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You're right, it doesn't seem McClelland et al's paper makes the claims that Reuter's article does. Scientific American's article did a much better job explaining the realities and the SA author appears to have actually understood what McClelland et al were getting at.

While some claim that the pollinating bees are not being wiped out by genetically-modified (GMO) crops, keep in mind that many of these "foods" have been intentionally engineered to have high levels of "natural" pesticides; in other words, pesticides that plants evolved as a defense against insects.

However, what is new is the introduction of genetic codes so the plants now generate new, never-before developed pesticides. Should we assume the multi-national corporations have done their due diligence to test the effects of these toxins in our food supply?

Actually, they are *suppressing* the scientific evidence of significant toxicity. And keep in mind, they are testing only *one* single added toxin -- do you eat only one type of food? It is common to find synergy in similar toxins; where one + one poison equals three times the danger. OK, enough of the reality; let me just skip to the links:
    Scientific American; March 13, 2007; GMO corn causes liver, kidney problems in rats: study
    http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=A 1018BD684F0C6A62F01999A180E764B
    (interestingly, link is dead, search on "GMO Corn" now finds editorial "no harm from GMO has ever been demonstrated")

    GreenPeace; Regulatory systems for GE crops a failure: the case of MON863. March 2007
        http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/internationa l/press/reports/gp_briefing_seralini_study.pdf
        (this links to dozens of newspaper and magazine articles tracing this latest unethical
          attempt to suppress scientific findings about health risks of GMOs)

Actually, I agree that better seeds are a good thing, and that finding crops which require less pesticides is wonderful.

I would just like to see advanced cross-breeding used to achieve those results, rather than splicing poison into our food supply.

To those who claim "no harm has been done" (aside from destroying the crops and lives of those attempting to live GMO-free!) let me pose one question. What is next?

Sure, adding these two toxins here, and those four poisons there hasn't killed anyone just yet....

But what happens in a few years, if we learn that after 3 years of exposure to those man-made chemicals the human liver gets turned to pudding? Several hundred thousand people start going jaundice and dying? And all our food sources are irretrievably contaminated? Do we start regulating then, in the midst of the plague?

No. We need to impose minimal levels of testing, as we would for new drugs being given to humans, immediately.

And *immediately* we need labeling of any foods containing GMOs.

Your state legislature, congressperson, senator, political action committee; and vote with your dollars by buying organic and non-GMO right now.

...or it's like a smail mail connection where you can't send messages as letters from the Post Office!

Just because it has limitations relative to another method doesn't mean it's pointless -- it just has different uses. And as was pointed out in a recent Scientific American article here, line-of-sight is probably ok in office settings as long as your signals can bounce around the room.

By conicidence, this was written up in the Scientific American blog yesterday:

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=D0607ADA-E7F2-99DF-357C0F909848DD63&ref=rss

Basicaly, the mitochondria just keep doing their thing, which is consuming sugar and oxygen and making carbon dioxide. But, the body's no longer removing the CO2 from the cell, so it builds up until it wonks the cells chemistry and causes the cell membrane to pop.

The SciAm article also mentions how hypothermia slows down the mitochnodria, which is why people who 'drown' in very cold water can sometimes be brought back to life.

It doesn't really matter how many dogs you've trained semi-professionally. Until you get your hands on one genetically identical animal, after another, after another... I don't think you'll fully appreciate how much alike these creatures will be. Additionally, they'll be raised in very similar drug-sniffing environments.

It will be very much similar to driving one 2007 V6 Honda Accord just off the assembly line after another. You'll rarely notice a significant difference from one to the next.

Save the birds and the bees!

If you want to keep up with news like this (recall that "news" comes from Middle English for "new thing") just drop New Scientist and Scientific American into your RSS reader.

I say STFU, n00b!

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=diaper_clad_ astronaut_attempts_to_kidnap&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

P.S. WHOOOSH!

Pluto shouldn't have been declared a planet in the first place because it is tiny and its orbit crosses that of Neptune. It is a moon-in-waiting.

As for the IAU decision, yah, it was a bit ad-hoc. I agree it will be revised, it needs to be. But Pluto will not be a planet again.

BTW I do like the reasoning in the Scientific American article.

