April 8 2002
Scientists were sceptical yesterday of claims by Italian gynaecologist Severino Antinori that a woman taking part in a controversial human cloning program was eight weeks pregnant.
Dr Antinori refused to confirm the reports, , published in New Scientist on Friday, although a friend reported that the embryo was the clone of a wealthy Arab. If true, it would be the first human pregnancy by cloning.
IVF pioneer and reproductive specialist Alan Trounson said Dr Antinori's claims were purely to gain notoriety. "He has no capacity to do it . . . and the people he has with him aren't that skilled," Professor Trounson said.
"Only a few of us can (clone) mice. If you take cows, it is limited to a dozen laboratories. It is not a widespread technique because it is so hard."
The scientist who created Dolly the cloned sheep and perfected the technique to clone mammals, Professor Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, said: "It sounds extremely unlikely.
"In the past, he claimed that he cloned pigs and that he cloned monkeys and there has never been any demonstration that that was true. We should be extremely sceptical."
Dr Antinori, who runs a clinic in Rome, is well known as being prepared to cross ethical boundaries. He helped a mother of almost 63 to have a child after her adult son died, and caused outrage in Britain six years ago when he helped an unmarried woman of 59 to have twins.
Together with colleague Dr Panos Zavos, at the Andrology Institute of America in Lexington, Kentucky, Dr Antinori had previously pledged to attempt to clone a baby by the end of 2001.
Dr Antinori reportedly told Giancarlo Calzolari, a friend and science reporter at Il Tempo newspaper in Rome, that the pregnancy was real and that he had a "limitless supply of money" for his experiments.
"He told me it was a clone of an important, wealthy personality," Mr Calzolari said. "However, he was vague when I asked him the name of the woman and to at least describe the father. He would only say that he was (a big cheese).
"The doctor added, 'I have at my disposal whatever amount of money is needed to reach the result. Imagine, it has been possible to carry out in a Muslim country a kind of research that was impossible to do in the West.' "
Dr Antinori had also dismissed concerns about malformations, claiming it was a certainty that the problems seen in other cloned animals did not occur in human beings, Mr Calzolari said.
But scientists yesterday expressed extreme reservations at the prospects of cloning humans because of the high rates of miscarriage, deformities and death among those mammals that have been cloned.
Professor Trounson said the probability of a good outcome was low. "Cloning doesn't really reset all the genes to be embryonic," he said. "There are developmental abnormalities which leave very few of the implanted embryos alive at term."
He said many laboratories would expect about one in 20 implanted embryos to be born. Of those, half would have a serious defect that would end their lives within a few days.
Professor Trounson said mothers had placental problems, which put them in severe danger.
The head of IVF Melbourne, Dr John McBain, said he believed reproductive cloning would never happen in Australia because no doctors would be prepared to sacrifice their scientific reputations.
State Health Minister John Thwaites said human cloning was already prohibited in Australia, with national legislation to define the ban to be introduced as a result of Friday's meeting between the Prime Minister and state premiers.
On Wednesday Gulf News, an English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, reported Dr Antinori as saying: "Our project is at a very advanced stage. One woman among the thousands of infertile couples in the program is eight weeks pregnant."
It said Dr Antinori had been responding to a question at a lecture at the Zayed Centre for Follow-up and Coordination, an Abu Dhabi think-tank. It was unclear if Dr Antinori had clearly stated that the woman's pregnancy was a result of cloning.
Dr Antinori's moves to create human clones prompted the United Nations to set up a panel last year to draft an international treaty to ban the cloning of human beings.
Dr Antinori's reported announcement is likely to give more urgency to the debate, which began in February.
Tues Apr 9 2002 18:00:52 ET
CAIRO, April 9 (Kyodo) _ Osama bin Laden is alive and well and planning a new terror attack, according to an extremist Islamic group likely linked to the terrorist network al-Qaida, the Arabic newspaper Al Hayat said Tuesday according to ANSA news agency.
Al Hayat said it received a letter dated March 26 and making such claims from the group calling itself Qai'dat al-Jihad on Monday.
The letter, addressed ''to our Islamic state and to the heroic Palestinian people'' said ''God has given permission to resume activities.''
''Al-Qaida's leader has gone abroad safely. Bin Laden is safe and well. He is preparing to work with his brothers,'' the letter was quoted by the paper as saying.
Al Hayat, based in Lebanon and printed in London, has been circulated in throughout the Middle East region.
April 4, 2002 (NY Newsday)
WHEREVER Stuart Shapiro may be, he gets my vote for father of the year.
His son, Adam, is a Jewish child of Brooklyn who in the last few years has been living in the Mideast and advocating for the rights of Palestinians. Last week, he spent a night in Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah while Israeli soldiers shelled the town. Arafat's bunker was filled with the dead and dying, and Adam Shapiro went there, he later explained, to try to persuade the Israelis to allow ambulances in to treat the wounded.
But after saying on television that he ate breakfast with Arafat and comparing the house-to- house raids on Palestinians in Ramallah to Nazi raids during World War II, Shapiro has become a villain. He's been branded a traitor, denounced as "the Jewish Taliban" and compared to John Walker Lindh, who's charged with having been a soldier in Osama bin Laden's army.
The death threats to Adam Shapiro's parents' home in Brooklyn were so numerous that they were forced to flee the state temporarily. But, amid all the excoriations of his son, Stuart Shapiro said the greatest thing any father could say.
"Of all the people in the world," he told a Newsday reporter, "I believe my son."
Some parents would be ringing their child up in Ramallah: "Have you lost your mind? What do you think you're doing? Do you know what people are saying, how this is going to hurt us with our friends? You pack up and come home right now!"
But Stuart Shapiro, convinced that in a place of endless hatred and endless revenge his son is one of the few who are trying to understand the other side, is standing by him.
"If my brother says these human rights atrocities are taking place against innocent Palestinian children, then we have to believe him," says Noah Shapiro, who's acting as spokesman for the family.
"But in no uncertain terms does that sympathy toward Palestinian children mean that we support suicide bombings."
The Middle East is a region whose troubles the world has grown sick of. The Palestinians are now terrorizing Israelis through random acts of violence, and the Israelis respond with tanks and guns, bombardments and house-to-house raids.
The two leaders in this war are loathsome in their intransigence. Arafat is incompetent, cowardly, ineffectual and more concerned about his own survival than about a workable peace for his people. He probably doesn't have the ability to stop the terrorist attacks, but he hasn't even tried.
Ariel Sharon is a malevolent former terrorist himself and the worst possible prime minister Israel could have now. He thinks he can bomb the Palestinians into submission and hates Arafat so badly that the only thing keeping Arafat alive is pressure from the United States and other Western countries.
Few in this war can argue anything but their own long-raging grievances, and almost no one in a leadership role is willing to reach out to the other side.
Into this melee came Adam Shapiro. Raised in a non-observant Jewish home, he became interested in the Middle East and went to Yemen to study Arabic - not Islam, as some have written. He was affected by what he saw there, and started working with a program that brought Jewish and Palestinian kids to a camp in the United States: the idea being that, if they actually got to know each other, they might like each other.
Upset to see Palestinians barred by Israeli security forces from going to work, and their homes and villages razed if a relative was suspected of being a terrorist, he was drawn to protest the Israeli government's actions. Most recently, he was trying to get ambulances to wounded Palestinians in areas ravaged by Israeli shelling.
Noah Shapiro says his brother believes in the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and is at the opposite extreme from Hamas, Hezbollah and bin Laden. If Sharon had asked him to breakfast, Noah Shapiro said, he would have gone.
So who is Adam Shapiro a traitor to? Not to Israel. He's not an Israeli citizen. Not to his religion. He's not a practicing Jew. And not to the United States government, which claims to support equity in human affairs and the rights of innocent citizens. By condemning Arafat for not stopping the terrorists, but only mildly rebuking Sharon for waging all-out war on the Palestinians, we've betrayed our own values.
Adam Shapiro wanted to restore a little equity to this equation. And, in a season already long on heroes, this makes him another one in my book.
(Washington Post)
April 12, 2002
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. She added that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war."
In a recent interview with a Berkeley, Calif., radio station, McKinney said: "We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?"
McKinney declined to be interviewed yesterday, but she issued a statement saying: "I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case."
Bush spokesman Scott McLellan dismissed McKinney's comments.
"The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views," he said. "The fact that she questions the president's legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason."
In the radio conversation, McKinney delivered a stinging attack on the administration. In 2000, she charged, Bush forces "stole from America our most precious right of all, the right to free and fair elections." With the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, McKinney said, "an administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power."
She suggested that the administration was serving the interests of a Washington-based investment firm, the Carlyle Group, which employs a number of high-ranking former government officials from both parties. Former president George H.W. Bush -- the current president's father -- is an adviser to the firm. McKinney said the war on terrorism has enriched Carlyle Group investors by enhancing the value of a military contractor partly owned by the firm.
Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman asked: "Did she say these things while standing on a grassy knoll in Roswell, New Mexico?"
During her five terms in office, McKinney has often given voice to radical critiques of U.S. policy, especially in the Middle East. She defied the State Department to investigate assertions that international sanctions are brutalizing innocent Iraqis.
With her comments concerning Sept. 11, McKinney, 47, seems to have tapped into a web of conspiracy theories circulating during the past six months among people who believe that the government is partially -- or entirely -- to blame for last year's attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people.
"What is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11th," McKinney charged. "America's credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions."
None of McKinney's colleagues has embraced her allegations, but a few said they are familiar with the theories.
