X-Message-Number: 661
Subject: CRYONICS - Science Report 1/3
From:  (Edgar W. Swank)
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 14:17:58 PST

SCIENCE REPORT by Peter Christiansen
(Reprinted from The Immortalist, February, 1992) - Part 1/3

SUPPOSE THEY GAVE AN ECO-CATASTROPHE AND NOTHING HAPPENED

Two recent studies have failed to find any evidence for Global warming
or the "GreenHouse Effect", the latest environmental scare.  First,
the National Climate Data Center of the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration, in a study published in Geophysical
Research Letters concluded that daytime temperatures in the Northern
Hemisphere have not warmed at all in the period from 1950 to 1990 and
"most of the warming which has occurred in the regions over the past
four decades can be attributed to an increase of mean minimum (mostly
nighttime) temperatures."

The primary danger of global warming is from rapidly rising daytime
highs and this is what the 1990 Intergovernmental Panel of Climate
Change Report claimed it had evidence of and that claim was the basis
of the whole global warming scare.  But says Thomas Karl of the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration,"...our data
clearly show that's not true."

Indeed, the NOAA data not only explodes the basic thesis of the global
warmers, but it raises exactly the opposite thesis.  If all warming is
at night, then global warming is benign, lengthening the growingseason
with warmer nights without creating more evaporation through hotter
days thus destroying the threat of increased droughts.

The same week the NOAA published its report, the journal Geology
published a special report on the global warmers dire forecast of a 30
foot rise in the sea level as a result of the melting of polar ice
caps from the effects of global warming during the "greenhouse
century".  Last year the American geophysical Union reduced that
figure to 9 inches, plus or minus 18 inches.  But according to
Geology's special report,"...the response of the Antarctic glacial
system to future warming would be an increase in mass balance."  In
other words, global warming would result in falling sealevels.  Since
the primary greenhouse gas is water vapor,and since even the most
imaginative forecasts of the global warmers predict only a 5 or 10
degree increase in polar temperatures, the result of global warming
would be more, not less, ice and snow.

Little wonder that many are now questioning why the U.S.  should sign
up and participate in a proposed Earth Summit to be held in Rio de
Janeiro in June or implement the massive costly economic changes
recommended by the Panel of Climate Change which authored the now
thoroughly disproven and discredited forecast of global warming.

VICTIMS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM FIGHT BACK

In 1989 the CBS television show 60 Minutes broadcast "findings"
provided by an environmentalist organization called the Natural
Resources Defense Council regarding the use of Alar on apples.  The
result was that many small apple growers in Washington State were put
out of business.  The NRDC "findings" were subsequently rebuked by the
National Academy of Science which pointed out that the studies upon
which the NRDC "findings" were based had been discredited previously
by a panel of leading scientists.  Now eleven apple farmers have
organized to "to put the brakes on irresponsible reporting based on
bad science" and filed what promised to become a landmark law suit
against the Natural Resources Defence Council and CBS.

WHO WANTS TO READ (OR SEE) GOOD NEWS

Remember the big Exxon oil spill in Alaska in 1989?  It was of course
front page news for months.  But chances are you may not have heard or
read about how it was finally cleaned up.  Nutrients were added to 74
miles of oil smeared shoreline which in turn stimulated certain
marineorganisms to break down the oil.  This new breakthrough
technology is called bioremediation.

Bioremediation uses microbes to decay, detoxify or prevent the
formation of hazardous waste."Bugs" (short for bacteria under guidance
and supervision) are utilized to digest crude oil, diesel fuel, coal
tar, industrial solvents, or a rapidly growing array of other
chemicals and breaks them down into carbon dioxide, water and benign
organic compounds.  The rapidly growing and developing bioremediation
industry has even developed a variety of chemicals called inducers
that stimulate the appetite of the"bugs".

SUPERCONDUCTING COMPUTER

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists are planning a new type of
supercomputer called a petaflop which would utilize superconducters,
be a million times faster than current supercomputers and fit on a
desk.  The new petaflop computer will have chips and switches made
from superconducters that use about one millionth the electricity of
conventional computers and give off far less circuit warping heat
which allows them to be packed tightly togetherfor speed.  At least
three Japanese companies and a national laboratory are also working on
the development of a superconducting supercomputer.


