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- Darci Chapman writes "The preliminary results of a survey titled, "Hiring Preferences in Libraries: Perceptions of MLS graduates with online degrees" are available. You can take the survey here." |
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- But I focus here instead on the fact that homeschooling families tend to be politically active by margins that should scare the daylights out of anyone whom those homeschoolers might want to take on. For example, just 29 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds voted in national and state elections over the last five years. But among former homeschoolers who are now in that age bracket, a whopping 74 percent went to the polls. In the next age bracket up (25- to 29-year-olds) the margin is even bigger: In the population at large, 40 percent voted, but among folks with homeschooling backgrounds, 93 percent went to the polls. |
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- A computer-science student at Algoma University recently became the first person to create a system that routes data over bongo drums. See that picture above? That's basically how it works. You type an internet command into one computer, and the software translates it into a set of bongo-drum beats -- which the computer whacks out on the drums, using electrically-powered sticks. The second computer listens to the bongo pattern, then translates the commands back into computer-speak, and executes the command. |
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Job opening (Oct 11 2003 16:58 GMT) - The University of Kentucky, in Lexington, KY, is looking for an Engineering Librarian. This person will be responsible for the... |
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- Letao discusses coming out For gay folks, coming out is a neverending process. With every new person we meet, every... |
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- Tryon tied with David Duval ... for next to last. |
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- Buckminster Fuller wrote: The year I was born, Marconi invented the wireless, but it did not get into any practical use until I was twelve years of age, when the first steamship sent an SOS, when it was in distress, by wireless. Think of it. Great many miles–and the world began to know the ship was in distress, and a ship then rushed to its aid. Absolutely unexpected. |
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- Facilitating a constructive exchange of knowledge and goodwill worldwide, offering realistic hope for a better world through an impressive vision of inspired solutions, and doing so in such a generous and open spirit as that offered by Synergic Earth is one of the essential steps in creating the worldwide synergy necessary to move this world of ours towards a Human Era. In view of these considerations, I am pleased to inform you |
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- Million Belay writes: This is a testimony from one of the poorest nations in terms of food security. The main message is that it is by healing the ecology of an area rather than by treating one part of a system that sustainability in agriculture is achieved. The experience of the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) and the Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Tigray (BoANR) shows that there is little need for genetically manipulated seeds to improve the livelihood of poor rural communities. The experience outlined below shows how farmers can control their lives by combining their knowledge and science instead of putting themselves in a cycle of debt and despair by borrowing money to buy chemicals and improved seeds. |
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- BBC Science -- Photosynthesis is the most important chemical reaction on Earth. It is responsible for virtually all energy available for life in the biosphere. Biologists have determined the structure of the cytochrome, a protein complex that governs photosynthesis in a blue-green bacterium. According to Professor William Cramer of Purdue University in the US, the discovery is a great leap forward in the understanding of photosynthesis. "Where we once could see merely the tip of the iceberg, we can now perceive the entire mechanism of photosynthesis," he says. |
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- BBC Science -- Writing in the journal Nature, scientists describe how 14 whales died during a naval exercise in the Canary Islands. They say sonar use may need to be regulated to protect the mammals. ... They outline the circumstances surrounding the deaths in September 2002 of 14 beaked whales during a Spanish-led international naval exercise in the Canaries. About four hours after "the onset of mid-frequency sonar activity" all 14 stranded themselves and then died on the beaches of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. |
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- BBC Science -- Volunteers were asked to play a computer game designed to fool them into feeling excluded, while brain scans were taken at the same time. After the computerised snub, the scan detected activity in an area of the brain linked to physical pain. Experts say the study, from the journal Science, is a hint to the importance the brain places on social ties. The researchers involved in the study, from the University of California at Los Angeles, used an MRI scanner to probe the brains of their test subject as their feelings were manipulated. These scanners can detect subtle changes in blood flow to various parts of the brain - which indicate when the region is active. |
