U.S. biophysicist admits passing secrets to Russia WASHINGTON (Reuter) - U.S. biophysicist Theodore Hall, the youngest member of the Los Alamos team that developed the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, admits in a new book that he passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Statements from Hall, who is now 71 years old and living in Cambridge, England, appear in a new book, ``Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy.'' The book, published by Times Books/Random House, arrives in bookstores this week and will be officially released Oct. 1. Statements from the book were released Sunday. In over 100 hours of interviews with the book's authors, foreign correspondents Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel of the Cox Newspapers, Hall told of his concern about a possible U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons and said he felt no remorse about sharing information with the Soviets, since they were U.S. allies at the time. FBI and National Security Agency documents cited in the book show that Hall was the target of an FBI espionage investigation in the 1950s and 1960s, but was never charged. No comment was immediately available Sunday from the FBI or the Justice Department. ``During 1944, I was worried about the dangers of an American monopoly of atomic weapons if there should be a postwar depression,'' Hall is quoted as saying. ``To help prevent that monopoly I contemplated a brief encounter with a Soviet agent, just to inform them of the existence of the A-bomb project.'' Hall said he anticipated a very limited contact, but things turned out differently. ``Now I am castigated in some quarters as a traitor, although the Soviet Union at the time was not the enemy but the ally of the United States; the Soviet people fought the Nazis heroically, at tremendous human cost, and this may well have saved the Western Allies from defeat,'' he said. He said some people had even argued that he changed the course of history with his action. ``Maybe the 'course of history', if unchanged, would have led to atomic war in the past 50 years -- for example the bomb might have been dropped on China in 1949 or the early fifties,'' he said. ``Well, if I helped to prevent that, I accept the charge.'' Hall, then 18, was recruited from Harvard University -- where he was active in radical student politics -- in 1943 to become the youngest physicist at the Los Alamos bomb laboratory in New Mexico. He was made part of the team that worked on implosion experiments that led to the invention of ``Fat Man,'' the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945. ``In 1944 I was nineteen years old -- immature, inexperienced and far too sure of myself,'' Hall told the authors. ``I recognize that I could easily have been wrong in my judgment of what was necessary, and that I was indeed mistaken about some things, in particular my view of the nature of the Soviet state.'' ``But in essence, from the perspective of my 71 years, I still think that brash youth had the right end of the stick. I am no longer that person; but I am by no means ashamed of him.'' Hall suffers from kidney cancer and Parkinson's disease. He worked for most of his scientific career as a research biophysicist and expert on electron microscopy at Cambridge University's prestigious Cavendish Laboratory. The book contained many details of Hall's espionage activities, including his recruitment in 1948 of two more American atomic scientists codenamed ``Anta'' and ``Aden'' to join the network of U.S. scientists spying for the Soviet Union, two informants whose identities have never been revealed.

anyone want to say anything about the discoveries of angiostatin and endostatin regarding cancer? anyone here working in that field? i for one am happy about the news, as i have a long history of cancer in my family.

http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9805/06/space.explosion/index.html

MY FATHER IN LAW JUST DIED OF CANCER FOUR WEEKS AGO. HE HAD IT FOR TWO YEARS. HE JUST WENT DOWNHILL. THE DOCTORS SAID IT WAS TOO LATE TO TRY ANY EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS OR ANYTHING. HE DIED AT 82. THEY SAID HE WAS TOO OLD. HE HAD OTHER PROBLEMS TO BOOT. ITS ASHAME THOUGH. IT SEEMS LIKE SCIENCE IS ON THE VERGE OF MANY NEW BREAKTHROUGHS NICK

my sympathies nick, I hope your father's 82 years were full of quality life!

Environmentalists are ringing the alarm bell about the fate of the Tibetan antelope, saying the demand for the animals' precious cashmere wool in the world fashion market has led to a deadly threat by poachers who are hunting down the animal, sometimes killing hundreds of them at a time. http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9807/05/tibetan.antelope/index.html

A human skull believed to be between 100,000 to 200,000 years old is being hailed as an important discovery in the evolution of humankind. Scientists believe it may be a link between the transition from Homo erectus, sometimes described as the hand-axe culture, to the earliest modern humans. http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9807/05/s.africa.skull/index.html

Researchers clone first mammals from adult cells using new technique NEW YORK (CNN) -- Researchers in Honolulu have successfully cloned five generations and more than 50 identical mice, using a new technique they say can be applied to other mammals. http://cnn.com/HEALTH/9807/22/cloning.report/index.html

A sheep cloning how-to, more or less http://cnn.com/TECH/9702/24/cloning.explainer/index.html

Astronomers observe a "cannibal" pulsar stealing matter from companion star CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (CNN) -Using X-ray telescopes, astronomers have observed for the first time a so-called "millisecond" pulsar in the process of cannibalizing a companion star. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9807/22/cannibal.pulsar/index.html

Scientists make plans for seeking life beyond Earth MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AP) -- Scientific discussion of extraterrestrial life has moved beyond the question of whether it exists to where and how we should look for it. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9807/21/new.worlds.ap/index.html

great selection of mind candy, ratthing!