"I've heard a number of people say it," said Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), who quickly added, "I can't say that it would be a widely held view" among lawmakers.
Some lawmakers have a less charitable view of McKinney's penchant for publicity. Rep. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said McKinney is simply trying to impress her constituents.
"She's demonstrated at home an ability to win," he said, "and she's demonstrated in Washington a total lack of responsibility in her statements."
Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a friend of McKinney's, said the Georgia Democrat is adept at seizing on "red-meat" issues that resonate with her political base and have helped her fend off a series of GOP challengers.
"She's not as random as people think," Kingston said. "People always want to hear a political conspiracy theory."
Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now reports: "Yesterday [Monday], Democracy Now saw a CNN news zipper announcing that the Ramallah offices of CNN, Fox and other networks had been raided by the Israeli military. It also said that the news organizations had been told to run their reports by the Israeli authorities. But after scouring the internet and wires last night, we could find no other reports of this, aside from a sentence buried in a CNN story confirming that 'Israeli forces raided the offices of several news organizations and one U.S. aid organization Monday, using gunfire and explosives to enter the buildings.' The CNN story made no mention of having to clear reports with the Israeli authorities. But the Boston Globe reports this morning that Israel is considering litigation against news organizations that do not comply with its restrictions. An Associated Press report today says Israel's military censor has ordered 'significant deletions.' ... At least 20 journalists have come under Israeli fire since the most recent offensive began March 29, according to the Paris-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. Five journalists have been wounded, including one U.S. reporter, Anthony Shadid of the Boston Globe." Source: Democracy Now, April 9, 2002
April 6, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Under the chairmanship of former House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, the conference will gather 250 political, business and academic leaders from Europe, North America and Japan, who will analyze the global response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States' foreign policy and the situation in the Middle East.
"The running line at this meeting is definitely going, 'What do we do now, and where do we go from here?'" said Francois Sauzey, the commission's press officer. As usual, all meetings and panel discussions will be closed to the public.
Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan will report on the Islamic world's contribution to globalization, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo will highlight his ongoing work on financing development since the U.N. Monterrey Conference.
Also, World Trade Organization Director-General Mike Moore is scheduled to lead a panel discussion on the next steps in the multilateral trading regime after his organization's recent Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, where the problems of developing countries' implementing the WTO agreements were discussed.
Other debates will focus on the challenge of reducing poverty and financing development in lesser-developed countries, economic reform and recovery in Japan, the state of the U.S. and world economies, and China in the international system.
Among other political leaders who are expected to attend the three-day meeting are Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board Paul Volcker.
The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller, who was then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. A few years later, the commission became a target of conspiracy theorists after at least 25 commission members joined the Carter administration, including Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Defense Secretary Harold Brown and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Since then, the commission has been called a "shadow government," the "Establishment" and a "global elite" that runs the world, among other things.
Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr., a six-time presidential candidate who was convicted of conspiracy charges, once said the commission is behind the international drug trade, and is plotting to raise taxes on Americans and siphon the money overseas. Evangelist Pat Robertson has said the commission "springs from the depth of something that is evil."
Members of the 29-year-old commission laugh off the conspiracy theories. Although it is a private organization, its publications and memberships are public. "It's so absurd I can't help but, to some extent, find it amusing," Mr. Rockefeller said in a 1996 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The commission also invites as many as 10 news editors or reporters to attend the annual meeting. "We're not a cult," Mr. Sauzey said. "These theories are total nonsense, but they're fun to hear."
(NATURE)
10 April 02
New Scientist
The Earth's magnetic poles might be starting to flip say researchers who have seen strange anomalies in our planet's magnetic field.
The magnetic field is created by the flow of molten iron inside the Earth's core. These circulation patterns are affected by the planet's rotation, so the field normally aligns with the Earth's axis - forming the north and south poles.
But the way minerals are aligned in ancient rock shows that the planet's magnetic dipole occasionally disappears altogether, leaving a much more complicated field with many poles all over the planet. When the dipole comes back into force, the north and south poles can swap places.
The last reversal happened about 780,000 years ago, over a period of several thousand years. Now Gauthier Hulot from the Institute of Earth Sciences in Paris and his colleagues think they have spotted early signs of another reversal.
They used data from the Ørsted satellite to study strange variations in the Earth's magnetic field. In particular, one large patch under South Africa is pointing in the opposite direction from the rest of the Earth's field and has been growing for hundreds of years.
The anomalies have already reduced the overall strength of the planet's magnetic field by about 10 per cent. If they continue to grow at the same rate, the Earth's dipole will disappear within just two millennia.
But Ørsted is the first satellite to take a snapshot of the Earth's magnetic field for 20 years, and such scant data makes it difficult to predict future shifts.
"We can't really tell what will happen," says Hulot. "But we speculate that we're in an unusual situation that might be related to a reversal."
2002-04-09
(PRAVDA)
The citizens of the Russian city of Vladivostok (the Far East of Russia) witnessed weird snowfall today: the snow was of dirty pink-yellowish color. This was especially strange after the blue sun, which has astonished the people recently - the snow was the continuation of the surrealistic behavior of nature in Vladivostok.
“This was the first time, when such a dusty mist covered the city,” – the chief regional weather forecaster Zinaida Bakulina said. As it turns out, this is the way for Vladivostok citizens to pay for the unusually warm winter. As Bakulina said, the mainland was warmed due to the high temperature in January-March, and cyclones activated. A powerful troposphere whirlwind up to nine kilometers high was formed above the northern China, and now it is gradually moving eastwards. The cold fronts were formed in the southern rim of the whirl, and one of those fronts covered Vladivostok. Zinaida Bakulina said that since the air was coming from China, where the dusty storm raised sand and dust in the air, the snow in Vladivostok was colored pink and yellow. The sun rays seemed bluish because of the dust refraction.
The concentration of dust in the air of Vladivostok increased the norm nine times yesterday. Doctors and weather forecasters asked the citizens to breath through wet masks outside. Today’s snow made the air cleaner.
(UKGuardian)
April 11, 2002
Disappointed holidaymakers are cutting short their stays in chic Alpine resorts like Zermatt and Verbier after some Officials from Geneva's meteorological office said yesterday that rising water vapour sucked the sand up into huge clouds in Algeria and Morocco last Friday.
An atmospheric depression then carried the equivalent of several hundred lorry-loads of sand at around 25mph across the Mediterranean, along the eastern Spanish coast and up the Rhone Valley in France.
But when the clouds reached Lake Geneva on Sunday night, they found their path blocked by a large cold front coming from Scandinavia and turned instantly into rain, depositing their red-brown contents over a wide area and ruining the late season breaks of thousands of winter sports enthusiasts.
"We are right at the end of the season, and the slopes were already pretty far gone and icy," said a spokesman for the Verbier tourist board. "I'm afraid a light coating of airborne sand did them very little good at all."
However, the sand did wonders for the Geneva area's car washes. One main street in the city was jammed yesterday morning as queues of cars, all coated with light red dust, waited to get a wash.
Health authorities said the sand particles were too big to cause problems through inhalation, but at least one doctor in Geneva said several patients with allergies had called him in a state of panic.
The United States is planning to restructure its climate-change research programmes in an effort to make them more relevant to government policy. (Nature)
According to MIT researchers, rapid and dramatic climate swings have occurred on Earth over the last 1.5 million years
April 24, 1998
(ENN) -- Most people don't think of bikinis, beach volleyball and tropical weather in relation to Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. But they might, if the world experienced a climate swing today like the ones documented from the past.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher has discovered that for at least the last 1.5 million years, the Earth has undergone rapid and dramatic climate changes similar to those observed in ice cores from more recent times. These climate swings are so dramatic that if we lived through one today, it would be like New England taking on Miami-like weather within a 25-year period.
"Ten years ago, we had no idea that climate could change this quickly," said Maureen E. Raymo, associate professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. Publishing the results for the first time in the April 16 issue of Nature, Raymo and her colleagues at MIT and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute report that millennial-scale climate instabilities -- swings of as much as 10 degrees Celsius within a few decades -- are not restricted to the large glacial periods of the last 700,000 years but existed much further back in time.
For the last five years, a cutting-edge initiative in climate studies has been the search for understanding of millennial-scale climate instabilities. These rapid, large-amplitude climate fluctuations were first identified in ice cores in Greenland and later in ocean sediment cores around the world.
While other researchers have focused on the geologic record of the past 120,000 years, Raymo and a handful of colleagues have undertaken the far more ambitious effort of looking at climate trends as far back as 1.5 million years ago, at the dawn of mankind.
Their work has turned up some unexpected results. "Our results suggest that such millennial-scale climate instability may be a pervasive and long-term characteristic of Earth's climate, rather than just a feature of the strong glacial-interglacial cycles of the past 800,000 years," the authors wrote.
Raymo and her colleagues, including MIT graduate student Susan Carter and research technician Kristen Ganley, also show that these climate changes are tied to changes in the conveyor-like circulation of ocean waters that delivers tropical heat to the northern Atlantic in surface currents while exporting salt-heavy deep waters cooled by Greenland's winds to the south. But while scientists know that climate changes are linked to changes in ocean circulation and heat transfer, they don't know what causes these climate and circulation variations in the first place.
The most dramatic instabilities tend to be triggered during the cooler Ice Age periods, most recently the period from about 100,000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago. "We're living at the end of an unusually stable period," Raymo said. After more than 8,000 years of warmth, we're about due for a cooling phase, "but all bets are off because of global warming from the buildup of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," she said.
