Weird Links

In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels -- three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents -- and that the “peak oil” argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.

Opiorphin is six-times more potent than morphine and works by preventing the breakdown of enkephalins, which activate opiate receptors that block pain signals from reaching the brain, although that may not be its only effect.

Radiation measurements on a crater probably created by an Israeli Bunker Buster bomb of 700 nanosieverts per hour was confirmed by two independent studies.

The implication is that enriched-uranium (not fission) weapons were used during the invasion of Lebanon this summer. Israel denies the use of uranium weapons in Lebanon.

The United States last night vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel in the wake of the artillery attack which killed 18 Palestinian civilians last week in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The veto on the resolution ­ on which Britain abstained ­ came despite efforts to redraft the original text to make it more acceptable to its opponents.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said the resolution, proposed by Qatar and also calling on Israel to withdraw its forces from the area "does not display an even-handed characterisation of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace"

“We think Arc controls how brain cells learn and associate behaviours and remember them over a long period of time”.

The theory is that the stronger the connection/signalling ability between neurons, the stronger the memory. Arc may regulate signalling between adjacent brain cells by altering the number of chemical receptors between cell junctions.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed Thursday that he is drafting a bill to undo portions of a recently passed law that prevents terrorism detainees from going to federal court to challenge the government's right to hold them indefinitely.

Researchers injected mice with stem cells and gave the mice a booster shot ten days later. They then transplanted lung cancer cells under the animals' skin — a standard animal model for the disease.

The stem-cell injection protected 20 out of 25 mice from developing tumours, whereas tumours grew in all unvaccinated mice.

Nick Pope was head of the MoD's UFO project between 1991 and 1994. Now retired, he is worried that Britain is "wide open" to attack by extraterrestrials due to the sceptical nature of security services when dealing with UFO-related incidents.

The draft study states that cited financial losses to the (Australian) music industry attributable to piracy are "unverified and epistemologically unreliable". The report also goes on to say that it found no evidence for claimed links between piracy and organised crime, or that it was "simply beyond the capacity of [copyright] holders to identify these links".

An extract reads: "Of greatest concern is the potentially unqualified use of these statistics in courts of law".

The Center for Constitutional Rights will file the suit on behalf of a group of Iraqi detainees as well as the so-called 20th hijacker, who is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.

"The former secretary actually authorized a series of interrogation techniques," said Michael Ratner, President of CCR. "They included the use of dogs, stripping, hooding, stressed positions, chaining to the floor, sexual humiliation and those types of activities."

Those techniques, he says, amount to torture and violate the Geneva Conventions. Ratner will be traveling to Berlin next week and plans to file the suit on Tuesday.