Professors Stressed Over Technology - As college students research papers on the Internet and manipulate numbers on spreadsheets, their professors are feeling a little less in tune with the newest computer trends.  Two out of three professors say they are stressed trying to keep up with the emerging technology, surpassing traditional troubles such as publishing pressure and teaching loads, according to a new national survey of university faculty...

 War Without Bloodshed? - "Researcher Says Robots Could Fight Future Battles - Future wars could be fought by robots commanded by humans, a specialist in robotics told Britain’s leading science conference. Within five years, “we could withdraw from war completely and let robots shoot it out,” said John Pretlove, a lecturer at the University of Surrey..."

 A step closer to fusion power At 5:15 PM on Tuesday, 31 August, a cheer echoed through the HSX Plasma Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The occasion was the so-called "first plasma" for the innovative HSX plasma machine...

 Execs curious about possible link between UFOs, technology - "If Silicon Valley execs can invest in Internet companies that have little hope of making a profit, it's probably no surprise they're willing to pony up millions for a company that is looking into the link between space aliens and high technology. The details are somewhat sketchy, but sources have told The Examiner that on Oct. 12, scientists, including some from NASA's Ames Research Center, will mingle at an unknown Bay Area location with a handful of top Silicon Valley executives. The event is being sponsored by the International Space Sciences Organization..."

 Chandra Sees X-Ray Ring Around Crab Nebula's Heart - "The Crab Nebula, the spectacular remains of a cosmic explosion nearly a thousand years ago, revealed a new feature in images released: a glowing ring of X-rays around its heart. The fresh images were captured by the Chandra orbiting observatory, launched two months ago to observe the X-rays emitted by various heavenly bodies..."

 Obese Child Offers Genetic Link - For the first time, injections of the hormone leptin have been shown to curb appetite and induce weight loss in a human, a new study says.  Scientists caused a stir four years ago when they announced that leptin could evoke weight loss in mice, but until now, a direct role in human obesity had not been confirmed...

 Hepatitis C Clears Faster in Kids - Children with hepatitis C may fight off the infection better than adults can, according to a new study. Researchers examined 458 children who underwent heart surgery in Germany long before 1991, when that country began screening its blood supply for viruses such as Hepatitis C, a leading cause of liver disease...

 Japan Creating New Breed of Robots - "The arena comes alive with cheers and shouts when the referee signals for the bout to begin. Pushing and shoving, the wrestlers try furiously to drive each other toward the edge of the ring. It's just like a real sumo tournament - except the wrestlers are robots..."

 Brain Buildup Causes Addiction - Cocaine may be one of the toughest addictions to cure because it triggers a buildup of a protein that persists in the brain and stimulates genes that intensify the craving for the drug, new research suggests. Scientists at the Yale School of Medicine were able to isolate the long-lived protein, called Delta-FosB, and show that it triggered addiction when released to a specific area of the brains of genetically engineered mice...

 Blueberries May Aid Balance, Memory - A secret of youth may be as close as a nearby farm or the supermarket shelves: blueberries. Elderly rats fed the human equivalent of at least half a cup of blueberries a day improved in balance, coordination and short-term memory, a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience said. A cup of blueberries is a normal serving...

 FUTURISTIC SOFTWARE DEMONSTRATED ON DEEP SPACE 1 WINS NASA AWARD - Remote Agent, the first artificial intelligence software in history to command a spacecraft, recently was named co-winner of NASA's 1999 Software of the Year award. Remote Agent shared the honor with Genoa, a software package that can predict aging and failure of materials, including those used in airplanes, cars, engines and bridges...

 Study Links Star Blast, Black Hole - Scientists have found some of the best evidence yet to support the theory that the cataclysmic explosions of giant stars can lead to black holes, some of the strangest and least understood objects in the universe. Researchers analyzed the gases near a star that wobbles around a suspected black hole, and concluded that the chemicals could have originated only in the blast of a neighboring supernova. The findings were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature...

 Pre-Human Skull Found in NYC Shop - A fossil skull, presumably of a Homo erectus believed up to 1 million years old, has been found in a Manhattan shop, The New York Times reported. Paleoanthropologists have concluded that the skull is a genuine specimen from Indonesia that could be critical in determining the place on the human family tree of the East Asia branch of Homo erectus...

