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Honoured researchers urge colleagues to fight anti-science Scientists need to fight against a growing anti-science sentiment worldwide by joining the debate, say two researchers acknowledged in today's Australia Day Honours. Professors Bruce McKellar and Sam Berkovic, both associated with the University of Melbourne, received the nation's highest honour when they were appointed Companions in the General Division of the Order of Australia. McKellar, a theoretical physicist, says the honour for his "eminent service to science, particularly the study of theoretical physics" came as a "surprise". However it highlights a remarkable journey from a NSW bush school playground to the hallways of Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider. "One of the things that is very nice about me getting this award is the fact I went to a bush school with 50 students and one teacher," he says. That one teacher at Budgeregong Public School near Forbes in NSW also happened to be his father. "In part it is to he that I owe my appreciation of mathematics and various forms of science," he says. Although officially retired, the 72-year-old will later this year become the first Australian and first southern hemisphere president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The prestigious position comes at a time when science - most notably climate and immunisation science - is under attack in western societies. "The basic denial is the denial that science has done anything for us," says McKellar. He cites the example of basic radio astronomy research to analyses radio signals from the universe that led to the development of mo

SR Transport og SR Group var en av de første transportørene som fulgte etter skipsbransjen og innførte et variabelt drivstofftillegg. Første gang dette ble forelagt våre kunder var i 2005. Vi har opp gjennom tidene foretatt endringer med ujevne mellomrom, hele tiden basert på at våre endringer skulle være basert på en endring i vår netto pumpepris på + / - 5%. Dette har så langt fungert veldig bra. For å imøtekomme ønske fra våre kunder vil vi fra 1. september 2011 samkjøre vårt dieseltillegg med SSB's kostnadsindeks. Dette slik at våre endringer skal kunne spores direkte til det som er offentlig utarbeidede tall. Vårt dieseltillegg justeres fra 14,9 % til 13,8 % med virkning fra 1. januar 2014. Tillegget samsvarer da med 120,9 i indeks (Kostnadsindeks for lastebiltransport - indeks nr 10 - Drivstoffelementet). BAF for båtfrakt holdes uendret på 30,0 % i januar. Ved gjennomføring av denne endringen vil våre justeringer ikke lenger være basert på +/- 5% - men på eksakte endringer. Det vil for begge parter - både våre kunder og oss bety et mer korrekt tillegg. Det til enhver tid gjeldende dieseltillegg og BAF finner du her.

One in 13 Kinder konnte sehen, dass ihr Leben verkürzt durch Rauchen, es sei denn, die Nation aggressivere Maßnahmen braucht, den Tabakkonsum zu beenden, sagte die US Surgeon General Freitag--, erstaunlicherweise sogar Wissenschaftler hinzugefügt noch mehr Krankheiten auf der langen Liste von Zigaretten Harms.

Google could soon be more than just a search engine for those with diabetes. Amid the hype surrounding creations like Google Glass, a new device designed to make hands-free communication easier, are technological advances that are spilling over into more areas of people's lives than just the way they communicate or search for information. Google is changing the way people live, as well as the quality of their lives. The company looks to expand that reach into digital health and that can make a real difference in the health epidemics, such as diabetes, that the country currently faces. With Google technology, people may soon be able to manage diabetes through the use of a specially created contact lens.

Darwin in the Dock: C.S. Lewis's Limited Acceptance of Common Descent Common descent is the claim that all organisms currently living have descended from one or a few original ancestors through a process Darwin called "descent with modification." According to this idea, not only humans and apes share an ancestor, but so do humans, clams, and fungi. Common descent is a hallowed dogma among today's evolution proponents, held with quasi-religious fervor. C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic Bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."18 In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter."19 In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis even offers a possible evolutionary account of the development of human beings, although he makes clear he is offering speculation, not history: "[I]f it is legitimate to guess," he writes, "I offer the following picture -- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense," which he defines as "a not unlikely tale," or "an account of what may have been the historical fact" (emphasis in the original). Lewis then suggests that "[f]or long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself... The creature may have existed for ages... before it became man."20 Elsewhere, Lewis seemed smitten by the idea of embryonic recapitulation, the discredited evolutionary idea that human beings replay the history of their evolution from lower animals in their womb. And in a letter to his f

The United States is poised for its strongest year of economic growth since the recession began. Signposts for the economy are generally pointing up. A recovery that seemed tentative and halting a year ago now appears to be durable and more deeply entrenched. Sound familiar? It should. Those are all phrases from an article that ran in The Washington Post on Dec. 31, 2010, projecting how the economy would fare in 2011. I know because I wrote it. If your memory is shaky, here's what actually happened in 2011. There was a disruptive earthquake in Japan, an oil price spike caused by the Arab Spring, and a euro-zone crisis that was so severe as to endanger the entire global financial system, and a confidence-shattering debt ceiling showdown in the United States, and austerity by state and local governments that sapped growth. The U.S. economy kept growing, but at the same kind of sluggish, uneven rate it had in 2010 and, for that matter, 2012 and 2013.

