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Bowles averts suit for UNC
Erskine Bowles, BOG, Open Meetings LawSAT no longer stands alone
ACT vs SATPork industry should be held to its commitment
Hog waste researchTBJ Poll: NC State contributes most to Triangle economy
NCSU economic impact
Persimmons
not just for possums
Cooperative Extension
Scholarship
set up in memory of student who died in fire
Scholarship in memory of Cody Pilkington
Out
of this world: Nasa funds revolutionary ideas
Amy Grunden
The
View from Mexico
Dick J. Reavis
TBJ Poll: NC State contributes most to Triangle economy
Jan. 4, 2005
Raleigh Triangle Business Journal
By staff report
© Copyright 2005
The Triangle Business Journal conducted a non-scientific poll from Dec. 28 through Jan. 3 to help measure the economic impact had on the Triangle by some of our surrounding universities.
Our readers were asked, "Which Triangle university contributes the most to the Triangle economy?"
Out of 545 total responses, 356 or more than 65 percent believed that North Carolina State University contributes the most to the Triangle economy, with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ranking a distant second with 20.9 percent or 114 votes.
Duke University received 62 votes or 11.4 percent of the total response and North Carolina Central University tallied 9 votes or 1.65 percent. Four respondents, or less than one percent, leaned in favor of other institutions.
Listed below is a sampling of poll voters' comments, which were made anonymously.
"Duke and UNC Chapel Hill are the most prestigious, but NCSU's ascendant programs, coupled with the [school's] location in the capital of North Carolina and its increasing ability to draw top notch students and businesses, makes it the top draw for the Triangle."
"N.C. State contributes more because of its research, outreach, venture activities and overall approach to commerce and business."
"This is a no-brainer. UNC has the most students and employees versus the other guys. Therefore, they contribute the most. Simple, I surmise."
"It's quite obviously either UNC or N.C. State. Duke just does not produce enough alumni to match the impact, and many of them go elsewhere as it is. UNC provides a tremendous medical boon for our state. N.C. State a technical and agricultural one."
"UNC and N.C. State graduates stay in the area after graduation. [Duke grads] move back to New Jersey."
Jan. 4, 2005
Greenville Daily Reflector
By Erin Rickert
© Copyright 2005
GRIFTON – The second you pull into the Pilkingtons' gravel drive and meander between the white fence, it is evident the memory of their son lives.
From the rock garden in his honor, where a large stone inscribed with "Cody Blue" sits in the front yard, to a dozen or so teddy bears made from his shirts that rest on his bed, reminders of the impact he made on his mother, father and two brothers fill the home.
Now, a scholarship created by the family following the 19-year-old North Carolina State University sophomore's death in a house fire, allows his memory to live on through other students like him.
"He loved school; he thrived at school," his mother, Pam Pilkington, said Monday from her Boss McLawhorn Road home. "It just seemed like the right thing to do ... give others a chance."
In the works since the day of Dylan Cody Pilkington's death on Oct. 7, the "Cody Blue" Pilkington scholarship reflects the nickname given to him as a baby by his grandparents because of his radiant blue eyes.
An exceptional student throughout his life, Cody was studying mechanical engineering at NC State on a full scholarship and planned to obtain his master's degree in the field – even planned to get his pilot's license one day.
"He's goal-oriented," said Cody's stepbrother, Chris Cruz, who had formed a friendship with him in recent years and talked with him regularly by phone. "Anything he has his eyes set on, he'd accomplish."
Scholarship recipients must have interests similar to Cody's.
Rising freshmen and sophomores studying engineering, math or science at NC State who have at least a 2.8 grade point average will be considered for the scholarship, Pam said.
The students must have attended either Ayden-Grifton High School or the N.C. School of Science and Math in Durham, both of which Cody attended, or the private Parrott Academy, where Pam attended in Kinston.
A five-person committee made up of Cody's teachers and family will decide who is awarded the two $500 scholarships to be given this year.
Through a golf tournament, other fund-raising events and general donations, the family hopes to raise $20,000 and eventually increase the number of scholarships given each year. As of Monday, close to $7,000 had been collected with help from family, friends, the Pilkingtons' church and media exposure.
"This seemed the best way for him to continue to touch other people's lives like he touched ours when he was here," Pam said. "Hopefully, the scholarship will continue on forever."
While the topic of a required essay will change yearly, Pam said, students this year must write about fire safety.
In early August, Cody moved into a three-story duplex at 128 Groveland Ave. in Raleigh, where he and seven other men from Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity would reside.
Cody joined the fraternity of engineering students a few months prior to the move, after pledging his freshman year. The typically shy Cody had counted down the days until the move, his parents said.
