Enter Metal Rubber—a new patented material created by a team of researchers headed by Richard Claus, professor of materials sciences and engineering, and electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech. Claus’ team took six years to perfect Metal Rubber, collaborating with chemist Jennifer Lalli at NanoSonic, Inc., a Blacksburg, Virginia nanotechnology company of which Claus is president.

To make Metal Rubber, Claus and his team built it molecule by molecule, using a nanotechnology process they call "electrostatic molecular self-assembly," which means that Metal Rubber virtually assembles itself. "Molecular self-assembly is a process that's similar to the way that your bones grow," Claus explains. "Individual molecules are formed layer by layer on a surface."

The team starts with a plastic or glass substrate, or base, that they have given an electric charge, either positive or negative. Then they dip the base alternately into two water-based solutions, one containing plastic molecules that have been given a positive electrical charge, and the other containing plastic molecules with a negative charge. If the base has a positive charge, it goes into the negative molecules first, and they cling to the base, forming a layer only one molecule thick. After the next dipping, into positive molecules, a second ultra thin layer forms. Making Metal Rubber, Claus explains, is like “making a layer cake.”

Claus says that with Metal Rubber, nanotechnology has produced a material with many potential uses. One of the most exciting is to make what he calls "morphing aircraft structures. These are aircraft that dynamically change the shape of their wings and their control surfaces during flight," he explains. "Almost the way that a hawk might fly along, see prey, and change its shape to dive down. The hawk changes the shape of its body, and when it does that, it needs to be able to sense what the outside forces and pressures are so it knows how to fly. For a plane, you need a material that's mechanically flexible. But you also need a material with a surface that's controlled by sensors and electrical conductors that allow it to do that sensing and change shape accordingly. This material might allow sensors that can be flexed." Now NanoSonic is working in partnership with Lockheed Martin to explore Metal Rubber's potential in aerospace.

The voter survey in the independent al-Mada newspaper, one of Iraq's most respected dailies, was conducted last week in eight main districts of Baghdad.

Based on a sample of 300 respondents, it found that 67 percent of Baghdad voters planned to participate. Twenty-five percent said they would not take part, and the rest were undecided.

A high turnout in the city of 5 million to 6 million could raise the credibility of the voting, which will take place under the threat of suicide bombings and other attacks on polling stations.

"These figures are positive and indicate that Iraqis are undeterred by the threats," a spokesman for Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission said.

Nevertheless, terrorists bent on sabotaging the election continued their grim work yesterday.

Witnesses said burned bodies were scattered in a police compound in Baiji after a car bomb killed at least seven policemen in the oil refining town north of Baghdad. At least 25 persons, mostly police, were wounded.

At the center of the issue is a process by which those who register on election day are sent postcards to confirm the address before they are entered onto permanent voting rolls.

By law, Stone said, the process was to begin right after the election, though he says the cards were not sent until Jan. 6. Of the 83,000 or so same-day registrations, a number city officials acknowledge, Stone said he was told only 73,079 cards could be mailed.

That leaves a gap of about 10,000, which he argues is evidence of serious problems.

"The one fail-safe you have on these people is to the addresses on the cards," he said. "We have 10,000 of them that can't be verified."

It is unclear how many of the cards have been returned as undeliverable.

Stone: There's 83,000 people who registered at the polls, and there's 10,000 we can't contact. That's just unbelievable.

Wagner: Now just to put it in perspective, that's, that 10,000 figure, these aren't cards that have been returned as undeliverable, right, these are cards they can't even send out because the information's so bad, right?

Stone: Exactly, and I, I think if, if the trend follows as we've seen before, we're going to see 10, 20, possibly even 30,000 of those cards that they did mail out that are going to be returned, and we're going to have just a tremendous number of votes that were cast that we can't account for the people that cast them. And I think that's just, uh, extremely detrimental to people's confidence in elections in this state overall.

Wagner: Now what's the reason you're being given for why they can't send out that, that 10,000, that they can't even mail them out to prove whether or not, ya know, somebody actually legitimately showed up to vote.

