End of Polio
We're about the see the end of polio, only the second time an entire disease is eradicated from the planet! The crippling virus, at its peak, paralyzed or killed about half a million people every year before development of new vaccine in 1955. As a result of one of the largest health initiatives in the world, we are 99% polio-free and by 2005, it is estimated the disease will be fully eradicated.... posted on Dec 12 2003, 1,073 reads

An 11-year-old boy who wanted to know what the Big Bang sounded like; that prompted University of Washington professor John Cramer to start a research project that gave startling results. Scientists now say that the universe began with a deep hum rather than a Big Bang. An analysis of radiation left over from the dawn of creation has been used to create audio files which can be played on a compu... posted on Nov 14 2003, 1,040 reads

Riding the Bamboo Bike
An Indian professor, D P Mishra, rides it everyday to work, it has a horn that sounds like a flute, and it is made largely from bamboo! Yup, it's a bamboo bike he has invented to make bicycles more affordable and to reduce pollution.... posted on Nov 12 2003, 1,148 reads

Can loud noises in the ocean, such as pings of sonar from a Navy ship, hurt whales and other marine mammals? Investigators examining 14 beaked whales that washed up in the Canary Islands during a military exercise last fall said that high-powered sonar from Navy ships appears to be giving whales and other marine mammals a version of the bends, causing them to develop dangerous gas bubbles in some... posted on Oct 24 2003, 945 reads

From the flocking geese to the spawning salmon, many animals can navigate. But exciting new research shows that lobsters can even find their way "home" no matter where they are! Caribbean spiny lobsters have an advanced magnetic compass sense that enables them to travel long distances in darkness to specific den locations. It's also the first signficant finding about the earth's magnetic field.... posted on Sep 26 2003, 1,292 reads

Leaf me alone! When plants get eaten, they send out distress signals to recruit predators to eat their assailants. Plants enlist bodyguards from higher up the food chain to kill the things that eat them. Scientists are now looking at ways to harness these chemical messages and offer fresh routes to crop protection.... posted on Sep 18 2003, 965 reads

The longest lasting symphony, scientists just discovered, has been playing for three billion years. And it's coming from a black hole that's 250 million light years away. Astronomers at Cambridge detected the sound to be B flat, the same pitch as a key near middle C on the piano. But the song of the Perseus Black Hole is 57 octaves below that middle C -- a frequency more than a million billion ... posted on Sep 13 2003, 862 reads

Astronomers in Australia say there are 10 times more stars in the visible Universe than all the grains of sand on the world's beaches and deserts. From the darkest parts of Earth, the naked human eye can see about 5,000 stars; from a brightly lit city street, only about 100. But modern telescopes tell a different story -- 70 sextillion, or seven followed by 22 zeroes.... posted on Aug 26 2003, 1,141 reads

Rick Woodbury starts every morning with silent meditation in a small Tibetan Buddhist temple in Spokane. His prayers call for an end to sickness, war and suffering, but since he doesn't know how to do those things, he decided instead to create an environmental traffic-busting car. ... posted on Jul 31 2003, 998 reads

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