To study these climate changes, Raymo retrieved sediments from far below the ocean floor, where deep-water currents sweeping down from Greenland have caused sediment to accumulate at unusually high rates for millions of years. By analyzing the composition and chemical structure of fossils in these sediments, Raymo, a marine geologist and paleoceanographer, reconstructs past conditions on the Earth.
During a 1995 deep-sea drilling expedition -- two months at sea aboard the JOIDES Resolution, a former British Petroleum oil-drilling rig -- Raymo, leading a team of 24 international scientists, broke the world record for the most sediment recovered in a single ocean-drilling expedition. And although these sediments have provided a multitude of clues about climate variations over the millennia, scientists remain at a loss to explain why parts of the planet have swung from ice age to warm stage and back again. Is it due to external forces such as variations in the output of the sun or internal oscillations caused by instability in the distribution of salt and heat within the ocean?
"What causes climate variations on this time scale is a black box for scientists right now," Raymo said.
Mar. 29, 2002
HAVANA - (Reuters) - Scientific investigators said on Friday they hope to better determine later this year if an unusual rock formation deep off Cuba's coast could be a sunken city from a previously unknown ancient civilization.
``These are extremely peculiar structures ... They have captured all our imagination,'' Cuban geologist Manuel Iturralde said at a conference after a week on a boat over the site.
``If I had to explain this geologically, I would have a hard time,'' he told reporters later, saying examination of rock samples due to be collected in a few months should shed further light on the formation off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on Cuba's western tip.
Iturralde, research director of Cuba's Natural History Museum, has joined Canadian exploration company Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) in efforts to solve the mystery of the smooth, geometrically shaped, granite-like rocks. They are laid out in structures resembling pyramids, roads and other structures at more than 2,000 feet in a 7-3/4 mile-square area.
ADC has suggested they might belong to a civilization that colonized the American continent thousands of years ago, possibly sitting on an island that was sunk to great depths by cataclysmic earth movement such as an earthquake.
That theory, and its inevitable parallel with the myth of the lost city of Atlantis, has provoked skepticism from some scientists around the world who say the depth and age -- ADC has spoken of at least 6,000 years' old -- were not credible.
Some European archaeologists said the stones, stumbled upon in July 2000 while ADC was hunting with sonar equipment for treasure and sunken Spanish galleons, could be formed by natural limestone.
But Iturralde's conclusion that there is no immediately apparent natural explanation for the rocks has lent credence to ADC's theory.
``NEED FOR OPEN MIND''
``It appears like there is some kind of intelligent design in the structure's configuration and planning,'' ADC's Soviet-born Canadian ocean engineer, Paulina Zelitsky, said on the sidelines of the geophysical conference in Havana.
``I have worked in this field over 30 years and I have never before seen natural structures shaped with such intelligent symmetry and plan. From the very first moment, I was suspecting that these structures were not natural.''
While Iturralde gave evidence in his paper on Friday for seismic movement at the site, and possible submerging of the land, he drew short of definitively concluding the rocks were not shaped by nature. If, however, that theory was proven, it would revolutionize understanding of the history of the Americas, he told reporters.
``It would change a lot our knowledge of humans and the evolution of the Americas,'' Iturralde said.
``Recently, a French archaeologist found some evidence of people being here in South America 40,000 years ago, something we never expect, so you need to be always open to things that you are not expecting, that are not in the framework of present-day knowledge ... We may have found something that nobody has thought about.''
ADC plans to take a specially designed robot to the site in a few months to take samples of the rocks and the sediment they are embedded in to try to date them and seek signs they may have once been on dry land. They will also be searching for any sign of human life such as drawings, sculptures or artifacts.
``To drill samples from these structures is not easy because they look like granite. And to drill granite at a depth of 600 meters is very difficult,'' Zelitsky said.
She said their discoveries could make history. ``I think we are talking about the origins of the American continent. There are many hypotheses about how the continent was colonized ... There is quite a controversy, and I think our discovery will be the first physical evidence of the true origins of developed civilization in the Americas.''
(UKGuardian)
April 10, 2002
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, could contain up to a billion Earth-like planets capable of supporting life, scientists will announce today.
The theoretical abundance of hospitable worlds among the estimated 200bn stars of our home galaxy suggests it is only a matter of time before more accurate telescopes are able to glimpse the faint signature of a far-off planet, proving that, in size and temperature at least, we are not alone in the universe.
Solar systems such as Earth's, in which planets orbit a star, have been discovered. Astronomers have identified almost 100 planets in orbit around other suns. All are enormous, and of the same gaseous make-up as Jupiter.
Today Barrie Jones, of the Open University, will tell the UK national astronomy meeting in Bristol that he and his colleague Nick Sleep have worked out how to predict which of the newly discovered solar systems is likely to harbour smaller, Earth-like, planets.
Using a computer simulation, they have created mathematical models of the far-off planetary systems and seeded them with hypothetical Earths, orbiting in the "Goldilocks zone" around stars where it is neither too hot nor too cold to support life.
The computer reports which of these model Earths is likely to be kicked out of its temperate orbit by the gravitational effects of the monster planets, and which is likely to survive.
Based on their work so far, the number of Earth-worlds could be vast. "There could be at least a billion 'Earths' in the Milky Way, and lots more if we find systems more like ours, with their giant planets well away from the habitable zones," said Professor Jones.
The size of the Goldilocks zone depends on the size and age of the solar system's star. In our solar system, it lies, like Earth, between Venus and Mars. Jupiter lies beyond Mars.
The solar system most like ours discovered so far is that of a star called 47 Ursae Majoris, which lies 51 light years from Earth, near the constellation known as the Great Bear or the Big Dipper. Astronomers have discovered two planets orbiting the star - one 2 times the size of Jupiter, the other slightly smaller.
Both planets orbit relatively close to the Goldilocks zone, which is further out than ours because 47 Ursae Majoris is older, hotter and brighter than the sun. Yet the system could still support Earth-like planets.
"It's certainly a system worth exploring for an Earth-like planet and for life," said Prof Jones. The definition of the life-supporting zone in any solar system is that water should be able to exist in a liquid state.
Nasa and its European counterpart, Esa, plan to launch instruments into space in the middle of the next 10 years which could produce pictures of Earth-sized planets.
(NZHerald)
08.04.2002 7.32 am
A Welsh schoolgirl says she is in agony every time she cries after a freak accident turned her tears to searing acid.
Michelle Jessett, 15, claims her bizarre condition began last January when a lorry carrying chemicals burst into flames and sent a toxic cloud across the countryside.
Michelle, of Glynneath, was on a school bus which passed the accident scene with open windows, unaware of the cloud of hydrochloric acid.
Michelle said she had been to hospital about 30 times but the doctors did not know what it was.
"It has got progressively worse and now when I cry my face burns and begins to blister," she said. "I haven't been to school for 11 weeks."
10.04.2002
(NZHerald)
The Koreans, the Japanese and the Chinese are among the world's most dedicated learners of English, but they have always shared a common weakness - their apparent inability to distinguish between "l" and "r" sounds.
Now, after decades of cruel jokes about "rice" and "lice", South Korean doctors claim to have found a surgical operation which improves English pronunciation.
South Korean parents are paying up to $900 for an operation on their children's tongues, in the belief that it will improve their English almost before they can speak their own language.
The operation, called a lingual frenectomy, involves snipping the frenulum, the web of stringy tissue below the tongue.
If children are born with a frenulum too long or too tight, it inhibits the tongue from touching the roof of the mouth.
This, in turn, hampers the production of certain sounds, including "l" and "r".
Cutting the frenulum lengthens the tongue's reach by a millimetre or two, theoretically opening up a new world of lingual dexterity.
"Parents are eager to have their children speak English, and so they want them to have the operation," says Dr Nam Il Woo, who performs about 10 frenectomies every month, most of them on children under five.
"It is not cosmetic surgery. In some cases, it really is essential to speak English properly."
The problem is that, in their eagerness to give them the best start in life, parents are putting children with perfectly healthy, flexible tongues under Nam's scalpel.
"If the tongue is really short, you can't pronounce 'l' and 'r' properly," another doctor, Jung Do Kwang, said.
"But this condition is relatively uncommon, and you get 10 times as many parents who want the operation as children who really need it."
Among many South Korean families, mastery of English - often to be followed by study overseas - is regarded as the single most efficient means of personal betterment.
Private kindergartens offer English immersion courses to children as young as 18 months old, as well as Chinese instruction, for $1800 a month.
Video English courses for babies are also popular, so it is no wonder that more and more parents are opting for the relatively cheap and fast-acting surgical method.
Few stereotypes are more recognisable than that of the Asian who gets his or her l's and r's mixed up.
But physiology has very little to do with it.
Japanese, for example, has nothing exactly corresponding to the English "l" and "r".
Instead, Japanese speakers of English use a native sound in between the two.
(WebMD)
April 3, 2002 -- It may not be just bad luck. News that Michael J. Fox and three co-workers all have Parkinson's disease has prompted reports of other mysterious disease clusters.
Nobody knows what causes Parkinson's disease. It's hoped that these clusters will turn up clues that can help with the search for a cure. In recent appearances to promote Parkinson's causes, Fox has displayed the characteristic symptoms of the disease: tremors and facial rigidity. Current treatments delay but do not stop the relentless course of this fatal disease.
Fox and the three other people with Parkinson's disease were among 125 people who in the late 1970s worked on a Canadian television show called Leo & Me. Four cases among 125 people -- especially young people -- is highly suspicious. Parkinson's each year strikes only about 1 in 10,000 people, nearly always much older people than the sitcom cast and crew.