Wow, great stuff. I don't have time to look now, but tonight I'll check it out.

Cool. Ray, I saw a programme on BBC the other day where they said there might me a chance that Dolly wasn't a clone at all.

yes, that was one of the very exciting things about the current mouse clonings. In the case of Dolly, the original paper that described the technique used to create her left out some genetic tests that would have demonstrated whether she was a true clone or simply the product of a mistake in the lab. when the authors of this new mouse paper first submitted it for publication, it was rejected on the grounds that there were no tests conclusively demonstrating that the new mousies were actual clones. so the workers went back to the lab, made a whole mess o' mousies, and did the genetic tests. the results were conclusive and accepted for publication: the same tecque used to create Dolly did in fact work for creating cloned mice. these results suggest that Dolly is probably a real clone, and, most importantly, that the technique used to one her is effective!

I find the bits I read from time to time about gene technology scary and exciting at the same time. One that excited me was about the possibility of 'growing' limbs and things (don't know it that has to do with gene technology or what, so forgive me). I think it must be horrible to lose and arm or leg - would it not be wonderful if they could just grow you a new one? You think that will happen in our lifetime, Ray? Oh, and I saw this programme about organ transplant, and doctors seemed optimistic that in time they would be able to do head transplants. In fact one doctor did it with monkeys (which I find horribly cruel). But again, when you think that people who are in wheelchairs could be helped, it is a great vision to have. What scares me about gene technology is the idea that it can and may well get into the wrong hands. Imagine people like Hitler (thank God that bastard's dead) being cloned.

one of the creepier things i read about one time had to do with the fact that someone had developed a method to develop reptile embryos without heads! the implication was that one could have a headless clone created of oneself, thus insuring a steady supply of replacement organs. the technology already exists! messing with genetic materials is very very dangerous. i personally feel it is more dangerous than nuclear power.

done in England with frogs, Ray... little headless hoppers...had to stop the research... and, no, have know idea where I read about it...

God, that's disgusting. Why not just figure out how to grow organs? If they can grow limbs, than surely that should come next?

Good point!

Thank you, thank you? Sorry to go off the topic, Ray, I just want to ask Autumn something quickly: Autumn, didn't Juliette's picture come out wonderfully in art? Did she take a look? Tell her I want MORE please!

Ray, where do you get your science news?

He MAKES it!

oh i wish! most of it comes from cnn.com. i also subscribe to Science News, a wonderful little weekly magazine that summarizes all sorts of scientific findings. every major news site on the web has a science section, so the news is not hard to find! www.sciencenews.org

So what exactly do you do, Ray? Do you teach science? Do you sit in a lab, doing experiments all day? Do you make exciting discoveries and write difficult theories down? Must be so cool having such a brainy job.

the history of my career is oh-so weird. here it is in a nutshell: * right now I am a consultant with EDS in san antonio, texas working in the area of knowledge management * prior to that i was a technical consultant and chief knowledge officer for a small telecommunications firm in san antonio * prior to that i was a postdoctoral research fellow at a large biomedical institution. i did research on the neurochemistry of depression and anxiety. also did research related to the genetics of alzheimer's disease. * prior to that i was a graduate student and did research on the neuroanatomy and neurochemistry of analgesia and reinforcement. i also studied evolutionary biology and philosophy. so i used to sit in labs all day buy not any more. now i sit in meetings all day (haha!). i have taught for the past 11 years and continue to teach biology, philosopy, and information technology courses around san antonio. my research efforts right now are directed toward artificial intelligence, specifically the development of intelligent agents that can surf and index the web, diagnose mental diseases, and befriend lonely people! I really do enjoy my job with EDS, but it is highly hectic and i really have no control over my own schedule. my dream job would be to be a faculty member at some school or institute where i could continue my AI research and teach.

which languages do you prefer for AI?

Oh wow, that sounds so cool! And where is your AI research going at this point? I mean, what are your visions for the future, say, like in 100 years from now?

Have you approached UT or any other colleges yet?

