> [Original Message] > From: What's New <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 12/16/2005 7:46:51 PM Subject: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday December 16, 2005
WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 16 Dec 05 Washington, DC 1. SPACE DEVELOPMENT: WILL "SIX FLAGS OVER THE MOON" BE NEXT? The big news this week is that New Mexico is building the first commercial spaceport. British entrepreneur Richard Branson says his Virgin Galactic Airline will use the spaceport to launch tourists on suborbital flights beginning in 2008. A $200,000 ticket will buy you five minutes of weightlessness, with no extra charge for space sickness. With America's once-proud space program hard-put to support a crew of only two, wandering lost in the cavernous ISS, the future in space seems to be theme parks. According to China Daily, even the newest space-faring power wants some of the theme park action. Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province, said to have been visited by a UFO in 1994, received $20M from a Taiwan-based company for a UFO research center. 2. CLONE SCANDAL: KOREAN SCIENTIST REPORTEDLY ADMITS FABRICATION. The goal of treating people with tissues cloned from their own stem cells had seemed almost in reach. In May, Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues reported in Science that they had cloned stem cells from 11 patients. Hwang became an international celebrity and a Korean hero. Then there were reports that women who worked in his lab had been pressured to donate eggs for the experiment. Last month, an American collaborator asked that his name be taken > off the paper citing "ethical violations." Now the work seems to be unraveling completely, with Hwang reportedly admitting that critical parts of the "discovery" had been fabricated. 3. GHOST STORY: WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS. On Tuesday, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, by Staff Reporter Anna Wilde Mathews, dealt with publication of ghost-written papers in major medical journals. The papers bear the names of academic researchers, who presumably agree with the articles. The intent, however, is not to disseminate knowledge, but to promote the products of the company that paid to have it written. We expel students who turn in ghost-written papers. WN has reported before on unhealthy ties of NIH scientists to drug companies, http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN04/wn070904.html . Something like it seems to be going on with academic scientists. 4. EVOLUTION: THINGS ARE A LITTLE STICKY IN COBB COUNTY, GEORGIA. Yesterday, a federal appeals court panel seemed to some observers to be critical of the ruling requiring removal of a sticker from biology texts http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn011405.html . It read: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered." The sticker was not factually inaccurate. The attorney who argued the case against the stickers at last years trial remarked admitted that, "I'm more worried than I was when I walked in this morning." THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be. --- Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org What's New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link: http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1