It's funny how people get so worked up about Pluto not being a planet. The fact is that it should have never been a planet in the first place. Scientists did a similar thing back in the 1800s when the decided not to call all of the asteroids between Jupiter and Mars planets. If we kept calling Pluto a planet, then we'd have to add all the other Kuiper belt objects. There's a very good Scientific American article here that explains the whole thing. If you're still crying about Pluto not being a planet you should probably read it.

I read it in a Scientific American article. I can't find the militia stuff in the article(it might have been in one of the boxes to the side, which are apparently not published online) but I think this is the article.

The asteroid belt isn't really all that crowded.
I found a scientific american article that has some interesting bits.

You could have provided us with the link while you were at it, but thanks for the tip. The entire article is there! I am going to enjoy reading this: A Simpler Origin for Life by Robert Shapiro.

Well, last things first... you can't stop a hurricane.

Actually, you can. Look at Drowning New Orleans: The Original 2001 Scientific American Article or look at what Dutch did to protect themselves from the North Sea (not precisely a hurricane but close enough).

But getting back to the topic, by that logic, we shouldn't try to stop homicides, either, because they account for less deaths than car crashes...

I never said you should not try to stop the terrorism. Point I was trying to make was that budget should correspond to the real threat instead of the perceived threat and that American people are sadly off-balance when it comes to judging real threats.

As a consequence, it is worse for them as well as for the rest of the World.

For example, it was well known that an investment of around $14 billion would bring New Orleans to a reasonable safety level. Instead these $14b ended up in a sink-hole called "War on Terror".

Sure, you can virtually eliminate deaths from car accidents by reducing speed limits to 25 and making cars cost $50k each by adding $25k more in protection, and then they get 8MPG.

But that's not what we want.

Which is where a responsible govermnet comes into - to order people to do what will benefit them all in the long run, even against their immediate wishes. Sadly, Americans seem to have lost their ability to elect such a government.

Here is a better explanation. This topic has been covered before many times.

http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?articleI D=959FBD96-E7F2-99DF-341F959A7DA2A292&chanID=sa003

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007A73 5-759A-1CDD-B4A8809EC588EEDF

There hasn't been "dead silence" about Mars. I've heard about it a lot. A whole lot.

We don't have to rely on Mars to get data about solar energy flux over the last >25 years. We have direct satellite measurements of solar output. Check it out.

If we didn't have satellite data, we would want to check our natural satellite for solar-induced temperature changes. Unlike Mars, the moon doesn't have abedo changes like Mars does.

>the predictions of the climate models have been very, very poor

They've underestimated the amount of rise in sea level, true.

>CO2 rises lag warm periods

It's a positive feedback system, warmth brings out more CO2. The effect of CO2 and other "greenhouse" gases is simple physics, not climatology. Apply thermodynamics to the earth without the effect of a warming atmosphere and you would get a global average temperature about 30 Celsius lower than we've actually got. CO2, methane, and (here's where things get so complicated you need supercomputers) water vapor are the reasons the oceans aren't frozen over.

There are still big uncertainties about a system with multiple coupled feedback loops on different time scales, but the remaining uncertainties are how much, how fast, and how serious the effects will be.

From the article you quoted,
>>the global cooling hysteria of the 1970s.
This claim is like a Terminator, it just keeps coming back no matter how many times someone posts the bibliography of climate articles from the 1970s.

...last year: astronomers could see in the aftermath of two colliding galactic clusters.

The visible matter's momentum through space was impeded at quite a different rate than dark matter. This left four distinct zones of gravitational lensing, but only TWO were associated with visible matter. The other two were dark matter halos that had been separated from each galactic cluster.

Scientific American had an interesting article in the April 2007 issue called "Just How Smart Are Ravens?" (subscribers-only link, sorry). It touched on determining why animals evolve intelligence, especially considering the sheer number of species that respond instinctively at best, or, in the case of the majority of species, simply to taxis (think bacteria, insects, etc.) The article defined intelligence as the ability to reason and display logic. It seemed to conclude that the more "intelligent" animals--birds, primates, humans--lived in more social environments and needed to be able to adapt (short-term, not in terms of evolution) to different situations.

Current robots, however, have highly specific roles and do not need to adapt much. They clearly are highly logical, and thus somewhat intelligent by SciAm's standards, but the breadth of their intelligence is limited. And a mine-sweeping robot isn't about to "adapt" itself to start avoiding damage from mines, becoming its controller's friend, or taking over the world.