Pam remembered having reservations when the family moved Cody in on Aug. 8, mainly because the duplex was an older brick home.
Everything was fine, until a lighted cigarette was discarded on the sofa of a first-floor room following a party at the duplex that continued into the early morning of Oct. 7.
Ivey Pilkington, Cody's father, said a smoke detector alerted one fraternity member to the fire about 6:30 a.m., and he was injured jumping from a window. Several other men and women also escaped.
However, Cody and his 22-year-old fraternity brother, Brandon "Moose" Davis, sleeping in their second-story rooms, were unable to get out.
While Davis had been drinking with the others, Cody had not consumed any alcohol. Family said he never touched a drop, living by what he called the straight-edge philosophy.
"He didn't smoke, he didn't drink," Ivey said as he sipped coffee in his recliner. "You couldn't ask for no better."
Ivey said the family later learned the duplex lacked the proper number of smoke detectors that would have helped warn the students. Two smoke detectors were in the entire home, he said.
The other side of the duplex was equipped with several fire safety tools, including emergency lights, window ladders and smoke alarms, Ivey said.
Family said they are holding on to the memories of an amazing son and brother who loved four-wheeling, camping, music and building computers.
A sunset candlelight service held in the rock garden created for Cody recognized his 20th birthday on Nov. 14.
Family, friends and several of his fraternity brothers attended, exchanging words and song.
"Everyone has touched him and affected who he was, what he believed, what he wanted and what he lived for," Cody's family wrote about him. "All this over the last 20 years helped shape Cody into the outstanding man that he is. ... And I say that he is, not that he was, because he lives within each of us now and he will live within us forever."
Cody still has a bedroom in the family's home where his cell phone, wallet, driver's license and other personal items have been framed in his memory.
Newspaper clippings detailing the recent loss and his life sit atop dressers and trunks, while the bears made from his clothing pepper his bed.
On each bear's neck, a tag with his picture is fastened and reads, "I was worn by someone so dear, who through loving memory will always be here. So when you hug me up close to you, just remember he loved you to."
Pam said she plans to have several more bears made out of his sheets and other personal items. The bears eventually will be sold and the money put toward the scholarships.
Want to Donate?
Anyone interested in donating to a scholarship fund in memory of Cody Pilkington, an NC State University student from Grifton who died in a fire last year, may mail tax-deductible contributions to the nonprofit N.C. Community Foundation at P.O. Box 2432, Greenville, NC 27836. Mark in the memo section of the check that the donation is for the Cody Blue Pilkington Scholarship. A Web site, www.codyblue.org, accessible Feb. 1, will let visitors view donation forms, scholarship applications, pictures and memories of Cody.
Erin Rickert can be contacted at erickert@coxnc.com and 329-9566
Pork industry should be held to its commitment
Jan. 4, 2005
Fayetteville Online
By staff report
© Copyright 2005
It helps to remember that the 5-year hiatus in the war over swine waste began with a gun at the industry’s head, not at the public’s. That’s where it belongs now, as the ruckus resumes.
The people of this state and their elected and appointed officials did not agree to let the industry return to business as usual unless its quest for better waste-management systems yielded technologies that caused it no fiscal discomfort.
Business as usual was, and is, the problem. Yet, with five new systems unveiled last week, some producers want to redefine “infeasible” as no increase in the cost of operation.
The producers have a right to indulge in such mental gymnastics, but have no right to visit the consequences on the rest of us.
This industry grew too big, too fast, in an inappropriate place: an environmentally sensitive area atop a shallow water table. Furthermore, it underwent that explosive growth in the virtual absence of regulation. The only requirement of any consequence, a decade ago, involved paperwork. And even with years of advance notice, producers took their own sweet time shuffling toward various degrees of compliance.
After nature demonstrated the deficiencies of the cesspool-and-sprayfield system in use then (and now), and after a series of missteps by producers, the legislature imposed restrictions that were helpful but insufficient. The turning point came only when the public and its government realized that the industry, operating just as it was engineered to operate, provided too little protection to an area whose topography, hydrology and weather are nothing like those of Iowa, the only state with more swine.
It would be a mistake to disparage the quality of the research, done by a team at N.C. State University, that led to the development of new technologies — a mistake that producers, not press or public, seem poised to make by opposing as “infeasible” innovations that might involve any reductions of scale.
That is not only a misrepresentation of the original agreement, wherein the industry accepted that new systems might be more costly; it implies that the industry is in a position to brush all that work aside and simply take up where it left off.
Not true. The researchers did their work. Some in the industry don’t like the outcome, and are now trying to rewrite the script after the curtain has been raised. And, in fact, there is already a precedent, more narrowly focused, for reductions of scale: A factory farm that can’t safely manage its own waste is required, right now, to remedy the problem by cleaning up its act or by removing stock from the site.