Fox is being treated in the U.S. His three co-workers are being treated by Donald B. Calne, MD, director of the neurodegenerative disorders center at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Calne puts the odds of this happening by chance as 1 in 20,000.
"We do have a group of Parkinson's disease cases that seems to be more than coincidental," Calne tells WebMD. "These people worked together here in Vancouver from 1976 to 1980. We want to find as many other crew and cast members as we can and see how their health is. We'll be looking at the building they worked in to see if we can find any clues."
J. William Langston, MD, founder and president of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, Calif., says he thinks the Fox cluster is real.
"Four cases in a small group in a short period is very unlikely to be chance -- particularly because they were young-onset cases," Langston tells WebMD. "That is what really puts it into statistical orbit. The younger cases are extraordinarily rare."
Langston says Fox told him about the cluster of cases some years ago. But it didn't become public knowledge until recently, when it became part of a soon-to-be-aired Canadian documentary. The program suggests that this cluster may offer a clue to the cause of Parkinson's disease. Calne and Langston think so, too -- and there's already been a payoff.
"As a result of all the media attention, we are getting very interesting reports of other Parkinson's disease clusters," Calne says. "We are interested in hearing of more. Right now we are planning a strategy to try and prioritize investigation of the various clusters we have heard about because of this publicity. We feel it is important."
Earlier clusters of Parkinson's disease have been a boon to research. The most recent of these was in the early 1980s when cases of Parkinson's began appearing among young people in San Francisco. Langston gained fame when he showed that these cases were caused by a chemical contaminating synthetic heroin. This led to a huge advance -- a way to create animal models for testing Parkinson's treatments.
Another clue comes from the 1917 worldwide epidemic of von Economo encephalitis. Years after recovering from this disease -- thought to be caused by a now-extinct virus -- many patients developed Parkinson's disease. This experience shows that infections can leave a person vulnerable to Parkinson's.
Calne suspects something similar happened to Fox and his co-workers.
"We think there was probably quite a brief exposure some years before symptoms occurred," Calne says. "The way we see it is that probably some quite common virus infects someone and -- because of a particular state of susceptibility at that time -- it gets into the brain. Maybe this is because they had another infection or a toxic exposure. But they are not infective at all -- you can't catch Parkinson's disease from a person who has it."
It's one thing to find a cluster of Parkinson's cases and quite another to tease out the cause. A cluster of cases occurred among members of the physics department at the University of Pittsburgh. Over a 10-year period, four professors were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Neurologist Michael J. Zigmond, PhD, was chosen to lead the investigation. Zigmond is co-director of the National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh and sits on the scientific advisory board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
"There's a couple of serious problems in trying to understand these clusters," Zigmond says. "The first is, we don't know what causes Parkinson's. You can measure whatever you like, but we don't know what to look for. We didn't find anything on the short list of compounds people already feel there is reason to be concerned about. The second problem -- and this is the case for the Fox cluster, too -- is that there is a long delay between the time the disease begins and the time it shows up as a clinical problem. Whatever happened could have taken place on a single day over a period of years. We just don't know enough."
Parkinson's disease affects a very specific set of brain cells. The telltale symptoms of the disease only occur when about 80% of these cells die off.
"If you think of a battle, these nerve cells are like soldiers," Calne says. "The event that causes Parkinson's is like a battle. Some cells are killed outright, some are unscathed, and some are wounded so that they die prematurely. It is that premature death that leads to Parkinson's disease."
Calne would like to know of other clusters of Parkinson's disease. He urges people who think they may be part of a cluster to call the University of British Columbia Parkinson's center at 604-822-7695.
04/04/2002
(UKTelegraph)
THE prospect of an African succeeding the present Pope became more realistic yesterday after a powerful cardinal said that it would be a "wonderful sign for all Christianity".
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's doctrinal chief, said an African papacy would "only be to the Church's benefit".
Cardinal Ratzinger, 74, is viewed as a possible king-maker in the conclave that will eventually choose the Pope's successor.
The Bavarian-born prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told the German newspaper Die Welt that the Church's African leaders had all the qualities required for the papacy.
"They are absolutely up to the level of such a position," he said. As a result, it was entirely plausible that the "next Pope may come from there."
Yet Cardinal Ratzinger acknowledged that racism could prevent an African succession and that there were still "great misgivings in the West about the Third World".
Cardinal Ratzinger is possibly the most powerful figure in the college of cardinals. His conservative politics go well with those of most of his African colleagues.
The most obvious African candidate for the papacy is Cardinal Francis Arinze, a 69-year-old Nigerian. Seen as a conservative figure, he leads four of the Vatican's congregations, three pontifical councils and two committees.
Cardinal Arinze has already occupied the Pope's throne - when he stood in for the pontiff at a ceremony to open an African synod.
The freshest African candidate is the newly created Cardinal Wilfred Fox Napier of Durban. A Franciscan and a moderate, he is a youthful 61, which may count against him.
Another possible runner is Mgr Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is just 62 and not yet a cardinal, although technically that poses no barrier to the papacy. Italian cardinals hope that their country may regain the papacy next time round after "losing" it for the first time in 476 years with the election in 1978 of the Polish-born Pope.
However, Italy's share of the College of Cardinals has now plummeted to an all-time low of about 15 per cent. Half a century ago this was about 60 per cent.
Western Europe has also lost its domination of the college of cardinals, giving way to Latin America, Africa, Asia and now also Eastern Europe.
The great majority of practising Catholics live in the developing world and an African papacy is the logical outcome of this continuing trend. The Africans have an extra importance: namely, that the Catholic population in the continent has grown by 20 times since 1980.
The Pope turns 82 next month and has been increasingly frail. Yet Cardinal Ratzinger insisted that he continued to "hold the reins" of the Church.
April 8th, 2002
(TempleInstitute)
It can now be revealed that less than one month ago, a red heifer was born in Israel. After the heifer's owner contacted the Temple Institute, on Friday, April 5th, 2002, Rabbi Menachem Makover and Rabbi Chaim Richman traveled to the farm where the heifer is located, to inspect and validate her status. The rabbis found her to be kosher and were satisfied that this heifer could indeed be a candidate to be used in the process of purification described in the book of Numbers, chapter 19. This is an important development towards the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.
(THE WASHINGTON TIMES)
April 6, 2002
The bloody conflict in the Middle East is again turning some evangelicals to the Bible for texts that speak of a final cosmic battle in those ancient lands.
Some scholars and religious leaders warn against being too literal.
As with the founding of Israel in 1948, the Six Day War in 1967, and the Persian Gulf war of 1991, the ongoing violence between Israel and Palestinians is making some Christians think of a biblical-scale showdown.
"I see Israel as the only nation on Earth with a title deed to any real estate," said Hal Lindsey, who popularized the study of Bible prophecy in his 1970 book, "The Late Great Planet Earth."
He said that at this time he is focusing on larger biblical themes rather than details, such as terrorist attacks on America or Israel's seizure of Yasser Arafat's political headquarters.
"In Jeremiah, God declared a promise to the people of Israel, and He keeps His promise," Mr. Lindsey said. "We're seeing a contest now between God's promise and the rest of the world, which says Israel can't exist."
Capital Bible Seminary President Homer Heater, an Old Testament scholar, said Bible prophecy demands a sympathy to Israel but that Christians must also defend the rights of Arab Christians and justice.
"I'm trying to persuade Christians to not just carte blance support Israel," Mr. Heater said. "The Christian Embassy in Israel, for example, says Israel can do nothing wrong."
Mr. Heater had been a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, widely known for its "premillennial" view of the Bible. In that belief, the 1,000 years cited in the book of Revelation is the millennium-long reign of Christ in Jerusalem before the final judgment.
"We do believe there is a future conflagration in the Middle East," Mr. Heater said. "But is this it? I don't know."
He recalls how Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait made evangelical media eager for exciting commentary, which he tried to discourage. "Everyone was so hot on the thing," he said. "And I said, 'This is not it.'"
Images of an end time in the Middle East stretch from the Hebrew books of Jeremiah, Zechariah and Daniel to the New Testament's gospel of Matthew and the book of Revelation.
The more apocalyptic interpretations see the return of Jews to Israel, the rise of an anti-Christ, a new world government and a final battle of Armageddon as key features in God's plan.
During the Gulf war, some evangelicals said Saddam Hussein was the anti-Christ and likened the smoke of burning oil wells to Matthew's allusion to how "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light."
Also in Matthew, Jesus said that before His return, "Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars."
Though all Christian traditions adhere to the Bible, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics take such prophecies and Israel symbolically.
Mainline Protestants also have historic missions in Arab Palestine and side with their cause, while Rome has Arab districts and sees Jerusalem as an international city.
In contrast, evangelicals such as Pat Robertson back Israel, and the Rev. John Hagee, a San Antonio pastor, built an international ministry on interpreting Middle East events.
His end-time evidence includes Jewish control of Jerusalem and world television so everyone may see the final events. Others point to the new European Union as the united empire the Bible predicts.
In recent weeks, some Christians have evoked Zechariah's prophecy that God will "make Jerusalem a burdensome stone" so "all the people in the earth gathered together against it."
Erin Zimmerman, a columnist for the Christian Broadcasting Network, recently visited Israel with evangelicals and was "surprised by the lack of detailed, 'date-setting' type of end-times speculation that was popular during the Gulf war."
She said those who make contact with suffering Israelis and Palestinians "are mostly concerned with their safety," not prophecy, and turn to Bible texts to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" as the Psalms state.
"They're becoming more aware that there's a human side to Armageddon," Miss Zimmerman said. "For many Christians, I think the prophetic viewpoint is being tempered by a new level of compassion where the Middle East is concerned."