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- BBC Science -- One genetically modified crop proposed for possible use in the UK is certain to produce large numbers of hybrid plants, British researchers say. ... The researchers are from the University of Reading, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge, and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorset. Their study, Hybridization Between Brassica napus And Brassica rapa On A National Scale In The United Kingdom, is published in Sciencexpress, the online version of the journal Science. ... |
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- I am revisiting some of the writings of R. Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was truly a man ahead of his time. His lifelong goal was the development of what he called “Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science”–the attempt to anticipate and solve humanity’s major problems through the highest technology by providing “more and more life support for everybody, with less and less resources.” Fuller was a practical philosopher who demonstrated his ideas as inventions that he called “artifacts. |
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- CNN World -- The world's oil reserves are up to 80 percent less than predicted, a team from Sweden's University of Uppsala says. Production levels will peak in about 10 years' time, they say. "Non-fossil fuels must come in much stronger than it had been hoped," Professor Kjell Alekett told CNN. Oil production levels will hit their maximum soon after 2010 with gas supplies peaking not long afterwards, the Swedish geologists say. At that point prices for petrol and other fuels will reach disastrous levels. |
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- The New Scientist -- The controlled burning of vast swathes of bushland in northern Australia every year is damaging biodiversity, not protecting it, according to the results of an eight-year experiment. Between 30 and 40 million hectares of bush are burned annually in the Northern Territory. About half of this area is torched maliciously or by accident, but the other half is burnt intentionally by fire managers. These fires are usually set early in the dry season, when the landscape is still relatively damp. The idea is that these low-intensity fires will reduce the extent of fast-burning, high intensity wildfires later in the season. |
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- The New Scientist -- A male contraceptive treatment has achieved a 100 per cent success rate in trials involving 55 couples, Australian scientists have reported. The treatment was fully reversible and the men suffered no undesirable side-effects. The research was led by David Handelsman, director of the ANZAC Research Institute in Sydney, and involved treating 55 men in heterosexual relationships for year-long periods. None of the men's partners became pregnant during the trial, but when the treatment was stopped, normal fertility returned within a few months and some of the couples went on to conceive. Handelsman believes it is "the first time a male contraceptive that suppresses sperm production reliably and reversibly has been fully tested by couples". |
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- BBC Science -- A new era in the accuracy of climate prediction has come closer with the presentation of the first results from the largest supercomputer in the world. The Earth Simulator, housed in Japan, has produced what scientists are calling "very exciting" information. It is being presented at a three-day climate workshop in Cambridge, UK. The computer's results hold out the prospect of better predictions of the likelihood of increasing hurricanes, prolonged heavy rain, and heatwaves. The Earth Simulator, which began work in March 2002, is the world's biggest and fastest supercomputer, and has the job of solving some of the thorniest problems facing the Earth in the decades ahead. |
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- BBC Science -- The world must act far more urgently to save thousands of threatened wild plants, three British botanists say. They say part of the answer is seed banks, which can be richer in higher plants than any location on Earth. The cost would be a tiny fraction of the amount spent on particle physics, and would pay huge dividends, they say. Even seeds from rainforest plants and trees can be saved in banks, some of them for centuries, provided the conditions are carefully controlled. The argument for seed banks is made in Biologist, the journal of the Institute of Biology, by three scientists from the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens, housed at Kew Gardens in west London. |
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- John Brand writes: On May 7, 1945, General Eisenhower accepted the total and unconditional surrender of Germany's military forces. World War II had come to an end. Freedom prevailed over enslavement; democracy triumphed over dictatorship. |
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- Timothy Wilken writes: If you want to help make a world that works for all humanity, you must know this secret. It is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness. You must live from the point of view of the whole. |
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- Common Dreams -- While personal morality is key in the conservative world-view, public morality is the overarching concern of liberals. Some are so passionate about this morality that they're led to acts of civil disobedience. Perhaps best summarized in Jesus' description in Matthew 25 of who will (and who won't) get into heaven, liberal morality asks: "Are the hungry fed? Does everybody have the housing, clothing, and health-care they need? |
