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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (39248)	3/11/2004 7:44:32 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

March 9, 2004, 9:54PM GOP learns Bush, gasp, is the problem By CRAGG HINES Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Like antsy dogs before an earthquake, some Republicans sensed trouble. They were barking about the deficit, chasing their tails over the immigration proposal. A number had even begun baying about Vice President Dick Cheney. But when the tremor struck Monday (on the evening news) and the strong aftershocks continued Tuesday (in the morning newspapers), the party seemed astonished at the real cause of their prescient unease: President Bush. The White House and Republicans came face-to-face with a pair of new national surveys that not only show Democrat John Kerry leading the president in the horse-race question (For whom would you vote if the election were held today?) but also find Bush trailing even more distantly in other key measures of voters' underlying sentiments. Taken together, the surveys are much more dire news than the White House had been predicting and for which it has been struggling to steel the faithful. Perhaps the worst news for Bush and the Republicans was a question in the Washington Post-ABC survey (1,202 adults, Thursday-Sunday) that asked: "Which of these two statements comes closest to your own views: A. After four years of George W. Bush, we need to elect a president who can set the nation in a new direction. B. We need to keep the country moving in the direction Bush has taken us." Same direction got 41 percent, new direction 57 percent. Two percent, bless their indecisive hearts, expressed no opinion. That is the type of Bush-specific finding that defies malinterpretation by the wiliest of White House spinmeisters. A clear majority of Americans say (at least at the moment) that they are looking for something different. It is one growing deficit the administration will kiss off at its peril. It is a finding that does not meld well with the overarching Bush campaign themes of steadiness and staying the course. What if the course is one on which Americans do not wish to stay? The exact same split showed up when the ABC-Washington Post respondents were asked: "Please tell me whether the following statement applies to George W. Bush or not: He understands the problems of people like you." Yes, 41 percent. No, 57 percent. These inquiries paint an even worse picture for Bush and his campaign strategists than his precarious rating in the new USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll (503 adults, Friday-Sunday), which found 49 percent approve and 48 percent disapprove of the way the president is handling his job (a record-tying low for Bush in that survey). That same sort of narrow divide was reflected in response to a question in the Washington Post-ABC poll: "Overall do you think George W. Bush has done more to unite the country, or has done more to divide the country?" Unite, 48 percent; divide 49 percent. Again, worrisome territory for an incumbent whose first campaign was based (fraudulently as it has turned out) on his stated desire to bring us together. In policy terms, the findings of both surveys buttress Bush's decision to run as a war president. It's about all he's got. He can't run as the jobs president, the education president, the Social Security president, the health care president. Unfortunately for Bush, those issues -- and not the fight against terrorism or the war in Iraq -- are the ones on which most of the surveys' respondents say they will base their vote in November. Thankfully, Bush's exploitive use of scenes from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in his campaign-opening television ads was seen as inappropriate by a majority (54 percent) of the USA Today-CNN-Gallup respondents. Not that it will have any effect on Bush's refusal to drop the ads. While raising even more campaign funds in Texas on Monday, Bush again defended the use of the images by recalling how he had gone to Ground Zero. Fine. He can use pictures of himself standing on the rubble, not the flag-draped corpse of a fireman being carried from the wreckage. Bush also used his trip back home to pounce on what he called Kerry's attempt "to gut" the budget of the nation's intelligence services. Kerry proposed in 1995 to cut $1.5 billion from the CIA's appropriation over five years. How kind of the president to point out a sensible proposal that would have helped to shut down what Kerry's campaign called "essentially a slush fund for defense contractors." Kerry's proposed cut would have amounted at the time to about 1 percent of the CIA's annual budget. Some gut. The best news for Bush came in the USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they think that Bush will win the election. Bush would take that margin in a heartbeat. Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C. (cragg.hines@chron.com)

To: lurqer who wrote (39248)	3/11/2004 2:12:08 PM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Very interesting technology development... Lab land mine detection technology gets glowing results There’s no need to explain why land mines left over from various wars are perceived to be a problem in the world. There are plenty of pictures of maimed children to get that point across. Technologies for getting rid of land mines and unexploded ordnance are being sought by the U.S. Department of Defense and a number of humanitarian agencies. One such technology now under study at ORNL could take advantage of the same microscopic, genetically engineered creatures that are also being used in waste management technologies. These bacteria can be genetically engineered to glow in the presence of certain compounds—even explosives. Bob Burlage in the Environmental Sciences Division has been working with these bacteria, Pseudomonas, for a number of years. Biotechnologies using bacteria hinge on the tiny organisms’ abilities to metabolize and break down organic compounds or transform heavy metals—if you match the right bacteria with the right meal. “Bacteria live everywhere, and they respond to all different kinds of substances,” Burlage says. “Luminenscence—glowing in visible light—and fluoresence—glowing in ultraviolet light—are rare in bacteria,” he says. “However, since genetic engineering began in 1975 we’ve learned that the chromosomes in bacteria can be modified to make the bacteria glow in the presence of certain chemicals. We essentially stitch together a few genes and stick them in. Then it’s no problem to produce usable quantities of them.” Environmental microbiologists in ESD first applied the technique to environmental remediation. The bacteria, when applied to soil, would glow if the soil was contaminated with solvents like toluene or xylene. “TNT is closely related to these solvents chemically, so it was fairly simple to modify these bacteria to fluoresce in its presence,” Burlage says. The plan, which Burlage has described to DoD representatives and others, is to spray a solution of genetically engineered Psuedomonas over a field. Land mines and unexploded shells have a tendency, over time, to leak the explosives into the adjoining earth. When the Pseudomonas contacts the explosives and starts metabolizing it, it triggers the gene that elicits the tattletale uv glow—“Here it is.” Although it hasn’t been tried in the field, Burlage says, “It works in the lab. Land mines leak the explosive chemicals in the parts per million range, which is just right for these bugs. Vegetation also tends to take up the chemicals, so the bacteria glowing on the vegetation could even localize the explosives more.” Although Burlage says he’s seen mines put in some nonsensical places, they are most often placed in roadways and open fields where troops and tanks are likely to tread, and those are places that would be ideal for the bacteria. Places they wouldn’t work, he says, would include rice paddies and other wet areas, which would disperse the bacteria, and rough jungle and snow. Past ESD experiments have studied the effectiveness and safety of genetically engineered bacteria. In 1996 researchers at the Field Lysimeter Facility near Y-12’s west end filled large tanks with contaminated soil and treated the soil with microorganisms selected for bioremediation. “We used simple chemicals—anthracene, naphthalene—to test the process and to make sure that everything went right. We took a lot of precautions in those experiments, but now that we are more confident on how to do the process correctly and have explored what unintentional effects might arise, further experiments should go much faster,” Burlage says. The soil lysimeter studies, funded by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research, were the first field applications of genetically engineered microorganisms for bioremediation. If funding agencies are sufficiently interested, the glowing bacteria might someday soon be saving innocent lives and limbs as well as cleaning up the environment.—B.C. ornl.gov