DORDRECHT, Netherlands — The Dutch enjoy a hard-earned reputation for building river dikes and sea barriers. Over centuries, they have transformed a flood-prone river delta into a wealthy nation roughly twice the size of New Jersey. If scientific projections for global warming are right, however, that success will be sorely tested. Globally, sea levels may rise up to a foot during the early part of this century, and up to nearly three feet by century’s end. This would bring higher tidal surges from the more-intense coastal storms that scientists also project, along with the risk of more frequent and more severe river floods from intense rainfall inland. Nowhere does this aquatic vise squeeze more tightly than on the world’s densely populated river deltas. So why is one of the most famous deltas – the Netherlands – breaching some river dikes and digging up some of the rare land in this part of the country that rises (barely) above sea level? In the Biesbosch, a small inland delta near the city of Dordrecht, ecologist Alphons van Winden looks out his car window at a lone excavator filling a dump truck with soil. He considers the question and […]
Scientists at MIT, collaborating with an industrial team, are creating a proton-shooting system that could revolutionize radiation therapy for cancer. The goal is to get the system installed at major hospitals to supplement, or even replace, the conventional radiation therapy now based on x-rays. The fundamental idea is to harness the cell-killing power of protons — the naked nuclei of hydrogen atoms — to knock off cancer cells before the cells kill the patient. Worldwide, the use of radiation treatment now depends mostly on beams of x-rays, which do kill cancer cells but can also harm many normal cells that are in the way. What the researchers envision — and what they’re now creating — is a room-size atomic accelerator costing far less than the existing proton-beam accelerators that shoot subatomic particles into tumors, while minimizing damage to surrounding normal tissues. They expect to have their first hospital system up and running in late 2007. Physicist Timothy Antaya, a technical supervisor in MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was deeply involved in developing the new system and is now working to make it a reality. He argues it ‘could change the primary method of radiation treatment’ as […]
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court here rejected the Bush administration’s year-old fuel-economy standards for light trucks and sport utility vehicles on Thursday, saying that they were not tough enough because regulators had failed to thoroughly assess the economic impact of tailpipe emissions that contribute to climate change. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, voided the new regulations for 2008-2011 model year vehicles and told the Transportation Department to produce new rules taking into account the value of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The court, siding with 4 environmental groups and 13 states and cities, also asked the government to explain why it still treated light trucks - which include pickups, sport utility vehicles and minivans - more mildly than passenger cars. Under the rejected rule, the average fuel economy of light trucks was to rise to 23.5 miles a gallon in 2010, up from the current standard of 22.5 m.p.g., but still well below the current standard for passenger cars of 27.5 m.p.g. The ruling, which is likely to be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, represents a major setback for both the auto industry and the […]
WASHINGTON — Most of the United States, including the Northeast heating oil market except for Maine, will see above-normal temperatures from December through February, government forecasters predicted Thursday. In its 90-day outlook, the National Weather Service said there were equal chances of above-normal and below-normal temperatures in the West, in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and the northern half of Nevada and California. The agency projected below-normal precipitation in much of the southern half of the United States in a large area stretching from Virginia down through Georgia and across through Texas to California. Above-normal precipitation was forecast for the Pacific Northwest and for a large area from the Great Lakes down to northern Alabama and Mississippi from December through February.
Twins boast considerable entertainment value, to judge from the success of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, among other famous pairs. But they have scientific value as well. Because identical twins have the same DNA, studying them can reveal how much of a given trait is determined by genetics and how much is determined by parenting and environment. That is, twins are helping scientists flesh out the nature-versus-nurture debate. That debate began in the 1870s, when British scientist Sir Francis Galton (inventor of fingerprinting and Charles Darwin’s cousin) coined the phrase. Galton surveyed several dozen twins in an attempt to distinguish between ‘the effects of tendencies received at birth’ and ‘those that were imposed by circumstances of their after lives.’ Galton, not very helpfully, documented the confusion that can arise in families with identical twins. He also concluded that twins can share some unusual traits — such as descending stairs slowly and bursting into the same song at the same time. But he was perplexed by the existence of two types of twins: identical twins, who are mirror images of each other, and fraternal twins, who are no more alike than ordinary siblings. The former come from a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
