Bumblebees have an amazing homing instinct that allows them to forage for food up to eight miles away and find their way back to their nest, according to new research. Scientists are dropping off bees at famous North East landmarks to study their flight patterns in a bid to save the symbolic British summer insect. The bees, which are tagged with tiny identification numbers in the laboratory, have already been found to fly back to their nest on the Newcastle University campus from the Metro Centre and the Angel of the North, both three miles away, and the Tyne Bridge and Manors Metro station, which are a mile away. But the record flight was from a garden centre in Heddon on the Wall in the Tyne Valley, some eight miles from their nest. The researchers have found it is only the worker bees which make their way back – they suspect the queen bees find shelter elsewhere. The results are surprising because scientific literature says the bumblebee they are studying, a common species called Bombus terrestris, travels just three miles for its food. The project to find out how far the bees can travel […]
LONDON — A British company reported Wednesday it had achieved the best results ever seen on an experimental human vaccine for bird flu and said mass production might be possible by 2007. A global health official called GlaxoSmithKline’s early results ‘an exciting piece of science.’ If future tests are as promising, it would be a major step in the frustrating campaign to protect people from a possible deadly flu pandemic. The U.S. government’s chief infectious disease scientist also was very optimistic. ‘The data are really very impressive,’ said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. ‘It changes the whole complexion of the issue that we have to face of getting enough vaccine for people who might need it in a pandemic.’ Glaxo’s results came from tests on 400 people in Belgium, most of whom developed strong immune responses from very low doses of the prototype vaccine. Success from wider tests of the vaccine could intensify competition with Sanofi-Aventis SA, whose vaccine unit, Sanofi Pasteur, reported disappointing results in March on its experimental product. It protected only about half of those who got two shots with a very high dose […]
WASHINGTON — The government is failing to reduce health risks from toxic air pollution as required by law, congressional investigators said Wednesday. The Environmental Protection Agency has not met 30 percent of the Clean Air Act’s requirements and regularly misses deadlines, they said. EPA scientists issued their own report Wednesday, saying the agency should consider tightening its national health-based standards for smog-forming ozone to a level similar to California’s, though not as restrictive as what the Swiss-based World Health Organization recommends. They said the risks of asthma and other respiratory ailments are greater than previously believed. EPA is under court order to propose a decision on this by next March. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the EPA largely has failed to regulate air pollutants from small sources, including dry cleaners and trucks. The GAO report said the EPA has not yet met 239 of the law’s requirements; of those the agency did fulfill, only 12 were met on time. ‘EPA has not reduced human health risks from air toxics to the extent and in the time frames envisioned in the Act,’ according to the report by the investigative arm of Congress. […]
Scientists observing elephants in northern Kenya have found they hate walking up hills. Using GPS satellite tracking they found the animals studiously try to avoid sloped terrain. Even minor hills represent a major energy barrier for animals as big as elephants, the researchers discovered. An elephant needed to boost its calorie consumption dramatically to climb a hill – which meant finding a lot more to eat. The researchers, led by Professor Fritz Vollrath from Oxford University, focused on the Samburu / Isiolo / Laikipia districts of northern Kenya which cover 20,000 square miles and are home to around 5,400 elephants. They found that elephant population density dropped significantly with increasing hill slopes. Calculations showed that the energy cost of trudging up hills was a likely explanation. A 4,000 kilogram elephant would need an extra 100 kilojoules, or 25,000 calories, of energy for every vertical metre climbed – around 2,500 per cent of the cost of level walking. ‘Climbing 100 metres would ‘burn’ 10,000 kilojoules which would have to be either replenished by an extra half hour of foraging or paid for by using up body reserves,’ the researchers wrote in the journal Current […]
WASHINGTON — President George Bush’s practice of writing exceptions to legislation as he signs it into law represents a violation of the constitution and a danger to democracy, America’s leading lawyers alleged yesterday. The American Bar Association, an independent lawyers’ organisation, issued a report on President Bush’s prolific use of ‘signing statements’ and found he was using them to create unconstitutional loopholes to laws passed by Congress. The ABA found that the president used signing statements to make more than 800 challenges to congressional legislation, 200 more than all previous US presidents put together. Signing statements have been issued since the nation’s founding but they have traditionally served a ceremonial function, extolling the virtues of the legislation just signed. Mr Bush has used the statements to distance himself from the laws he signs rather than veto them outright. A veto can be overruled by Congress but the legislature has so far been powerless to make the White House enforce provisions the president does not like. For example, in signing a bill last year banning the use of torture by American personnel, the president wrote that the executive branch would ‘construe’ the legislation ‘in a manner consistent’ […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
