The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has outlined a new research strategy to better understand how manufactured nanomaterials may harm human health and the environment. Nanomaterials are materials that are between approximately one and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is approximately 1/100,000 the width of a human hair. These materials are currently used in hundreds of consumer products, including sunscreen, cosmetics and sports equipment. The strategy outlines what research EPA will support over the next several years to generate information about the safe use of nanotechnology and products that contain nano-scale materials. The strategy also includes research into ways nanotechnology can be used to clean up toxic chemicals in the environment. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/6427a6b7538955c585257359003f0230/3058183a44280171852576400076bc35!OpenDocument

The DocumentCloud initiative—winner of this year’s largest grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation—has lined up some two dozen partners, everyone from Thomson Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, to the ACLU National Security Project, The National Security Archive, the Center for Investigative Reporting and many more. DocumentCloud will provide public access to news reporters’ original source materials. It will debut in a beta version by the end of this year. DocumentCloud will be software, a Web site, and a set of open standards that will make original source documents easy to find, share, read and collaborate on, anywhere on the Web. Users will be able to search for documents by date, topic, person, location, etc. and will be able to do "document dives," collaboratively examining large sets of documents. http://www.documentcloud.org/

New Rules Protect Patients' Genetic Information
News release: "Individuals’ genetic information will have greater protections through new regulations issued by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury. The interim final rule will help ensure that genetic information is not used adversely in determining health care coverage and will encourage more individuals to participate in genetic testing, which can help better identify and prevent certain illnesses."
Interim Final Rules Prohibiting Discrimination Based on Genetic Information in Health Insurance Coverage and Group Health Plans
Fact Sheet
Research Exception Form

This year's Nobel prize for medicine goes to the three US researchers who discovered how the body protects the chromosomes housing vital genetic code.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak jointly share the award.
Their work revealed how the chromosomes can be copied and has helped further our understanding on human ageing, cancer and stem cells.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8290094.stm

As demonstrations have evolved with the help of text messages and online social networks, so too has the response of law enforcement. On October 1, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh. The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. American protesters first made widespread use of mass text messages in New York, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, when hundreds of people used a system called TXTmob to share information. Messages, sent as events unfolded, allowed demonstrators and others to react quickly to word of arrests, police mobilizations and roving rallies. Mass texting has since become a valued tool among protesters, particularly at large-scale demonstrations. And police and government officials appear to be increasingly aware of such methods of communication. In 2008, for instance, the New York City Law Department issued a subpoena seeking information from the graduate student who created the code for TXTmob. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/nyregion/05txt.html?bl

Congress wants to cut taxpayer costs associated with presidential libraries and archives, and a new report (PDF) by the National Archives and Records Administration released Wednesday proposed five possible alternatives. It also warned that social networking tools will complicate future presidential record-keeping. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/10/the_future_of_presidential_lib.html?hpid=news-col-blog

The students who have long cherished the small library inside Dunster House, Harvard’s oldest dormitory, have discovered a new feature there: two brass bars stretching across nearly every shelf, making the books impossible to peruse. The unannounced change astonished those who revere the musty collection and have become accustomed to indulging in its broad span of history, fiction, and other genres.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/09/30/bars_on_books_jar_harvard_students/

New park service chief sees 'convergence' Los Angeles Times - ‎9 hours ago‎
To Jon Jarvis, who takes the helm of the National Park Service this week, the parks are on the verge of rejuvenation. Ken Burns' PBS documentary is sparking new enthusiasm, and a centennial is near.
Ohio's very own national park The Plain Dealer - cleveland.com
Creating National Parks New York Times

The dog’s nose is an amazing organ. It is considered to be thousands, even up to a million times more sensitive than that of the human nose. Dogs have 220 million olfactory receptor cells in the nasal passages compared to a human’s 5 million. Dogs accurately rely on their sense of smell for almost everything. Their sense of smell is extremely important to them to deliver vital information, even more so than that of their sense of hearing or even sight, (with the exception of sighthounds.) The whole interpretation of their surroundings is summed up successfully through this unique sense. The dog’s sense of smell is connected to the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/3950539.php?

Because social networks online are much more clearly defined than offline connections, they have been a boon to researchers. And studies are finding that despite dire predictions from naysayers who warned that spending too much time online would be damaging to real-life relationships, the opposite appears to be true. The findings, trickling in from early research, suggest health and psychological benefits for those who "friend" and are "friended." But as with all new media, critics say it's much too soon to know about all the possible long-term effects online social networking might have—from growing obesity and musculoskeletal problems to loss of privacy and overwhelming commercialism.
Whether they're face-to-face or virtual, social networks influence human behavior and shape everything from finances to the way people vote, say Christakis and co-author James Fowler, a social scientist at the University of California-San Diego. The authors suggest that the world is governed by what they call "three degrees of influence"—that is, your friend's friend's friend, most likely someone you don't even know—who indirectly influences your actions and emotions. Among those concerned about the Internet's effect on relationships are Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, and author of the 2005 book Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. Although he maintains a Facebook page that he says he checks for about 20 minutes a week, "because you have to know the nature of the beast," Bugeja says his concerns have only increased. "Most of the studies that have been done have been biased from the start," he says. And now, his unease is focused more on the social networking sites themselves, saying it's time to "step back from the hype about social networks" and look at the question from a computer science perspective. "They are essentially data mining what you are putting on that page," he says. "The application is not programmed to bring you a friend. The application is programmed to make money, and they make money by data mining and by selling virtual ads."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2009-09-27-social-networking_N.htm

On October 4, 1830, the country of Belgium was born, when the region was separated from The Netherlands.
Learn more about the founding of Belgium.
On October 4, 1974, the trial of Watergate conspirators HR Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Mitchell, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson began, Judge John Sirica presiding. Review transcripts of the Watergate tapes played at the outset of their trial.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/thisday/