The report, Public and Scientists' Views on Science and Society, was based on surveys of a sample of U.S. adults and, separately, a survey of scientists belonging to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS.Townes is best remembered for thinking up the basic principles of the laser while sitting on a park bench. Later in life he advised the U.S. government and helped uncover the secrets of our Milky Way galaxy.
Through it all, he maintained a deep religious faith.But those convenient little plastic pods can pile up quickly, and they're not recyclable. And that's created a monster of an environmental mess, says Mike Hachey. Literally. "He really was one of these rare people who could be a deeply thinking research scientist and yet, at the same time, be a deeply devout Christian," says Reinhard Genzel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.
Townes was born in 1915 in Greenville, South Carolina. He finished college at age 19. But often his smarts weren't the first thing that people noticed.Argentina-born Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, a 79-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, told undercover FBI agents posing as Venezuelan officials that he could design and supervise the building of 40 nuclear weapons for Caracas, including one targeted on New York City, in exchange for an unspecified amount of money.
Mascheroni, who was laid off from Los Alamos in 1988, is heard in recordings telling an agent that the bombs, to be developed over a decade, would keep the United States from invading Venezuela, according to The Associated Press.
The AP says:Next we have an update on a Super Bowl scandal. No, we do not mean that story about the deflated balls; however, they may have been deflated. But it is a cheating scandal about people cheating themselves. NPR's Shankar Vedantam joins us each week on this program. He's here now to talk about it. Hi, Shankar.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.Research into how the human brain develops helps explain. In a teenager, the frontal lobe of the brain, which controls decision-making, is built but not fully insulated — so signals move slowly.
"Teenagers are not as readily able to access their frontal lobe to say, 'Oh, I better not do this,' " Dr. Frances Jensen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross."I mainly pretended I was a student of traditional Chinese medicine to try to figure out not only what was being traded, but why it was being traded," Mills tells NPR's Arun Rath.
She says she found China's first tiger farm — complete with a hand-written ledgers filling up with orders for tiger bone.
Back then, when tiger trade was first flagged as an issue, the main demand for bone was for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Today, the trade has changed to more of a luxury goods market — and Mills says that although China banned the trade of tiger bone in 1993, demand for luxury items still thrives today. She estimates that there are 6,000 tigers on farms in the country.
In her book Blood of the Tiger, Mills chronicles her decades of work to bring these issues to light and protect these animals.
INSKEEP: Who's being cheated?On why teenagers are more prone to addictionThe Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is holding a public hearing on the proposal Feb. 12 in Portland. If it's approved by the commission in April, Clean Water Services will still need additional state approvals for an amended Recycled Water Reuse Plan before the brews are cleared for drinking.
Oregon rules allow recycled wastewater to be used for irrigation, industrial processes and groundwater recharge. They require additional approvals for human consumption to make sure all safety concerns are addressed. Avis Newell of DEQ says it's the first time the state has considered allowing people to drink treated wastewater.
Clean Water Services spokesman Mark Jockers said his company is the top provider of recycled water in Oregon. Its high-purity water treatment system turns sewage into water that meets or exceeds all drinking water standards.
The process includes three different treatment methods: ultra-filtration, which filters the water through very small pores; reverse osmosis, which passes the water through a membrane that blocks chemicals from passing through; and enhanced oxidation, which uses ultra-violet light and an oxidizing chemical to break down contaminants.
In September, Clean Water Services organized a brewing competition with beer made with about 30 percent purified wastewater. As The Oregonian reported, some craft brewers said they prefer the high-purity water because it lacks some of the minerals of tap water that they ordinarily have to remove to make beer.
Now, the company wants to take the idea to the next level with beer made entirely from treated effluent.But how long should these student athletes be out of school? A day? A week? A month? The latest research supports the idea of a gradual return to class and other activities, in a flexible program that's tailored to each student's injury and recovery from symptoms, rather than a blanket insistence on strict isolation and total rest for everyone. The aim is a more balanced approach that at least one high school — Trinity Christian Academy, in Addison Texas — is already trying to adopt.
For weeks after his concussion during a high school football game in 2013, Graham Hill, then a junior at Trinity, felt sick. His stomach hurt, he remembers. He was exhausted, and there was a pressure in his skull — like a balloon was being inflated in his head.