Did you meet your fiancee through your work?

ooooh! good questions! my AI coding usually takes place using C, C++, Lisp, Perl. i use a lot of libraries written in C, and work extensively with the SOAR expert system. my vision for the future is that we will have machines like the HAL 9000 computer in "2001" within the next 50 years. i am certain of this, but dont think that I will have anything much to do with it. I havent approached any colleges yet for a couple of reasons: 1) faculty jobs are few and highly competitive 2) they dont pay very well. i am paid extremely well with EDS and would have a tough time going back to making $30-$40 per year!

I wish I made $30-$40 per year... do you read PC AI, Ray? if so, what do you think of it? and, think we (meaning of course, you...) could write a genetic algorythmic conference and/or participant? or, what sort of expert system direction would you like to see the Spring take? (unfortunately(?), I think the fuzzy logic topic on here should be in Philosophy...)

whoops, make that $30K-$40K per year! i do read PC AI. i really do not get that much out of it myself, tho i do like the ads that are in it. I definitely think that most of the AI topics we discuss here on line should be crosslinked between multiple confs, like science and philosophy. AI is not just one field and is very multidisclipinary.

the k's were implied in my response, also...

Do you know how to crosslink a topic, Ray?

ummmmm, nope, but i am certain that it is in a manual somewhere on armindale's web site or on the WeLL.

It's easy, just create the topic. Say you create a topic called biological warefare in science and it's topic 22. Then go to politics and type li science 22 If it doesn't work for, just ask wer to do it as cfadm It should work if you own the topic.

thanks, terry!

No sweat, just for fun I linked this topic to news. I went to news and typed li science 5 (or whatever the topic number was in science).

Studies point to space as origin of life's seeds WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Three studies published Thursday cast more light on how life originated on Earth, painting a picture in which space dust provided the seeds, and a warm, volcanic environment supplied the incubator. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9807/30/origins.reut/index.html

Galileo resumes beaming science data to Earth PASADENA, California (AP) -- The Galileo spacecraft touring the moons of Jupiter is again sending science data back to Earth after a glitch that forced a shutdown last week. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9807/30/galileo.ap/index.html

Forgot to pay it's long distance bill?

What are we talking about? Long distance bill? For what, Terry? Is my phone bill suddenly going to shoot up for clicking on the hyperlinks - note the fancy new word in my vocabulary?

scroll back a bit

Oh, okay, I'm with you again. And relieved.

i'm glad you're back, riette!

Thank you, Ray - glad you're back too. How was your business trip?

my trip went really well, actually. of course i spent most of the time in meetings, but some of them were actually fun and productive. the biggest thing that happened was that i have officially become a member of the EDS Government Consulting Group, which means (hopefully) some more money!

Mo' money! Yo, Ray.

Great! Congratulations, Ray! You're going to be and MMM from now on. A More Money Man.

Scientists on quest for deep sea mud (ENN) -- Scientists aboard the world's largest scientific drill ship, the JOIDES Resolution, are getting ready to study a cold-water current that today is 100 times the size of the mighty Amazon River. http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9808/06/joides.yoto/index.html This is a cool story because it reflects the enormous complexity of the weather systems of the earth. THe Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) is a massive current of cold water that circulates through the Southern Ocean and into the Pacific. Scientists are hoping to correlate it's stregth, temperature, and direction with global climate changes, and they will be using the sand the DWBC pushes around as an indicator of it's strength, temp, and direction.

Scientists map evolution of phytoplankton (ENN) -- Evolving into diverse forms over billions of years, tiny one-celled marine plants and bacteria have interacted with the changeable physics and chemistry of the land and sea to stabilize the relative concentrations of Earth's atmospheric gases, according to a report in the recent issue of the journal Science. This is a very cool story reflecting how important phytoplankton is to the world ecology. The things we are doing to the environment are affecting phytoplankton, and there is no way to predict what will come of this!

That sounds very interesting indeed. I find the whole thing about ecology quite fascinating, though I don't have a perfect understanding of how it works. On the farm where I grew up partly, ecology was very important, and alot of my granddad's work consisted of making sure that the balance between plant and animal remained perfect - he always said that even small errors in keeping the balance (over grazing, high or low mortality rates, and such things) could result in serious problems.

well dont feel bad riette, because no one has a complete understanding of how these things work! i also grew up in a farm and ranch setting, and to this day i am amazed at how my grandparents were able to maintain both a productive set of crops and keep a stock of animals going. it is a set of knowledge that predates written human history, and modern science is just now trying to come to grips with it. another good example of how delicate ecosystems can be is illustrated when an outside species invades an new and foreign environment by accident. a classic example is that of the goddamn fireants we have here in texas. fireants were introduced to this country from south america via boatloads of soil. now the goddamn things have invaded virtually every part of the southern U.S. and have brought many native species close to extinction. two of these species are ones that i grew up with and have fond memories of from childhood: red ants and the horned lizard (aka "horny toads").

