April
25, 2002 -
Gender gap in longevity
narrowing
- By Charlene Laino, MSNBC,
Ceiling effect at play as women approach
maximum lifespan... More men are
outliving their wives than ever before,
but the centenarian club is still vastly
female. Americans are living longer than
ever, and men in particular have
something to celebrate. Bucking a
long-time trend, men are slowly closing
the gender gap of life expectancy. The
reason, experts say, appears to be a
combination of several factors: better
medicine, healthier lifestyles and a
ceiling effect as women near the maximum
average lifespan...
April
26, 2002 -
Time in a Bottle - By Julia
Sommerfeld, MSNBC, Promoters of
so-called “anti-aging” potions, pills
and devices promise their products can
turn back the clock, restore youthful
vigor and extend lifespan. But
mainstream doctors and researchers say
these claims are just snake oil dressed
up as science...
April
26, 2002 -
Dark Energy Tops List of 'Big Questions'
- By Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science
Writer, It's a big and complex
universe out there, and even the
smartest scientists know they can't
solve all its puzzles on their own. So a
new report produced by a group of
leading cosmologists, astronomers and
physicists calls for greater cooperation
across disciplines and agencies in an
effort to answer some remaining big
questions of the cosmos. It also
suggests which questions ought to top
the list. Number One is the pursuit of
so-called dark energy, a strange and
repulsive force thought to pervade the
universe. Scientists in recent years
have found that the universe is
expanding at an accelerating rate.
Present knowledge of matter and energy
can't explain how or why galaxies
continue to speed up as they race away
from each other...
April
23, 2002 -
Walk This Way -
Techreview.com, By David Cameron,
Whether you do the moonwalk or the
cakewalk, new technologies may soon ID
you by how you strut. Mark Nixon may be
one of the pioneers of gait-recognition
technology, but he credits Shakespeare
with the idea: "Great Juno comes; I know
her by her gait," cries Ceres in The
Tempest...
April
26, 2002 -
Flash! Researchers Print LCD Display
- By Cade Metz, PCMag, Is there
no end to what ink jet printers can do?
They can print digital images that rival
photographs. They can etch pictures on
the icing of your birthday cake. And
they may soon be used to build computer
displays. Led by Ghassan E. Jabbour, an
associate professor of optical sciences,
researchers at the University of Arizona
are using ink jet printers to construct
light-emitting signs and are planning to
apply the same technique to the
construction of displays. The research
could allow manufacturers to build
displays on any sort of surface—even a
flexible one—at very low cost...
April 25, 2002 -
Rough
space ride raises questions - By James Oberg, SPECIAL TO
MSNBC.COM, HOUSTON, With the world’s second personally funded human
space flight under way, questions have surfaced about a mysterious
malfunction during the landing of the last flight, one year ago.
Something went wrong with the spacecraft guidance system, subjecting the
three space travelers to higher than expected G-forces when they hit
Earth’s atmosphere...
April 29, 2002 -
Club Fed for life: WiredNews, A vote on
life imprisonment for malicious hackers has been postponed. The House
Judiciary committee was supposed to consider the
Cyber
Security Enhancement Act this week, but postponed a vote until
next week because of a full schedule. A subcommittee has
already approved the bill, after rewriting it to cover more
types of computer intrusions...
April 02, 2002 -
Cloning discovery may kill ethical objection - 22 April 02,
NewScientist.com news service, A key ethical objection to
"therapeutic" cloning could be undermined if the results of periments
on abnormal cloned frog embryos are repeated in humans. Therapeutic
cloning involves the harvesting of embryonic stem cells from cloned
embryos. Scientists hope the stem cells will provide powerful
treatments for disease. But collecting them destroys the embryo -
which is destroying a potential life, in some people's view...
