Business and political leaders have repeatedly warned that America's scientists and engineers are in short supply. However, some economists say the numbers indicate the opposite — a glut of high-tech workers. A panel of experts debate whether America's schools produce the scientific workforce needed to compete globally.
On his upcoming trip to Mount Everest, mountaineer Conrad Anker will team up with geologist Dave Lageson to remeasure the peak's exact altitude--a stat scientists still dispute. Physiologist Bryan Taylor will also be in Nepal to monitor how Anker's blood, brain and muscles respond to the thin Himalayan air.
Estimated altitude for this flight was about 115,000 feet, says Raul Oaida, 18-years-old. Raul launched the shuttle, along with a video camera and a GPS tracker, by way of a large helium balloon. Flight time was about three hours--the shuttle landing about 150 miles south of where it took off.
Astrophysicist Adam Riess shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011 for his work on distant supernovae, which demonstrated that the universe was not only expanding--but that its expansion was accelerating. Now he's hunting for clues that might explain why, and one of the prime suspects is a mysterious force known as dark energy.
It's just an update, but people made lines in cities around the world to buy Apple's latest incarnation of the iPad.
Look at this line outside an Apple store in London:
And this scene at a Manhattan Apple store:
NPR's David Folkenflik was in New York City and he filed this report for our Newscast unit:
"In Manhattan, lines wrapped full city blocks at Apple Stores last night as fans waited to buy the new device in person — and that's just for an upgrade on the iPad.
Researchers made a bunch of male fruit flies into boozehounds by pushing them on females unreceptive to their advances.
After a few days of striking out, the male losers, referred to as the "rejected-isolated" group in a study published online by Science, drowned their sorrows in alcohol.
Alain de Botton is the author of Religion for Atheists.
A survey published in the U.K. in January predicted that within 20 years, the majority of the British population will define themselves as having no religion. In the British isles, religion has become something of a sideshow, even a joke. Remember that this is the land that gave us The Life of Brian. Even the BBC has caught on with a satirical series called Rev., about a hapless comedic clergyman who has no faith but has a strong inclination to be good.
Some of the documents seized last May after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan show that the al-Qaida leader "boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Barack Obama and Gen.
Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student "accused of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate's love life has been convicted of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy in a case that exploded into the headlines when the victim of the snooping committed suicide" in September, 2010, The Associated Press writes.
The 20-year-old "could face 10 years in prison when he's sentenced," the AP adds.
Is the battle for the GOP presidential nomination about history? Or is it about math? Santorum may be getting big headlines with his primary wins, but it's Romney who is advancing further to the magic 1,144 number. And more defeats mean more pressure on Gingrich to pull out. Plus: a tribute to the late Peter Bergman of Firesign Theater. NPR's Ron Elving and Ken Rudin have the latest in this week's political roundup.
Originally published on Fri March 16, 2012 11:56 am
The Oscar-winning actor George Clooney was arrested this morning, after he and supporters, including congressmen stepped onto the grounds of the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C.
The student council at the University of California Irvine approved a resolution Thursday demanding that Dr. Hazem Chehabi, Syria's honorary consul in Southern California, be removed from the post of chair at the UC Irving Foundation, which supports the school and is trying to raise $1 billion for it.
Scientists on the trail of "pine nut mouth," a nasty metallic aftertaste that some people get after eating the tender little nuts, have been stumped in their latest effort to zero in on the cause of the mysterious affliction.
Two Senate Democrats want the Justice Department to share more details about how it interprets a key provision of the Patriot Act. The lawmakers say the public has a right to know about a sensitive intelligence gathering program.
So Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Colorado Democrat Mark Udall have sent a letter of complaint to the attorney general. The senators say people would be stunned to know how the government is going about getting business records and other information under the U.S. Patriot Act.
John Updike wrote more than 25 novels. He was also a prolific short story and essay writer. Hundreds of his poems, criticisms and reviews appears in The New Yorker.
These interviews were originally broadcast on March 17, 1988, March 16, 1989, and Oct. 14, 1997. You can listen to the original broadcasts in their entirety here.
The student government at the University of California, Irvine voted Thursday night to call for the resignation of Dr. Hazem Chehabi, who is the chairman of its school's foundation. He also serves as the Syrian consul general in California. He is a personal friend of Syria's dictator Bashar Assad.
Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in February from January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported. The increase — the largest in the past 10 months — was mostly fueled by higher prices for gasoline.
Excluding the food and energy sectors, prices rose 0.1 percent. That's a sign that the so-called core rate of inflation remains in check.
According to BLS:
-- Gas prices spiked 6 percent last month and were up 12.6 percent from February 2011.