Stone: Well they said they're illegible, they said they, they used a term that some of them were duplicates. Now I don't know if that means the, and, and they haven't clarified that yet. Uh, which if you read the article you see that, uh, they're still trying to scrambling trying to come up with answers, but, umm, I don't know if that means they got two cards from the same person, or if they had cards filled out for people that were registered in other areas, but there is definitely a larger problem here that needs to be taken up, and I think it just points to a flaw in the way we cur-, that we have our elections structured currently, that there's no way to properly identify who's voting in our elections in this state right now.

Wagner: Well, and, as of, yeah, we still don't have an answer to all the, the phony addresses that were identified right before the election. Ya know, you had all these people who were registered to addresses that don't come back to valid addresses. We still don't have an answer as to how pervasive that problem is, either.

Stone: Well there were, you're exactly right. There were 37,000 of those addresses that were questionable, there's, um, and there was the agreement that was struck before the election that they were going to, uh, um, there were 5500 of those addresses that they were going to be checking at the polls, and ya know, all indications I have is that agreement was not lived up to on the part of Milwaukee Election Commission. So, ya know, there's just, it just is a problem that seems to be compounding the deeper you look into it

Al Taee, 37, of Phoenix, was among thousands of Iraqi expatriates who showed up at polling stations in 14 countries from Australia to the United States on Monday to register to vote in their homeland's first independent election in nearly 50 years.

Cities in four other states held registration for the Jan. 30 election, including Michigan, Tennessee, Maryland and Illinois. About 240,000 Iraqis are eligible to vote in the United States, according to Roger Bryant of the International Center for Migration, which is in charge of the overseas voting for the Iraqi government.

Eligible voters can be American citizens, but must be 18 or older, have been born in Iraq, hold citizenship or prove that their father was Iraqi.

Preparations for the election around the world mirrored those in Iraq itself, where the top U.S. general there predicted violence during the national election but pledged Monday to do "everything in our power" to ensure safety of voters.

Eligible Iraqis abroad - estimated to number 1.2 million - can vote in Britain, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the United States.

The worm appears with the subject line: "Tsunami donation! Please help!" and invites recipients to open an attachment called "tsunami.exe" -- which, if opened, will forward the virus to other Internet users.

It could also initiate a denial-of-service attack against a German hacking Web Site, Sophos said, in which the site's server would be bombarded with messages, putting it out of action.

"Duping innocent users into believing that they may be helping the tsunami disaster aid efforts shows hackers stooping to a new low," Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley said in a statement.

The White House made no public announcement of the penalties, and the State Department placed a one-page notice on page 133 of The Federal Register early this month listing eight Chinese companies affected. The notice kept classified the nature of the technology they had exported.

[...]

China has repeatedly vowed to curb its sales of missile technology, starting with an agreement with the first Bush administration in 1992, and expanded with the Clinton administration in 2000.

But two of the largest companies cited in the State Department's list, China Great Wall Industry Corporation and China North Industry Corporation, known as Norinco, have been repeatedly penalized for more than a decade; each is closely linked to the Chinese military.

A third company on the penalties list, the China Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation, or Catic, is one of the country's largest producers of military aircraft and was accused of diverting to military use sophisticated machine tools bought from McDonnell Douglas. Eighteen months ago, a senior State Department official, Paula A. DeSutter, referred to several of the companies as part of China's "serial proliferator problem," and told a Congressional commission on relations between the United States and China that although the Chinese government had often repeated its opposition to missile proliferation, "the reality has been quite different."

The Iranian operation, which the article claims has been underway since last summer, intends to identify as many three dozen Iranian military or nuclear sites for US missile attacks or commando raids.

Lawrence DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said in a statement on Monday that many of the facts upon which the story is based are inaccurate. Neither he nor Dan Bartlett, the White House spokesman, commented directly on the commando operations claim, however.

"Mr Hirsch's sources feed him with rumour, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programmes that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made," the Mr DiRita said.