See e.g. Scientific American, March 2006: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=000B73EB-3380-13F6-B38083414B7F0000

Seems like they could make use of some hydrogen sulfide as well:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00089E1 B-035C-152C-835C83414B7F0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide#Indu ced_hibernation

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000998FD-65C6-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7/

The word wormhole is being used inappropriately somewhere...

To make a fascinating story short, he claims that cancer is a result of chromosomal damage and reshuffling, not gene mutations. He provides very compelling chromosome diagrams showing the pieces of chromosomes scattered all over. (Chromosome 2 has pieces of chromosome 8 stuck to it, etc). I was unaware of this property of cancerous cells, even though that knowledge has been around since the 50's. He believes that science took a wrong dogmatic turn by pinning the cause of cancer on gene mutations instead of chromosomal upheaval.

The BBC and Scientific American have good quotes from Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the results. Others are already calling it "possibly habitable".

Very cool news!

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/cloned_animals. cfm
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=C716B55E-E7 F2-99DF-3DE129EA7AA82596&chanID=sa006&colID=2
http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/BEEF.html

Thank you bockelboy for posting this. I have been keeping tabs on the CERN for a very long time, from the groundbreaking to today - and I really really really want to see this become a success. I really hope that it's not derailed. *snerk* I made a funny. :P I studied particle physics, but could never afford to go to school for it, so I became an IT GeekGrrrl instead. Something I could do without school anyways. :P But after the *horrible* SA blog here: http://blog.sciam.com/ - it's good to see some positive and ACCURATE information out there. I'm waiting for the 24th with baited breath! :)

It certainly is - strangley enough, I just finished reading an article in this month's scientific american that describes the research mentioned in TFA done by John Pendry regarding an area of study called "plasmonics". Odd that TFA didn't mention the field, as it has applications that are far more realistic in the shorter term than cloaking devices, such as circuits that can convert electromagnetic energy at a given frequency and wavelength to an electron density wave that is the same frequency of the light (thus information can be transmitted from the light and through the material with no loss) but at a much smaller wavelength, meaning the material can transmit the same volume of information through a conduit that it is much smaller than half the wavelength of the light wave, which is currently the limiting factor in optical transmission of data (i.e. fiber).

At any rate, the SciAm article is much more interesting than TFA, and has a lot more information, I highly recommend it.

"[Marijuana] contains far more carcinogens, isn't smoked through a filter"

You may be surprised to hear that there is no link between marijuana use and lung cancer.

Great stuff, hardly news though, it just seems like the same thing as some Swiss lab has been working on for years.
Publications: http://isic2.epfl.ch/page58678.html
Some press coverage: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa025&arti cleID=0002C2E1-17B2-1508-97B283414B7F0000
Products?: http://www.solarisnano.com/solarenergy.php

Here's the press release from UBC, and a SCIAM article.

also note that an estimated 125 gigatons of ice is lost each year from the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. We'll have a little more / deeper water with each passing year.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000625A 6-6ECF-1CE2-95FB809EC588EF21

If you browse through I think, the Dec issues over the last couple years or so, one has a good article on photonic bandgap crystals. However tehe structures are still quite large, so a transistor would be huge if they made one.

This has been in work a while (from 2005):

http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleI D=000BCFA2-450E-1289-837D83414B7FFE9F

Doesn't say anything about a solution to the real issues, which are economically and safely recovering the hydrogen in a motor vehicle and the slow rate of absorption.

More promising is using organic nanopores (from corncobs, natch) to store methane:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/07022 0132230.htm

Obviously, this was caused by the fact that the Yorktown's control software was of a really bad design.

You are mistaken. Safeguards were intentionally disabled.

The truth is that a server app corrupted it's data, a client app tried to use that bad data, and the client app failed to control equipment. Can happen with any OS. Add to this the fact that the ship was a test platform not an operational ship and they were trying to break things.

