Madame Butterfly

New monkey species

found in Tanzania

Conservationists urge

expansion of park

to preserve highland mangabey

 

Tim Davenport / WCS

 

 

Updated: 12:08 p.m. ET May 20, 2005

WASHINGTON - Two separate teams of researchers working hundreds of miles apart have discovered a new species of monkey in Tanzania.

 

The highland mangabey is the first new species of monkey identified in 20 years, and conservationists immediately said the find showed how important it was to preserve African forests.

 

The highland mangabey is a medium-sized monkey, about 3 feet (90 centimeters) tall with a long tail, long brown fur and black face, hands and feet.

 

 

 

Adults make a distinctive, loud, low-pitched "honk-bark" call. They live in mountainside trees at elevations of up to 8,000 feet (2,400 meters).

 

Fewer than 1,000 of the animals live in the highland forest, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Hunters had described the animals but no scientist had identified them before.

 

"If this small population is to be protected in perpetuity, the Udzungwa Mountains National Park needs to be extended to include the Ndundulu Forest," the researchers wrote.

 

The two teams behind the discovery were led by Carolyn Ehardt, a primatologist at the University of Georgia working in Tanzania's Udzwunga Mountains National Park; and Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society, working in Tanzania's Southern Highlands, almost 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the southwest. Trevor Jones, who worked at the national park, was the Science paper's lead author. The teams also included other researchers from WCS and Conservation International.

 

 

 

"This exciting discovery demonstrates once again how little we know about our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates," said Russell Mittermeier, chairman of the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN-The World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission. "A large, striking monkey in a country of considerable wildlife research over the last century has been hidden right under our noses."

 

The monkey, scientifically named Lophocebus kipunji, will likely be classified as a critically endangered species.

 

"Clearly this remarkable discovery shows that there are still wild places where humans are not the dominant species," said John Robinson, director of international conservation programs for the WCS.

 

"This new species of monkey should serve as a living symbol that there is hope in protecting not only wild places like Tanzania's Southern Highlands, but the wonder and mystery they contain," Robinson said in a statement.

 

Last month, U.S. bird experts announced the rediscovery of an ivory-billed woodpecker, a species feared extinct for decades, in a remote Arkansas bayou.

Gene study links Polynesians to Taiwan

DNA points to Pacific population’s origins in East Asia

 

 

 

 

 

Updated: 10:30 p.m. ET July 4, 2005

WASHINGTON - A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swath of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported Monday.

 

Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan.

 

Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes — who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese — show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported.

 

 

Indigenous Taiwanese, Melanesian and Polynesian populations share three specific mutations in their mitochondrial DNA that are not found in mainland East Asian populations, they report in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.

 

Their findings suggest that Taiwanese aboriginal populations have been genetically isolated from mainland Chinese for between 10,000 and 20,000 years, and that the original Polynesian migrants originated from people identical to the aboriginal Taiwanese.

 

Earlier studies have looked at the Y chromosome, which men pass along from father to son.

 

No Y-chromosome link has been found between the early residents of the island of Formosa and the Polynesians, which could suggest early Oceanic societies organized around wives and mothers, said the researchers, who included a team at Estonian Biocentrein Tartu in Estonia.

I have a lot of woman friends who are "rabid" Rickman fans and I've often heard how great this movie is.

 

But last night was the first time I began to watch it, and the part I saw before my medicine kicked in and put me to sleep was hilarious.

raining.

Whale baby boom cheers scientists

28 mother-calf right whale pairs spotted so far this year

 

 

 

Updated: 6:31 p.m. ET July 1, 2005

WASHINGTON - This is one of the best years in recent memory for right whale calving, with 28 mother-calf pairs sighted so far, government biologists say.

 

NOAA Fisheries Service confirmed the 28th sighting on Friday, a pair videotaped off the coast of South Carolina as they headed north.

 

"With so few of these right whales left — approximately 300 — we are very excited about sighting another mother-calf pair," said Bill Hogarth, NOAA Fisheries Service director. "Although this latest calf is small, it looks healthy and strong at this point."

 

 

The New England Aquarium verified that the mother-calf pair observed off South Carolina were the same pair observed by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla.

