USDA Finally Removes 233 European Sheep from Vermont Farm After Court Battles

European sheep in morning mist © 1998 by ilfracombe.
European sheep in morning mist © 1998 by ilfracombe.

March 21, 2001  Greensboro, Vermont - After months of legal battles, the U. S. Department of Agriculture acted today and took 233 sheep from Vermont farmers, Houghton Freeman and Linda and Larry Faillace. It started back in July 2000 when four sheep on their Greensboro, Vermont farm tested positive for antibodies to Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy, or TSE, - a family of diseases caused by misshapen proteins called prions - the most famous being BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or Mad Cow disease. The destructive proteins attack the spinal cord and brain, literally eating holes in tissues which deteriorate to resemble a sponge, always ending in death.

 

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Can Earth Plants and Bacteria Grow On Mars?

Global topographic map of Mars created from more than 6 million laser measurements by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Red is highest altitude and blue is lowest. The Northern Hemisphere of Mars shown in the bottom globe is several meters lower than the Southern Hemisphere and is where water would have collected if it ever existed, shown in blue. The big groove is the Valles Marineris, largest canyon in solar system and the white objects are the huge volcanoes in the Tharsis Montes, Olympus Mons being the largest volcano in the solar system. Large blue oval on upper globe is the Hellas Basin, the largest crater impact known in the solar system. Images courtesy NASA.
Global topographic map of Mars created from more than 6 million laser measurements by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. Red is highest altitude and blue is lowest. The Northern Hemisphere of Mars shown in the bottom globe is several meters lower than the Southern Hemisphere and is where water would have collected if it ever existed, shown in blue. The big groove is the Valles Marineris, largest canyon in solar system and the white objects are the huge volcanoes in the Tharsis Montes, Olympus Mons being the largest volcano in the solar system. Large blue oval on upper globe is the Hellas Basin, the largest crater impact known in the solar system. Images courtesy NASA.


March 18, 2001 Houston, Texas - This past week I was in Houston at the Johnson Space Center to attend the 32nd Lunar and Planetary Space Institute meeting held since the first Apollo days. This was the largest conference so far. More than a thousand planetary scientists from around the world presented their latest research data on Mercury, Venus, Earth's Moon, the Asteroid Eros, Jupiter's moons, Europa, Callisto and Io. But probably the most exciting sessions were about Mars. There were more than a hundred papers presented about the red planet. Hundreds of high resolution photographs from the Mars Global Surveyor showed valleys and rippled features that on Earth would mean only one thing: water.

 

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Are the “Tubes” On Mars from Lava, Water, or Wind?

 Mars Global Surveyor MOC Image m0400291, Northern Hemisphere, Acidalia Planitia, Latitude 39.12 Degrees North and Longitude 27.08 Degrees West. Spacecraft Altitude was 410.24 kilometers. Image by Malin Space Science Systems.
Mars Global Surveyor MOC Image m0400291, Northern Hemisphere, Acidalia Planitia, Latitude 39.12 Degrees North and Longitude 27.08 Degrees West. Spacecraft Altitude was 410.24 kilometers. Image by Malin Space Science Systems.

March 11, 2001 - Planetary scientists, geophysicists and astrogeologists will be gathering in Houston this week to discuss our solar system. It's the 32nd Lunar and Planetary Institute meeting at the Johnson Space Center. One of the most puzzling planets is Mars and recently I talked with two scientists who will be presenting papers about their work on the red planet. Dr. Maria Zuber is Professor of Geophysics and Planetary Science at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is also Deputy Investigator of the Global Topography Map Mission now underway on Mars. Dr. Bob Craddock is a geologist at the Smithsonian Institution Center for Earth and Planetary Studies in Washington, D. C.

 

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Disappearing Glaciers – Evidence of A Rapidly Warming Earth

"Since 1963, the Qori Kalis glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap
in the Southern Andes has shrunk by at least 20%.
The rate of retreat has been 509 feet per year, or 1.3 feet per day!
You can literally sit there and watch it retreat.
And if you assume that the current rate of retreat will continue,
this ice cap will disappear some time between 2010 and 2020."

- Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D., Glacial Geologist, Ohio State University -

Qori Kalis glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap, Southern Andes. Image on left, 1978. Image on right, 2000, shows new 10 acre lake from ice melt. Twenty percent decrease in square kilometers of ice, retreating at 1.3 feet per day since 1963. Photographs by Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D.
Qori Kalis glacier in Peru's Quelccaya ice cap, Southern Andes. Image on top, 1978. Image on bottom, 2000, shows new 10 acre lake from ice melt. Twenty percent decrease in square kilometers of ice, retreating at 1.3 feet per day since 1963. Photographs by Lonnie Thompson, Ph.D.


March 4, 2001  Columbus, Ohio - At the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in San Francisco on February 25, Prof. Lonnie Thompson from Ohio State University's Department of Geological Sciences presented a paper entitled "Disappearing Glaciers - Evidence of A Rapidly Changing Earth." He spoke before a special session of Earth Systems Science: The Quiet Revolution, organized by the International Geosphere/Biosphere program. Dr. Thompson has completed 37 expeditions since 1978 to collect and study perhaps the world's largest archive of glacial ice cored from the Himalayas, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, the Andes in South America, the Antarctic and Greenland.