The inevitable lobbying is likely to be fierce and dirty. But it is unlikely to change the minds of people who know perfectly well what they did not endorse.
Persimmons not just for possums
Jan. 4, 2005
Kinston Free Press
By staff report
© Copyright 2005
The trees full of large orange fruit have been attracting a lot of attention by two-legged and four- legged creatures. Possums are known for enjoying eating persimmons. For more than 100 years, persimmons have been sought after by those that appreciate the fruit.
Persimmons are divided into two distinct groups - the native persimmon, which is Diospyros virginiana, and the Oriental persimmon, which is Diospyros kaki.
* The fruit of native varieties is usually smaller, seedier and more astringent until the fruit is ripe. Many native persimmons are frequently seedling trees which result in a wide variability in the quality of the fruit. Native persimmon selections are available for purchase.
* Oriental persimmons were introduced into the United States by M.C. Perry in 1856. In less than 20 years, the Department of Agriculture planted them throughout the southern states.
Considerable research and cultivar breeding has made the Oriental persimmon a great addition to the garden.
As a general rule, their fruit is superior in quality to native persimmons.
Native persimmons are more cold-hardy than Oriental varieties. The native varieties may survive temperatures of 20-25 degrees below zero, while Oriental varieties may be killed or injured when temperatures fall below about 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Oriental persimmon varieties Great Wall, Korean or Sheng are the most cold-tolerant of the Oriental varieties.
Oriental persimmons are subdivided into two classes: the astringent and the non-astringent.
The astringent type should be completely soft before eating or your mouth will pucker for hours. When fully ripe, the fruit is reddish-orange and is mellow flavored and very sweet.
The non-astringent types are firmer and can be eaten prior to softening. Oriental persimmon fruit may grow to the size of a peach, while native varieties produce fruit that is closer to the size of a plum.
Most native varieties must be completely ripe and soft before they lose enough astringency to be eaten. Persimmons will continue to ripen after they are picked from the tree.
David Parker, Clemson University extension agent and Greg Reighard, Clemson extension specialist, report that it is a misconception that frost is required before persimmons are edible. They indicate that frost will ruin immature fruit on the tree.
Fruit tree culture often poses a challenge to area gardeners because of the high number of disease and insect pests that thrive.
Traditional fruits like apples, peaches and plums require a great deal of care, expense and time to control the numerous pests. Oriental persimmons do not require a lot of maintenance and will perform well in this area.
The primary problem is alternate year bearing. Alternate bearing is common in most varieties and is related to factors such as the size of the crop load, the tree age, condition and health of the tree, soil moisture and pollination requirements.
Native persimmons are usually dioecious, which means they produce either male or female flowers. Rarely are native persimmons self-pollinating.
Both male and female trees are required to produce a full crop. Oriental persimmons may produce male, female and/or perfect flowers on the same tree and do not need cross-pollination to set fruit.
Native and Oriental persimmons will not cross-pollinate. The varieties listed in this leaflet do not require cross-pollination to ensure a crop.
More information on persimmon culture and suggested varieties is available through the extension office or by finding the following Internet sites: www.ces.ncsu. edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-377 or htmlhttp://hgic.clemson.edu/ factsheets/HGIC1357.htm.
Peg Godwin is a horticulture agent for the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, Lenoir County Center, 1791 N.C. 11/55, Kinston, NC 28504. E-mail her at Peg_Godwin@ncsu.edu; call (252) 527-2191; or visit www. ces.ncsu.edu/lenoir/.
Jan. 4, 2005
News & Observer
By Marti Maguire
© Copyright 2005
In a region where college dreams rise and fall on SAT scores, the ACT is hardly a blip on most parents' radar screens.
But that other test is gaining popularity among students desperate for an edge in the increasingly competitive college admissions race.
Traditionally, the SAT has been the college entrance exam of choice for high school students on both coasts, with the ACT predominating in the nation's heartland. But in the past decade, more students in SAT states have started taking the ACT. Last year, 15 percent of high school graduates in North Carolina took the ACT, compared with 9 percent a decade ago.
Triangle school officials expect the number of ACT takers to keep rising as more students use it as a safety net; if they bomb on the SAT, they may fare better on the ACT, which tests different skills.Most colleges and universities accept both tests, and will consider only the highest of the two scores in admissions decisions.
"There's no reason a student shouldn't take it," said Mike Gallagher, director of Huntington Learning Centers in Cary and Raleigh. "It doubles their chances of success."
Huntington offers SAT and ACT prep courses nationwide. Gallagher plans to start offering ACT courses locally next year in response to higher demand.