 

Right whales were depleted by commercial whaling, and their recovery has been hindered by injuries and deaths caused by through collisions with vessels or entanglement in fishing gear.

 

They live mainly in coastal or shelf waters, wintering and calving in coastal waters off the southeastern United States, then moving in summer to feeding grounds in New England waters and north.

 

"On the surface, it looks like we might have good news for right whales this year," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist Barb Zoodsma.

 

"Twenty-eight right whale mother-calf pairs makes this one of the best years in a long time for right whales. But a lot can happen to right whale calves before they reach maturity. Not all of these calves will survive to adulthood, when they can reproduce and contribute back to the population."

 

The most productive year since records started being kept in 1980 was 2001 with 31 new right whale calves.

Lost notes of Isaac Newton found

Notes on alchemy disappeared after 1936 auction

 

 

Updated: 2:36 p.m. ET July 1, 2005

 

 

LONDON - A collection of notes by the 17th century English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, that scientists thought had been lost forever, have been found.

 

The notes on alchemy were originally discovered after Newton's death in 1727 but were lost after they were sold at auction in July 1936 for 15 pounds ($27).

 

They were found while researchers were cataloguing manuscripts at the Royal Society, Britain's academy of leading scientists.

 

 

"This is a hugely exciting find for Newton scholars and for historians of science in general," Dr John Young, of London's Imperial College Newton Project, said in a statement on Friday.

 

Newton's celebrated work "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) is considered one of the most important works in the history of modern science.

 

In it he formulates the three laws of motion and that of gravity.

 

Some scientists in Newton's time believed alchemy held the secret of how to transform base metals into silver or gold. Newton's notes were written in English in his own handwriting.

 

"It provides vital evidence about the alchemical authors Newton was reading, and the alchemical theories he was investigating in the last decades of the 17th century," Young added.

 

The notes will be on display at the Royal Society's annual Summer Science Exhibition in London which begins on July 4.

white shorts

 

asian red cotton v neck t

 

a smile. :P

that's a hard one. :P

 

I love "America", it's such a beautiful song.

 

 

 

I also love "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "God Bless America"

 

 

 

 

And I often find myself singing "this land is your land" when I'm painting. I don't know why, but it makes me happy. :P

 

:) :) :blink: :P :P

 

Where are you going Matt? :P

 

Have a good time, I know you'll have a blast!! :huh:

Ha.. ha... ha...:P

336513[/snapback]

 

Oh I was just teasing, don't take offense.

 

I said I appreciated it and I do. It was just a friendly joke Wally!! :P :P

I appreciate it. :P

 

I'd appreciate it more if they were in alphabetical order!! :P :P

Updated: 10:31 AM EDT

New Da Vinci Picture Found Under Another Painting

By SUE LEEMAN, AP

 

LONDON (July 1) - Experts at London's National Gallery said on Friday they had discovered a new Leonardo Da Vinci picture, hidden underneath another painting by the Italian master.

 

 

AP

This picture provided by Britain's National Gallery shows a tracing of a drawing beneath Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Virgin on the Rocks."

 

 

 

 

 

This is the first time a new Da Vinci has been discovered since the 1930s, when the "Ginevra de' Benci" and "The Madonna of the Carnation" were attributed to him.

 

Experts using infrared techniques found the sketch hidden beneath the delicate brushstrokes of Da Vinci's "The Virgin on the Rocks," a powerful study of Christ's mother in a rather gloomy cavern that hangs in the National Gallery.

 

The sketch shows a woman with one hand clutched to her breast, the other outstretched, kneeling before what experts say was planned to be an infant Jesus in a scene popular with Renaissance artists.

 

The experts believe the artist was planning a picture of the adoration of the Christ child, but changed his mind.

 

"It came as a complete surprise to finding the sketch," said Rachel Billinge, research associate in the conservation department of the National Gallery. "We had no idea until we studied the painting that there was anything under there."

 

The National Gallery's "Virgin On The Rocks" is the artist's own copy of a painting that now hangs in the Louvre gallery in Paris, and National Gallery experts were using infrared techniques to find out how the copy had been made when they found the sketch.

 

A confraternity of the Roman Catholic church commissioned Da Vinci to paint "The Virgin On The Rocks" to decorate an altarpiece in a Milan chapel in 1483.