 

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Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles – A Book Excerpt

Milk Hill, Wiltshire, discovered May 2, 1999, in yellow flowering oilseed rape, 250 feet long. Charles Mallett encountered a sphere of light inside the circle at the far right. Photograph © 1999 by Steve Alexander.
Milk Hill, Wiltshire, discovered May 2, 1999, in yellow flowering oilseed rape, 250 feet long. Charles Mallett encountered a sphere of light inside the circle at the far right. Photograph © 1999 by Steve Alexander.


Excerpt and images from:
Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles
© 2000 by Linda Moulton Howe.

 

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Slowing Light to A “Stop” for Fraction of A Second

Harvard-Smithsonian laser apparatus used to store photon "signal" for fraction of a second in small glass cell filled with rubidium gas. February 2001 photograph courtesy physicists Ron Walsworth and David Phillips.
Harvard-Smithsonian laser apparatus used to store photon "signal" for fraction of a second in small glass cell filled with rubidium gas. February 2001 photograph courtesy physicists Ron Walsworth and David Phillips.

February 27, 2001  Cambridge, Massachusetts - A revolutionary step in physics was reported around the world on January 18, 2001 when The New York Times headlined "Scientists Bring Light to Full Stop, Hold It,Then Send It on Its Way." The scientists are actually two independent teams of physicists who both managed to slow photons down. One group is led by Lene Vestergaard Hau, Ph.D. of Harvard University and the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Mass. The second group was lead by Ronald L. Walsworth, Ph.D., and Mikhail D. Lukin, Ph.D. of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also in Cambridge, with colleagues Dr. David Phillips, Annet Fleischhauer and Dr. Alois Mair.

 

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A New Martian Mystery

"It's puzzling. I looked at a few pictures around (area) and couldn't find anything to explain it. Very puzzling! These are huge boulders. There are no indications of any outcrops that could shed such boulders."

- Michael Carr, U. S. Geological Survey -

Scattered 80-foot dark boulders - from where? Nilosyrtis Mensae Valleys, mid-Martian latitude. High resolution image is 3 kilometers wide by 4.9 kilometers vertical (1.9 miles by 3 miles) taken on February 14, 2001 by the Red Rover Goes to Mars International Student Training Mission. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Malin Space Sciences Systems.
Scattered 80-foot dark boulders - from where? Nilosyrtis Mensae Valleys, mid-Martian latitude. High resolution image is 3 kilometers wide by 4.9 kilometers vertical (1.9 miles by 3 miles) taken on February 14, 2001 by the Red Rover Goes to Mars International Student Training Mission. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Malin Space Sciences Systems.

February 25, 2001  Carlsbad, California - On February 14 while NASA's Near spacecraft was making its historic landing on the Eros asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, a camera on the Mars Global Surveyor orbiting the red planet was under the guidance of an international group of four girls and five boys aged 10 to 15 known as the Red Rover Goes to Mars team.

 

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Environmental Updates

Earth photo courtesy NASA.
Earth photo courtesy NASA.

February 25, 2001 -

Global Warming:

International computer projections for the next 100 years all agree that the world's average temperature will rise. How high depends upon greenhouse gas build up, but the range will be between 2.5 and 10.5 degrees Fahrenheit. To put that into perspective, if we go back to the last time the earth was 10 degrees cooler than it is now, we have to go back at least ten thousand years to the end of the last Ice Age. So, it took 10,000 years for the earth to warm up 10 degrees F. since ice last covered North America, but may take only the next 100 years to heat up another 10 degrees.

 

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Environmental Updates and Mysterious Deaths of 2000 Atlantic Brant Geese

"Scientists can't remember ever seeing a situation like this
where we've just had one species die, especially in this large a number."

- Tracy Casselman, U. S. Fish and Wildlife -

Dead Atlantic brant geese collected for lab studies by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Oceanville, New Jersey. Photo courtesy USFWS.
Dead Atlantic brant geese collected for lab studies by U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Oceanville, New Jersey. Photo courtesy USFWS.

February 18, 2001  New York City - Increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere ARE raising the global average mean temperature, physicists say, and 100 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol that requires a cutback in emissions. But none of those nations are industrial like the United States, which is responsible for 25% of the world's atmospheric pollution. So far the U. S. refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because American industry argues it cannot afford the economic costs of complying with emission cutbacks. This week the United Nations agreed to delay greenhouse talks until June or July, hoping for American involvement. But this delay further frustrates environmental groups who argue that President Bush was quick to create a high-level team to develop new sources of oil and other fossil fuels that will put even more CO2 into the atmosphere, while ignoring the consequences of burning fossil fuels.

 

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NEAR Shoemaker Spacecraft’s Historic First Landing On Eros Asteroid

Graphic depicting NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker spacecraft orbital descent path to the earth's first historic landing on the Eros asteroid at about 3:02 p.m. EST, February 12, 2001, 196 million miles from Earth. Image courtesy Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, (JHU-APL) Laurel, Maryland.
Graphic depicting NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Shoemaker spacecraft orbital descent path to the earth's first historic landing on the Eros asteroid at about 3:02 p.m. EST, February 12, 2001, 196 million miles from Earth. Image courtesy Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, (JHU-APL) Laurel, Maryland.

February 12, 2001  Laurel, Maryland - Scientists at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory broke out the champagne to celebrate today when the clock ticked 3:02:10 p.m. EST and the last picture was taken by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft as it lowered at 4 mph for the first historic landing of an Earth vehicle on the asteroid Eros 196 million miles away. Touchdown was in the yellow circle below on the edge of the asteroid's saddle-shaped feature named Himeros.

 

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