Is one easier?
Those familiar with the tests say each tends to favor a different type of student. The ACT, or American College Testing Assessment, measures a student's knowledge of English, math, reading and science. With straightforward questions on what students are learning in school, it supposedly rewards students who study hard and earn good grades.
Conventional wisdom holds that the SAT -- formerly the Scholastic Aptitude Test -- is more closely linked to a person's IQ. The test measures "aptitude," a sticky term that supposedly reflects a student's overall ability to succeed in college. SAT questions often put a new twist on concepts learned in school, challenging students to reason their way through unfamiliar problems.
When the SAT was developed in the early 1900s, it was credited with democratizing the college admissions process by helping schools judge students on ability, not economic class, at a time when few went to college.
When the ACT debuted in 1959, the GI Bill was allowing the masses to try to earn college degrees. The newer test purported to give more realistic snapshots of how students performed in the classroom, ACT spokesman Ken Gullette said.
The nonprofit agency that runs the ACT surveys high schools across the country and includes only the most commonly offered concepts on the test, Gullette said. "Students seem to be more comfortable with the ACT because it reflects what they learned in school," Gullette said.
Tradition kept the ACT a regional power, since many East Coast colleges and universities didn't accept it. Most started accepting it decades ago, but it wasn't until recently that counselors started pushing the ACT as an alternative to the SAT.
Orange High School senior Katie Kimrey said she thought the ACT was easier than the SAT, although her scores were comparable. Kimrey, who wants to study chemistry at Duke University, said she did well on the science section of the ACT and aced the math section on both.
She struggled with the SAT reading and vocabulary questions.
But rather than picking one test over the other, she said, she'll urge her younger sister to take both.
"You really don't know which one you'll do better on," Kimrey said. "It's good to have scores from both."
Most North Carolina colleges and universities now don't think twice about admitting an in-state student based on ACT scores.
"We will use the score that gives the students the best chance of being admitted," said Steve Farmer, the admissions director at UNC-Chapel Hill. "We wouldn't weigh one or the other more heavily."
The number of students who included ACT scores in their applications to UNC-Chapel Hill has increased from about 1,000 four years ago to 1,600 last year.
Most students submit scores from both tests, although most schools would accept the ACT alone. Wake Forest University is the only North Carolina school that doesn't accept the ACT, and they'll start taking it this year in applications for fall 2007.
Steering students
In Johnston County, the percentage of high school graduates who took the ACT has doubled over the past five years to 20 percent last year.
Under a controversial countywide policy, guidance counselors advise students who may not do well on the SAT to take the ACT instead. Most districts urge all students to take the SAT and suggest the ACT as an additional option. Critics contend that Johnston County's policy is aimed at raising the district's average SAT score, which is widely publicized. Discouraging students from taking the SAT may turn them off college altogether, they say.
But counselor Mary Helen Burgess at West Johnston High School said some students just fare better on the ACT. She advises students who are stronger in science than they are in math to take the ACT. Although the ACT's math section tests higher-level skills, it carries less weight than the SAT's.
Burgess also recommends the ACT for poor testers, such as students whose test scores haven't measured up to their grades.
Many parents have never heard of the ACT, Burgess said.
"Because the ACT hasn't been used much in this region, the SAT just rolls of your tongue," she said. "It's hard to get them in the mind-set of taking it."
Other Triangle counties don't keep track of how many students are taking the ACT, but counselors are reporting increases. Wake County spokesman Chip Sudderth said interest in the ACT is spiking among students who are apprehensive of the new SAT, which includes a writing section.
If you're writing-phobic, though, you probably can't avoid it by taking the ACT. The ACT writing section is optional, but most schools in the UNC system require students to take it. So does Duke.
Nor is everyone buying into the advantages of the ACT.
Lyle Burnham, North Carolina director for a national test prep company, Studyworks, is particularly turned off by the idea that certain types of students perform better on the ACT.
Burnham's company prepares Triangle students for both tests, and he keeps track of their scores. He said most students score about the same on both tests.
"The urban legend is that if you're no good on the SAT, you'll be good on the ACT," Burnham said. "There's good things and bad things about both, and they end up canceling each other out."
Burnham also offered a tip for potential ACT takers: Courses like his can't do as much to push up a student's score on the ACT. SAT prep courses teach strategies to help students tackle reasoning questions; a review course can't re-teach a science class.
Overall, Burnham said, taking both tests can just add to the stress of applying for college.
"The last thing you want your kid to do is to be worrying about two tests," Burnham said.
Staff writer Marti Maguire can be reached at 829-4841 or mmaguire@newsobserver.com.
