In The News

Falungong’s Signals of Defiance of China

Jason Leow July 10, 2002
Using relatively cheap technology, followers of Falungong were able to interrupt the World Cup Finals and the anniversary of the Hong Kong handover broadcast on Chinese state television. Their purpose was to counteract state propaganda that has branded Falungong as an evil cult. While most of the interruptions were in rural China, which often receives TV programs celebrating China’s modernization...

Online, the Armies Have No Borders

William J. Holstein April 28, 2002
Internet armies don't necessarily have fatigues, guns, or the same citizenship. What they do have, however, is internet technology and a common ideology. As author Richard Hunter contends in an interview with the New York Times, groups ranging from anti-globalization activists to Al Qaeda terrorists are increasingly held together by the internet. Though the fluid spread of ideas across...

Japanese Computer Is World’s Fastest, as U.S. Falls Back

John Markoff April 20, 2002
Japan recently unveiled a supercomputer so powerful that it would take the 20 fastest American supercomputers combined to rival it. The innovation has shocked U.S. computer scientists who have dominated the supercomputer-building scene for the last decade. Some believe the reason that the Japanese model was able to outstrip American models was the focus behind its production. The Japanese...

A Different Take on Human Origins

John Noble Wilford March 7, 2002
Dr. Alan R. Templeton, a population biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that he has discovered primitive Homo sapiens’ initial migration out of Africa to be more than half a million years ago. Previously, the popular “Out of Africa” theory of modern human origin set the initial migration at only 100,000 years ago. Many scientists argue that these new findings will make the...

It’s a Real Slowdown at Campuses

Raja Simhan T.E. January 17, 2002
The information technology industry is recruiting fewer management and engineering graduates in India. Many engineering graduates have chosen to look only for jobs in more secure sectors, listing their first choice for a company as one that is “stable.” The reason for the lower recruitment rates in IT is due to the volatility of the industry. Even as offers were made in the previous year,...

How Islam Won, and Lost, the Lead in Science

Dennis Overbye October 30, 2001
While Europe was lost in the superstition of the Middle Ages, science reigned in the Muslim world as thinkers strove to understand the workings of Allah. The Koran was at once a source of inspiration for studying natural phenomena and comprehending them. Thus, astronomy, math, and other sciences flourished across the Islamic belt for centuries until science, for many reasons, began to decline....

Net gains for citizens

John W. Hunt September 28, 2001
Governments cut costs and improve service by putting more of their information and services online. The main obstacle, however, is access to the internet. A report by McKinsey Quarterly gives a model to implement web-based government services. The model follows three stages: 1) outsourcing of government services to a private supplier, 2) inter-departmental cooperation or “one-stop shopping” to...