"Others insist that NT was not the culprit. According to Lieutenant Commander Roderick Fraser, who was the chief engineer on board the ship at the time of the incident, the fault was with certain applications that were developed by CAE Electronics in Leesburg, Va. As Harvey McKelvey, former director of navy programs for CAE, admits, "If you want to put a stick in anybody's eye, it should be in ours." But McKelvey adds that the crash would not have happened if the navy had been using a production version of the CAE software, which he asserts has safeguards to prevent the type of failure that occurred."

http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2.h tml

"McKelvey writes that the failure, "was not the result of any system software or design deficiency but rather a decision to allow the ship to manipulate the software to stimulate [sic] machinery casualties for training purposes and the 'tuning' of propulsion machinery operating parameters. In the usual shipboard installation, this capability is not allowed.""

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.37.html#subj1

Alibates Dolomite 'Flint' Found In Oldest US Archaeological Sites

The single source of the hardest 'flint' material (a dolomite) in North America comes from the panhandle of Texas, quarried at Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibates_Flint_Quarri es_National_Monument , with the site protected and preserved by the US Parks Service from the 1960s http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/alibates/images/ smithsonian-letter.html .

The only quarries known that produced it are located near Lake Meredith reservoir and recreation area 30 miles north of Amarillo, Texas. http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/alibates/ Alibates Dolomite, #9 (out of 10) in the harden scale, is found in most ancient archaeological sites across the USA; from the east and west coasts - including throughout the Great Lakes and plains regions of North America; being much more sturdy and harder than obsidian (a black, brittle volcanic glass) or chert (though a hard sedimentary rock) that's 'softer' than Alibates flint.

Seashells, beads, pipestone, some tools and ornaments derived from those regions have been found with Alibates flint in most of the oldest North American excevations; including the: Yuma man area, Folsom man http://folsommuseum.netfirms.com/folsomman.htm , Sandia man and Clovis man http://members.tripod.com/wksmith/ews.html digs plus others. One distinctive trait of the manufacture of Alibates points is a 'blood gutter' (of sorts) that is not on the points on display in the article http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&arti cleId=EB7B89C4-E7F2-99DF-3FEB5E35D73EE583 .

Also - the color of Alibates, though greatly varied, tends to have translucent striated streaks and swirls in many shades generally from purple to white. Aside from the spear and arrow points; other tools include: knives, scrapers, awls (leather punches) and hatchet heads all made from Alibates Flint. As these implements have been found in digs across the continent; clearly there was thriving industry and associated nation-wide trade, dating from well over 10,000 years ago.

Most of the 'oldest' 'man' digs in North America, discovered thus far, being between 10,000 to 15,000 years old; after the glaciers melted ( http://folsommuseum.netfirms.com/folsomman.htm , come complete with tools made of Alibates Flint. Respectfully submitted by: Robert Hertner

See
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=D7A6170FCD40C9D43BE7EB83295B0324

To the extent that it is harvested with diesel and distilled with nat. gas, it might as well be a fossil fuel.

Newer plants do better, but the energy surplus isn't spectacular. Shifting all corn and soya production to energy would displace less than 10% of the US transport fuel demand. Yippee:

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=fuel_change& more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Biomass conversion might work, but anything less is just special interest lobbying working.

NASA's problem is that they're stuck in the old model of "we want to find the VERY BEST candidate" and a "process of elimination." Many corporations long ago realized that you look for good people you can refine to be the best and you keep them. NASA's like an employer that shows a brilliant stock trader the door after an interview because he's a horrendous dresser, instead of hiring him and his supervisor taking him to a tailor some evening.

Guess what? We're all full of faults, and even after decades of refining their screening technique, they didn't detect that this woman could have serious mental issues.

Would You Seek Help If It Meant You'd Never Fly On the Shuttle covers the matter better than I could, but basically: NASA's reaction to this is more intense screening, when it should be to recognize the commitment made on both sides and help them resolve their personal problems.

My employer has an entire department dedicated to helping employees with "life" problems. It's anonymous; your supervisor or coworkers never find out you even talked to them. Why? Because it's better to have someone for you to talk to and try and help you with little problems, before they become problems that interfere with your work. Had NASA had a similar program, chances are the astronaut in question would have received the mental help/counselling she needed.

Instead, NASA lost a great astronaut and her life has been destroyed.

Even the most sophisticated and 100% accurate missile defense shield fails against decades-old missiles + an overwhelming number of decoys. Only one nuke needs to get through, and you'll never stop them all. This nice article explains in more detail. Anyway, the next nuke that is detonated as an act of terrorism will probably be delivered by much simpler means, e.g. via FedEx...

