MSNBC

The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration, with fewer scientists heard in policy discussions and money for research and advanced training being cut, according to panelists at a national science meeting.

Speakers at the national meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science expressed concern Sunday that some scientists in key federal agencies are being ignored or even pressured to change study conclusions that don’t support policy positions.

…

“In previous administrations, scientists were always at the table when regulations were being developed,” she said. “Science never had the last voice, but it had a voice.”

Issues on global warming, for instance, that achieved a firm scientific consensus in earlier years are now being questioned by Bush policymakers. Proven, widely accepted research is being ignored or disputed, she said.

It’s hard to listen to common sense when you are beholden to industries and corporations.

Science News Article | Reuters.com

Global warming could stifle cleansing summer winds across parts of the northern United States over the next 50 years and worsen air pollution, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.

Further warming of the atmosphere, as is happening now, would block cold fronts bringing cooler, cleaner air from Canada and allow stagnant air and ozone pollution to build up over cities in the Northeast and Midwest, they predicted.

“The air just cooks,” said Loretta Mickley of Harvard University’s Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “The pollution accumulates, accumulates, accumulates, until a cold front comes in and the winds sweep it away.”

The molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of complex behaviour are poorly understood. The mammalian genus Microtus provides an excellent model for investigating the evolution of social behaviour. Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) exhibit a monogamous social structure in nature, whereas closely related meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) are solitary and polygamous. In male prairie voles, both vasopressin and dopamine act in the ventral forebrain to regulate selective affiliation between adult mates, known as pair bond formation, as assessed by partner preference in the laboratory. </blockquote?

-Perhaps other complex behaviors could be explained by genetics? Imagine being able to alter behaviors through simple genetics…

Discovery Channel

The modern human just aged by an additional ~65,000 years, give or take 5,000 years. This brings the official estimate to 195,000 years.

CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) — Scientists in London have created a coating for glass, which reflects or absorbs heat, depending on the temperature outside.

Professor of inorganic and materials chemistry, Ivan Parkin, and Troy Manning, both of the chemistry department at University College London, developed the intelligent window coating as part of Mr Manning’s PhD studies.

The thin film is made out of a material called vanadium dioxide, and it undergoes a change depending on the weather outside.

Yahoo

MAHABALIPURAM, India – Archaeologists have begun underwater excavations of what is believed to be an ancient city and parts of a temple uncovered by the tsunami off the coast of a centuries-old pilgrimage town.

Jorge – Devry Grad and MCSE

This guy has gotten so much traffic it is amazing. I am finally posting this after seeing references to this article three times in different RSS feeds. Just a few of the cited problems with the Mac Mini:

1. “hardware is about roughly equivalent to a Windows PC circa 1995”
2. “no serial ports, no way to connect a printer, no PS/2 ports…no Windows XP”
3. ” the perfect computer for grandmothers or autistic children”
4. “stripped-down operating system which Apple calls OS X, similar to the stripped-down WindowsCE OS”
5. “NO Outlook Express, Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update” — ” I would expect a Mini to get really slow and unstable within a couple months”

Jorge’s assessment of Linux vs. Windows (note the attractive wife beater shirt ‘Jorge’ is wearing). Apparently, anyone who reads PC Magazine knows:

that major portions of the Linux kernel, the Linux filesystem, Linux networking utilities, and portions of the human genome are all illegally copied from Unix System V.

Too bad Jorge is someone’s Onion. I’m so disappointed. I wish Jorge was a real dude.

ZDNet

This week, a breakaway faction of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) said its work on the Web Forms 2.0 specification is nearly done and put out a call for final comments. The splinter group, which includes browser makers Apple Computer, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software, calls itself WHAT-WG, or the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group.

What!? No, WHAT-WG!!

The battle illustrates chronic fissures in the politics of Web technology development, with substantial consequences for the continued relevance of open standards in electronic forms–a ubiquitous tool that’s used to gather information on the Web and in other digital applications.

WHAT! YEEEAH, WHAT! (I feel like Lil’ John)

WHAT-WG members say the forms dispute illustrates a larger conflict over whether the W3C should proceed in a “revolutionary” mode, tackling problems from square one and coming up with technically elegant solutions–even if that results in the loss of backward-compatibility with older browsers–or an “evolutionary” mode, maintaining older technologies like HTML 4 and extending the usefulness of current browsing software.

“This gets to the question of what the W3C is all about,” Lie said. “Is it about making revolutions all the time? Do we kill all the sheep and start with goats? Or should the W3C maintain older specs like CSS and HTML?”

Aaron says: ‘evolve it.’ We are still hacking at CSS an ‘older’ spec to get cross browser support. Offer a less elegant alternative that will facilitate an extension of existing capabilities plus ease of use/adoption. It may not scale quite as well, but no one is saying abandon Xforms. At least, I’m not. There was a time I would gun for the most elegant/scalable solution. These days I guess I am just more cynical. As a side note, I recall Alan talking smack about this meeting a year+ ago when he came back from the conference where this all started going down. He is firmly in the Xforms camp. He has always been less about pragmatism and more about semantic rigor, which in general so am I, but not so much on the web. This is only because rigor on the web seems to be the equivalent of jumping through flaming hoops with no audience. Meaning, in general the only benefit you reap is that of being able to pat yourself on the back.

eWeek

The newest [Google] tool bar adds the ability to turn information on Web pages into hyperlinks to related information, check spelling on Web-based forms and translate words from English to one of eight languages.

Why doesn’t Google ever release a FireFox version? Will this change will Goodger on board?

CNN

ORLANDO, Florida (AP) — A high school chemistry teacher was arrested after students claimed he taught his class how to make a bomb, authorities said.

David Pieski, 42, used an overhead projector in class to give instructions in making explosives to students at Freedom High School, including advising them to use an electric detonator to stay clear from the blast, an Orange County sheriff’s arrest report said.

In Pieski’s classroom in Orlando, authorities found a book labeled “Demo,” which includes the chemical breakdown for a powerful explosive, the arrest report said.

Actually, he was “charged with possessing or discharging a destructive device and culpable negligence”, NOT teaching students how to make a bomb. A fact that seems to be missing from all headlines I have seen. This is simply not true ( he was detonating these devices on golf courses). But way to go media, keep saying that he was arrested for teaching. Lets get everybody on the mindset that knowledge is bad. Everyone knows that too much information is never good. Why do you hate our troops?
This bothers me.