Jan. 4, 2005
News & Observer, Charlotte Observer
By Jane Stancill
© Copyright 2005
Media organizations won't sue the University of North Carolina over its secret meeting to interview Erskine Bowles. And Bowles has pledged that he won't seek changes in state law that would keep some university records from the public.
The N.C. Press Association, along with media including The News & Observer, has decided not to pursue a lawsuit against the university after the UNC Board of Governors' presidential search committee met Sept. 25 and 26 in Charlotte without giving public notice of the gathering, as state law requires.
The decision was announced in a letter Tuesday to UNC Board Chairman Brad Wilson.
The press association's president, Rip Woodin, publisher of the Rocky Mount Telegram, wrote that media organizations were "deeply troubled by the University's arrogant refusal to publicly acknowledge the rather obvious violations to the North Carolina Open Meetings Law."But Woodin said the association was swayed by a promise from Bowles, the new UNC president, that the university system will closely follow state laws on open meetings and public records.
"We're willing to give Erskine the benefit of the doubt," Woodin said Tuesday. "He has voiced his support for open government."
Press association leaders met with Bowles in November, Woodin said.
Bowles told the press association he would ask legislators to withdraw a bill that would hide some university records from the public, including donor information and cell phone numbers of university employees. The bill, pushed by UNC leaders last year, passed the Senate but not the House.
"Believing in openness as I do, I felt this is not the kind of thing we should make an issue of," Bowles said in an interview Tuesday.
Wilson, who led the search committee, said Tuesday that he was pleased and appreciative that the press association did not sue.
"We're certainly sorry this whole issue arose during the search process," Wilson said.
The board will back Bowles' promise, Wilson said.
"We fully intend to conduct all of our business in full compliance of the open meetings law as interpreted by the Attorney General's Office," he said.
September meetings
The UNC search committee began discussing candidates Sept. 7 after giving proper notice of the meeting's date, time and location.
The group met behind closed doors; that is allowed by state law. But the panel recessed the meeting, which reconvened in Charlotte more than two weeks later -- without giving notice.
The maneuver was sanctioned by UNC's top attorney, Leslie Winner.
But such a practice is a violation of the state's Open Meetings Law, according to a legal opinion from top staff of state Attorney General Roy Cooper. The opinion was distributed to 100 government board leaders around the state after The N&O reported the UNC board's secret meeting.
Woodin said attorneys representing news organizations met with Cooper's staff and with Winner to discuss the matter.
"We were all convinced it was better to work through this," Woodin said.
But the association said it would hold university leaders to their promise of openness.
"Our faith in your new president has played a major role in our decision not to file a lawsuit," Woodin's letter said. "However, our optimism doesn't mean we will abandon our role as a watchdog of the public's interest."
The press association was joined by The N&O, The Charlotte Observer, The Associated Press and the N.C. Association of Broadcasters in negotiations with the university.
Staff writer Jane Stancill can be reached at 956-2464 or janes@newsobserver.com.
Creationists say fossils back them up
Jan. 4, 2005
Fort Wayne News Sentinel (IN), The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
ByJIM STRATTON
© Copyright 2005
CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. - Most paleontologists look into the mouth of an allosaurus and see a prehistoric eating machine with a jaw full of flesh-tearing teeth.
Peter DeRosa peers into that mouth and sees the hand of God.
Working from a business park about 80 miles north of Tampa, Fla., DeRosa and his family are hammering away at two bedrock principles of modern science: evolution and the notion that Earth is about 4 billion years old.
The DeRosas are part of a small but growing band of creationists using dinosaurs - the icons of an ancient Earth - to argue that the world is only 6,000 years old.
The DeRosas' tool of choice? The fossilized bones of Ebenezer the allosaurus and other creatures cramming their makeshift laboratory.
"It's very clear in Scripture. God's word is true," said DeRosa, 22. "Everything we've found supports that."
The DeRosas run Creation Expeditions, a ministry that relies on dinosaurs to spread what they say is the infallible word of the Bible. The family operation includes Peter, his brother Mark, sister Leah, and parents Pete and Linda.
The DeRosas have no formal training but have studied dinosaurs and fossils for more than a decade.
They lecture at private schools, churches and anywhere else that will have them. Several times a year, they conduct digs in Florida and out West, serving as guides for others - usually Christians - interested in dinosaurs. They charge $500 per person for five-day excavations. They also take in contributions from religious groups and other sponsors.
The DeRosas' digs have produced impressive results. They have uncovered a 22-foot-long allosaurus - a smaller relative of the T. rex - and a 15-foot-tall edmontosaurus, a plant-eating, duck-billed dinosaur.
