ScienceBlog.com

During the civil war this nation “nationalized” the railroad in the name of national security. The railroads seem to have recovered quite well.

In order to end our dependence on those countries which produce both our oil and the terrorists we must NATIONALIZE THE OIL INDUSTRY, cap gasoline at $1.00 a gallon at the pump (which would do more to stimulate the economy than most anything else) and keep the oil industry nationalized until those goals are realized.

U.S. and Israeli researchers have developed a method for enabling a computer program to scan text in any of a number of languages, including English and Chinese, and autonomously and without previous information infer the underlying rules of grammar. The rules can then be used to generate new and meaningful sentences. The method also works for such data as sheet music or protein sequences.

Wildlife Conservation Society scientists, working in conjunction with Iran’s Department of Environment in an isolated region in the Dar-e Anjir Wildlife Refuge, recently discovered that a remote camera set out to survey wildlife had photographed an entire family of extremely rare Asiatic cheetahs. The pictures show an adult female and her four youngsters resting in the shade of a tree, marking the largest-known group of these rare cats ever photographed in Asia.

NASA is marshaling agency resources to assist Gulf Coast-area facilities that suffered damage from Hurricane Katrina. The agency is preparing to provide help for NASA employees and contractors whose homes were damaged or destroyed. Monday’s storm hit NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, which is operated by Lockheed Martin. There are no reports of any injuries at NASA facilities. Both facilities are closed during recovery efforts.

One of the great challenges in the field of nanotechnology is optical imaging–specifically, how to design a microscope that produces high-resolution images of the nano-sized objects that researchers are trying to study. For example, a typical DNA molecule is only about three nanometers wide–so tiny that the contours of its surface are obscured by light waves, which are hundreds of nanometers long. Now, researchers from Stanford University have greatly improved the optical mismatch between nanoscale objects and light by creating the “bowtie nanoantenna,” a device 400 times smaller than the width of a human hair that can compress ordinary light waves into an intense optical spot only 20 nanometers wide.

Designer molecules that combine metals such as copper with natural organic materials could one day attack viruses in the body and treat a wide range of diseases. That’s the finding of chemists at Ohio State University, who have successfully tested such molecules against portions of HIV and Hepatitis C virus RNA in the laboratory. They’ve also created molecules that act like ACE, or angiotensin-converting enzyme, inhibitors – drugs that are used to lower blood pressure.

A new study led by researchers at Yale School of Medicine shows for the first time that a low dose oral contraceptive with a unique progestin and dosing regimen is effective in treating symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), the most severe form of premenstrual syndrome.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that the human brain favours familiar-looking faces when choosing a potential partner. The research team found that people find familiar faces more attractive than unfamiliar ones. They also found that the human brain holds separate images of both male and female faces and reacts to them differently depending on how familiar it is with their facial features.

HIV is often regarded as a disease of young people, due to its status as a drug-related or sexually transmitted disease. However, the number of people over age 50 who are infected with HIV is significant–and growing–according to an article in the Sept. 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.

A combination of natural and man-made threats is killing gorillas and chimpanzees in Central Africa, and experts say $30 million is needed for special programs to save some of mankind’s closest relatives from disappearing. An action plan drafted by more than 70 primatologists and other experts who met in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, in May designates 12 areas for emergency programs intended to increase security against illegal hunting, protect great apes and tropical forests from logging, and slow the spread of the Ebola virus in the region.

Can some one point me to some good water quality assessment related web links?

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have combined the world’s hardest known material – diamond – with the world’s strongest structural form – carbon nanotubes. This new process for “growing” diamond and carbon nanotubes together opens the way for its use in a number of energy-related applications. The technique is the first successful synthesis of a diamond-nanotube nanocomposite, which means for the first time this specialized material has been produced at the nanometer size – one-millionth of a millimeter, or thousands of times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.

Researchers at the University of Manchester are testing our genetic disposition to depression with a unique internet test. The team, based at the Neuroscience and Psychiatry Unit (NPU), in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, has set up a website where would-be volunteers can see how prone they may be to depression by identifying the emotions on people’s faces and also by taking a gambling test.

A far wider range of wildlife species could be at risk from bird flu, warns a biologist from the University of East Anglia. Dr Diana Bell, of UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, says the discovery that avian flu was responsible for the death of three rare civet cats in Cuc Phuong National Park in Vietnam, raises important questions about the range of wildlife species which could now be at risk from this virus.

Discover the true source of creation here.

Methinks the author has been hitting the sauce (marinara that is) a little too often.

We now return you to our normal serious programming.

That’s all, folks!

This season’s Antarctic ozone hole has swollen to an area of ten million square kilometres from mid-August – approximately the same size as Europe and still expanding. It is expected to reach maximum extent during September, and ESA satellites are vital for monitoring its development. This year’s hole is large for this time of year, based on results from the last decade: only the ozone holes of 1996 and 2000 had a larger area at this point in their development.

A method for identifying Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, has been cleared for diagnostic use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The test, known as the Gamma Phage Assay, was modified by scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to improve its performance and reliability when used with clinical specimens. The original form of the Gamma Phage Assay was first developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the mid-1950s.

In usual life, we can see many neon sign hanged on wall and bar with flowerier light. We are a newbie of neon sign industry. Is there anyone could explain the exact definition of neon sign, and conclude the classifeld.

Coffee provides more than just a morning jolt; that steaming cup of java is also the number one source of antioxidants in the U.S. diet, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Scranton (Pa.). Their study was described today at the 230th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

The world’s only searchable database for all four groups of land vertebrates launches today on WWF’s web site, worldwildlife.org. Wildfinder is the only online, map-driven tool to cover the entire globe. “For the first time the geographic ranges of 26,000 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians can be found at a single site,” said Eric Dinerstein, WWF’s Vice-President for Science. “This kind of information is critical for studies in ecology, biogeography, conservation biology and natural history. Before Wildfinder, finding these data might require a time-consuming search of several different references. Now, they are available with just a few mouse clicks.”