When it comes to Bisphenol A (BPA) exposure from polycarbonate plastic bottles, it’s not whether the container is new or old but the liquid’s temperature that has the most impact on how much BPA is released, according to University of Cincinnati (UC) scientists.
Scott Belcher, PhD, and his team found when the same new and used polycarbonate drinking bottles were exposed to boiling hot water, BPA, an environmental estrogen, was released 55 times more rapidly than before exposure to hot water.
“Previous studies have shown that if you repeatedly scrub, dish-wash and boil polycarbonate baby bottles, they release BPA. That tells us that BPA can migrate from various polycarbonate plastics,” explains Belcher, UC associate professor of pharmacology and cell biophysics and corresponding study author. “But we wanted to know if ‘normal’ use caused increased release from something that we all use, and to identify what was the most important factor that impacts release.”
“Inspired by questions from the climbing community, we went directly to tests based on how consumers use these plastic water bottles and showed that the only big difference in exposure levels revolved around liquid temperature: Bottles used for up to nine years released the same amount of ...   more »

  The US Navy test fired the world's most powerful electromagnetic railgun Thursday, launching a projectile at a velocity of 2,500 meters per second, or 5,600 miles per hour, into a bunker.
The test marks the latest step in US efforts to develop a futuristic naval gun that can hit a target more than 200 nautical miles away with a non-explosive slug traveling at between five and seven times the speed of sound.
Instead of chemical propellants, the railgun uses electromagnetic energy to propel a slug along rails before launching it at a velocity of about Mach 7, officials said.
"The gun is designed to launch these projectiles extremely far, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 nautical miles, and their impact velocity is extremely high, somewhere in the vicinity of Mach 5," said Jim Boyle, a spokesman for the Office of Naval Research.
"So it is an extremely fast moving, long range system," he said.
The test model bears little resemblance to a gun. Instead, thick black cables plug into the rear of what looks like a long rectangular grill.
That armature holds the rails together as a powerful electric current surges through them, pushing the slug forward.
In Thursday's ...   more »

By Joe Kaufman
With its similarity to popular online sites such as Facebook and MySpace and its links to a network of grassroots blogs, Barack Obama’s campaign website has been hailed as a testament to the candidate’s transformative politics. But at least part of the senator’s online outreach, “Muslim Americans for Obama ’08,” proposes installing Muslim prayer areas in public places and giving Muslims time off for prayer and has denounced Obama’s colleagues in the U.S. Senate who happen to be Jewish. This segment of Obama's online outreach also has ties to unindicted co-conspirators in terror trials and has recruited Obama supporters from among the ranks of fundamentalist Muslim extremists.
On the blog, which is attached to BarackObama.com, viewers can read about “the Senate pro-Israeli zionist hawk Joe Lieberman,” as well as criticism aimed at Obama himself for getting too cozy with the Israeli lobby. As stated on the blog, that last part was derived from information found on Electronic Intifada (EI), a terror apologist website based in Chicago, Illinois, Obama’s hometown. According to the site’s co-founder, Ali Abunimah, Senator Obama once told him, regarding Abunimah’s anti-American and anti-Israel writings, to “Keep up the good work!”
While the Muslim Americans ...   more »

 by Ed Stoddard
DALLAS - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s continued presence in the Republican presidential race has kept the white evangelical vote divided, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.
Its latest national survey, conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 2 among 1,502 adults, found that Arizona Sen. John McCain now holds a substantial lead among all segments of the Republican electorate — with the notable exception of white evangelical Protestants.
McCain and Huckabee’s support among the voters in this key Republican base was divided evenly at 34 percent a piece.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith is viewed by many evangelicals as a heretical cult, had 17 percent of the support among these voters.
But both McCain and Romney has seven-point gains from the previous month with this group of voters as other candidates dropped out while Huckabee’s support remained stagnant at 34 percent.
This suggests that if Huckabee’s campaign fades, evangelicals are already starting to look to either McCain or Romney to be their political saviours.
Huckabee is an ordained Baptist preacher who has connected well with this conservative constituency, which is stridently opposed to abortion rights and gay marriage and has become one of ...   more »

From Kelli Arena and Carol Cratty
CLARKSBURG, West Virginia (CNN) -- The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people's physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.
But it's an issue that raises major privacy concerns -- what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.
The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans.
Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI's Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is "important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in."
But it's unnerving to privacy experts.
"It's the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Project.
The FBI already has 55 million ...   more »