Reflectorites
Below are web article links, headlines and/or paragraphs for the period 3 - 10 February,
with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
PS: If anyone received an e-mail requesting prayer for the release of Mike Hutchinson,
a missionary in Africa who ran over and killed a Muslim boy, it is a hoax, but with an
element of truth. E-mail me privately for details.
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http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/02/10/xray.pics/index.html ...
CNN ... New X-ray orbiter finds universe hotter than thought ... February
10, 2000 ... MADRID -- It's gathering images of a spider-shaped nebula, a
pack of colliding galaxies and a deep-red star. And the XXM-Newton -- a
new Xray observatory in Earth orbit -- is producing pictures that European
Space Agency (ESA) scientists say suggest the universe is hotter than
estimated. "I am amazed by the quality of the pictures as compared to
previous X-ray missions," says a statement from Prof. Roger Bonnet,
ESA's director of science. "We see on them a lot of new sources, especially
in the parts of the spectrum which correspond to the hottest temperatures
and we see that the universe is hotter than we thought." Observation of
objects from space -- over a range of X-ray, ultraviolet and visible
wavelengths -- is a unique feature of the XMM-Newton observatory,
which the ESA launched in December. The satellite is named for Sir Isaac
Newton (1642-1727) and the spectroscopy he's credited with inventing. ...
[I wonder whether this will be relevant to the Big Bang and/or the age of
the universe.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=Q0wS33wR&atmo=tttttttd&pg=/et/00/2/10/ecnpig10.html
Electronic Telegraph 10.02.00 ... 10,000 pigs killed in transplant labs By
Marie Woolf SCIENTISTS have killed around 270 monkeys and more than
10,000 pigs during research into animal-to-human transplants in the past
four years, the Home Office disclosed yesterday.... MPs and animal welfare
groups say that the use of so many animals is questionable on ethical
grounds. ... Scientists have yet successfully to transplant a pig organ into a
human. They are still trying to find ways of tackling the body's rejection of
transgenic pig organs, and have encountered several types of rejection in
tests, including "acute vascular rejection" and rejection involving white
blood cells. ... [One wonders if they really need to kill that many animals
for research?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000210/sc/science_desire_1.html
Yahoo! ... February 10 ... Protein Forms Crossroad of Desire in Brain
Study WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A protein known by the unromantic
name of DARPP-32 acts as a kind of crossroads of sexual desire in the
brain, and may be a key target for future aphrodisiacs, researchers said on
Thursday. Female mice bred to lack the protein, or in whom it does not
work, act as if they have no interest in sex, a team of researchers at Baylor
College of Medicine in Houston, Rockefeller University in New York and
the University of Texas reported. Writing in the journal Science, they said
sex hormones travel along a certain pathway in the brain that merges with a
pathway used by dopamine, an important neurotransmitter or message-
carrying chemical linked with pleasure....The researchers do not suggest
that the human brain works in just the same way, but said the rats and mice
they used could be models for early experiments on ways to increase sexual
desire ... Also: http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/02/11/science.desire.reut/index.html
[No doubt some cosmetic company will latch on to this. "Love potion
#DARPP-32"? :-)]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_638000/638305.stm BBC
... 10 February, 2000 ... Scientist rapped over forged letters GMC found
scientist guilty of professional misconduct. An internationally-renowned
scientist has been banned from unsupervised research after forging
documents during drug research. Dr Henry Elliott had the restriction
imposed on his practise for a year after the General Medical Council
(GMC) was told he wrote two letters falsely claiming approval to test a
drug on volunteers. A hearing was told Dr Elliott, based at West Glasgow
Hospitals University NHS Trust, wrote the letters in October 1997 and
January 1998. He admitted falsifying the papers. ... He had originally been
given approval for the research into an anti-hypertension drug for drug
company Sanofi Winthrop but when alterations were made he side-stepped
the legal procedure and forged the letters. ...Member of the ethics
committee and a boss of Dr Elliott at the NHS trust Professor John Reid
said his colleague was guilty of a "serious lapse of judgement", but that it
was an "isolated incident". ... The hearing was told he side-stepped the
procedure to speed up the tests and did not stand to gain personally from
the forgeries .... [There seems to be a lot of cases of scientific fraud being
in the literature. Is this normal, or is it on the increase?]