 NASA Makes Water Droplets Findings - Tiny water droplets that could be billions of years old were found in a meteorite, the second found with water, a NASA researcher said. Droplets about one-tenth the width of a human hair were found in the so-called Zag meteorite, a 300-pound rock that broke into pieces when it struck a remote area of Morocco...

 Scientists Develop Plague Vaccine - British government scientists said they have developed a vaccine against bubonic plague to help protect military troops from biological warfare. The vaccine is in a ``particularly advanced stage'' of development and is ready to be tested on humans, Rick Hall, technical director at the government's military research center, said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview...

 Philippine Volcano Calms Down - Philippine villagers began returning home from evacuation shelters Thursday after a volcano that had been belching ash-laden smoke and burning rocks into the air calmed down. Government scientists said the Mayon volcano in Albay province, 210 miles southeast of Manila, was puffing wisps of steam but showing no signs of major ash explosions or an eruption. ``It's like the volcano just burped,'' said Renato Arevalo, a civil defense official in Legazpi, Albay's capital city...

 Unraveling the Web - Finding information on the Web has always been frustrating, and as the amount of data on the Web explodes, the search is only going to get harder. But a new breed of search engines is aiming to ease the aggravation. Some are searching ever-larger portions of the Web. Others are employing staffs of editors to hunt down the best sites for particular queries. A few are even running ``popularity'' contests, letting Web surfers and Web-page designers guide one another to the best sites...

 Gene Study Links Whales and Hippos - One has no legs and swims in the ocean, and the other has four legs and lives in rivers, but a genetic study shows that the whale and the hippo are close relatives in evolutionary history.  The study, by researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and Pennsylvania State University at University Park, Pa., compared gene sequences from the minke whale, the sperm whale and the hippopotamus. It found the diverse animals share a sequence of genes inherited from an ancient common ancestor...

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 NASA Says Mars Orbiter Lost In Space - An unmanned $125 million spacecraft, intended to be the first interplanetary weather station, went missing Thursday and NASA scientists said they feared it had broken up just as it was starting to circle Mars. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said there also was a possibility that the Mars Climate Orbiter may have crashed into the Martian surface...

 Matter Found Falling in Black Hole - "NASA scientists have detected what they say may be the first actual evidence of matter falling into a black hole in space.  Using the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics, Paul Nandra and colleagues at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., observed the emission of X-rays from iron atoms in the gas swirling around a central, dense object..."

 Japan To Study Global Warming - Japanese researchers hope gigantic, solar-powered, cigar-shaped airships will be the latest tools in the fight against global warming. It just needs to figure out how to launch them. The helium-filled craft would analyze the atmosphere for such industrial byproducts as carbon dioxide and methane and transmit the data electronically to researchers below. ``We're talking about something the size of a battleship,'' Yasukazu Tamura, a deputy director at Japan's Science and Technology Agency...

 Varmus Says NIH Will Proceed With On-Line Archive of Research Papers - The National Institutes of Health announced that it would proceed with a controversial on-line archive of scholarly papers in the life sciences that will be freely available to all. The archive has attracted the ardent opposition of some scholarly societies and for-profit journal publishers...

 Internet Arcs Around The Globe - "The globe is one of the most powerful visual metaphors to map the geographical dimensions of large networks like shipping lines, trade flows, airline routes and communications such as the Internet. A team of researchers, Tamara Munzner, K. Claffy, Eric Hoffman and Bill Fenner produced visually striking, interactive maps of part of the Internet using arcs encircling an Earth globe..."

 The National Ocean Service's MapFinder - The National Ocean Service's (NOS) MapFinder Web service provides direct Internet access to NOS imagery and data holdings for coastal photography, nautical charts, historical maps, coastal survey maps, environmental sensitivity index maps, hydrographic survey outlines, water level stations, estuarine bathymetry, and geodetic control points...

 Astronomers Baffled by Space Light - "A mysterious celestial object detected three years ago in the northern sky is baffling scientists who have been unable to figure out its makeup or how far it is from Earth.  It's rare for astronomers to find an unexplainable object, but it's even more unusual for it to remain undefined for more than a week, said S. George Djorgovski, a California Institute of Technology astronomer who helped discover the object. ``It's fairly uncommon to stumble on something you don't have a clue about,'' he said Tuesday. ``It certainly hasn't happened to me, and I've been doing this for many years...''