The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state—and President Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control against Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism.

Tickets to the president's swearing-in, thousands of which were handed out free by congressional offices, are now commanding hundreds of dollars from scalpers who are hawking them on Web sites like eBay and in the classified section of local papers.

Entrepreneurs are also selling tickets to the inaugural balls, parade and other events at steeply marked-up prices. Ball tickets that were available for $150 through the Presidential Inauguration Committee are now selling for about $1,000, for example.

SUFFOLK — On paper, Lisa W. Rath’s ordeal ends Tuesday. A juvenile court judge will sentence one of her students, a girl who savagely beat her in a King’s Fork Middle School hallway last year.

But not everything is in the court record.

Not the nightmares. Not the panic attacks. Not the answers to the Big Question: Will she be able to put this behind her and stand in front of a classroom again?

1. On the challenge from bloggers: The "platform" - print, TV, Internet, telepathy, whatever - will change, but the public hunger for reliable information will grow. Blogs will compete with op-ed columns for "views you can use," and the best will morph out of the pajama game to deliver serious analysis and fresh information, someday prospering with ads and subscriptions. The prospect of profit will bring bloggers in from the meanstream to the mainstream center of comment and local news coverage.

On national or global events, however, the news consumer needs trained reporters on the scene to transmit facts and trustworthy editors to judge significance. In crises, large media gathering-places are needed to respond to a need for national community.

2. On resentment of media elitism by awakened cultural and religious voices: They're not crazies. Their opinions on stem cells and same-sex marriage are newsworthy and not an assault on church-state separation. Protests at "wardrobe malfunction" and campaigns against state-sponsored gambling are neither bluenosed nor repressive.

But there is no need for sensible seculars in mainstream media to feel an urgent call to get right with religion. It's O.K. to say "Merry Christmas" at the end of a newscast without worrying about equal greeting for Ramadan and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and all the rest.

"B'nai B'rith is supporting the more conservative elements in the Muslim community, and that's not good for women," said Ester Reiter, a secular Jewish feminist and a professor of women's studies at Toronto's York University. "I'm not sure what a smart idea that was. Tradition should not be used as an excuse for limiting gender equality."

The decision of B'nai B'rith Canada also is likely to surprise some observers, who have noted its tendency to oppose Muslim groups on foreign policy issues.

If the proposal is adopted, it would be the first recognition of Islamic law, or Sharia, in any Western society. Sharia is a centuries-old system of justice based on the Koran. While it includes general invocations of justice and equality, it has been used in some Muslim nations to justify stoning of adulteresses, flogging of rape victims and various types of mutilation.

While Ontario Muslims favoring Sharia are not seeking its application in criminal matters, they want it approved for arbitration of family and civil matters. Even this is controversial. Under Sharia, male heirs receive almost double the inheritance of females. Alimony is limited to a period ranging from three months to one year, unless a woman was pregnant before she was divorced. Only men can initiate divorce proceedings, and fathers virtually always are awarded custody of any children who have reached puberty.

The government report noted that religious-based arbitration can only bind parties who voluntarily submit their dispute to the process, and even then the arbitrator cannot impose settlements that are contrary to the gender equality guarantees contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Also, the federal Divorce Act would continue to require that "the best interests of the child" be the criterion in custody decisions.

B'nai B'rith Canada and pro-Sharia Muslims contended in submissions to the government inquiry that rabbinical courts have functioned successfully as arbitration forums in Canada for generations, and that Islamic courts must be given the same rights under Canadian constitutional guarantees of equality and freedom of religion.

Transparency International ranks Indonesia in its top 10 of worst offenders, with an ungovernable reputation for kickbacks, collusion and bribery that has scared away badly needed foreign investment.

Aceh's governor Abdullah Puteh is behind bars at the moment, accused in a helicopter purchase embezzlement scam worth 100,000 dollars -- a paltry sum compared to the 35 billion allegedly amassed by former dictator Suharto (news - web sites).