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000211/t000013695.html
... February 10, 2000 ... New State of Matter Exists, Physicists Say By
USHA LEE MCFARLING, K.C. COLE, Times Science Writers A
coalition of nuclear physicists is announcing today that it has gathered
evidence of the existence of an entirely new state of high-energy matter-
one that may have arisen in the first split seconds after the big bang. The
finding, still hotly contested, would be the first experimental proof that
such a state could exist and could eventually help explain how the stars and
galaxies that make up the universe were formed. But many physicists who
have been searching for such proof remained skeptical of the
announcement and said they did not believe there was adequate evidence
that the new state of matter had actually been created in the lab. Others
suggested that the announcement was a political move, made by a
European laboratory with aging machinery that will soon be eclipsed by a
bigger and better machine being built in the United States. ... The
announcement is somewhat unusual, because it is not based on one new
experiment but on an accumulation of suggestive evidence gathered over
several years. Several physicists not directly involved in the experiment
were skeptical, if only because no one knows exactly what a quark-gluon
"soup" looks like. That makes it almost impossible to say for certain
whether the soup has been seen. The theories simply aren't strong enough
to predict clear, unambiguous signals, the physicists say. ... Today's
announcement, said one physicist, was being made so CERN could "stake
its claim" to finding the plasma, although it did not have adequate proof to
do so. "The Brookhaven machine is breathing down their neck," he said. ...
Also: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000210/sc/science_bigbang_5.html
Yahoo! ... February 10 ... CERN Physicists Say Need More Research on
Big Bang Reuters Photo By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters)
Physicists claimed Thursday to have created a new form of matter ... They
said further laboratory research must be carried out to duplicate more
closely the conditions they believe existed in the microseconds after the Big
Bang that created the universe. ... Earlier in the day, CERN announced that
scientists working since 1994 had created a new form of matter through
experiments which smashed together heavy lead ions in a fireball to prove a
theory that for years had existed only on paper. ... The next challenge in the
high-energy science falls to the United States, where a new national facility
has just been built on Long Island in New York. The so-called Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is due to begin experiments this year. The
Geneva-based CERN is winding down its current research, but expects by
2005 to have on line a new accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
It will continue experimental heavy ion research at higher temperatures and
densities. ... We would not have the World Wide Web, which was invented
here (at CERN), without particle physics." ... [More on this. Note the
bestowing of creator-hood on the Big Bang: "the Big Bang that created the
universe"! The reminder that CERN invented the Web (or was it just the
web browser?) seems irrelevant. It does sound like CERN was trying to
hang on to priority and funding?]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=Q0wS33wR&atmo=tttttttd&pg=/et/00/2/10/ecnbuz10.html
Electronic Telegraph 10.02.00 ... Bees do 'the knowledge' to sharpen their
skills By Roger Highfield BEES wearing special radar reflectors have
shown that they hone their navigational skills during training missions in
the same way that London taxi drivers gain "the knowledge".... a newly
developed radar system, in which bees wear very light reflectors, allowed
them to be tracked during their practice flights. They appear to achieve this
greater reconnaissance not by taking longer flights but by flying faster and
faster, scientists reported last week in the journal Nature. ... [Likening the
way bees acquire knowledge about their environment to how London taxi
drivers acquire theirs could be taken as either a compliment to the taxi
drivers or an insult to the bees! :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000209/sc/science_romans_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 9 .... Romans May Have Reached New World First-
Magazine LONDON (Reuters) - Christopher Columbus may not have been
the first European to reach the New World -- the Romans may have got
there first.... Anthropologist Roman Hristov, formerly of Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, believes a small black terracotta head that
was unearthed near Mexico City in 1933 is a Roman artifact and proof that
the Romans arrived before Columbus. "Hristov believes the head is the first
hard evidence of preHispanic trans-ocean contacts between the Old and
New World," ... Hristov drilled material from the neck of the head which
scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg
tested and estimated was fired 1800 years ago. Art experts agree it is
Roman and date it back to 200 AD. Archaeologists verified its authenticity
because it was excavated from a site by professionals. ... [How do they
know that someone post-Columbus did not bring it over with them? It's
hard to believe the Romans sailed across the Atlantic in 200 AD and there
is no record of it.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000209/sc/science_proteins_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 9 ... Scientists Say Robots Speed Up Gene Research
By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - American scientists have used
robots to record the interactions between proteins in a single cell in a
technical tour de force that will help researchers learn about the function of
unknown genes. ... identifying which proteins of the thousands of genes in
a single cell interact can be painfully slow. Dr. Stanley Fields ... [has] ...
automated the process and used robots to test the simultaneous interactions
of roughly a thousand molecules inside a yeast cell. ... Proteins have
complex, three-dimensional surfaces that work with a type of lock and key
mechanism. They only bind to certain other proteins to carry out their
function. "What we trying to do is to find all the keys," said Fields ...."It's a
guide book in the sense that it allows you to cluster proteins to see if they
interact with one another. It should be possible to test these interactions on
any genome (genetic material in a cell), the human genome included," ....