Horny toads!! Think we have a few on the spring too! We had this weird bird plague on the farm once. Tiny birds, called 'vink' - but I don't know what they're called in English. Anyway, there were so many of them, they'd snap the branches of trees like twigs when they all descended at once to sit in the trees. It was really disgusting, and their crap clogged up the water pumps and everything. In the end it got so bad that my granddad and the men made many catapults out of desperation, and gave everyone these - women and children included. Because all ne had to do was to shoot into the air with a biggish stone, and the birds would fall two at a time. I did it once, a bird fell, and I was so sorry for the poor thing, I nursed it back to health - which Granddad didn't find particularly helpful. But it was awful. I'm not sure how he got rid of the birds in the end, but it was a disgusting business, and he had thousands of rands of damage, and the farm took almost two years to recover from the plague.

Where was this, Riette?

Have you got a map of Namibia in your hand? Well, it was in the north east, close to the border, and on the border of Hereroland, a small Herero 'country' in Namibia. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful flat land with savannah fields, leopard, lion, zebra, springbok, kudu, oryx, duiker, porcupine, warthog, poisonous snakes, ostrich, etc.etc.etc. A wonderful place to grow up, I can tell you. Where did you grow up, Terry?

Chautauqua, Illinois and St. Louis, MO, with a brief spell in Texas (1st grade).

Was it a nice place to grow up?

It was a wonderful place, a fairybook sort of town (Chautauqua).

In what sense? Were the houses made of chocolate?

Chautauqua was a little summer town nestled between two majestic bluffs on both sides and by the Mississippi River on the other side. There was only one road leading to it, and a dinky train ran along the river. We packed off for Chautauqua every summer of my childhood. The place had everything a kid could dream about. Tennis, roque, croquet, swimming, community sing and movies nearly every night, hiking, fencing, archery, baseball, basketball, etc. etc. The open air movie theater turned into a nondenominational Sunday School on Sunday morning. It was everything America should be, and isn't. A real community, centered around kids.

That sounds fabulous. Do you ever go back there now, Terry? And how far is it from Austin? Is there a bus/train one can catch to go there? See, I'm thinking of places to visit when I go to the spring party in Austin next year - I want to stay for a week or ten days if I can, and see what there is to see in the area. How about art? Are there any art galleries to visit? But these thing have to be a bus/train journey away - I don't drive, I'm ashamed to say. One doesn't need to in Switzerland, that's why.

It's several hundred miles to the North in another state, Illinois. So it's a major outing. But there is so much to do and see right here in central Texas. It would be impossible to cover this territory in any short period of time!

So what is there to see in central Texas? You want to go open a topic in travel, and tell me more about the sights and sounds of Texas? Don't want to muck up Ray's topic, but I would love to know what to expect.

Sure, I'll open it later! In travel.

I am the proud owner of one of these camcorders: Sony halts camera that can see through clothes Copyright � 1998 Nando.net Copyright � 1998 Reuters News Service TOKYO (August 12, 1998 09:36 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Electronics giant Sony Corp. said Wednesday it had halted shipments of some video cameras after finding they could be used for filming more of their subjects than meets the eye. Some versions of the Handycam have infrared technology which lets users shoot at night or in darkness in a "night shot" mode. But magazine reports revealed that when the special feature is used in daylight or a lighted room with a special filter it can "see through" clothing -- underwear can show up, especially on those lightly dressed, and people wearing swimsuits look almost naked. A Sony spokesman said the first the company knew of the camera's surprise feature was when reporters started asking for comments on the "new way" of using the camera. Sony technicians then experimented and confirmed that the technology had the unintended capability. "When we developed this feature for the Handycam, we were thinking of people filming night views -- their children sleeping, or perhaps the nocturnal behavior of animals," the spokesman said. Concerned at the possibility of less innocent users taking advantage of the technology, Sony has modified the camera so the "night shot" mode only works in the dark. Shipment of the new versions have already begun, replacing the original ones, which hit the market in March and had sold around 180,000 units in the domestic market by the end of July, the spokesman said. It sold 870,000 of the original cameras worldwide by the end of June, including 400,000 in North America and 290,000 in Europe. The spokesman said it is now shipping the modified version overseas. He denied local media reports that it had asked stores to remove the original versions from their shelves. The company declined to confirm retail prices, but media reports said the cameras range from $684 to $1,368 in Japan.

Will I get a knock at my door? How hilarious. I must test this.