The DeRosas and their movement, in essence, are trying to turn science against itself. By digging up fossils and interpreting their finds, some creationists hope to convince others that evolution and a 4-billion-year-old Earth are nonsensical notions unsupported by the data.
They maintain, for example, that they've found organic plant matter buried with fossils indicating the animals died only a few thousand years ago. Some say they've found human footprints next to dinosaur tracks, a claim the vast majority of paleontologists consider preposterous.
Organisms didn't evolve, they say - they were created by God largely as they appear today.
The vast majority of scientists consider the movement badly misguided, or worse, intellectually dishonest. Creationists, scientists say, aren't doing real science.
They are starting with a conclusion - that the Bible is 100 percent accurate - and gathering evidence to support that idea. True science, they say, actively looks for problems with a hypothesis. And over the years, a tremendous amount of research has been conducted specifically to find major flaws in the theories about evolution and the age of Earth. The fundamental principles of both have held up.
"The evidence is overwhelming," said Skip Pierce, the chairman of the biology department at the University of South Florida. "These theories are essentially established fact."
Described most famously by Charles Darwin in 1859, the basics of evolution are fairly simple. The theory holds that all life evolved from earlier, generally more primitive forms.
Organisms survived based on how well-suited they were to their environment. Beneficial traits passed on from parents - genetic variations in speed, size or eyesight - gave some offspring an advantage over competitors. Those offspring - with their unique inherited traits - stood a better chance of surviving and reproducing.
Darwin suggested that over millions of years those incremental changes and mutations reach a point of no return. At some stage, the organism changes so much, it can no longer breed within the species.
If its inherited differences are adaptive, it can evolve into a new species.
"Its explanatory power is just incredible," said Peter Harries, a USF professor who studies ancient marine animals. "And the data that has been accumulated to support it is enormous."
But creationists remain unconvinced.
Where scientists see an elegant, powerful theory, the DeRosas see an effort to deny the existence of God. The theories of evolution and an ancient Earth are riddled with problems, they say.
If erosion has been a force for millions of years, they ask, how is it that fossils are still being found just below the surface? After millions of years of erosion, Mark DeRosa said, those fossils should have disappeared long ago.
"At that rate," he said, "there shouldn't even be any continents left."
They point to a lack of so-called transitional fossils - organisms that clearly demonstrate one species turning into another. They reject any suggestion that inorganic material can be transformed into even the simplest life forms.
And citing the second law of thermodynamics, they insist that all systems tend to break down. Organisms, they say, devolve, not evolve, into more-complicated creatures.
Most scientists have heard the criticisms and, by now, are almost weary of addressing them. They say there are many transitional fossils and plenty of instances of organisms growing more complicated. A seed, for example, becomes a flower.
As for how inorganic material first turned into life, they freely admit they don't yet know. Research, however, has demonstrated that amino acids, the building blocks of life, can be produced from nonliving material.
Early this year, young-Earth creationists jumped on an announcement that researchers had found soft tissue in the thigh bone of a T. rex. This proved, they said, the animal could not have been 68 million years old because soft tissue wouldn't last that long.
But the scientist who discovered the tissue said it shows no such thing.
Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist with North Carolina State University, said it's unclear whether the material is original tissue. Even if it is, Schweitzer said, that doesn't mean the leg bone is only 8,000 years old. Far more likely, she said in an e-mail to the Sentinel, is that scientists don't yet fully understand how tissue is preserved.
"It is very, very obvious that the earth and the solar system are very, very old - billions of years," she wrote. "It is far more likely we are wrong about how molecules degrade, than that we are wrong about the age of dinosaurs."
Meanwhile, the DeRosas push ahead with their ministry, chipping at evolution as patiently as they chip stone off the skull of Ezekiel, the duck-billed dinosaur they uncovered out West.
There is no chance that any scientific find will sway their views, they say, because the Bible's account of history is complete and unerring. They even reject as "lightweight Christianity" the newer notion of intelligent design, which holds that some higher power created Earth and the universe but does not necessarily give credit to the Christian God.
"We know who the creator is," said Pete DeRosa, brushing dust off the massive skull. "It's the God of the Bible. It's Jesus Christ. It's our Lord.
"We won't find anything contrary to that."
That line of thinking doesn't really bother biologist Skip Pierce. He just doesn't think faith should pass for science.
"If it makes you happy, fine," Pierce said. "But calling it science is just misleading."
Out of this world: Nasa funds revolutionary ideas
Jan. 4, 2005
EducationGuardian.co.uk (UK)
By Alok Jha, science correspondent
© Copyright 2005
Bouncing robots capable of exploring planets, a giant pinhole camera in space, and genetically engineered crops that could grow on other worlds are just three of the ideas proposed by scientists funded by Nasa's forward-thinking Institute for Advanced Concepts.
