fast-food consumption...

New studies show Jiroft was an international trade center 5000 years ago Tehran Times Culture Desk TEHRAN (MNA) –- Studies by foreign archaeologists and experts on seals recently discovered in the Jiroft area prove that Jiroft was an international trade center 5000 years ago. The head of the excavation team in the region, Yusef Majidzadeh, said on Wednesday that several ancient seals in various shapes were discovered during the most recent excavation at the site. “The twenty-five discovered seals show that the regional people made use of seals in their business. They used to put products inside jars, covered the...