GEN-ERIC News

When two people walk up to a food counter at the same time when there are two main courses left, one person gets a choice and the other has their dinner predetermined - if they choose to take the remaining dish and use their free will to give up their free will to choose dinner that evening. They could have easily used free will to go somewhere else, but that doesn’t change the fact that the decision at that particular counter was predetermined. Whether the predeterminism occurred a millisecond or a week before arrival at that counter is irrelevant, because it doesn’t change the outcome. Our past is determined, and our future has a probability-based predetermination dependent upon each individual’s determined experiential frame of reference.

Recent reports by the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command show that gang-related activity in the U.S. military is increasing. The FBI report concludes the increase poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security. Some experts point to looser recruiting standards, implemented in recent years as the Army struggles to meet recruiting goals, and the increase in waivers given to recruits with criminal records as a factor behind gang presence in the ranks. Each year since 2003, an increasing number of applicants with records of everything from traffic violations to felony convictions have been allowed to enlist in the Army under “moral waivers.” In fiscal 2006, 7.9 percent of all recruits received moral waivers, compared with 4.6 percent in 2003, according to Recruiting Command.

Global warming may carry a higher risk of flooding than previously thought, according to a study released on Wednesday by the British science journal Nature. It says efforts to calculate flooding risk from climate change do not take into account the effect that carbon dioxide (CO2) — the principal greenhouse gas — has on vegetation. Plants suck water out of the ground and “breathe” out the excess through tiny pores, called stomata, in their leaves. Stomata are highly sensitive to CO2. The higher the level of atmospheric CO2, the more the pores tighten up or open for shorter periods. As a result, less water passes through the plant and into the air in the form of evaporation. And, in turn, this means that more water stays on the land, eventually running off into rivers when the soil becomes saturated.

What happens when you breed a helicopter with a two-wheeler? You get a motorcycle with all-wheel drive. Philadelphia-based Christini has begun to market a drivetrain that can apply power from the engine to the front wheel of motorcycles. A second chain turns the front wheel so that riders can get through sand, snow, mud or uneven terrain more easily. “I love it. It is a total advantage,” said Mike Bergman, a professional motocross racer who’s raced twice on motorcycles equipped with Christini’s drivetrain. “Let’s say you come into a rough corner with deep ruts, it will pull you right around it.” Christini recently released a version of its drivetrain for some Honda dirt bikes and will soon have a unit that works with off-road motorcycles from KLM. Over the next few years, it hopes to move from selling its system as an aftermarket device to something that is integrated into a motorcycle at a much lower cost at the factory.

A team of U.S. researchers has found a new and inexpensive way to create a nanowire coating for titanium surfaces used in bone implants. Their nanowire scaffolds can be used ‘to create more effective surfaces for hip replacement, dental reconstruction and vascular stenting.’ As said the lead researcher, ‘We can control the length, the height, the pore openings and the pore volumes within the nanowire scaffolds’ by varying the time, temperature and alkali concentration in the reaction,’ who added that the process was also extremely sustainable, requiring only that the device be rinsed in reusable water after the heating process. These nanowire scaffolds might also be used in hospitals or in meat-processing plants to kill bacteria.

Even years after quitting, former smokers still have an increased risk of lung cancer – and now Canadian scientists believe they know why. It appears that though most smoking damage is repaired over time, the habit appears to permanently alter the activity of key genes. Dr. Stephen Lam, chair of the B.C. Cancer Agency’s lung tumour group, says the findings may explain why 50 per cent of Canadian patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer are former smokers. Researchers from the B.C. Cancer Agency, writing in the journal BMC Genomics, looked at the lung tissue of 24 current, former, and non-smokers. Using a technique called serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), they identified close to 600 genes that were differentially expressed between current and non-smokers. Only about a fifth of the genes in a cell are switched on at any given time, but environmental factors such as smoking lead to changes in gene activity. Of the 600 genes identified, changes in almost one third of them are irreversible in former smokers, the researchers found. Specifically, some DNA repair genes are irreversibly damaged by smoking. Smoking also switched off genes that help combat lung cancer development.

Ever wonder why you can’t seem to get anything done in the office? It may be because your co-workers are preoccupied with something other than work. “Workplace Taboos” is a new CareerBuilder.com survey, conducted by Harris Interactive of more than 5,700 workers. The most common workplace taboos that workers admitted to taking part in include:
– Falling asleep at work (45 percent)
– Kissing a co-worker (39 percent)
– Consuming alcoholic beverages while on the job (21 percent)
– Stealing from the office (22 percent)
– Spreading a rumor about a co-worker (22 percent)
– Snooping after hours (18 percent)
– Lying about an academic background (4 percent)
– Taking credit for someone else’s work (2 percent)
Who is most likely to commit workplace taboos?
Men report that they engage in all of these workplace taboos more than women. For instance, nearly half (49 percent) of men have fallen asleep on the job compared 35 percent of women. When it comes to kissing co-workers, 44 percent of men and 34 percent of women admitted to puckering up.

Calving Alaskan glaciers have attracted more than the regular tourists and concerned climate scientists this summer — they’ve also brought some pioneering surfers. The surfers’ goal is to ride the swift, icy dwarf tsunamis that are launched by the calving ice in the pursuit of the biggest waves ever ridden. The waves created by the falling walls of ice near what’s known as the Million Dollar Bridge, near Cordova, Alaska, have been seen as tall 30 feet along the river banks. They have been clocked heading downstream as fast as 40 miles per hour and almost standing still relative to shore as they move upstream against the current, said Ryan Casey of Deepwater Films. Casey is developing a documentary about the strange glacial surf.

PETER Beattie, Nicole Kidman and Michael Voss are. So were William Shakespeare, Christopher Columbus and Queen Elizabeth the First. But the future doesn’t look bright for people with ginger hair. According to genetic scientists redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years. The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than 2 per cent of the world’s population has natural red hair - created by a mutation in northern Europe thousand of years ago. Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and so producing little redheads of their own. Although it takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger babies, two redheads obviously creates a much stronger possibility. Some experts warn redheads could be gone as early 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant in the reproductive system for generations before returning.

The use of renewable energy in the United States increased nearly 7% in 2006, according to preliminary statistics released on August 21st by DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). The new report finds wind power to be the fastest growing renewable energy technology, growing by 45% in 2006, followed by biofuels, which grew by 27.6%. In 2006, ethanol provided 4% of the volume of finished gasoline produced in the United States while consuming 14% of the nation’s corn crop. Hydropower production also increased by 6.9% in 2006, reaching its highest level since 2003, but it remained below the high-water years of the late 1990s.