INTERACTIVE TELEPHONES NOWAVAILABLE

Anyone who has a telephone will soon be able to shop, pay bills, read
the news, or exchange electronic messages on one of two new low cost
interactive telephone services.  Up until now on-line interactive
information could only be obtained by computer owners who subscribed
to services Compuserve or Prodigy.  The new services operate like
cable television and charge a basic monthly fee of $9.95 after
installation.  The services are already available in many parts of the
U.S.  and will soon be available nationally .

The ScanFone, has a built-in credit card scanner and a lightpen for
reading bar codes.  To pay bills, for example, the ScanFone issues a
personal list with special bar codes for separate bills, from house
payment to utilities.  The user scans the bar code for a bill with the
light pen, then use the ScanFone key pad to enter the amount and the
date to be paid.  Bills are deducted directly from the bank account
and itemized on the customer's monthly bank statement.  The competing
system, The Minitel features a terminal with an eight-inch black and
white screen.  The Minitel which was developed 20 years ago in France
and is currently in use in about 20% of thehomes in that country, also
allows subscribers to tap into news services for 10 cents perminute,
and to exchange electronic messages with other Minitel subscribers.

HEART DISEASE GENE FOUND

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory have narrowed the
location of a gene, ATHS, that predisposes almost one in three people
to heart disease, to a small section of chromosome 19.  The gene is
present in 30 percent of the population and in 70 percent of people
with heart disease.

HAVE ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE

10 studies that sought to determine if caffeine promotes heart disease
were recently reviewed by the University Of Maryland.  Seven of the
studies found no connection.  One was inconclusive.  The two others,
which found a connectin, were dismissed as flawed.  The most recent
study, by the Harvard School of Public Health found that moderate
coffee drinkers are no more susceptible to stroke and heart disease
than non-coffee drinkers.  The same study found that people who drink
four or more cups of decaffeinated coffee per day appeared to be a
slightly higher risk of heart attack and stroke than those who drink
regular coffee or no coffee.

GENE THERAPY CURES CYSTICFIBROSIS

When the gene that causes cystic fibrosis was discovered in 1989
"researchers cautioned" that it would be decades before a gene therapy
could be developed to sucessfully treat or prevent the disease.  Now a
research team at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute headed
by molecular biologist Ronald G. Crystal report they have developed a
gene therapy that cures the disease.  Says Crystal "it is a cure."
The first human gene therapy experiment took place September 14, 1990
when a 4 year old girl born with no natural protection against cystic
fibrosis because her immune system lacked acritical gene, was injected
with about 1 billion of her ownblood cells which had been altered to
cotain the correct gene.  Within weeka her body began generating a
normal immune reponse and she is now attending kindergarten.

A second human gene therapy experiment using altered genes to attack
advanced malignant melanoma, a disease that is always fatal, is now
underway.

SST or single session therapy, a greatly expedited approach to
counseling and psychotherapy, is rapidly gaining popularity among both
counseling professionals and the public.  Single session therapists
point to the fact that no one has ever been actually "cured" of
anything by psychotherapy in one session or five hundred sessions and
that more than a third of people who consult a psychotherapist do not
return for a second visit. Furthermore say SST clinicians, for many
people a single session of therapy seems to be enough for them to give
them the coping skills and attitude they need to solve their problem
on their own.  At least one study, in England, showed most patients
who had only one session of psychotherapy still showed improvement in
their symptoms up to nine years later.  SST practitioners stress that
no one should be denied a second visit but that the choice should be
up to the client.

AND OH, BY THE WAY, ANOTHER SOLAR SYSTEM HAS BEEN FOUND

Astronomers have found evidence of at least two planets, each about
three times the mass of Earth, circling a newly discovered pulsar
located about 1300 light years from Earth in the plane of the Milky
Way galaxy.  The discovery, which was announced in the Journal NATURE,
supports the theory that extrasolar planets not only exist but are
common inthe universe.

SCHOOL VOUCHERS?

California voters may soon be the first in the nation to have an
opportunity to vote on school vouchers.  Parents for Educational
Choice is seeking to qualify an initiative which, if passed by a
majority of the states's voters, would mandate the state to give
parents who send their children to private schools a tuition voucher
for $2500, half of what the state currently spends a year per public
school student.

[Continued]

--
 (Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005  Silicon Valley, Ca

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