 

"When Da Vinci completed the first painting, he was so pleased with it that he asked for more money, and when this was refused, he sold it privately," said Billinge. The artist later agreed to paint another picture, and probably started with the newly found sketch, but was persuaded to make a copy of the original "Virgin On The Rocks," she added.

 

The second version, which now hangs in the National Gallery, was placed in the chapel in 1508.

 

Critics argue over what "The Virgin On The Rocks" actually shows. Some claim it is the Immaculate Conception, while others believe it is the first time Jesus met John the Baptist.

 

 

07/01/05 09:40 EDT

Strange new world unlike any other

Large solid core provides clue to how giant planets might form

 

 

Updated: 8:44 p.m. ET June 30, 2005

 

A strange newfound planet as massive as Saturn appears to have the largest solid core known, providing an important clue to how some giant planets might form and setting off a controversy over how it formed.

 

The world passes in front of its host star, so even though they can't actually see the it, astronomers were able to glean important information about its size and density, and therefore infer things about its composition.

 

Scientists who investigated the large and presumed rocky core of the planet say it supports the idea that giant planets can indeed form by gradual accumulation of a core, long the leading theory of planet formation but one that has been called into question lately.

 

 

But how it grew such a massive core is beyond the ability of current theories to explain, according to one expert who does not agree that the isolated discovery proves anything.

 

With the standard core accretion model, as it is called, dust around a newborn star gathers into clumps, which become asteroids, comets and protoplanets. Some grow large enough to form rocky worlds like Earth. The theory states that a giant planet like Jupiter is created in the same manner, reaching a critical point when its core is massive enough to attract a large envelope of gas.

 

But the giant planets in our solar system don't have cores large enough to prove the idea. Other researchers have suggested that they might have formed, instead, by the sudden collapse of gas from a knot in the cloud of material that circles a new star.

 

"For theorists, the discovery of a planet with such a large core is as important as the discovery of the first extrasolar planet around the star 51 Pegasus in 1995," said Shigeru Ida, theorist from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan.

 

The planet orbits a sun-like star called HD 149026.

 

It is very close to the star, taking just 2.87 days to make a yearly orbit. That makes it hot -- about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the star-facing side. Modeling of the planet's structure shows it has a solid core approximately 70 times Earth's mass.

 

The scientists don't believe the core could have formed by cloud collapse. They think it must have grown by accumulation of dust and rock, and then acquired gas.

 

The finding does not rule out collapse as an alternate means of making planets. Astronomers don't know if there are multiple methods or not.

 

"This is a confirmation of the core accretion theory for planet formation and evidence that planets of this kind should exist in abundance," said Greg Henry, an astronomer at Tennessee State University, Nashville. Henry detected the dimming of the star by the planet with robotic telescopes at Fairborn Observatory in Mount Hopkins, Arizona.

 

Not so fast, says Alan Boss, a theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington who has championed the collapse model in recent years.

 

"I have not seen any core accretion models that predict the formation of such a beast," Boss told SPACE.com. "I suspect that the core accretion folks will be scratching their heads for a while

over how this thing could have formed."

 

Since this planet is just one of about 150 that have been discovered beyond our solar system, Boss thinks its premature to claim core accretion has been proved.

 

"I suspect that both disk instability and core accretion can occur, as well as intermediate, hybrid mechanisms," Boss said.

 

The research was supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The discovery will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

:P Sam have you always started each word with a captial letter? :)

336458[/snapback]

 

Yep :)

336461[/snapback]

 

 

:P Oh. :P

:P Sam have you always started each word with a captial letter? :P

New Cornell study suggests that mental processing is continuous, not like a computer

 

By Susan S. Lang

 

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The theory that the mind works like a computer, in a series of distinct stages, was an important steppingstone in cognitive science, but it has outlived its usefulness, concludes a new Cornell University study. Instead, the mind should be thought of more as working the way biological organisms do: as a dynamic continuum, cascading through shades of grey.

