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Similarly, most countries do put a significant amount of effort into the selection and training of the teams (here's the US training organisation's site, for example). While the exact amount of effort varies, it's still a fair time contribution, even in the US. Luckily, the prestige of the event tends to offset any minor issues it causes in other areas of the student's study.

Hey, that's not cool. Lead poisoning is a very serious. It's not the kid's fault they are exposed to it, but they get to deal with the damage for the rest of their life.

Some links for your educational pleasure:

http://www.todaysparent.com/healthsafety/allages/a rticle.jsp?content=20040206_103527_3540&page=4
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1998/198_lead.htm l
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/factsheets/lyh/govtdo. htm
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HEC/CSEM/lead/biologic_fa te.html
http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/geology/lead/
http://www.cfc-efc.ca/docs/ldac/00000367.htm
http://www.nsc.org/library/facts/lead.htm

feel free to mod this up, mods, lead poisoning is underrecognised.

http://www.constitution.org/grossack/arrest.htm
http://www.kevinboone.com/citizens_arrest.html
http://oldweb.uwp.edu/academic/criminal.justice/ci tarr.htm

  Note: varies from state to state.

Spot on. You've managed to capture what I have been floundering to say exactly.

That is the secret which funds commerical TV programming. You and I and everyone with a VCR knows that we don't watch adverts, but the advertisers sure as hell had better not figure it out, lest all programming funding go the way of the pear.

Giving direct downloads would really be rubbing this secret in the face of the advertisers, and the broadcasters unsurprisingly don't want to do that, so direct downloads ain't going to happen.

Heck, since I live in the UK, I always flick over to commerical-free BBC News 24 rolling news channel whenever ads come on, then flick back three minutes later. When I have the remote, we don't watch adverts. At all. Ever. But if the advertisers figured this out, we'd be screwed.

...

Regarding your other point, corporate political bias is something we wouldn't really consider in the UK. The BBC have pretty much a stranglehold over in-depth analytical news programming. All the other news programs are nothing more than redtop tabloid reporting ("15 killed" gets 30 sec announcement with static photo; whereas "JLo's bum" gets 5 mins full feature with live interview and excerpt from her latest video), with the exception of Channel Four News which doesn't accept sponsorship.

Programme sponsorship and product placement are very tightly regulated in the UK anyway. There have been a very few cases of this kind of corporate politial bias, but they've tended to get shot down pretty smartish by people complaining to the regulators. Us Brits may not be very good at complaining loudly at restaurants, but when it comes to writing snotty letters about "Fair Play" and "That's Not Cricket, Old Chap", we tend to do so in deluges. If you lot played rugby without padding, you'd soon get the hang of complaining about foul play.

First, there is a difference between bioinforamatics and DNA computing. Bioinformatics is the application of computer algorithms and statistical techniques to figure out how a biological system works. DNA computing is more of an engineering project, since you are addapting DNA to do your computational bidding (e.g. a DNA based microprocessor)
I my self am in the field of bioinformatics/molecular biology with my primary interest being in RNA regulation and regulatory elements. I am trying to find and figure out how RNA regulation works in model systems.
Now for your questions...
>In the long run, will biology rewrite computing or will modern day technology concepts and theory be integrated into biology?
Both will happen...
>If both are true, which will have the greater effect?
I don't know about biology rewriting comuting. First, yes DNA encodes information 'like' binary 1's and 0's, but we are still figuring out the system works. We know how to find some genes by just looking at the sequences, but we still have the problems with predicting genes in a sequence (e.g. gene splicing, post transciptional events, etc.
I think it would be more sane to use the modern day technological concepts and theory, but with an emphasis on parallel computing.
>I understand long run is ambiguous in this question, but Iâ(TM)m interested in all thoughts using any applicable definition.
Tied to the first question: How will the nature of computing, and how we perceive it, change due to biology integration?
Well we can have those clean computers powered by photosynthesis... ok, all kidding aside, it change computing for those tasks DNA would excel at: A DNA computer is a type of non-deterministic computer. We have to overcome some of the problems imposed by DNA... its a chemical that is in an aqueous environment that tends to mutate over time; also the DNA computers I have seen work in a test tube, and you have to sequence it to get a result. That should hopefully change in time.
>More to the point, how much of the theory we learn today may change?
In biology - a sh*t load most likely; like I said above, we are still trying to understand biological systems and how they interact with each other, including DNA and how it codes for life.
>What will be the biggest issue determining the success of the adoption of biology-integrated computing?
Get it out of the test tube first... place it on a chip, like a microprocessor. Also the energy source... I don't want to share my doritos with my desktop...
>Will it be technology factors or will it be societal factors (e.g., rebellion by the Right Wing), or something else?
Don't like the right wing, eh? Well as a card carrying member of the vast right wing conspiracy, you have just as much to worry about from the left... those environuts who think we are tampering with nature (like we haven't been doing that for the last 10000+ years (e.g agriculture). Both extremes muzzel science... get used to it.
If we start to integrate computers into our selves... yeah I think society will have some issues to face about what it means to be human. (I'll go with David Hume with this gem "I'm human because my parents were human")
>What things must hold true to make the idea succeed?


1. Perfect DNA computing
2.
3. Profit -- of course!

Ok, seriously -- there need to be interest in the scientific community, we need to figure out how DNA works in living beings... how it encodes all its data (and how about that junk DNA?). We need to get it on a chip (not a microarray chip... some times called DNA chips). And there needs to be a profit motive.
>And perhaps the hottest issue of all: Is there anything inherently wrong with pursuing this avenue? What may be some of the consequences?
Hell no! But if you are interested in DNA computing, the bioinformatic

not quite.. I believe he is talking about this little charm in ice-t's past...

a pretty good summary that i agree with
taken from http://basil.cs.uwp.edu/Cs370/notes/Threads.doc:

Advantages (Thread vs. Process):
-Much quicker to create a thread than a process.
-Much quicker to switch between threads than to switch between processes.
-Threads share data easily

Disadvantages (Thread vs. Process):
-No security between threads:
---One thread can stomp on another thread's data.
-For threads which are supported by user thread package instead of the kernel:
---If one thread blocks, all threads in task block.