The current net from corn and soya, not processing the cellulose(Still a when, or can we do that now?) is less than 10% of the US consumption of gasoline and diesel energy. I can see that being better if you did it with energy in mind, but not the 5 times better that might be close to viable.

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=fuel_change& more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Know your sources:

On the one hand we have a climatologist (a real live PHD) saying that people who try to pass off political controveries as science should not be doing so while enjoying the certification of a scientific organization. Seems reasonable.

On the other hand, a guy described by slashdot as a scientist but who is really a conservative attack dog slagging the climatologist by making all sorts of unjustified remarks about censorship. This guy used to work for Rush Limbaugh as his Washington Correspondent. This guy was one of the first to break the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" story. Now he is a climate expert?

Hmmmm. Which person should I trust on climate .... hmmmm .... tough one ... weasel vs. expert .... hmmmm ....

Sources:

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=senator_inho fe_s_pet_weasel&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Marc_Mo rano

After reading your site,I thought your readers would be interested in looking at these energy technologies and EPS's theoretic base for ball lighting.

Aneutronic Fusion: Here I am not talking about the big science ITER project taking thirty years, but the several small alternative plasma fusion efforts.

There are three companies pursuing hydrogen-boron plasma toroid fusion, Paul Koloc, Prometheus II, Eric Lerner, Focus Fusion and Clint Seward of Electron Power Systems

Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion

He quotes costs and time to development of P-B11 Fusion as tens of million $, and years verses the many decades and ten Billion plus $ projected for ITER and other "Big" science efforts

Here are the links:

http://www.electronpowersystems.com/

A resent DOD review of EPS technology reads as follows:

"MIT considers these plasmas a revolutionary breakthrough, with Delphi's
chief scientist and senior manager for advanced technology both agreeing
that EST/SPT physics are repeatable and theoretically explainable. MIT and
EPS have jointly authored numerous professional papers describing their
work. (Delphi is a $33B company, the spun off Delco Division of General
Motors)."
and
"Cost: no cost data available. The complexity of reliable mini-toroid
formation and acceleration with compact, relatively low-cost equipment
remains to be determined. Yet the fact that the EPS/MIT STTR work this
technology has attracted interest from Delphi is very significant, as the
automotive electronics industry is considered to be extremely demanding of
functionality per dollar and pound (e.g., mil-spec performance at
Wal-Mart-class 'commodity' prices)."

EPS, Electron Power Systems seems the strongest and most advanced, and I love the scalability, They propose applications as varied as home power generation@ .ooo5 cents/KWhr, cars, distributed power, airplanes, space propulsion , power storage and kinetic weapons.

It also provides a theoretic base for ball lighting : Ball Lightning Explained as a Stable Plasma Toroid http://www.electronpowersystems.com/Images/Ball%20 Lightning%20Explained.pdf
The theoretics are all there in peer reviewed papers. It does sound to good to be true however with names like MIT, Delphi, STTR grants, NIST grants , etc., popping up all over, I have to keep investigating.

Recent support has also come from one of the top lightning researcher in the world, Joe Dwyer at FIT, when he got his Y-ray and X-ray research published in the May issue of Scientific American,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=00032CE5-13B7-1264-8F9683414B7FFE9F
Dwyer's paper:
http://www.lightning.ece.ufl.edu/PDF/Gammarays.pdf

and according to Clint Seward it supports his lightning models and fusion work at Electron Power Systems

lightning produces thermonuclear reaction
This new work By Dr.Kuzhevsky on neutrons in lightning: Russian Science News http://www.informnauka.ru/eng/2005/2005-09-13-5_65 _e.htm is also supportive of Electron Power Systems fusion efforts .

Vincent Page (a technology officer at GE!!) gave a presentation at the 05 6th symposium on current trends in international fusion research , which high lights the need to fully fund three different approaches to P-B11 fusion (Below Is an

The only reason why I know anything at all about the disease is because of the Janet Skarbek documentary. With the law on the side of the beef producers (remember the Oprah case?), you won't see too many news outlets sticking their necks out to report this. That and the CDC is doing its best to discount any cases here in the USA as "normal" CJD (as opposed to the variant type).