Now, Niac, the organisation that first backed research into space elevators (think of a satellite tethered to Earth by a giant cable, dispensing with a rocket launch to attain orbit) has again made its annual call for revolutionary ideas lurking in the laboratories, or even just in the imagination, of US space scientists.
"Niac was created to identify new and revolutionary concepts for Nasa that go well beyond what Nasa is currently doing," said Robert Cassanova, director of Niac, set up in 1998 as an independent, and, in effect, brainstorming institute.
The dozen or so projects chosen each year for funding tend to be long-term, perhaps coming to fruition within 10 to 40 years, according to Sharon Garrison, Niac's co-ordinator at Nasa.
Dr Cassanova added: "Niac is looking for grand ideas and grand visions - big ideas that might inspire new enabling technologies. We state explicitly that the concept or architectural system does not have to have the enabling technology available to make it work. And the science does not have to be totally understood."
The deadline for out-of-this-world proposals this year is midnight, February 13.
At a recent meeting in Colorado, scientists heard about the projects funded after last year's Niac call. One microbiologist, Amy Grunden, at North Carolina State University, reported that she had been working on a way to grow food in harsh conditions on other planets. Her inspiration came from extremophiles, microscopic organisms that live in the most extreme environments on Earth.
"We can actually pinpoint particular genes that are responsible for providing adaptations for these organisms that are living in extreme environments," said Professor Grunden. "Given our current biochemical and physiological knowledge of some of these adaptive pathways, can we put them in other plant systems to help them deal with extremes?"
Her idea is to put "extreme survival" genes into crops such as rye; astronauts on long missions would take the seeds with them, saving on the cost of taking food supplies into space.
Penelope Boston, of New Mexico Tech, and Steven Dubowsky, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's space robotics laboratory, looked at space exploration. Their idea was to beef up the capabilities of probes orbiting planets, and of robotic rovers - such as Spirit and Opportunity, which have been trundling across Mars for two years - with thousands of 10cm-wide ball shaped robots scattered on the planet's surface.
"The microbots employ hopping, bouncing, and rolling as a locomotion mode to reach scientifically interesting features in very rugged terrain," said the scientists. Powered by fuel cells, the microbots would explore, sharing information so as to build up a map of the planetary surface. Each robot could be customised, equipped, Professor Dubowsky said, with "a suite of miniaturised instruments for each specific mission - [with] imagers, spectrometers or chemical detection sensors".
The iconic but clunky spacesuit is also set for a makeover. Dava Newman, at MIT, presented the Bio-Suit System. Dr Cassanova said: "This is a spacesuit that would enable you to wear it like a wetsuit and bounce around on planetary surfaces and do extra-vehicular activities ... without this cumbersome gas bag and very heavy suit that we use now."
The idea that has generated most interest recently at Nasa is the New Worlds Imager space telescope, designed to take pictures of planets outside our solar system. Taking such pictures is difficult because light coming from the planets is obscured by stars. To get around this, Webster Cash, of the University of Colorado, at Boulder, planned a pair of spacecraft - a starshade (the astronomical equivalent of sunglasses) and a collector - that works as a giant pinhole camera. The starshade would be one kilometre in diameter with a 10-metre hole at its centre and would sit more than 124,000 miles (200,000km) from the collector and would block the stars' dazzling light.
The imager is an idea that builds on previous Niac research on formation flying. "The [New Worlds Imager] observatory has components that are physically disconnected and the components may be positioned over several kilometres," said Dr Cassanova. "You can't physically tie these things together but you still have to control the spacing very accurately." Formation flying is where different components in space "fly reasonably close very accurately", he said. The imager might resolve details on distant planets, even linking up to objects about 60 miles across, giving us our first views of the clouds, oceans and continents on planets far from our solar system.
Professor Cash's observatory is just one of the ideas initially funded by Niac and then taken on by Nasa.
Other projects, like the space elevator, have become the focus of much scientific attention. "When we funded it, about five years ago, the first reaction was, we're funding science fiction but ... typically now you'll have a number of space elevator papers submitted," said Dr Cassanova.
Dr Grunden said that though her re-engineered food crops might not be used by astronauts for 10 years or so there could be spin-offs much earlier. "It has applications not only to space but to Earth," she said. Prof Dubowsky's microbots will be tested in New Mexico this year; his team hopes to have prototypes built by March.
Dr Cassanova said that he hoped Niac's latest call for ideas would stimulate people's imagination. "We're really trying to inspire the geniuses here in the US to find different ways of doing things," he said.