 Volcano Watch - These satellite images show the world's 10 most active volcanoes, as determined by the Michigan Tech Geology Department. The Java animations contain the last four satellite images. Volcanoes are listed from north to south. These products are made available, in part, through an IBM Shared University Research Grant. Updated every half hour...

  Next generation space planes are go - Flight tests are due to begin next year on a new generation of reusable spacecraft that should substantially reduce the cost of putting payloads into orbit. The new vehicles will also be able to undertake far more frequent launches than is possible with current technology...

 Gene Study: Eat Less, Live Longer - Genes that play a key role in aging tend to stay vigorous in response to a low-calorie diet, says a study that may help explain why animals that eat less often live longer. Tomas A. Prolla and Richard Weindruch, both of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said their genetic analysis of mice showed that genes that normally deteriorate with age tended to continue functioning in a youthful way when the mice were underfed. They said the study, to be published in the journal Science on Friday, may explain why a reduced-calorie diet can cause mice to live up to 50 percent longer...

 Dolly cells surprise scientists - Scientists have looked inside the cells of Dolly the cloned sheep to determine the origin of her genetic material. What they found surprised them and may provide useful information to researchers who study inherited diseases like neuromuscular and kidney problems, which are passed down on the mother's side only...

 Mars Lander set for soft touchdown - Nasa scientists say they have a found a landing site on Mars for the Polar Lander probe to touch down on the Red Planet later this year. The probe, designed to search for water in the form of ice or vapour on the Martian surface, will come down softly on the fine dust of "gentle, rolling plains" in a target area 198km (124 miles) long by 19km (12.4 miles) wide near the planet's south pole...

 Divining Water on Europa - Circumstantial evidence for water on Europa mounts as JPL scientists try an ingenious experiment to find hexagonal water-ice crystals on the frigid surface of Jupiter's iciest moon.  September 9, 1999: A future guide book for Solar System vacationers might describe Jupiter's moon Europa this way: "Europa is cold -- really cold. The surface temperature is a chilly -260 deg F, so bring your space parka. The entire planet is covered with a relatively smooth layer of frozen water and ice skating is allowed in most regions. Travelers should bring their own air, as Europa's oxygen atmosphere is a million times thinner than Earth's. Other items of note include cold water volcanoes, gigantic ice rafts, and an underground ocean. Ice fishing is not encouraged." ....

 New 'Cholera' virus discovered - Cybersleuths are warning of a new combined worm and virus threat, called Cholera, discovered Wednesday morning on a German hacker's Web site. Vendors of anti-virus programs are scrambling to identify it and create an antidote before it becomes epidemic like Melissa and Worm.ExploreZip, although no cases of infection have yet been reported...

 DISTANT SUPERNOVA REMNANT IMAGED BY CHANDRA'S HIGH RESOLUTION CAMERA - The Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is taking a new look at the universe, snapped images of what is left of an exploded star in a nearby galaxy, astronomers reported Friday. The tatters of the exploded star -- known as a supernova -- are shown as a red, yellow and black blob in images visible online...

 Organ Network Shelves Liver Plan - The network that runs the nation's organ transplant system is ordering four Midwestern states to put on hold a plan to share livers among themselves because they would exclude Illinois.  Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota had agreed to share livers among their sickest patients. But national policy set by the United Network for Organ Sharing this summer directs that livers be shared among all the sickest patients in an established region, which in this case includes those states plus Illinois...

 Plasma, Plasma, Everywhere - A new model of the plasmasphere surrounding our world... As photographed from space, the Earth looks like it is floating in a black void. But, unseen by our eyes and most cameras, the Earth is actually surrounded by a complex system of interacting electric and magnetic fields, electric currents and charged particles called the magnetosphere...

 Space shuttles may fly till 2040 - Nasa's announcement that its fleet of space shuttles have been grounded due to wiring problems comes just shortly after Dana Rohrabacher, Chairman of the US House of Representatives Science Committee, stated that "Nasa officials were planning to upgrade and operate a government-owned Space Shuttle for another 40 years..."

 Coming Soon: Insects In Space? - "Angelina Bautista Antonio and her daughters Juana and Elena Matias get up at 4 a.m. to hunt. Armed with plastic bowls and bags, the family from Santa Lucia Ocotlan, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, scour the fields in search of their prey -- things that crawl, hop, fly and generally make for a crispy treat..."

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