During the year that is just starting the U.S. economy will face major challenges. The pressures built in health care, monetary, and immigration policies are likely to lead to decisions that can have a major impact on economic growth. There are always chances for additional positive and negative shocks. A faster move to freer trade with Europe would be a positive shock. A liberalization of North American energy markets, including the approval of the Keystone pipeline and continued progress in Mexico is another. Negative shocks can come not only from the economic arena, but also for national or international security threats, such as acts of terror or wars affecting the U.S. or its major allies. Think Tanks are playing an important role in most of these battles.

Koyal Info Group Mag Discovery of Oxygen in Soils New discoveries show biological formation of oxygen in soils In the 1930s, the ability of green plants to form oxygen through oxidation of water -- photosynthesis -- was discovered. Since then, no other large-scale biological formation of oxygen has been found, until now. New research results show that down in the dark depths of the soil, a previously unknown biochemical process is under way, in which oxygen is formed and carbon dioxide is reduced to organic material. He made the assumption that the bewildering result could be explained if water, which is present everywhere, contributes to reducing carbon dioxide to organic material down in the dark depths of the soil. The fact that this process takes place without sunlight, as is the case with plants, was however something completely outside current knowledge and accepted views. Professor Fleischer, however, went further, with this as his working hypothesis. An international assessment of the scientific research, carried out at Halmstad University in 2013, called the results "potentially ground-breaking." Professor Fleischer conducted the five-year project in collaboration with Lovisa Bauhn and Arvid Ödegaard-Jensen of the Division of Nuclear Chemistry at Chalmers University, and Patrik Fors at Vattenfall. 

We live in an age shaped by scientific research. Medical practice, for example, changes a bit each year because of new discoveries in the laboratory or in drug trials. We have come to expect progress in a variety of technical fields, and science often lives up to our hopes for it. But science can also falter. One of the challenges for non-scientists - whom I call "normal people" - must address is how to interpret new scientific studies. Which ones contain valuable information that should influence our activities or government policies? Which can be put on the back burner of our minds, awaiting further evidence? Scientists are human. Scientists are people. We do our best, but that doesn't make us perfect. Scientists have several reasons to try to promote the work that's been done, quite apart from whatever merit it may have. Scientists want to have successful careers and that means promoting results obtained in the lab or field. For some scientists, professional status really matters, and for most scientists today, further funding is an issue always kept in mind. Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. This column is a service of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. Read This Article

LETTER: Scientific findings on climate are real, not optional The letter by James Policelli ("America is heading down dangerous path," Jan. 22) is proof that the far right lunatic fringe disavows science. On the next page of that day's paper was a statement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2013 was the fourth warmest year on record. Policelli would likely claim that NOAA is a puppet of the Obama administration and has broadcast false information to further a socialist agenda. (What!) Let's look at some indisputable facts. A comparison of NASA space shots of polar ice caps clearly indicates they are shrinking. Ocean levels have been measured to be rising. (Where do you think the melting polar ice caps go?) As a scientist, I have never been amused by junk science or those who espouse it. As one who helped develop some of the spectroscopic fingerprints used to monitor ozone-destroying man-made molecules in the upper atmosphere, I find the climate change denials of the far right lunatic fringe to be extremely offensive and exceptionally dangerous. This Content: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/01/letter_scientific_findings_on.html Koyal Info Group Mag: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/science.html http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/blog/ Koyal Info Group Mag - Twitter: https://twitter.com/koyalgroup

A decadal survey for human scientific exploration of space: a focus on discovery The role of science in the nation's human spaceflight program has been controversial since the inception of the Apollo program. That controversy continues to this day. It is the root cause of NASA's failure to achieve national consensus on defining the first deep space mission objective for human spaceflight, and is an aspect that has most limited the nation's progress on planning for human exploration of deep space. Despite nearly 50 years of advocacy that the focus of NASA's human spaceflight program should be to enable scientific discovery, this program remains adrift as a result of a national space policy that fails to head this long-standing advice. For more info: http://koyalgroupinfomag.com/ http://koyalgroup1.tumblr.com/ https://foursquare.com/p/the-koyal-group-info-mag/62282215 http://www.pinterest.com/margakoyal1/the-koyal-group-info-mag/