 

Kevin Stearns/University Photography

Cornell psycholinguist Michael Spivey asks Florencia Reali to listen for a word and then click on its picture. By studying the curvature of the trajectory of the mouse, he can analyze language comprehension processes. Copyright © Cornell University

 

In a new study published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 27-July 1), Michael Spivey, a psycholinguist and associate professor of psychology at Cornell, tracked the mouse movements of undergraduate students while working at a computer. The findings provide compelling evidence that language comprehension is a continuous process.

 

"For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols -- like a digital computer," said Spivey. "More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties -- like a biological organism."

 

In his study, 42 students listened to instructions to click on pictures of different objects on a computer screen. When the students heard a word, such as "candle," and were presented with two pictures whose names did not sound alike, such as a candle and a jacket, the trajectories of their mouse movements were quite straight and directly to the candle. But when the students heard "candle" and were presented with two pictures with similarly sounding names, such as candle and candy, they were slower to click on the correct object, and their mouse trajectories were much more curved. Spivey said that the listeners started processing what they heard even before the entire word was spoken.

 

"When there was ambiguity, the participants briefly didn't know which picture was correct and so for several dozen milliseconds, they were in multiple states at once. They didn't move all the way to one picture and then correct their movement if they realized they were wrong, but instead they traveled through an intermediate gray area," explained Spivey. "The degree of curvature of the trajectory shows how much the other object is competing for their interpretation; the curve shows continuous competition. They sort of partially heard the word both ways, and their resolution of the ambiguity was gradual rather than discrete; it's a dynamical system."

 

The computer metaphor describes cognition as being in a particular discrete state, for example, "on or off" or in values of either zero or one, and in a static state until moving on. If there was ambiguity, the model assumed that the mind jumps the gun to one state or the other, and if it realizes it is wrong, it then makes a correction.

 

"In thinking of cognition as working as a biological organism does, on the other hand, you do not have to be in one state or another like a computer, but can have values in between -- you can be partially in one state and another, and then eventually gravitate to a unique interpretation, as in finally recognizing a spoken word," Spivey said.

 

Whereas the older models of language processing theorized that neural systems process words in a series of discrete stages, the alternative model suggests that sensory input is processed continuously so that even partial linguistic input can start "the dynamic competition between simultaneously active representations."

 

Spivey's co-authors are Marc Grosjean of the University of Dortmund, Germany, and Günther Knoblich of Rutgers University.

Archaeological dig perplexes

TRAPPER CREEK: Team from Nevada didn't discover what it had been expecting.

 

By ZAZ HOLLANDER

Anchorage Daily News

 

 

 

 

TRAPPER CREEK -- Sitting in a mosquito-infested camp just off the Parks Highway a few weeks ago, archaeologist Brian Wygal was happily baffled.

 

 

Last summer, the University of Nevada, Reno, instructor made two intriguing finds in the Trapper Creek area while working with a Matanuska-Susitna Borough crew. The teams discovered sharp, stone blades and other tools at twin sites perched on knolls about five miles apart, one overlooking Trapper Creek, the other the Susitna River. They dated the sites at about 7,000 years old, one of the earliest found in the Susitna Valley and among the earliest in all of Southcentral.

 

The researchers figure these early foragers cruised the area looking for game -- maybe caribou or bison or Pleistocene elk -- and refurbishing their stone tool kits before quickly moving on.

 

Glacial ice sheets disappeared between 10,000 and about 7,000 years ago. It's possible the people who left tools at each site were the first to venture into the area, the archaeologists say.

 

Fascinated, Wygal came back again this summer, this time armed with 17 archaeology field-study students from all over the country and accompanied by his wife and fellow archeologist, Katie Krasinski. He expected to learn even more about the important discoveries near Trapper Creek.

 

Instead, Wygal now knows less.

 

"We didn't find what we expected to find," he said.

 

Among hundreds of potential artifacts unearthed in about five weeks of work, the student-powered crew excavated a heavy, nearly foot-long club of a rock apparently chipped to sharpen its edges, perhaps used for woodworking or smashing large bones.

 

What kind of backpacker lugs such a heavy tool around? And just who were these people, anyway?

 

"It was totally unexpected ... because it's so large," Wygal said, hefting the thing in his hand. "They're still hunter-gatherers, they're still moving."

 

The team had guessed that the people at the sites migrated from the Interior. But some tools found at the sites are not linked to early people known to frequent the area, Wygal said. "We really have no idea if this fits into anything that we know about."

