SAN FRANCISCO — The long-term stability of the massive ice sheets of Antarctica, which have the potential to raise sea levels by hundreds of metres, has been called into question with the discovery of fast-moving rivers of water sliding beneath their base. Scientists analysing satellite data were astonished to discover the size of the vast lakes and river systems flowing beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, which may lubricate the movement of these glaciers as they flow into the surrounding sea. The discovery raises fresh questions about the speed at which sea levels might rise in a warmer world due to the rate at which parts of the ice sheets slide from the land into the ocean, scientists said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco. ‘We’ve found that there are substantial subglacial lakes under ice that’s moving a couple of metres per day. It’s really ripping along. It’s the fast-moving ice that determines how the ice sheet responds to climate change on a short timescale,’ said Robert Bindschadler, a Nasa scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, one of the study’s co-authors. ‘We aren’t yet able to predict what […]
NEW YORK — A new study debunks the widely held belief that diet plus exercise is the most effective way to lose weight. Researchers report that dieting alone is just as effective as dieting plus exercise. ‘For weight loss to occur, an individual needs to maintain a difference between the number of calories they consume everyday and the number of calories they burn through metabolism and physical activity,’ Dr. Leanne Redman of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, explains in a press release. ‘What we found was that it did not matter whether a reduction in calories was achieved through diet or burned everyday through exercise.’ Thirty-five overweight but otherwise healthy adults – 16 men and 19 women – completed the 6-month study. Twelve were assigned to a diet-only group; they reduced their calorie intake by 25 percent. Twelve were assigned to diet plus exercise; they reduced their calorie intake by 12.5 percent and increased their exercise by 12.5 percent. The remaining 11 subjects made no significant diet or exercise changes. Redman and colleagues found that the diet-only group and the diet plus exercise group lost roughly the same amount of weight, albeit […]
WASHINGTON — The Clovis people, known for their distinctive spear points, likely were not the first humans in the Americas, according to research placing their presence as more recent than previously believed. Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in Friday’s issue of the journal Science said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals such as mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago. That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, N.M., both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago. These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas. Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University’s Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called ‘Clovis first’ theory of human origins in the New World. Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago. […]
NEW YORK — Bank of America Corp. is defending its decision to offer credit cards to people who don’t have U.S. Social Security numbers, amid criticism that the program effectively endorses illegal immigration. The bank’s pilot program, revealed last week, focuses on Hispanics in the Los Angeles area. It has spurred opposition in Congress and from grass-roots groups who say many illegal immigrants could benefit, and that the program might foster identity theft, money laundering and terrorism. Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis defended the program on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal. This came after some groups called for a boycott of the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets. They say their efforts are bearing fruit. William Gheen, director of the National Illegal Immigration Boycott Coalition, said his group has collected hundreds of e-mails from people vowing to cancel accounts and move mortgages. The group said it has more than 11,000 signatures on its petition calling for a boycott of Bank of America. ‘What Bank of America is doing is illegal, or should be,’ Gheen said. For its part, Bank of America has not seen ‘any unusual business activity’ resulting from responses […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Frustrated by government policy and inaction, a group of advocates for medical marijuana sued two federal health agencies on Wednesday over the assertion that smoking it has no medical benefit. The group, Americans for Safe Access, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, filed the lawsuit in Federal District Court, challenging the government’s position that marijuana, ‘has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.’ In its lawsuit, the group contends that federal regulators have publicly issued ‘false and misleading statements’ about the medical benefits of marijuana. The lawsuit, which named the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, seeks a court order to retract and correct statements that the group called, ‘incorrect, dishonest and a flagrant violation of laws.’ A lawyer for the medical marijuana group, Joseph Elford, said the lawsuit was filed now because administrative avenues had been exhausted and because of mounting scientific and anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Mr. Elford said a recent study by the Clinical Research Center at San Francisco General Hospital, which was approved by the F.D.A. and other federal agencies, found that smoking marijuana relieved pain and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