New President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has described his country's lack of probity as the laughing stock of Asia, said after the disaster that the misappropriation of relief funds would not be tolerated.

"It's a very serious problem," according US ambassador to Jakarta B. Lynn Pascoe, who says Indonesia will receive a substantial part of 350 million dollars promised by the United States.

Despite the concerns, there are indications that the Indonesian government is taking steps to prevent corruption as it strives for credibility on an international stage upon which it is a relative newcomer.

While President Bush has called for a guest worker program that has been decried by many in his own party, little attention has been focused on regulations published in recent weeks by the Department of Labor, which seeks to address this issue. In contrast to legislation proposed by Bush, which would only provide temporary working visas, these new regulations provide the basis for lawful permanent resident status that could lead to citizenship.

The stated goal of the new regulations is to reduce the processing time for certification to 45 to 60 days.

The Department of Labor has spent the past two years working with industry groups to develop regulations that would balance the needs of employers with safeguards against abuse. Currently, more than 315,000 potential foreign workers are awaiting a decision on their respective applications for positions in the United States.

In every case, these are jobs U.S. employers have been unable to find U.S. workers to fill.

With diminishing resources at the Department of Labor, the wait has grown increasingly longer. With such uncertainty, it is little wonder that companies have turned to outsourcing and that many of the most talented scientists, teachers and researchers have elected to seek immigration to other countries.

We chose as our House and Senate leaders (and thus the public face of the party) Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid--two honorable, decent people who nevertheless have done little to inspire confidence that they could successfully fight a parking ticket, let alone the war against terrorism. We chose (by abdicating responsibility to two extreme-ish members of Congress) to mount a formal, indignation-filled challenge to the results in Ohio--despite the fact that George Bush won by 100,000 votes, as compared to the 537 he (ostensibly) won by in Florida.

[...]

Of course, upgrading the salesmen won't dramatically change the results if we don't also upgrade the product we're marketing. Right now the clear majority of voters--including large swaths of the country--don't trust us to keep them safe or share their values, and we have a long way to go to rethink our messages and policies and ultimately rehabilitate our credibility. But we have to remember that politics is the art of persuasion, and in this era of diminishing party identification, elections more and more are tough tests of individual leadership. This last presidential campaign proved that in spades. And our test now as Democrats is whether we can select and empower strong, savvy and compelling men and women to not only chart our course but change it.

[...]

The bottom line? We need more bottom-line thinking before we decamp to New Hampshire once again. Adapt or Die, I say.

The infant dubbed "Baby 81" nurses from a bottle of milk and kicks playfully at a pink blanket as nine desperate, heartbroken women quarrel over him, all claiming he was torn from them by last month's tsunami.

One man standing outside the nursery at Kalmunai Base Hospital threatened to kill himself and his wife if they are not given the baby. A woman at the hospital said she would kill the doctors if he is not returned to her.

The battle over the wide-eyed boy, who appears to be about three or four months old, symbolizes the enormous loss in the Dec. 26 tsunami disaster.
Children accounted for a staggering 40 percent, or 12,000, of Sri Lanka's death toll of nearly 31,000. In all, nearly 160,000 people have died across southern Asia.

The loss is especially keenly felt in the Ampara district, where the fight over "Baby 81" is taking place. There were 10,436 people killed in Ampara, the highest in Sri Lanka.

"On an issue of this magnitude, it is the only right thing to do to allow the people to exercise their vote," said Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, echoing statements of other senators who voted for the amendment.

Democrats Donald Betts of Wichita and Greta Goodwin of Winfield voted against it, saying it had discriminatory language and would open the state up to costly and needless lawsuits.

"I was not going to place anything in the constitution that would outright discriminate," Betts said. "It's just a sad day."

Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, said she voted for the amendment to reflect the "huge number of constituents" who favored it. But she personally plans to vote against it if it is placed on a statewide ballot.

[...]

The proposed amendment approved by the Senate has two parts: a definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, and a second part that says only couples fitting that definition can be granted the "rights or incidents" of marriage.