[I like the "lock and key mechanism" analogy. How did the `blind watchmaker'
manage that? :-)]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020800sci-animalmotherhood.html
The New York Times February 8, 2000 ... By NATALIE ANGIER
Everybody knows what a good mother is. She is a lot like apple pie:
reassuringly firm on the outside, but soft, sweet, warm and bland within. A
good mother gets pleasure from the comfort and pleasure of others. A
good mother gets pleasure from being sliced, diced and eaten alive. Yet
while everybody knows what a good mother is, and everybody wants one,
nobody seems to know where to find her -- and with reason.
--- A new book aims 'to raise Darwin's consciousness.' --That good mother,
who gives infinitely and unstintingly, is, in the phrase of the primatologist
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the woman that never evolved, nor could have.. ...
Now Dr. Hrdy has gathered her insight and research into a book, "Mother
Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection," ... Pantheon
Books. ... Dr. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a primatologist at the University of
California at Davis, spent 15 years on a book that views the mother-infant
bond from a Darwinian perspective. ... it is the product of a woman who,
before going into science, had considered becoming a novelist. It is the
story of the mother-infant bond told from a nuanced but distinctly
Darwinian perspective, an appraisal of how a welter of selective forces has
shaped maternal behaviors, impulses and strategies over tens of thousands
of years. Among its many narrative parries, the book challenges a bedrock
assumption of evolutionary biology, the premise that males of most species,
including humans, vary far more in reproductive success than do their
female counterparts. ... [Dr Hrdy's wanted to be both a novelist and a
scientist, so she managed to combine both: writing Darwinian `just-so'
stories! :-)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000208/sc/health_genetherapy_3.html
... Yahoo! ... February 8 ... Experts Urge Caution in Gene Therapy
Experiments By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gene therapy researchers, under heavy
scrutiny after the death of a teenager, have quietly started to put some of
their experiments on hold. But the head of a government oversight
committee asked them on Tuesday not to panic, saying their research was
too important to abandon. ... Jesse Gelsinger died after getting an
experimental gene therapy treatment for a rare liver disorder last
September. Soon after, it became clear the RAC was not getting required
reports of problems encountered during gene therapy trials. Researchers
are supposed to report to the RAC and the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). Now the RAC is considering tighter reporting requirements, saying
researchers need to know if someone doing similar experiments has run
into trouble, so they can protect their own patients. On Tuesday President
Clinton asked Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala to tell
the Food and Drug Administration and the NIH to hurry up. "I want to
know how we can better ensure that this information about the trials is
shared with the public," Clinton said. "If we don't have full confidence in
these trials people won't participate, and then the true promise of genetic
medicine will be put on hold." Last month, the FDA stopped eight trials at
the University of Pennsylvania, after Gelsinger, 18, died, saying it feared
patient protections there might be too weak. Newspapers also reported
about some other deaths during gene therapy experiments. One of them
was Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where two gene
therapy trials, one for cancer and one for hemophilia, were underway. ...
[While one sympathises with the need to take some risks in the hope
that some terminally ill patients might be saved, that does not
excuse lack of proper controls.]
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020800sci-earth-asteroid.html
The New York Times February 8, 2000 ... By WILLIAM J. BROAD For
the fifth time in two years, astronomers have discovered an asteroid
hurtling through space that might collide with the Earth. ... The likelihood
of collision is considered slim: one chance in a million. While the projected
date of any impact is 2022, astronomers say additional observations are
needed to calculate the orbit of the asteroid better and to rule out a
collision. The asteroid, 2000 BF19, is about half a mile wide, relatively
small by cosmic standards, and if it struck Earth could do tremendous
damage to part of the planet but would probably not cause planetwide
destruction. It was discovered by three astronomers led by Dr. James V.
