Tuesday, April 29, 2003

The Iraqi Redemption John Brand writes: Only a handful of conquerors and political leaders have stood in the place where President Bush finds himself. He literally has the future of the world in his hands and has the chance to become the single greatest figure in history. All other leaders who had that opportunity muffed it. Alexander the Great had the chance to weld the world into a community of law and order; he died in a drunken brawl. Caesar could have victoriously imposed a lasting Pax Romana on the world; he met Brutus. Napoleon had the fate of the world in his hands; he met his Waterloo. Metternich’s grandiose plans developed at the Congress of Vienna came to naught when his dogmatism became self-defeating. After World War II, the torch of peace and justice flared for a short while. It seemed as though the world might yet become a community of nations. Alas, it was not to be. The two most powerful nations in the world exhausted their resources in an arms race leading nowhere. Now destiny again knocks on the front door of the White House. (04/29/03) Einstein's Ether and Pelastration Michio Kaku wrote: Einstein once said, "Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size." Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life searching for the "tail" that would lead him to the "lion," the fabled unified field theory or the "theory of everything," which would unite all the forces of the universe into a single equation. The four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) would be unified by an equation perhaps one inch long. ... Einstein also said that behind every great theory there is a simple physical picture that even lay people can understand. In fact, he said, if a theory does not have a simple underlying picture, then the theory is probably worthless. The important thing is the physical picture; math is nothing but bookkeeping. (04/29/03) Modern Medicine? CNN Health -- Researchers from Cambridge University, England, and the city's renowned Adenbrookes hospital are to apply for funding for a trial to use dogs to detect signs of the cancer, which affects over 20,000 British men a year, in urine. "We will train the dogs to distinguish the odor of urine from men with malignant prostate," Dr Barbara Sommerville, who is leading the research, told the Sunday Times newspaper. The 12-month trial will involve Alsatians and Labradors, with the dogs' success rate recorded at the end of the training. (04/29/03) Viet Nam! First Country to Contain SARS CNN Health -- The World Health Organization of the United Nations gave Vietnam a clean bill of health Monday for SARS. ... "WHO congratulates Vietnam in being the first country in the world to contain SARS. Such success can be attributed to a range of factors, but the most important were the speed of action, leadership and transparency shown by the government," said WHO representative Pascale Brudon. He believes the worst of SARS is over in Canada, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong, but the disease continues to spread on mainland China. (04/29/03) SONY Stock Down 27% Washington Post -- Shares of Sony Corp first traded at 2,720 yen on Monday, having fallen 27 percent since the world's top consumer electronics maker shocked investors with earnings well below forecasts and warned of a profit slump ahead. (04/29/03) "Sportsman" Shoots Endangered California Condor New York Times: Environment -- When the satellite transmitter showed that AC-8 had not moved for one day, then two, Mark Hall knew something was wrong. Condors, after all, tend to fly. On the third day, Mr. Hall, who manages the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge near this Southern California town, went to investigate and found the body of AC-8, a female condor with a 10-foot wingspan, in the branches of an oak tree on a ranch about a 45-minute drive north of here. She had been shot to death. The killing of AC-8, or Adult Condor No. 8, was a blow to the federal effort to preserve and enlarge the population of California condors, a long-endangered species. AC-8, whose body was found on Feb. 13, was one of the last born and raised in the wild before all known condors were taken into captivity so that the species could be saved from extinction. More than 30 years old, she had since outlived her ability to reproduce, but the Fish and Wildlife Service had hoped that she could continue to be an asset to the preservation program, by helping teach condors born in captivity, many of them her descendants, how to survive outside a zoo. So about three years ago, she was released. Having been in captivity for well over a decade, she almost immediately returned to her old flight paths and foraging grounds and, sure enough, showed signs of mentoring other freed condors. "She was showing these other birds positive things: her foraging grounds, her roosting areas," said Greg Austin, deputy project leader for the Hopper Mountain wildlife complex, which includes the refuge. Her killer remains unidentified, the motive unclear. Shooting a condor is a misdemeanor, punishable by a year's imprisonment and a fine of as much as $100,000. Federal investigators are looking into the case. (04/29/03) California Blinks on Clean Air New York Times: Environment -- California regulators, responding to legal pressure from automakers and the Bush administration, amended a plan today to force the industry to produce clean cars but kept it ambitious enough to please environmental groups. By an 8-to-3 vote, the California Air Resources Board altered the influential Zero Emission Vehicle mandate so it will require fewer vehicles to be sold in California with no tailpipe emissions and more with modest emissions, like hybrids that supplement gasoline with electric power. "Our greatest benefit here is to try and identify technologies that can be commercial successes," said Alan C. Lloyd, the chairman of the California Air Resources Board, adding, "This regulation ensures we are getting this technology on the road." The mandate has been one of the most effective regulations that never was. It has been blocked by challenges and revisions since it was first set in motion in 1990, but because car production cycles take years, its mere threat has led to the production of thousands of battery-powered vehicles. California is the nation's largest auto market, and other states, like New York, have adopted its stringent air standards. The mandate has also been an impetus in the development of hybrids as well as fuel-cell vehicles, which use hydrogen to generate electricity and are a favorite of the administration. The new version of the mandate takes effect in the 2005 model year, barring legal challenges, and offers automakers the choice of two compliance options. Each option requires 8 percent of sales to come from vehicles classified in one of two low polluting categories — highly efficient versions of the Ford Focus and Honda Accord qualify — though various credits can alter the numbers significantly. (04/29/03) SARS: Canadian Virus More Virulent ? New York Times: Science -- A leading American virologist who has just returned from advising Hong Kong officials on the SARS epidemic there said yesterday that death rates from the illness may vary among countries, in part because of differences in strains of the virus. The virologist, Dr. Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, said that one reason the United States has escaped Canada's difficulties with the disease, severe acute respiratory syndrome, is that "the virus they have got in Canada appears to be a more virulent strain than the one seen so far in the United States." Dr. Webster also said that an outbreak of SARS in an apartment complex in Hong Kong seemed to be caused by a different strain from the one causing illness elsewhere in Hong Kong. Speaking at a news conference the morning after his return, Dr. Webster said he and his colleagues in Hong Kong think there are likely to be many strains of the SARS virus. The World Health Organization says the virus, a previously unknown member of the coronavirus family, is the cause of SARS. How big a global problem the disease becomes will "depend on the evolution of this virus, and whether the more pathogenic strains" that spread well become established, Dr. Webster said. (04/29/03) 5:51:06 AM

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