During the Gulf war, 40 percent of Americans told pollsters the world is likely to end in the battle of Armaggedon, and as 2000 approached, 20 percent said the world will end in their lifetimes.
Mr. Lindsey's Web site, which receives 8 million hits a month, began a poll on interpreting the new Mideast violence, so far garnering an "unscientific sample" of 4,000 votes.
Most — 72.5 percent — agreed with the statement, "I believe we actually are seeing the start of the war that leads to antichrist and Armageddon." Most of the rest said: "I believe it is coming, but this isn't it."
(London Sunday Telegraph)
8-3-99
Britain's Ministry of Defense has disclosed that it is creating lethal genetically modified (GM) organisms in a secret program to prepare defenses against a new era of germ warfare.
Tests of the potential of "GM supergerms" are being conducted at Porton Down, the headquarters of the government's chemical and biological defense establishment.
The research uses similar genetic engineering techniques to those that create GM foods sold in supermarkets. It was launched to study the implications should such technology be developed for weapons of mass destruction by an enemy power.
The government has kept the experimental research secret, but the London Sunday Telegraph has learned it has been going on for at least five years.
The theoretical threat posed by GM germs has alarmed the Ministry of Defense. Genetic techniques can make biological weapons more dangerous to humans and less easy to detect or counter.
It is already feasible to use genetic engineering to introduce a lethal toxin into a pathogen -- an organism that attacks humans -- to increase its killing potential. Organisms can also be modified to resist antidotes.
In the future, it may be possible to wipe out an army with mutant germs that would then be made benign by a genetic flaw, enabling an enemy force to invade in safety.
An enemy may be more ready to deploy such "controllable" GM weapons than existing organisms such as anthrax. Ultimately, it may be possible to develop an "ethnic destruction" germ, that is, an organism that would attack the genes of a particular race.
In January, a study by the British Medical Association warned that a plague or toxin designed to kill specific racial groups could be only five to 10 years away.
Britain has signed treaties prohibiting the creation of biological weapons for military purposes. The sole reason for the research at Porton Down is to develop protection measures against any threat posed to the population or to servicemen.
A Ministry of Defense spokesman said: "To perform this task our scientists have to be at the cutting edge of biological scientific knowledge, including the techniques of genetics."
Command! Bruce Sterling talks about the militarization of space, citing "The
more people learn how dependent we are on space, the more likely they are to
figure out, as the Chinese and Russians have, that being able to interfere with
our satellites is essential to their strategic interest. The threat to space
assets is real and growing." Does the rest of the world suffer from a
satellite gap with the US? Plus, some href="http://wired.com/wired/archive/10.04/startech.html">scenario href="http://wired.com/wired/archive/10.04/strategies.html">planning :) and
a sensible href="http://techreview.com/articles/taubes10402.asp">missile href="http://wired.com/wired/archive/10.04/nmd.html">defense
program?
(Associated Press)
April 9, 2002
WASHINGTON –– Pictures from sharp-eyed satellites, once the domain of the United States and Russia, are becoming so easy to obtain that the military may have to alter its strategies knowing adversaries with a minimum of know-how and money can be watching.
Perhaps a half-dozen countries as well as some private companies have spy satellites that, while not as good as those used by the United States, are able to supply solid military intelligence.
"The unique spaceborne advantage that the U.S. has enjoyed over the past few decades is eroding as more countries – including China and India – field increasingly sophisticated reconnaissance satellites," CIA Director George J. Tenet said in a recent Senate hearing.
Tenet said adversaries are quickly learning how to take advantage.
"Foreign military, intelligence and terrorist organizations are exploiting this – along with commercially available navigation and communications services – to enhance the planning and conduct of their operations," he said.
In the past, only Moscow had satellite capability approaching that of the United States.
Now, with its own spy satellites, China would be able to learn of the location and composition of a U.S. carrier battlegroup dispatched during a potential dispute over Taiwan.
Eleven years ago, the United States threatened an amphibious assault on Iraq from the Persian Gulf before hitting Iraq's army with a "left hook" from the western flank. If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had had access to the kind of commercially available satellite imagery now for sale, it's conceivable he could have moved his troops to meet the coalition's surprise land assault.
The latest advances in foreign countries are largely the result of their research rather than technology purchases or espionage, experts said. The United States pioneered much of the technology; now, other countries are replicating it.
"We're losing our monopoly," said James Lewis, a former Commerce and State Department space policy expert now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "After the war in the Persian Gulf, other countries figured out it was really good to have space capabilities."
U.S. military satellites remain the best – they can discern far more detail and collect more images. Their numbers allow them to take pictures more frequently of a given area. A new generation of spy satellites, part of a project called "Future Imagery Architecture," is planned.
But now that other countries have access to high-resolution imagery, they can count tanks, track fleets and acquire other information useful in predicting U.S. military moves.
That means the military will have to practice the same "denial and deception" techniques adversaries have used to avoid detection by U.S. reconnaissance, experts say. Tanks are camouflaged under trees. Secret projects are hidden in buildings when a reconnaissance satellite is overhead.
During the first months of the Afghan war, the United States simply bought exclusive access to the right parts of the orbit of the Ikonos satellite, then the best commercial satellite in the skies. This prevented anyone else from having a look at Afghanistan, and the U.S. company that runs Ikonos, Space Imaging Inc., was happy to sell.
It's unclear if the U.S. government will do that in future wars. While it can exercise "shutter control" over U.S.-owned satellites, foreign-owned satellites are under no such restriction. Foreign companies also may not want to sell imagery solely to the Americans.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who has studied these issues, suggested the military develop ways to jam satellite transmissions and prevent ground stations from receiving the pictures.
"The more information an adversary has, the more vulnerable we are," he said. "We have to think about jamming and other capabilities at the appropriate times."
Both the United States and the former Soviet Union worked on weapons that would bring down spy satellites in the event of a major war. But interest in those technologies has waned.
James also said he worries that the United States is losing its edge in building the best satellites. New restrictions on exports of satellite components, while slowing the transfer of sophisticated technology, have also caused U.S. manufacturers to close, he said. These rules were enacted after an investigation into the Clinton administration's decision to let two U.S. aerospace companies export satellites to be launched atop Chinese rockets.
April 5, 2002 (Cosmiverse)
A group of Japanese astronomers watching the heavens around the clock to spot any sign of huge asteroids and comets apparently found an undisclosed spy satellite, they announced Thursday.
It is 50 meters wide and orbiting the Earth but it doesn't show up on any of the lists of satellites registered with the North American Aerospace Defense Command. There are more than 8,000 objects up there sent from Earth but this one isn't listed, making it a prime suspect as a spy satellite.
The large satellite was observed by a group of Japanese astronomers who search the sky constantly for huge asteroids and comets that could threaten the planet. The unidentified object was spotted at the Japan Spaceguard Association's observation center in Bisei, Okayama Prefecture, in December last year. After examining the NORAD list, the group said it was most likely a U.S. or Chinese satellite.
Aerospace engineering specialist Nobuo Nakatomi said the object was likely to be a spy satellite. "It is a common practice around the world to secretly launch satellites for technical or military reasons, and they won't make entry on the NORAD list," Nakatomi said. "Judging from the information available, it looks like the object is a U.S. or Chinese spy satellite."
Shuzo Isobe, director of the spaceguard association, was delighted with the ability of its 1-meter-diameter optical telescope at the Bisei Spaceguard Center. "We will keep watching space to spot asteroids or man-made objects that can be a threat to Earth," said Isobe, who is also an assistant professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
Though the astronomers found it using a one-meter telescope, the unidentified satellite can be observed with binoculars in the southeastern sky.
Marc Bastien departed for Russia on Sept. 7, 2000. I had orders to meet him. Bastien was going to work at the Canadian embassy regarding diagrams and blueprints of a weapons defense system. The U.S. government had a direct influence on his mission. The name of the defense system is SSST [Stealth Satellite System Terminator]. There are five different individual and unique defensive and strike capabilities of the system. The only portion that I have publicly spoken on is one frame regarding actual current orbiting satellites, which are not at this time owned by the US government. On advice of counsel I cannot discuss the other components.
This one component is a satellite system. Within the confines of the system there are multiple, deployable space/orbital EMP [Electromagnetic Pulse] missiles that are not aimed at the ground. They are targeted at everyone else's satellites. These would kill worldwide communications. The satellites of some countries that are shielded with titanium are protected from these weapons. The protected countries are Russia and China, but U.S. satellites are vulnerable and Putin has told Bush that the U.S. missile defense system doesn t work, and that Bush knows it.
A rogue state that wanted to incapacitate the US could deliver wet towels with foot and mouth to all the cattle markets in the country. A nuclear bomb in a standard commercial container placed in the Yellowstone caldera would take out most of the US. A bomb in a fishing boat in the atlantic would take out most of the atlantic seaboard infrastructure. No ICBM or anti-missile missile needed. The US military have to believe that there is a threat to their existence that is already out in space, and has to enter through the stratosphere, or they want to shoot down flying saucers, otherwise there is no point. Either that or its just jobs for the boys.
BEIJING (AFP) Apr 02, 2002
MUNICH, Germany, April 7 (Reuters) - Strange lights in the sky baffled Bavarians late on Saturday as hundreds of panicked callers jammed police telephone lines seeking an explanation for the phenomenon.
Reports of an unsettling late-night natural light show came from all over the southern German state as well as the neighbouring region of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
"It had nothing to do with the weather. But I don't think little green men from Mars have landed in Bavaria. It was something burning out in the atmosphere," a meteorologist said.