What the upshot of all this is (as I understand it) is that the prion unfolds somewhat (mutates) and that is what does the damage. They aren't a virus, and they are dammed hard to destroy. And from what I remember, the mutated prions "saw" through the cells in the brain causing holes in it.

Check out the picture of a damaged brain:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/572832.stm

A link to the unfolding/misfolding info:

http://www.cprmap.com/prion/prion-finding-offers-i nsight-into-spontaneous-protein-diseases-8134.html

A link to the Janet Skarbek documentary:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/sight8704.c fm

The latest victim in the USA:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=13D8532225DEA4FCA8E0EBDFB27B83E4

And a reference to the Hindu/cow link:

http://www.sustainabletable.org/blog/archives/2005 /09/news_new_theory.html

I can't remember where I saw the Janet Skarbek documentary. I think it was either FreespeechTV or LinkTV.

Oh, and the word that I have to type in to prove that I'm not a script is "infected". Ironic.

Also stumbled across this which is short and intersting, and quite gross (worth a quick read).

I don't really understand why fish is supposed to be so healthy for us (though clearly there is much advise that it is).

Omega-3s evidently help raise HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, and are known for anticlotting effects. (Ethnographers have remarked on an Eskimo propensity for nosebleeds.) These fatty acids are believed to protect the heart from life-threatening arrhythmias that can lead to sudden cardiac death. And like a "natural aspirin," adds Dewailly, omega-3 polyunsaturated fats help put a damper on runaway inflammatory processes, which play a part in atherosclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, and other so-called diseases of civilization.

I do know you can get serious liver problems from say eating lots of red meat, which is what I was thinking of - one of the reasons why medical practitioners often caution against things like the atkins diet (even though it has a really high success rate, it can also cause other problems and isn't sustainable, especially if you drink a fair bit, for example, as it puts huge strain on the liver).

This I find to be very interesting...a large number of the guys that I work with always seem to be on some form of bizarre "beer & meat" diet, or alternatively, regularly fast! They're all highly intelligent (in a slashdot sort of way), but I've wondered if this really makes for good common sense. Although, I have to say that the latest issue of Scientific American Reports has expounded upon the benefits of both alcohol and fasting, and the Sienna Miller liquid potato diet is amusing.

This was on Scientific American a while ago...http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0 00A27C4-0C1B-1C5E-B882809EC588ED9F

That's true to a point. Once we leave Earth's magnetic field, there is an awfully big danger from radiation.

IIRC, the moon is still covered by the field but any trip further isn't. A trip to Mars would require some type of shielding. Scientific American has an article on it but I can't find any link to a non-pay version. The gist of it has them exploring possible solutions such as physical shielding (water or some type of polymer), magnetic fields (requiring astronauts to be immersed in a massively powerful magnetic field or to have a double field design that complicates matters but neutralizes the field around living quarters), or giving the entire ship a huge negative charge. The first would be very expensive IF even possible given that a meter of water is required for decent shielding. The latter two would work but would require massive ammounts of electricty and would only be able to repel postively or negatively charge particles but not both at the same time.

Aquifers in the US are sinking (some with alarming speed).

As with the Ogallala Aquifer. At Black Mesa, on the Hopi and Navajo reseravtion in Arizona Peaboby Coal was pumping out millions of gallons of water that was used to make a slurry to pump the coal mined at Black Mesa to a power generation plant in Nevada. It was only recently that this stopped, because the Mojave Power Generation station was forced to close. It was either close or make expensive pollution upgrades to the plant. Falling aquifers is a big problem in China and India as well with water being pumped out much faster than it can be replaced. This is happening all over the world.

Regards

Scientific American had it too: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=000D45AD-46FB-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F

April 2005 issue

INNOVATION
A Toxin against Pain
For years, scientists have promised a new wave of drugs derived from sea life. A recently approved analgesic that is a synthetic version of a snail toxin has become one of the first marine pharmaceuticals

Now, with magnetic ram just around the corner, which keeps its charge powered or not, don't we have the answer right around the corner? And wouldn't asynchronous computing render this problem mostly solved?

Microsoft has done us a real disservice by implementing a broken ACPI, but the best response is to push forward the things that make that moot. For now, Ubuntu seems to get this right on my hardware out of the box, and my MacBook Pro handles it with ease. This can happen yet.