You're really into technology and equipment, aren't you, Terry? BTW, thank you for helping me with the picture-thing. Haven't manage a single successful one again, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. Thank you.

You only need to put your url in quotes to make it work. I went in as super user and fixed all your minor little booboos in 'art'. You were a hair breadth away from getting it perfect.

�BIG BIG BIG HUG� Oh, sorry! Did I hug your wind out?

No, I have too much of a wind surplus, it felt good though. Just make sure your images are gifs or jpegs that end with .gif or .jpg. You can img src a url that ends with .htm or .html.

terry: POST THOSE PICTURES!

especially if'n you can get Stacey in front of that camera...

What pictures?

Hey, Ray!!

Which pictures?

any pictures you can capture from your Sony camera.

Oh, I almost forgot! Terry's Tantalizing Tool!

Ray, I thought you were going to post us your photo.

oh yeah, i will try to do that today!

That'll make my day.

I've got to get the right filter first.

Oh, I know just what you mean...

New "night vision" auto system detects faraway people, animals in the dark August 20, 1998 WASHINGTON (AP) -- A man on the side of the road changing a tire, a deer or dog darting into the street -- all hazardous and potentially deadly confrontations for a driver at night whose sight is limited to what is illuminated by his headlights. http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9808/20/night.visioncar.ap/index.html

More wet, dry areas worldwide in recent decades August 20, 1998 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regions of Earth experiencing unusually wet or dry conditions have increased over the past 20 to 30 years, researchers say in a report that will add to the debate over global warming. http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9808/20/wet.dry.ap/index.html

Milky Way reportedly ripping apart neighbor galaxies August 19, 1998 WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Milky Way's gravitational pull is ripping apart two smaller neighbor galaxies, astronomers in Australia announced Wednesday. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9808/19/dueling.galaxies.reut/index.html

Magic of Perfect Shuffles S. Brent Morris likes to say that he�s the only person with a doctorate in card shuffling. A mathematician at the National Security Agency (the world�s largest employer of mathematicians) in Fort Meade, Md., he is also a showman, specializing in card tricks. Morris demonstrated a number of feats of legerdemain at last month�s Mathfest in Toronto http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/8_1_98/Mathland.htm

well, that's why i never see horny toads anymore. hate those fireants. they're so aggressive.

Alien species push native animals near extinction September 10, 1998 Webposted at 6:35 PM EDT CARDIFF, Wales (Reuters) - All is not well in the animal kingdom and man is to blame for introducing rogue species into the environment, scientists said on Thursday. http://cnn.com/TECH/science/9809/10/science.animals.reut/index.html

Global Surveyor finds mysteries on a Martian moon September 12, 1998 Web posted at: 10:17 a.m. EDT (1417 GMT) LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Phobos, the larger of Mars' two small moons, is covered in hip-deep dust formed by meteoroid impacts over millions of years, according to images captured by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9809/12/martian.moon.ap/index.html

Oldest extraterrestrial debris offers clues to early conditions on Earth September 10, 1998 Webposted at 2:20 PM EDT (AP) -- It's old dirt, but it's old dirt that scientists can't get enough of. Cosmic grit that survived a fiery ride from space 1.4 billion years ago has been discovered in a layer of sandstone in Finland, offering a glimpse of conditions on Earth during the earliest stages of life's formation. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9809/10/cosmic.grit.ap/index.html

Global Surveyor finds mysteries on a Martian moon September 12, 1998 Web posted at: 10:17 a.m. EDT (1417 GMT) LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Phobos, the larger of Mars' two small moons, is covered in hip-deep dust formed by meteoroid impacts over millions of years, according to images captured by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. http://cnn.com/TECH/space/9809/12/martian.moon.ap/index.html

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service New evidence for vCJD risk from lamb 15:02� 03�August �01 Andy Coghlan New experiments suggest sheep eaten by British consumers in the early 1990s might have been infected with BSE. The fear is that if people have eaten infected sheep, they might develop variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human equivalent of mad cow disease. BSE-infected sheep could pose a greater human health risk than infected cattle. So far, the assumption has been that sheep cannot naturally contract BSE. Scrapie, the sheep equivalent of mad cow disease, is not thought to pose any risk to humans. Researchers at the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) at Compton in Berkshire injected mice with liquefied brain tissue from 3000 sheep diagnosed with scrapie in the early 1990s. The preliminary results suggest that some of these sheep might in fact have been suffering from BSE. "If BSE did spread to sheep it would be serious," says a spokesman for the UK Food Standards Agency, which has issued a bulletin warning of the early results. " continued at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991115

More support for the vegetarian cause.