"It was like a huge firework," a Reuters TV correspondent in Munich said, describing the display. "You could even see it through half-closed blinds. It lasted around three seconds," she said.
Pilots flying into Munich airport radioed the control tower with reports of unusual lights in the sky.
The German police said NASA scientists initially thought the light was caused by space junk -- floating debris in the Earth's atmosphere -- but later said they were still unsure.
The German army reported no unusual movements on its radar.
Scientists said the lights may have the result of a meteor breaking through the Earth's atmosphere.
"There are no signs of impact or damage. We can't say what it was," a police spokesman said.
(http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/frhome.htm)
, as documented in a study by the Moscow Institute of Cosmic Research (IKI).
Work on individual elements of the Russian space defence programme (PKO) began as long ago as the late 1950s. One of these elements was the "Kosmoplan" developed by Vladimir Chelomei's OKB-52 design bureau, a kind of killer satellite intended to intercept and annihilate enemy spacecraft. Chief Designer Sergey Korolev for his part suggested creating a satellite defence system, whereby an interceptor satellite would be transported to space by his R-7 intercontinental missile and then guided to the target by PRO A missile defence system ground stations.
The practical implementation of a satellite interception system was a response to the US Air Force's SAINT project which dated from the years 1960-1962. This programme envisaged an unmanned spacecraft approaching a cosmic target in order to "inspect" it. After that the military planned to equip it so that it would be able to destroy this object. However, the US government scrapped the idea out of fear that it would give the Russians an excuse for a similar project.
Nevertheless, Moscow began work in 1962 on a cosmic defence system known as "IS" (after "Istrebitel Sputnik" or interceptor satellite). The project was run by the Kometa Scientific Research Institute and Vladimir Chelomei's OKB-52 design bureau. By the end of the 1960s the system was ready. It consisted of a ground station close to Moscow, a launch complex at the Baikonur cosmodrome, a launcher rocket and an "interception device" equipped with target-seeking equipment and a charge of fragmentation munitions.
The first such spacecraft, known as Polyot, was launched on 1 November 1963, and the second on 12 April 1964. The equipment section of these satellites contained a mechanism for firing a charge of shrapnel, which was drawn out with the aid of rods.
The Polyots were really intended to be launched with the Chelomei UR-200K intercontinental missile. However, as this was not ready in time, the two-stage Korolev R-7A was used instead. When work ceased on the UR-200K, the Russians finally resorted to the Cyclone 2A, which was based on the R-36 intercontinental missile.
Testing of the IS system began on 27 October 1967 with the launch of a killer satellite code-named Cosmos 185. This was followed in the years 1968 to 1970 by Cosmos 217 and Cosmos 248. But none of these machines had radio control, a homing device or an explosive charge, so they could only be used as target drones.
The first real interception manoeuvre took place on 1 November 1968 with the Cosmos 252 satellite, and in August 1970 a satellite interceptor destroyed a target satellite with a fragmentation charge - the first such feat in the world, as Russia has since publicly emphasised. The same year the first part of the Space Control Centre (ZKKP) entered service. With the launch of Cosmos 374 as target and Cosmos 375 as interceptor spacecraft, the complete system was finally put the test in October 1970.
Over the next few years, the Russian military tried out various variants of the interceptor idea. Under one of these, the auxiliary complex Lira assumed the role of target. It consisted of primitive satellites equipped with an impact registration system. These satellites were launched using Plessezk Cosmos missile launchers. The test series proved the concept of intercepting objects at altitudes between 250 and 1,000km. The Control Centre then entered service in 1972.
A new test series began in 1976. This time the objective was to enable extension of the spectrum of interception altitudes coupled with reduction of the interception time through perfection of the system. On 1 July 1979 the cosmic defence system also entered service. Although the system had a respectable hit rate of 60%, it underwent continuous modernisation (the Kremlin estimated that the hit rate of the American system was only 18%).
The last test of a fighter satellite was staged on 18 June 1982. On this occasion Cosmos 1379 intercepted a target which was simulating a US Transit navigation satellite during an exercise involving the Strategic Rocket Forces. Altogether the Soviets launched 41 spacecraft for testing their cosmic defence system between 1963 and 1982: two Polyot satellites, 19 target satellites and 20 interceptor satellites.
On 18 October 1983 Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party, ordered an end to the testing. In December 1985 the US Congress also banned such trials using its own system. In 1988 the Americans completely ceased work on the project, while in 1991 the Russian IS-MU space defence system, the result of further development work, entered service.
But Soviet military efforts in space were not confined to satellites. From 1978 an anti-satellite missile which was intended to be fired from a MiG-31D was developed at the Vympel design bureau. In 1986 trials using this missile on the prototype fighter aircraft commenced.
In 1976 the Energia scientific production organisation (NPO) headed by Chief Designer Glushko took over work on the space defence system. The top-secret project was run under the code name Skif (Shchit, named after a central Asian people mounted on horseback). In the course of this project two basic spacecraft types were developed: one was equipped with a laser weapon for use against objects in low Earth orbit and the other with a missile for use against targets in middle and geostationary Earth orbit.
Development work on the laser battle station was transferred in 1981 to the Salyut design bureau and that of the laser weapon itself to NPO Astrofisika. The satellite, which was also given the name Skif, was finally manufactured by the Chrunichev mechanical engineers in Moscow. It was to be launched on the heavy Energia rocket.
In 1983 flight trials of the approximately 60t laser device commenced on an Ilyushin Il-76MD heavylift transport. At the same time research was being carried out on the propagation of laser beams in the atmosphere.
Following the assumption of power by Michail Gorbachev and US President Reagan's announcement of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) programme, the Russians resumed their work on the space defence system. To test the laser battle station the dynamic "Analogue Skif-D" was built, while for the flight tests Energia finally assembled, at great speed, a model of the station known as Skif-DM (dynamic model). This station was 37m long and 4.1m wide, with a mass of 80t.
Skif-DM - also known as Polyus - possessed four sustainers, 20 orientation and 16 stabilisation motors. It was planned that almost 20 military fundamental experiments and some geophysical experiments should be carried out with it. But just before the planned launch date, Gorbachev gave an important speech in which he explained that the arms race should not be allowed to be transferred to space. It was subsequently decided not to carry out any military experiments with Skif-DM.
On 15 May 1987 Energia was launched with the battle station on its maiden flight. After 460 seconds Skif-DM separated from the launcher only to crash into the Pacific shortly afterwards, its control system having failed. The laser device was not found on board, however. It had been replaced by a dummy of identical weight.
Starting at the end of the 1960s, the Russians also developed ground-based nuclear laser systems for combating spacecraft. Unlike the American x-ray lasers, they could be used several times over. The programme was terminated after the USSR announced a unilateral moratorium on trials of the space defence system and the puzzling deaths of the two project managers in the mid-1980s.
The mobile Pamir-SU electro-generator, with an output of 15MW and a mass of around 20t, could supply power to long-range lasers and ultra-high-frequency weapon systems. It could be used both on the Earth and also in space. In 1994/1995 this equipment was sold to the USA.
Finally, the Russians also worked on an orbital fortress based on the MIR space station. The military modules were to be transported into orbit on the space shuttle Buran and docked onto the basic docking module. However, with the altered military and political situation at the beginning of the 1990s, work on these military space systems was halted.
Source: Inside China Today
11-6-98
China is developing anti-satellite laser technology which could seriously threaten American military operations, according to the US Defence Department.
Did you know there is a Federal law that the U.S. Military and Department of Defense can use *ANY* Biological and Chemical Agents on the American Public without their knowledge or consent?
C.1998
You might want to ask yourself who voted for and approved this law. Here it is:
§ 1520. Use of human subjects for testing of chemical or biological agents by Department of Defense; accounting to Congressional committees with respect to experiments and studies; notification of local civilian officials
(a) Not later than thirty days after final approval within the Department of Defense of plans for any experiment or study to be conducted by the Department of Defense, whether directly or under contract, involving the use of human subjects for the testing of chemical or biological agents, the Secretary of Defense shall supply the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and House of Representatives with a full accounting of such plans for such experiment or study, and such experiment or study may then be conducted only after the expiration of the thirty-day period beginning on the date such accounting is received by such committees.
(b) (1) The Secretary of Defense may not conduct any test or experiment involving the use of any chemical or biological agent on civilian populations unless local civilian officials in the area in which the test or experiment is to be conducted are notified in advance of such test or experiment, and such test or experiment may then be conducted only after the expiration of the thirty-day period beginning on the date of such notification. (2) Paragraph (1) shall apply to tests and experiments conducted by Department of Defense personnel and tests and experiments conducted on behalf of the Department of Defense by contractors.
Source: Cornell University Law Library http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/1520.html
4-17-99
The Cincinnati Enquirer June 15, 1947 - Page One
"WAR DEVICE BARED" Awful as A-Bomb, Cincinnatian Says WEAPON IS SECRET, Based on British Idea from Tarawa Battle, Not Biological.
A devastating new instrument of war placed in the Anglo-American arsenal by scientists working secretly in New Zealand yesterday was termed "as awesome in its effects as the atomic bomb" by a Cincinnati bio-physicist who aided in its development.
James Marion Snodgrass, 39, chief engineer of the motion picture division of the Dayton Acme Co., consultant engineering firm, declined otherwise to lift the cloak of mystery surrounding the weapon.
Pressed by reporters, Snodgrass said only that it was not connected with the atomic bomb and had no relation to biological warfare. He would not say whether it was intended to be directed against humans, aircraft or ships.
