At The BBC: Friday, 23 January, 2004, 11:35 GMT
Mars seen in unprecedented detail
The European Space Agency has released the early results from its Mars Express probe now orbiting the Red Planet. The data include a batch of remarkable pictures taken at very high resolution. ... ESA - Mars Express
From The Telegraph: (Filed: 29/01/2004)
Nasa accused of painting Mars red By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent
The American space agency Nasa has been accused of doctoring its pictures of Mars to make the Martian surface conform to our impression of the famously red planet.Nasa has been accused of digitally "tweaking" drab brown scenery to make it redder. It has even been suggested that Nasa removed green patches to hide evidence of life. ...
From Reuters: Tue Mar 2, 2004 05:20 PM ET
Mars Had Enough Water for Life, NASA Says
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Parts of Mars were once "drenched" with so much water that life could easily have existed there, NASA said on Tuesday. ... The scientists said the hematite, the blueberries and the heavy salt content of the area all add up to one conclusion -- salt water. ...
From The Independent: 07 March 2004
Revealed: Shocking new evidence of the dangers of GM crops By Geoffrey Lean
Genetically modified strains have contaminated two-thirds of all crops in US
More than two-thirds of conventional crops in the United States are now contaminated with genetically modified material - dooming organic agriculture and posing a severe future risk to health - a new report concludes. ...
http://www.rense.com/general52/twoth.htm
From NewScientist.com: 17:36 05 May 04
Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 291, p 2079)
Five "designer babies" created for stem cells by Shaoni Bhattacharya
Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. ... A UK couple involved in this study travelled to the US for treatment after the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) ruled that they could not create a tissue-matched sibling as a stem cell donor to their son. In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and tissue-typing was used ... In the US study, a single cell was taken from each three-day old embryo, which consists of a ball of just eight cells. The DNA was then analysed to find the tissue-type. ... A total of 28 embryos were transferred to the women in IVF cycles, resulting in five pregnancies and births. ... stem cells from the child's umbilical cord are used. ...
From Reuters: Thu May 6, 2004 05:11 PM ET
Early Hummingbird Fossil Found in Germany
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 30-million-year-old hummingbird fossil discovered in Germany is not only the oldest example of the family of tiny, hovering birds but the first found in Europe, surprised scientists said on Thursday. Nowadays the iridescent nectar-sipping creatures are found in the New World, in North and South America, but they apparently lived much further afield when they evolved, said Gerald Mayr, a zoologist from Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, a natural history museum in Frankfurt, Germany. "These are the oldest fossils of modern-type hummingbirds, which had not previously been reported from the Old World," Mayr wrote in his report, published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. ...
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2004/506/2
From AFP at SpaceWar: May 11, 2004
Mexican air force pilots catch purported UFOs on film
MEXICO CITY (AFP) Mexico's largest television network on Monday and Tuesday broadcast film taken by air force pilots of what they say are unidentified flying objects ...
Also:
http://www.rense.com/general52/deff.htm
http://www.virtuallystrange.com/ufo/mexico/mexico-03-05-04.mpg
From the Associated Press at Newsday: May 11, 2004, 6:05 PM EDT
Mexican Air Force Pilots Film 11 UFOs
From Reuters: Tue May 11, 2004 06:06 PM ET
Mexico Air Force Video Creates UFO Stir
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican Air Force has released footage of what a UFO expert said were 11 invisible unidentified flying objects picked up by an infrared camera as they whizzed around a surveillance plane. ...
From The BBC: Thursday, 15 July, 2004, 12:50 GMT 13:50 UK
Ammonia on Mars could mean life By Dr David Whitehouse
Ammonia may have been found in Mars' atmosphere which some scientists say could indicate life on the Red Planet. Researchers say its spectral signature has been tentatively detected by sensors on board the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft. ... Spectral evidence of the gas was seen by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on Mars Express. ... So far the PFS has observed a depletion of carbon dioxide and an enrichment of water vapour over some of the large extinct volcanoes on Mars. ... The detection of ammonia comes just a few months after methane was found in the Martian atmosphere. ...
From The Independent: 18 July 2004
Hundreds of firms using nanotech in food By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Two hundred companies are already working on inserting nanotechnology into food, posing "immense" risks to health, new research claims. ...
Why Is NASA Editing These Images?
These "raw" images are in fact being edited with simple graphics software
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/p/167/1P143011629ESF3221P2593L5M1.JPG
From Nature.com: 27 July 2004; | doi:10.1038/news040726-3
The search for life on Mars By Mark Peplow
Briefing: As Mars Express sends back the best ever data about the chemicals present in the martian atmosphere, rumours abound that scientists are beginning to detect signs of life on the red planet. ...
There are three main groups looking for these trace gases. Mars Express, the European Space Agency's probe, which is in orbit around the red planet, carries an instrument called the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS). Vittorio Formisano, from the Institute of Physics of Interplanetary Space in Italy, and his team are analysing the data sent back from the PFS. ... After preliminary reports in March this year that methane may have been detected in Mars's atmosphere, all three groups have confirmed that the gas is present. Methane can only survive for about 400 years in the martian atmosphere before completely breaking down, which means that the gas cannot be a remnant of ancient processes. It is almost certainly still generated on the planet today. ... However, methane is also generated by geothermal activity. ...
