TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Russian decline? Healthy or humbled - the true state of Russian science news.bbc.co.uk |
Man wrangles sharks in the name of science Richard Fitzpatrick is a shark campaigner who says he lassoes and rides the man-eaters in the name of science, but makes it clear he is no entertainer. abc.net.au |
AP Enterprise: Feds mull regulating drugs in water Federal regulators under President Barack Obama have sharply shifted course on long-standing policy toward pharmaceutical residues in the nation's drinking water, taking a critical first step toward regulating some of the contaminants while acknowledging they could threaten human health.... hosted.ap.org |
We suffered, prospered, survived Originally published on 31 December 1999Tomorrow we salute the start of a new era in history. Today we say farewell to the turbulent 20th centuryWhat would they make of us now, those cheerful, confident subjects of the old queen, secure in the certainty that Britain was great and progress would make it still greater, who launched us 99 years ago into the 20th century? In some ways, they would find our world reassuringly familiar. There is still a Queen on the throne and a parliament at Westminster and cricket at Lord's. But elsewhere, our lives would astonish them.Most of these astonishments have something to do with science. The science is neutral; what makes it decisive for good or ill is the use to which we put it. In this century, we developed the means to destroy our planet. That it has been a time of unparalleled violence is not exclusively due to science. There was nothing very advanced about the technology of Auschwitz, or Cambodia, or Tutsi versus Hutu. But superior technology brought new pitches of destruction to war. In the Boer war, 20,000 British soldiers died, but three-quarters of those were due to disease. In the second world war, with a huge increase in airpower, perhaps 55 million people died. Nobody really knows. But in peace, we are safer than ever. Afflictions which in the first decade of this century were often fatal are now put right with a few convenient pills. Reading newspaper obituaries or even studying tombstones in graveyards, visiting Victorians would marvel at the ages we live to now.The car transports us about our own country and the aeroplane takes us to lands to which only a privileged few once had access. Science has taken us to the moon. We have radio and television, and the greatest transformation of all: the world wide web. As they walked our streets, Victorians would be mystified by the spectacle of so many chattering away to themselves, in a way that was once thought demented. But life without a mobile is unimaginable today.How should we account for ourselves, at the end of this century? In most senses, we are exceedingly lucky. We have survived; in a way that sometimes at the height of the second world war seemed in doubt. We may not be as rich as we wish to be, but by every previous standard, most people in Britain are swimming in money.The huge success of the Jubilee 2000 campaign on world debt, the explosion of green thinking, the campaigns against genetically modified crops – all of these furnish abundant evidence that the great greedy western consumer society, prospering while millions starve, is breeding suspicion, fear and a taste for remedial action.But that is hardly the general mood of the pubs, clubs and shopping precincts. There are sporadic outbursts of real generosity for suffering people whose plight is shown nightly on television. But a longer, deeper commitment to making the world a fairer and more hospitable place remains a minority taste. In the early years of this century a great radical politician born in the age of Victoria, David Lloyd George, looked forward "to that good time when poverty, wretchedness and the human degradation which always follows in its camp will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests". We are nearer to that today, but after almost a century, still nowhere as close as we ought to be. We have to embrace that aspiration again as a new era opens before us.CommunitiesSecond world warFirst world warSpace technologyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Divisions appear as GM canola is sanctioned West Australian farmers can now grow genetically modified canola after the State Government lifted a ban on the crop. abc.net.au |