Scotti using the Spacewatch Telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona. They
spotted the object on Jan. 28, and it was tracked until Feb. 3, when it
disappeared. ... [This later turned out to be a false alarm] See:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/asteroid000208.html
ABCNEWS ... Earth Dodges Another Asteroid. One-in-a-Million Chance
Now Zero By Matthew Fordahl. The Associated Press. Feb. 9 - An
asteroid initially thought to be on a possible collision course with Earth in
2022 will miss the planet, astronomers said Tuesday after reviewing new
data collected by scientists around the world ... &
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_636000/636481.stm BBC
... 9 February, 2000 ... Earth survives asteroid 'threat' No need to worry
this time For the fifth time in two years, a report of an Earth-threatening
asteroid was proven wrong within days of being announced. The asteroid
was stated to be on a possible collision course with the Earth with the
impact date set for 2022. It rapidly became clear that the asteroid would
miss the planet by millions of kilometres. Some scientists fear the public
may become desensitised to the warnings. "Someday, we're going to find
something that will have a 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 100 chance of impacting
Earth," said James Scotti, who discovered the asteroid last month at Kitt
Peak National Observatory. "When that happens, I'd rather us be taken
seriously." ...
http://exn.ca/html/templates/printstory.cfm?ID=20000203-53
EXN.CA ..... Stone Age clothing more advanced than thought by: Gloria
Chang, ... February 3, 2000 Venus of Willendorf wore a
woven basket hat, not an elaborate hairdo. .... Think of life for women in
the Stone Age and you've probably got them in crudely fashioned dresses
made of animal skin, perhaps being dragged across the cave floor by their
hair. Or hovered over a hot fire tending to a dinner of mastodon or
mammoth. Now think finely woven hats, belts and skirts - and a place in
the highest echelons of society. That's what a new discovery tells us about
women and their clothes in the upper Paleolithic. "It all began when we
discovered and studied impressions of textiles and basketry and nets on
little pieces of hard clay," explains Olga Soffer, an archeologist at the
University of Illinois. "We saw an enormous diversity in loom-weaving,
including plain weave, twining, and a good deal of basketry as well as
nets." Venus of Kostenki wore a woven hat and a 'bandeau' with straps. ....
The signs of the sophisticated weaving technologies were found on over 90
pieces of clay in the Czech Republic dated at about 27,000 years ago. That
makes them the earliest evidence of weaving. It was previously assumed
that weaving didn't come about until 5,000 to 10,000 years ago during the
Neolithic period. Soffer then compared the clay pieces to the so-called
"Venus" figurines, which are also dated to about the same time, about
25,000 years ago. "It suddenly struck us that what we were looking at
under the microscope on these little fragments was precisely what was
being shown as clothing on some of these 'naked ladies'." Venus of
Predmosti, found in France. .... After careful study, she and her team
identified fine detailing showing different weaving methods. And different
items of clothing depending on which part of Europe the Venus figurines
came from. Those from western Europe were adorned with basket hats or
caps, belts worn at the waist and what Soffer calls a bandeau - a strap of
cloth that wrapped around the body right above the breast. Eastern
European women wore belts, hung low on the hips and sometimes string
skirts. ... [More of this advanced Stone Age clothing, which IMHO tends
to confirm the Biblical picture and disconfirms the evolution picture.]
HIV/AIDS:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/aids/020800hth-doctors.html
The New York Times February 8, 2000 ... By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN,
M.D. SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 4 -- In less than four years, the euphoria
over the success of new drug combinations to treat AIDS has yielded to
the sobering challenge of dealing with the drugs' complications and failures.
Death rates for what had been an invariably fatal disease have dropped
significantly since the introduction of combinations of protease inhibitors
and other drugs. Many people with H.I.V., the AIDS virus, including some
who were near death when they began taking the drug combinations in
1996, continue to lead more or less normal lives, though they must take a
number of pills at specified times throughout the day, at costs that can
exceed $10,000 a year. ... But the unflagging optimism that AIDS scientists
displayed at an international meeting on AIDS in Vancouver in 1996 was
absent at the Seventh Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic
Infections here from Jan. 30 through Feb. 2. One reason is that the
infection is spreading through many parts of the world. Another is that
many of the participants at the conference were doctors who treat infected
people for whom the drug combinations have not worked as well. No one
knows for sure how many they are: reports range from 30 percent to 70
percent.... since AIDS was discovered in 1981, there have been few
breakthroughs. ... the confusion reflects the price paid for the Food and
Drug Administration's decision to license drugs faster in response to a
public health emergency. Because many AIDS drug trials lasted less than
four months, the complications were not recognized earlier. ... There was
general agreement on one point: the need for further laboratory research,
epidemiology and rigorously controlled clinical studies to better define the
complications and find counter measures. ... [Up to 70% failure, costing
$10,000 per patient per year? How do they know the reduction in deaths
is due to the drugs?]
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Stephen E. (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ Email: sejones@iinet.net.au
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Web: http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
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