Rupert Murdoch’s reputation precedes him-but one thing he’s not well known for is his education reform advocacy. But that could soon change. Next month, Murdoch will make an unusual public appearance in San Francisco, delivering the keynote address at an education summit hosted by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has lately been crisscrossing the country promoting his own version of education reform.

The high-profile speech to a collection of conservative ed reformers, state legislators, and educators is just the latest step in Murdoch’s quiet march into the business of education, which has been somewhat eclipsed by the phone-hacking scandal besieging his media empire. (On Tuesday, word of Murdoch’s appearance at Bush’s conference came just hours after reports that News Corp. had agreed to pay more than $4 million to the family of a 13-year-old British murder victim, Milly Dowler, whose voicemail was hacked by reporters for Murdoch’s News of the World. ) But Murdoch has made it very clear that he views America’s public schools as a potential gold mine.

‘In every other part of life, someone who woke up after a 50-year nap would not recognize the world around him

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Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel — the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.

This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice’s previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a ‘botched’ operation where agents simply ‘lost track’ of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons.
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Documents Detail ATF Involvement in ‘Fast and Furious’

The following documents detail the role the ATF played in buying and selling weapons as part of its controversial ‘Fast and Furious’ operation.

Operation Fast and Furious began in October 2009. In it, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives encouraged gun stores to sell weapons to an arms smuggling gang, then watched as the guns crossed the border and were used in crimes. Each month, the agency allowed hundreds of guns to […]

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In the technological journey towards artificial intelligence, Israeli researchers have made the next giant leap: the RoboRat.

Matti Mintz of Tel Aviv University in Israel and his fellow scientists have built a rodent-sized artificial cerebellum that when implanted onto the skull of a rat with brain damage, allows him to function normally again.

The cyborg cerebellum consists of a computer chip that is electrically wired into the rat’s brain with electrodes. Since the cerebellum is normally responsible for coordinating movement, this chip was programmed to take in sensory information from the body, interpret it, and communicate messages back out to the brain stem and in turn, the rest of the body.

To test the computer chip brain, scientists conditioned a rat to blink whenever it heard a tone. When the researchers disabled the rat’s cerebellum, however, the rat could no longer coordinate this behavior. Once the artificial cerebellum was hooked up, the rat went back to blinking at the sound of the beep.

‘It’s proof of concept that we can record information from the brain, analyze it in a way similar to the biological network, and return it to the brain,

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A new poll shows that 50 percent of self-identified Tea Party members don’t believe in global warming, and less than one-fifth believe that human activities are causing the planet to heat up.

The Public Religion Research Institute poll is the latest to show deep political divides on global warming, an issue that’s also animating campaign trail clashes between GOP White House hopefuls Rick Perry, governor of Texas, and Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah.

‘Eighty-one percent of Democrats and 7-in-10 independents believe the earth is getting warmer, compared to less than half (49%) of Republicans and only about 4-in-10 (41%) Americans who identify as members of the Tea Party,

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Scientists at the Penn State College of Medicine said this week they have discovered a virus that is capable of killing all grades of breast cancer ‘within seven days’ of first introduction in a laboratory setting.

The virus, known as adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV2), is naturally occurring and carried by up to 80 percent of humans, but it does not cause any disease.

Researchers learned of its cancer-killing properties in 2005, after Penn State scientists observed it killing cervical cancer cells. They also found that women who carried the AAV2 virus and human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer, had a lower propensity to develop cervical cancer.

When combined in a lab recently, AAV2 eradicated all the breast cancer cells ‘within seven days,’ according to researchers. Better still, it proved capable of wiping out cancer cells at multiple stages, negating the need for differing treatments used today.

‘If we can determine which viral genes are being used, we may be able to introduce those genes into a [therapy],’ explained Penn State research associate Samina Alam. ‘If we can determine which pathways the virus is triggering, we can then screen new drugs that target those pathways. Or we may simply be able to use […]

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