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- The New Scientist -- A chance discovery could lead to the development of a drug that blocks prion diseases such as variant CJD. However, it would only be useful when combined with mass screening to identify infected people who have not yet developed any symptoms. Adriano Aguzzi's team at the Institute of Neuropathology in Zurich, Switzerland, discovered the effect by accident. The researchers engineered mice to produce a protein that would stick to the scrapie prion, so the team could retrieve the prion protein for testing. The engineered mice turned out to take twice as long as normal to develop the disease. |
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- BBC World -- The World Climate Change Conference in Moscow has ended inconclusively - and with bad-tempered recriminations directed at its organisers, the Russian Government. ... Mr Putin himself set the scene during his opening speech on Monday, in which he said his government was still studying the pros and cons of Kyoto and that a decision on whether to ratify would only be taken once that was complete. This caused considerable frustration for those keen to see Kyoto come into force quickly and that frustration was compounded by repeated interventions from one of his key advisers, raising a raft of objections to the treaty. Andrei Illarionov, who advises Mr Putin on economic policy, signalled his doubts about Kyoto in comments to BBC News Online on Tuesday, and followed them up with several contributions in the conference hall questioning the science of climate change. |
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- The Independent UK -- World oil and gas supplies are heading for a "production crunch" sometime between 2010 and 2020 when they cannot meet supply, because global reserves are 80 per cent smaller than had been thought, new forecasts suggest. Research presented this week at the University of Uppsala in Sweden claims that oil supplies will peak soon after 2010, and gas supplies not long afterwards, making the price of petrol and other fuels rocket, with potentially disastrous economic consequences unless people have moved to alternatives to fossil fuels. While forecasters have always known that such a date lies ahead, they have previously put it around 2050, and estimated that there would be time to shift energy use over to renewables and other non- fossil sources. But Kjell Aleklett, one of a team of geologists that prepared the report, said earlier estimates that the world's entire reserve amounts to 18,000 billion barrels of oil and gas - of which about 1,000 billion has been used up so far - were "completely unrealistic". He, Anders Sivertsson and Colin Campbell told New Scientist magazine that less than 3,500 billion barrels of oil and gas remained in total. |
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- Ten-year-old Susannah Jackson is dying of what may be the world's newest and oddest disease. An illness so rare and mysterious that science has not yet come up with an official name for it. |
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- The Supreme Court yesterday turned down the request brought before it by the Movement for Democracy and Justice (MDJ) to join Corporate Nigeria as a respondent in its election petition challenging President Olusegun Obasanjo's victory at the April 19 presidential elections. |
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- Research on how to increase rice production has yielded fruit as New Rice Era for Africa (NERICA) variety has been discovered in Nigeria and would be used to achieve rice sufficiency in the country in 2005. |
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- A satellite derived digital image map of Abuja the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria was yesterday launched in Abuja by the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) as part of events marking the Space week 2003. |
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- The House of Representatives yesterday adopted the report of the panel that investigated the killings of protesters in Lagos and other places during the last Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) organised strike against fuel price increases and asked for the policemen involved to be tried and punished. |
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- Per chi è interessato ho ampliato un po' gli argomenti e i casi contenuti in giochi di rete.... |
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- This or something like this was an issue I raised with my friends at ,a href="http://www. winksite. com/"> Winksite. If I have a site or a team of people I want to communicate with, how do I know their mobile and available? |
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- Bryan S. recounts (and photographs) a 400-mile trip along the Maine coast this week: My mind was filled with the... |
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- In 1991 Ken Berry a University Of Chicago policeman was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He sent 50 letters to attorneys pleading for help...only one wrote back...Kimball Anderson of Winston and Strawn. |
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- Project description: Sushi is a suite of GNOME application that allow people to play a pen-and-paper game across the Internet. |
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