Index Last Week Contact DQ News
Air Force Details a New Theory in U.F.O. Case
In a lengthy front page article in the June 25th issue of the New York Times, senior staff journalist William J. Broad presents conflicting versions of events that took place in the desert near Rosewell New Mexico 50 years ago. The latest U.S. Air Force report about the so-called "Rosewell Incident" was released on June 24th. In it, the Air Force claims that data regarding the "incident" were actually based upon observations that took place over many years, beginning with the crash of a secret nuclear test monitoring balloon in July, 1947. The Air Force claims that much of this "data" was based on faulty recollection, and sightings of dummies resembling humans that were used in other balloon and parachute tests and badly-burned human remains from aircraft crashes.
Critics of the Air Force report maintain that the latest government report is part of a massive cover-up of extraterrestrial landings. The article concludes that it appears unlikely that the Air Force report will end the debate between the Air Force and flying saucer fans.
Registry Laws Tar Sex-Crime
Convicts With Broad Brush
According to a front page article in the July 1st issue of the New York Times, seriously-flawed data may compromise the effectiveness of so called "public notification laws" for convicted sex offenders. According to the article (written by Times journalist Todd Purdum) officials in California and several other states acknowledge that convicted sex offender databases are "riddled with errors."
Included among the errors are persons included in sex offender databases who were arrested decades ago for conduct that is no longer classified as "criminal," out-dated or incomplete information, and no information for thousands of convicted sex offenders. Moreover, sex offender databases are often "packaged" in a way designed to panic both a community and convicted sex offenders who have lived in the community for decades without incident.
Finally, there is great variability among the sex offender databases set up in all 50 states, insofar as how the information is "packaged" and what information is released to the public. In some states the police use discretion and seek to avoid overreaction by the public. In others, the police notify a convicted sex offender's immediate neighbors and the rest of the community.
Residential Exposure to Magnetic Fields and
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Children
A carefully-designed study supported by the National Cancer Institute, the University of Minnesota, and several other institutions found "little evidence that living in homes characterized by high measured time-weighted average magnetic-field levels or by the highest wire-code category increases the risk of ALL in children." The study appeared in the July 3rd issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The study enrolled 638 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) under 15 years of age and 620 controls in a study of residential exposure to magnetic fields generated by nearby power lines. The study employed survey interviewers and technicians to collect socioeconomic, demographic, and technical data. Those who collected data were unaware of the respondents' status as a control or patient. Technical data concerning type of wiring and measured magnetic fields were collected for all the dwellings where the patients and controls had resided since conception (child's bedroom, family room, kitchen, living room, and the room where the child's mother had slept while pregnant). An additional longtitudinal study of 50 homes was initiated to determine seasonal variability and reproducibility of magnetic field measurements.
Data collection in this study was designed to address the limitations of earlier studies. These included long intervals between the diagnosis of ALL and magnetic field measurements, fewer potential confounding variables, and fewer magnetic field measurements in the home (or homes) where the subjects and controls had resided since conception.