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By Heather Timmons – NY Times – 3 Aug 06

NEWCASTLE, England — There is more riding the waves here than surfers, thanks to a growing number of scientists, engineers and investors.

A group of entrepreneurs is harnessing the perpetual motion of the ocean and turning it into a commodity in high demand: energy. Right now, machines of various shapes and sizes are being tested off shores from the North Sea to the Pacific — one may even be coming to the East River in New York State this fall — to see how they capture waves and tides and create marine energy.

The industry is still in its infancy, but it is gaining attention, much because of the persistence of marine energy inventors, like Dean R. Corren, who have doggedly lugged their wave and tidal prototypes around the world, even during the years when money and interest dried up. Mr. Corren, trim and cerebral, is a scientist who has long advocated green energy and pushed through numerous conservation measures when he was chairman of the public energy utility for the city of Burlington, Vt.

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By Jonathan Fildes – Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A series of hidden texts written by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being revealed by US scientists.

Until now, the pages have remained obscured by paintings and texts laid down on top of the original writings.

Using a non-destructive technique known as X-ray fluorescence, the researchers are able to peer through these later additions to read the underlying text.

The goatskin parchment records key details of Archimedes work, considered the foundation of modern mathematics.

The writings include the only Greek version of On Floating Bodies known to exist, and the only surviving ancient copies of The Method of Mechanical Theorems and the Stomachion.

In the treatises, the 3rd Century mathematician develops numerical descriptions of the real world.

“Archimedes was like no one before him,” says Will Noel, curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and director of the imaging project.

“It just doesn’t get any better than rereading the mind of one of the greatest figures of Western civilisation.”

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Ever since the Enlightenment, the true forms of existence have been slowing coming out of the fog of unknowing and from behind the previous explanations born of active imaginations and little else. And, at any moment as science unfolds the picture for us, we are seduced into thinking that we have it all or that we almost have it all. But, just wait ten or fifeteen years and look again. This story’s a great example. When I was in college in the 70’s studying Microbiology, the DNA world was our gospel and RNA was just a left over artifact. Then a few years ago, an entire system based on RNA became visible beside and beneath the previously known DNA world. And now, here, we have yet another form emerging from the fog. I do not agree in the least with the Intelligent Design folks but I do think that the complexity that four billion years of trial and error can yeild is wonderous.

By Nicholas Wade – NY Times

Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.

The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself.

The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell.

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Early dementia could be detected with a simple eye test, similar to those used to test for high blood pressure and diabetes, US scientists believe.

The test, developed by a team led by Dr Lee Goldstein, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, uses a non-invasive laser to study the lens of the eye.

It checks for deposits of beta-amyloid – the protein found in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease.

The procedure has worked in a trial in mice, a conference in Spain has heard.

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In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces.

The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?

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Scientists haven’t been able to study the amazing abilities of these drugs since the 60’s due to the wide-spread fear factor that their consciousness expanding abilities produced. Society was willing to risk the serious dangers of mind-dulling and addiction associated with alcohol and tabacco but it wasn’t willing to risk the dangers of looking openly into their own psyches.

From Science News – July 12, 2006

In the 1950s scientists studied the effects of so-called psychedelics: psilocybin from mushrooms, mescaline from cacti and the synthetic lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the name for this class of drugs based on their mind-altering properties, such as changes in the sense of self. The drugs showed some initial promise in treating chronic pain and depression in terminally ill patients but a wave of recreational abuse in the late 1960s led to outlawing and a halt in research. Now a new, rigorous, double-blind study has reopened the doors of scientific investigation, reporting spiritual effects and long-term impacts from the use of psilocybin.

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By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: July 11, 2006

The storm was nothing special. Its waves rocked the Norwegian Dawn just enough so that bartenders on the cruise ship turned to the usual palliative — free drinks.

Then, off the coast of Georgia, early on Saturday, April 16, 2005, a giant, seven-story wave appeared out of nowhere. It crashed into the bow, sent deck chairs flying, smashed windows, raced as high as the 10th deck, flooded 62 cabins, injured 4 passengers and sowed widespread fear and panic.

“The ship was like a cork in a bathtub,” recalled Celestine Mcelhatton, a passenger who, along with 2,000 others, eventually made it back to Pier 88 on the Hudson River in Manhattan. Some vowed never to sail again.

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