DATED FROM TARAWA
Development of the weapon started after the invasion of Tarawa Island in the Pacific by American forces, Snodgrass *line of text not legible* loss of life.
Asked whether the weapon had any bearing on the casualties or a military problem encountered on the island, Snodgrass replied tersely, "Could be."
Snodgrass, who lives at 150 Somerset Dr., College Hill, was a civilian when he was assigned to a group of British and New Zealand scientists engaged in the development project. The weapon was conceived by the British, Snodgrass said, and research was pressed despite lack of enthusiasm shown by the U.S. Navy officers who received reports during development.
CLUE IN HONORS LIST
Existence of the weapon first was disclosed when Prof. T.D.J. Leech of New Zealand was mentioned in the birthday honors list of King George VI in London. A news dispatch reported Professor Leech as calling the weapon an effective alternative to the atomic bomb.
Asked whether the weapon could replace the atomic bomb, Snodgrass said only: "First reports are substantially true, but perhaps they are exaggerated a little."
The research was conducted in New Zealand because of fears of espionage, Snodgrass said, although it had been planned to transfer the work to Florida.
Snodgrass, who is married and has two children, formerly was an instructor of psychology at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. Before the war, Snodgrass said, he performed considerable research on the effect of electric currents on the human body.
End of article
___________________
"Pledged To Silence On Secret Weapon, Cincinnatian States" The Cincinnati Enquirer, page-1 June 16, 1947
James M. Snodgrass, Cincinnati biophysicist, yesterday refused to describe any further the secrecy-shrouded weapon of war that he and a group of British and New Zealand scientists devloped in New Zealand during World War II.
As speculation developed concerning the weapon which Snodgrass termed "as awesome as the atomic bomb." The scientist said that he was "under obligation" to remain silent.
Although only the barest of facts have been made public concerning the weapon, it is known that it was developed following the invasion of Tarawa Island and was never used in the war.
---
Update On Alleged 'Secret Weapon' Reported In '47
Here may be some additional details relevant to the alleged 'Secret Weapon' referenced in a 1947 Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper article. -- text of this article can be found at
http://home.fuse.net/ufo/Secrets.htm
Apparently the papers of James Marion Snodgrass were sought after by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in 1995, as per the following item from: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/sionet/qrept/9596-1-arch.html
----excerpt----
October 27, 1995 SIO Archives Quarterly Report July/September
1995 ACQUISITIONS
"During this quarter we received 56 films of Eugene La Fond documenting work at sea during the 1960's and the papers of James Marion Snodgrass (38 cartons). The Snodgrass papers were received with a deposit agreement. A deed of gift is under negotiation now. We also received an original 1969 political cartoon signed by Ronald Reagan concerning state oceans policy and slides of work at sea from Peter Brueggeman."
---end excerpt---
This item was courtesy of Mr. Bob Barnes, who located it while browsing through a search engine under the name of SNODGRASS. I would be inclined to wager that the James Marion Snodgrass indicated in this article may be the same as from the '47 newspaper report, as the "James Marion Snodgrass" combination of 3-names together seems quite rare.
It appears that the Scripps Institute of Oceanography knew of Snodgrass and had an interest in the acquisition of some of his files, which may or may-not be relevant to this 'Secret' situation he was reportedly involved with while at the motion picture division of the Dayton Acme Company [Dayton, Ohio and Wright-Patterson AFB?].
Upon reading the '47 article, I first presumed that this exotic weapon was perhaps related to the projection of images -holograms, as per his association with a 'motion picture division' of the Dayton Acme Co., but upon closer scrutiny, the term 'weapon' and comparison to "A-bomb potential" seems to negate that possibility, as holographic projection would only serve as a potential counter-measure in any battlefield application and not have destructive capability as the term 'weapon' would imply.
I also surmised that this weapon may be an early EMP [Electromagnetic Pulse] bomb. However, according to a report by Defence Analyst Carlo Kopp entitled: "The Electromagnetic Bomb - a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction," Kopp states, "The ElectroMagnetic Pulse [EMP] effect was first observed during the early testing of high altitude airburst nuclear weapons." This statement indicates that the EMP effect was observed *after* the conflict at Tarawa, which was during WWII at which time no high altitude atomic tests had been conducted there.
The second person mentioned in the article, Professor Leech, would be another name to keep alert for.
In light of Snodgrass' connection to The Scripps Institute of Oceanography, I think it could be plausible that the alleged "Secret Weapon" could be nautically based. What seems puzzling is how that Snodgrass could go from a Chief engineer of the motion picture division of the Dayton Acme Co., a consultant engineering firm in Ohio from 1947, to having papers considered valuable to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in 1995.
Further, our understanding of the Tarawa Battle during WWII may shed some light on this. A Navy-Marines operation was enacted in the Central Pacific against Japan in August of 1943. The following information was found at: http://ac.acusd.edu/History/WW2Timeline/CRAIGE/doc1.html
--begin excerpt--
The Marshall Islands would serve as an air base from which further operations could be launched against the Marianas, and from there against the Japanese home islands. But 500 miles to the southeast of the Marshalls, an archipelago of atolls called the Gilberts stood between U.S. forward ground air bases and the Marshalls.
The Gilberts had only one workable airstrip for refueling American aircraft and that was on the island of Betio in the western Gilbert Island atoll of Tarawa.
The Japanese commander in charge of the defense of Tarawa, Rear Admiral Keiji Shibasaki, said "A million men cannot take Tarawa in a hundred years." He commanded 2,600 imperial marines, the best amphibious troops in the Japanese armed forces. With the importation of 1,000 Japanese workers and 1,200 Korean laborers the island airstrip of Betio had been transformed into one of the most formidable fortresses in the world, boasting 14 coastal defense guns(four of which were taken from the surrendered British garrison at Singapore), 40 strategically located artillery pieces, covering every approach to the island, a coconut-log sea wall four feet high lining the lagoon and over 100 machine gun emplacements behind the wall. All this was concentrated on an island only a mile long and a few hundred yards wide.
Meanwhile an armada of 17 carriers, 12 battleships, eight heavy and four light cruisers, 66 destroyers and 36 transports carrying the 2nd Marine Division and a part of the 37th Infantry Division- some 35,000 soldiers and Marines headed for Betio in early November of 1943.
In the moments before pre-invasion bombardment began, the task force naval commander, Rear Admiral Howard F. Kingman announced to the landing troops "Gentlemen, we will not neutralize Betio. We will not destroy it. We will obliterate it!"
Neither Shibasaki nor Kingman knew what they were up against.
--end excerpt--
[Thanks to Jim Martin for the information regarding Tarawa]
Aside from being a slight curiousity, there is nothing substantive indicating that this strange story is UFO-related.
Update - April 18:
Bob Barnes added that The Scripps Institute of Oceanography has a research facility in New Zealand, and they receive funding from NASA for oceanic gravitational studies.
He passed along the following information and comment: From: http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/guide/libpic/history.html
---excerpt---
"By the end of 1948, the Library collection comprised over 22,000 volumes and 450 journal titles. In this photo dated Oct 27, 1943, SIO Library is the building in the middle, looking south from the pier. By 1949, the Library was outgrowing the stack space in the 1916 building. A working group on SIO space requirements, chaired by James M Snodgrass, developed a "master plan for the Library building" which presented plans and recommendations for present and future quantities of volumes and for upgrading deficient facilities in the building.
---end excerpt---
Barnes also remarked that SIO has a lab in New Zealand and SIO receives funding from NASA. Of interest is the area of Marine Gravity. See:
http://topex.ucsd.edu/marine_grav/mar_grav.html
There is a possibility that Snodgrass may have been removed from the alleged Secret Project referenced in the '47 Cincinnati newspapers resulting from his mention in media reportage. If this scenario is likely, it could be possible he ended up with the SIO by '49 in a capacity totally unrelated to the '47 "Secret Weapon" situation.
Also of interest from the original article was the mention that Snodgrass had previously dealt with "research on the effect of electric currents on the human body." It remains to be seen how this relates to Snodgrass' involvement with the Motion Picture division of the Dayton Acme Co., and his ultimate involvement with Oceanographic research.
Kenny Young --
UFO Research http://home.fuse.net/ufo/
To the world she was one of the most successful American fashion models of the 1940s – but she led a secret life as a Manchurian Candidate-style agent for the US intelligence services during the Cold War. COLIN BENNETT analyses this tale of multiple personality, conspiracy, hypnotic mind-control and fantasy life.
April 11, 2002
MOSCOW, Russia --
In true Cold War spy-drama style, Moscow's main evening news on Wednesday showed grainy footage of clandestine figures said to be from a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency spy ring.
According to the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) -- successor to the Soviet-era KGB -- the U.S. agents used all the usual tricks of the espionage game, like dead letter drops and invisible ink.
The TV reports, fleshing out details of the spying allegations made earlier in the day, came at an embarrassing time with a summit between Presidents Vladimir Putin -- himself a former KGB agent -- and George W. Bush due in just over a month.
Truncated but exotic details of the spy case were described by unidentified officers of the FSB security police, appearing on the TV news with their faces in silhouette.
Footage of a young Asian woman was shown, and the news reports said she was a CIA agent responsible for the operation who had posed as a junior American diplomat but was no longer in Russia.
A spokesman for the security service said that CIA officers posing as embassy officials in Russia and another, unnamed, former Soviet republic had tried to recruit an employee at a secret Russian defence ministry installation.
State-controlled ORT television broadcast pictures of a plastic-wrapped package stashed among some bushes in what it identified as the Sokolniki region of Moscow, and an interview in a darkened room with a man identified as a Federal Security Service operative.
