Impeachment Web site offered
As the Clinton impeachment controversy continues, those interested in the history of the first time a president was impeached should check out a fascinating site on the Internet.Congress came close to removing President Andrew Johnson from office in 1868. One of the best news magazines of the time, Harper's Weekly, provided detailed coverage.
A free Web site has been set up containing more than 200 excerpts from the magazine's reports. Located at (http://www.impeach-andrewjohnson.com/), the site boasts biographies, portraits of leading characters in the battle, 47 illustrations and 27 cartoons (16 by Thomas Nast, the most famous cartoonist of the 19th century) and even an impeachment trial simulation game.
Of interest to history teachers and others who are trying to explain the present situation to students, the site has a lesson plan for classroom use.
False alarm at Tooele depot
Workers and residents near the Army's chemical weapons incinerator in Tooele County may well be thinking about the little boy who cried wolf.
On Nov. 23, emergency chemical agent detection sirens sounded for 15 minutes in the storage area of Deseret Chemical Depot, apparently warning of the release of toxic nerve or blister agent. Workers put on protective gear and left the area.
But it was all a mistake. A contractor performing repairs accidentally crossed the telephone and the siren wires, say depot officials.
"The depot's sophisticated monitoring equipment confirmed that no agent was present and workers were allowed to resume normal operations," says a press release.
Looping toward Saturn
NASA's Cassini spacecraft completed a 90-minute burn of the onboard rocket engine on Dec. 2, aiming the probe for a second flyby of the planet Venus.
Venus is the next major milestone on Cassini's long flight to Saturn, say officials of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The firing slowed the spacecraft by about 1,000 mph so that it was traveling 41,161 mph. This adjusted its flight to achieve a maximum boost in veolcity from Venus' gravity when it zooms past that planet in July.
Cassini was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, with the help of boosters built by Alliant Techsystems in Utah. In August it will loop past Earth. The next target is a swing by Jupiter.
The next time a "long burn" is planned, the engine will fire in July 2004, slowing Cassini so it goes into orbit around Saturn. Cassini continues to perform flawlessly, say JPL officials.
Bacterial soil cleaner
Researchers at Illinois Institute of Technology have genetically altered the burkholderia bacteria and turned it into a tool for cleaning up soil contaminated with DNT, a product of the breakdown of the explosive TNT.
Since DNT in the soil near ammunitions and explosives factories is often buried, and the process for breaking it down requires oxygen, researchers spliced the gene of the oxygen-bearing protein hemoglobin into the bacteria. Hemoglobin supplies the bacteria with extra oxygen and helps it to grow.