4/3/2005:

Intermediate Word:  luminati -  (a) paper bags with candles in them  (b)   (c) phase change measurement meter  (d) the enlightened
Difficult Word:  blue flag -  (a) yachting flag  (b) upper crust  (c) wild blue iris  (d) bluebottle

Nano circuit offers big promise  - BBC  The first computer circuit to be built on a single molecule has been unveiled by researchers in the US. It was assembled on a single carbon nanotube, a standard component of any nanotechnologist's toolkit. The finished circuit is just 18 micrometres (millionths of a metre) long and sits across the tube, which is substantially narrower. The researchers showed they could achieve a speed of 50 megahertz, The researchers say the circuit is 100,000 times faster than any previously recorded for a device made with a carbon nanotube, and with continued refinement they hope to push speeds beyond those possible today.     
Sea rise could be 'catastrophic'  - BBC  A study in the US journal Science suggests a threshold triggering a rise in sea level of several metres could be reached before the end of the century. Greenland could be as warm by 2100 as it was 130,000 years ago, when melting ice raised sea levels by 3-4m. The researchers found that melting of the Greenland ice sheet could have raised sea levels by 2-3.5m. "The ice sheet retreat and sea level rise on the order of what happened 130,000 years ago is inevitable and irreversible." Other work in the journal Science shows "earthquakes" caused by sudden movement of Greenland's glaciers are rising.    

Find could fill gap in human origins - MSNBC  Left:  The "intermediate" hominid skull is held by Gona project member Asahmed Humet, who discovered the fossil on Feb. 16 near the Ethiopian city of Gawis.  A hominid skull discovered in Ethiopia could fill the gap in the search for the origins of the human race, a scientist said Friday. The cranium, found near the city of Gawis, 300 miles southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, is estimated to be 200,000 to 500,000 years old. The skull appeared “to be intermediate between the earlier Homo erectus and the later Homo sapiens,” Sileshi Semaw, an Ethiopian research scientist at the Stone Age Institute at Indiana University, told a news conference in Addis Ababa. On the shores of what was formerly a lake in 1967, two Homo sapiens skulls dating back 195,000 years were unearthed. The discovery pushed back the known date of mankind, suggesting that modern humans and their older precursors existed side by side. Sileshi said while different from a modern human, the brain case, upper face and jaw of the cranium have unmistakable anatomical characteristics that belong to human ancestry.  




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