'Double agent'
He explained that the Russian defence ministry employee, identified only by his first name, Viktor, had gone to a U.S. Embassy in another former Soviet republic last spring to try to find information about a relative who had gone missing abroad.
Embassy officers allegedly slipped him psychotropic drugs to get information out of him, because he was found a week later wandering the streets in shock and with amnesia.
"He was brought to Moscow and here the FSB did some tests on him, and we established that he had known some government
secrets and that he had been under psychoactive drug treatment for a long time," a concealed FSB officer told NTV television.
The scientist had been recruited by the CIA, which gave him instructions in letters written in invisible ink, the officer told NTV, adding the espionage was thwarted before damage was done.
The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that only after psychiatric treatment had Viktor -- whom a security service employee called a "real patriot," presumably because he became a "double agent " -- been able to reconstruct details of his visit.
"As a result, the Federal Security Service took the necessary steps to stop the leak of Russian secrets through this channel and unmask the Langley (CIA) employees who used the most unscrupulous methods," ITAR-Tass said.
Officials at the U.S. embassy in Moscow and the CIA in Washington declined to comment, Reuters reported.
The spying allegations come amid heightened U.S.-Russian tensions following a warm spell prompted by Russia's participation in the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign.
Shortly after Putin became acting president in December 1999, U.S. businessman Edmond Pope became the first American convicted of spying in Russia in 40 years. Putin pardoned him shortly after his conviction.
Last year, Russia ordered 50 U.S. diplomats to leave the country, mirroring the U.S. expulsion of Russian diplomats following the arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on charges of spying for Moscow.
The Russians' arrest of U.S. Fulbright scholar John Tobin on marijuana charges also attracted wide attention after security officials said they believed he was a spy in training. Tobin was freed from prison in August 2001.
(Source: Washington Post, April 4, 2002)
The science journal Nature says an article it published last year on generically engineered corn growing in Mexico was not sufficiently researched and should not have been published reports the Washington Post. The controversial article reported that corn growing in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca contained genetically engineered material, although GE corn has been prohibited in Mexico since 1998. "The initial study also offered evidence that the genes spliced into corn plants were unstable, a finding that would challenge a basic assumption about the workings of agricultural biotechnology," writes the Post. "The editor's note does not distinguish between the two aspects of the study, by David Quist and Ignacio Chapela at the University of California at Berkeley. But the two authors, a graduate student and a professor, said they stand by their first finding and believe they were on the right track with their second, although they may have misinterpreted some readings." Val Giddings of the Biotechnology Industry Organization told the Post, "We believe that Nature erred in publishing the article to begin with, and it seems they came to the same unavoidable conclusion. ... The authors made mistakes that first-year grad students learn to avoid, which further demonstrates that their commitment was not to data and science but to a religious commitment to an [anti-biotechnology] dogma."
with genetically engineered soybeans.
News | AMERICAS | GM firm sues Canadian farmer:Can GM crops really be contained? US biotechnology company Monsanto
has taken a Canadian farmer to court over his fight over GM contaminated crops
(UKIndependent)
31 March 2002
Genetically modified foods are poised to slip back into Britain after major advances by Monsanto in countries that have so far refused to grow them.
Last week, India lifted a four-year ban on growing GM crops to allow production of three bio-engineered types of cotton and hinted that it will also give the go-ahead to GM foods such as soya and corn.
And earlier this month, the Brazil's commission on GM foods recommended the immediate authorisation of GM crops and foods, despite a similar ban. The recommendation would particularly benefit Monsanto, which has been lobbying hard for approval to grow pesticide-resistant soya.
Brazil and India have been important sources for British and European firms that have been forced to drop GM materials from food and animal feeds. If bio-engineered crops now sweep through the two countries, companies will find it hard to find non-GM supplies.
Brazil, for example, is the world's second biggest producer of soya. The first and third biggest, America and Argentina, already grow GM varieties, and the three countries together account for 80 per cent of soya production.
Monsanto's victories are a blow for environmentalists who had thought their success in turning consumers against GM foods in Europe and Japan would have global repercussions. As consumers refused to buy, the argument went, exporting countries would be forced to grow GM-free crops in order to reach their markets. Eventually even America would come under pressure to change course.
Now environmentalists fear firms and supermarkets will be forced to buy GM ingredients again, restricting choice to consumers.
The blow is all the more bitter because their strategy had seemed to be working. Over the past two years, Brazil has increased its share of world soya trade from 24 to 36 per cent, while the US share fell from 57 to 46 per cent.
As a result, many Brazilian farmers' leaders want to keep the ban. "Three quarters of our exports go to countries that don't accept GM," said Agide Meneguette, president of the Farming Federation of Parana, the country's second largest soya-producing state. "It is beginning to look foolish to switch to GM crops."
The recommendation to lift the ban has yet to be approved by the full parliament, but President Fernando Henrique Cardoso is determined to push it through. Earlier this month, the anti-GM environment minister, Jose Sarney Filho, resigned.
Monsanto refuses to comment beyond saying that it "remained committed to bringing the benefits of biotechnology to Brazilian farmers".
David Wynn-Williams, microbiologist, was born on July 16, 1946. He died on March 24, 2002, aged 55.
March 27, 2002
A microbiologist who had for 25 years studied the survival of primitive organisms in the Antarctic environment and the implications for the wider universe, David Wynn-Williams, had been using his findings to assess the likelihood of the existence of some form of life on Mars. These studies, which had led to an exchange of ideas with Nasa in the US, explored the behaviour of life forms on the frontiers of existence.
In the course of a series of ten visits to Antarctica from the mid-1970s onwards, Wynn-Williams had assessed the capability of microbes to adapt to environmental extremes, including the bombardment of ultraviolet rays and global warming — conditions which might parallel those of the early Primary Era of Earth’s existence, or of present day Mars. Besides his links with Nasa, he had also collaborated with the Italian Antarctic programme at Terra Nova Bay, with the New Zealand programme at Scott Base and with American research programmes in the Antarctic at McMurdo.
A man of boundless physical as well as intellectual energy, Wynn-Williams generated a constant flow of ideas, which entranced both his contemporaries and the young. He was killed in a road accident while out jogging near his Cambridge home.
David Wynn-Williams was born in Cheshire in 1946 and educated at Calday Grange Grammar School and Birkenhead Technical College. From the latter he went, in 1965, to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he read botany and microbiology, graduating BSc in 1968. He stayed at Aberystwyth for a further three years, being awarded his PhD for a thesis on environmental biology in 1971.
Wynn-Williams was a talented science teacher who loved imparting ideas to the young. For the next two years he taught school biology, first in South London and then at the Judd School, Tonbridge. When he subsequently moved to Cambridge and into higher research and farflung fieldwork, he nevertheless continued to revel in talking directly to classroom students about the excitement of developing scientific ideas.
He had first become interested in the polar regions after leading the University College of Wales expedition to Iceland in 1970. In 1974 he was invited to join the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge and spent the next two winters and three summers at Signy Island in the South Orkneys, studying terrestrial microbiology.
This became the central study of his life and he was to return on four separate occasions: 1980-81, 1984-85, 1987-88 and 1990-91, to continue research at Antarctic lithosol sites — those whose soil is composed of wholly or partly weathered rock fragments. In the meantime he was, in 1982-83, guest scientist with the New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme. Ten years later, he was appointed leader of the British Antarctic Survey Expedition to the Mars Glacier lithosol sites, on Alexander Island in West Antarctica.
After a year, 1993, as section head of terrestrial biology in BAS’s Terrestrial and Freshwater Life Sciences Division, Wynn-Williams went in 1995 as co-leader of an international expedition which worked in the McMurdo Dry Valleys and Terra Nova Bay. He was later involved in two separate expeditions to oversee the development of an Antarctic desert research site at Mars Oasis.
In 2000 he was appointed leader of the Antarctic Astrobiology Project, which explores the effects of environmental stress at the limits of life on Earth — analogous to conditions which might subsist on Mars. This drew Wynn-Williams into collaboration with the Nasa Ames Research Centre, the Johnson Space Centre and Lunar & Planetary Institute, Houston, and Montana State University, to develop and evaluate a miniature confocal microscope and Raman spectrometer (CMaRS) for use on a Mars landing vehicle. CMaRS has been adopted as the prime instrument for the proposed UK-led Vanguard Mars lander-rover mission, to be submitted to the European Space Agency.
Wynn-Williams had also worked with the German Aerospace Institute at Cologne, on the UVC (short-wave ultra-violet radiation in the 200-280 nanometre waveband) atmosphere of early Earth and Mars. Last year he returned to the Taylor Valley long-term ecological research site in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where he worked with colleagues on the American Antarctic programme.
His publications were numerous and covered subjects as diverse as recent aqueous environments in Martian impact craters, the need for collaboration in astrobiology, and lichens at the limits of life. His pioneering work had been acknowledged with the award of a Polar Medal as early as 1980.
In spite of the amount of time he spent in the Antarctic wastes, Wynn-Williams found time to be active in schools in Cambridge at a number of levels. He loved nothing better than to talk to the young about science whenever he could, and was chairman of the Chesterton College Parent-Teacher Association.
Outside this he loved marathon running and choral singing, his Welsh ancestry having endowed him with a fine voice. Among the choruses in which he sang was the Cambridge Philharmonic Choir.
David Wynn-Williams is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, an artist, and by their two daughters.
David Wynn-Williams, microbiologist, was born on July 16, 1946. He died on March 24, 2002, aged 55.
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