Jan. 4, 2005
CounterPunch (CA)
By DICK J. REAVIS
© Copyright 2005
If the Bush administration doesn't revise its border control legislation or enact a guest worker program by Jan. 18, it will force Mexico's next president to adopt the rhetoric of anti-American nationalism.
Mexicans high and low are piqued because of a measure by Republicans James Sensenbrenner and Tom Tancredo, HR 4437, which calls for, among other things, erecting double walls along some 700 miles of the Mexican-American border.
American Congress-watchers say that the bill doesn't stand much chance of approval in the Senate, but that's beside the point: in Mexico, the idea that powerful Americans want to build more walls is enough to spark outcry, and the bill's dim Senate prospects only heighten the gains to be made from denouncing it.
Nothing promulgated by the American government has inspired such furor since the early 1960's, when passions ran high over Chamizál, an El Paso-Juarez neighborhood whose nationality the shifting Rio Grande placed in doubt.
President Bush gave his nod to the Sensenbrenner bill, though, he said, only as a preamble to the guest-worker program that he promised Mexico six years ago, but hasn't produced.
Democrats and Mexican-American groups usually oppose labor import schemes that do not open routes to U.S. citizenship, but Mexico's governors and bishops, pundits and cartoonists-even on the left--generally favor the guest-worker idea. In their eyes, the solution to Mexico's problems, they say, cannot depend on anybody's permanent immigration to the United States: the Rio Grande is not the River Jordan.
The restrictive provisions of the Sensenbrenner bill-which also makes undocumented immigration a felony-have caused Mexican officialdom to break with its traditional doctrine, which holds that all nations have the right to control their borders. Even pro-American, lame-duck president Vicente Fox has joined the outcry, dispatching foreign service personnel to European and South American capitals to request parliamentary resolutions lamenting the very idea of the walls.
The Bush administration has thus far avoided a more severe thrashing only because of a holiday season gag order. Mexico's most ardent spokesmen-the candidates for its July presidential election-have been under a rule of silence since a few days before the Sensenbrenner bill was approved.
By the terms of Mexican electoral law, candidates were forbidden to campaign, even to issue press statements, on Dec. 11. They can't open their mouths again until Jan. 18.
When they do, we can expect that the United States will get a drubbing as never in forty years.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the center-left Partido Revolucionario Demócrata-AMLO of the PRD-is leading in polls by about ten points. His nearest rival is Roberto Madrazo, standard-bearer of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, which held the Mexican presidency for 71 years. Until its latter days, the PRI never passed up a chance to bash los gringos, and the signs are that it won't miss the opportunity when campaigning resumes.
By declaring his scorn of the Sensenbrenner plan, President Fox, of the Partido Acción Nacional, or PAN, left little room for its candidate, Felipe Calderón, to play the pro-American moderate-and doing so would only cost him votes, anyhow.
But the crux of the matter is that AMLO stands at the top of the polls despite playing the moderate's role himself. When he was its mayor, among other things, AMLO hired Rudy Giuliana to deter Mexico City's kidnappers, muggers and squeegee men. AMLO has called for renegotiation, not repudiation, of the unpopular NAFTA agreement, and he's not promising to shred his IMF credit card, as Argentina's Kirchner and Brazil's Lula da Silva recently did.
While promoting social welfare programs and calling himself a leftist, the Clintonesque AMLO been so careful not to offend Mexico's upper and middle classes that Subcomandate Marcos has laid down arms and come out of the jungle for a six-month national tour against all three candidates and their parties. Mexico's electoral system, he says, is irrelevant; only people's movements count for anything, he says.
To prove that he is not a vendepatria, or "fatherland seller," the PAN's Calderón will have to condemn the Sensenbrenner proposal with adjectives more blistering that those muttered by the timid Fox. To steal votes from the PRD, Madrazo will play the PRI's nationalist cards. To distinguish himself from the PRI, and to blunt the Subcomandante's barbs, AMLO will have to adopt an emphatic rhetoric akin to that deployed by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales.
In a word, Bush will have to swiftly pass a guest worker proposal, or Mexico's presidential hopefuls will jostle to the left, taking credit for forcing Uncle Sam to back down on the Sensenbrenner bill.
Sensible heads at the State Department must rue that the House didn't take an early Christmas vacation. But in November, wasn't the State Department defending the use of torture?
Castles have walls and dungeons, and dungeons have racks and screws. As soon as Mexico returns to the hustings, its electorate will hear that Bush, far from "building a bridge to the 21st century," as sweet-mouthed Clinton always promised to do, is laying bricks to wall the United States inside of the illusions of medieval days.
Dick J. Reavis is a Texas journalist who is currently an assistant professor of English at North Carolina State University. He can be reached at mailto: dickjreavis@yahoo.com.