Did they not also see ammonia?
Definitely not, despite recent stories to the contrary. Formisano has been hotly pursued by journalists since reports about Mars Express finding ammonia in the atmosphere began to circulate earlier this month. He now insists to news@nature.com that he has not detected ammonia, although in a recent conference abstract he had optimistically suggested that his team might have done so. ... Mike Mumma confirms that his own group has spent ten years looking for ammonia, "and we never saw it". He claims that Formisano could not have seen ammonia, because the Mars Express instrument does not have enough resolving power to distinguish ammonia from carbon dioxide. ...
From SPX at SpaceDaily: Aug 06, 2004
NASA Signs Agreement With Department Of Energy
Washington DC (SPX) - NASA and the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration - Naval Reactors (NR) Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will lead to the development, design, delivery, and operational support of civilian space nuclear reactors within NASA's Project Prometheus. ... "The development of this space nuclear power system will provide an important new capability to NASA for carrying out the Vision for Space Exploration, allowing us to explore farther and do more science than ever before," said Administrator O'Keefe. ...
From The Guardian: Tuesday August 10, 2004
Hollywood fantasy? Tidal wave disaster is just waiting to happen By Ian Sample
Scientist says governments are ignoring threat of a piece of rock as big as the Isle of Man crashing into the Atlantic
It has everything you could wish for in a cliche-ridden disaster movie. A beautiful volcanic island in the Atlantic is on the brink of catastrophic collapse, threatening to unleash giant waves that will wreak havoc around the globe within hours. And while scientists try in vain to make their concerns heard, the world's governments look the other way. But yesterday a leading expert claimed the doom-laden scenario was not only real but was being almost completely ignored by people in power. Bill McGuire, the director of the Benfield Grieg Hazard Research Centre at University College London, said a huge chunk of rock, roughly the size of the Isle of Man, was on the brink of breaking off the volcanic island of La Palma in the Canaries.
When - Professor McGuire says it is not a matter of if - the rock plunges into the ocean it will trigger giant waves called mega-tsunamis. Travelling at speeds of up to 560mph, the huge walls of water will tear across the ocean and hit islands and continents, leaving a trail of destruction. Mega-tsunami waves are much longer than the ones we are used to. "When one of these comes in, it keeps on coming for 10 to 15 minutes," Prof McGuire said. "It's like a huge wall of water that just keeps coming." Computer models of the island's collapse show the first regions to be hit, with waves topping 100 metres (330ft), will be the neighbouring Canary Islands. Within a few hours the west coast of Africa will be battered with similar-sized waves. Between nine and 12 hours after the island collapses, waves between 20 and 50 metres high will have crossed 4,000 miles of ocean to crash into the Caribbean islands and the eastern seaboard of the US and Canada. ...
From SPX at SpaceDaily: Aug 13, 2004
Technology Already Exists To Stabilize Global Warming
Princeton NJ (SPX) - Existing technologies could stop the escalation of global warming for 50 years and work on implementing them can begin immediately, according to an analysis by Princeton University scientists. ...
From The Observer: Sunday August 15, 2004
Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases By Juliette Jowit
Scientists alarmed as number of cases triples in 20 years
The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered. The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health. ...
Also at: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1283563,00.html
From the San Francisco Chronicle: Monday, October 4, 2004
Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons By Keay Davidson
Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order
The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons. ...
From Kerala News (India): 28-October-2004
Science ; New Human Species Found On Indonesian Island Of Flores
Science News, In one of the most spectacular fossil finds in decades, anthropologists are to announce on Thursday they have found the bones of a tiny human who may have been a twig in mankind's family tree. The height of a chimpanzee and with a skull the size of a grapefruit, the wee hominid lived around 18 000 years ago on the remote eastern Indonesian island of Flores, they say. ...
From CTV.ca News: Wed. Nov. 17 2004 6:29 AM ET
NASA clocks scramjet at record-setting Mach 9.7
With the second successful launch of its experimental 'scramjet' engine, NASA claims it has sent a rocket hurtling high over the Pacific Ocean at a record-setting speed in excess of 11,000 kilometres per hour. ...
From The Washington Post: Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01
Of Mice, Men and In-Between By Rick Weiss
Scientists Debate Blending Of Human, Animal Forms
In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.
In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.
In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.
These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research. Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses. ...
HAARP Updates By Dr. Nick Begich
" ... In March 1996 the military begins to demonstrate the earth-penetrating-tomography applications of this technology --the idea of "x-raying" the earth with ELF waves generated by HAARP. ... "
Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology
by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning
"The U.S. Military's first target is the electrojet: a river of electricity that flows thousands of miles through the sky and down into the polar icecap. The electrojet will become a vibrating artificial antenna for sending electromagnetic radiation raining down on the earth. The U.S. military can then "X-ray" the earth and talk to submarines. But there's much more they can do with HAARP. This book reveals surprises from secret meetings."