 

Archaeological sites pepper the Valley, buried pockets of the past exposed by new subdivisions, road widening or commercial development. Just two weeks ago, the borough staged a small archaeological salvage operation.

 

The company shipping wood chips and other commodities at Point MacKenzie -- NPI LLC, involved in a joint-venture with the borough -- decided to level a known site, so two borough archaeologists and the field-study students spent part of a day bagging small stone chips and charcoal to catalog the 1,200-year-old fish camp before it became a gravel storage area.

 

A link exists between the early settlers of the area and modern Knik tribal members. The Dena'ina are thought to have been the first people who came into the Cook Inlet area from the north. The Dena'ina established trade routes to the east and the Interior with Athabascans over the next few millennia, said Jack Alcorn, executive director of the Knik Tribal Council. The Athabascans and Dena'ina interbred. The Knik are Dena'ina Athabascan Indians.

 

Asked about Wygal's puzzle over the tools found at Trapper Creek and the tools he expected to find, Alcorn offered his own theory: Technology such as tools commonly traveled the trading routes even if people didn't.

 

"It's a common misconception ... that when they run across these things, that means people had migrated," he said. "We're now discovering it's the technology that travels. They had established substantial trading routes. They were trading."

 

The tribal council works with a coalition that includes the borough as well as the University of Alaska and Knikatnu Inc. tribal corporation on excavations that involve remains or cemeteries, Alcorn said. He wasn't familiar with the Trapper Creek dig but said he supported the "borough's integrity" at such projects.

 

There are well over 1,000 known sites in the borough. But the Trapper Creek discovery and the resulting attention from Wygal and others was exciting, said Fran Seager-Boss, the borough archaeologist. "I think it's good for the borough too to have that kind of exposure," she said.

 

A $30,000 Coastal Zone Management Act grant secured by the borough got the project going last year. This year, the borough, the University of Nevada and the Alaska Humanities Forum are providing funding. Wygal also applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation.

 

The archaeology field school students left the state within the last few weeks after five weeks of camping in Trapper Creek at a field near a homesteader's cabin. During the day, they hiked to various field sites where they mined the ground for hints from the buried past.

 

The field study crew, working with Wygal and borough staff archaeologist Dan Stone, discovered about 600 stone chips that will go back to Reno for analysis. Some will turn out to be rocks, others artifacts.

 

The artifacts will spend a year in Nevada, then return to Alaska. The borough is hoping to exhibit some at borough hall on Dahlia Avenue in Palmer, Seager-Boss said. Eventually, she hopes, the Alaska Museum of Natural History in Eagle River will serve as a repository, but a number of details need to be sorted out first.

 

Wygal will spend the next year analyzing the artifacts and trying to piece together the puzzles he discovered at the Trapper Creek dig.

 

Not that he minds.

 

"It is a mystery. I'm surprised ... but that's how it always works," he said. "You don't know what is in the ground until you can get to it."

^has changed his signature

Dr. Who has the best avatar in my opinion.

I thought it appropriate with the Fourth of July just around the corner.

Global warming might create lopsided planet

Extra precipitation could add to ice at South Pole

livescience

 

 

 

Updated: 5:18 p.m. ET June 29, 2005

Extra precipitation expected as a result of global warming could create a lopsided world in which sea ice increases around the South Pole while the far north melts away.

 

A new study illustrates the difficulty in predicting how the planet might react to overall warming, which most but not all scientists believe is underway, in part due to greenhouse gas emissions by industry and autos.

 

"Most people have heard of climate change and how rising air temperatures are melting glaciers and sea ice in the Arctic," said Dylan Powell of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. "However, findings from our simulations suggest a counterintuitive phenomenon. Some of the melt in the Arctic may be balanced by increases in sea ice volume in the Antarctic."

 

 

 

Powell, a doctoral student, is lead author of a paper describing the results in this month's Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans).

 

Powell and his colleagues used satellite data from NASA's Special Sensor Microwave/Imager to study snow depth on sea ice. The data allowed "more stable and realistic precipitation data" to be fed into computer models that project changes around the globe.

 

"On any given day, sea ice cover in the oceans of the polar regions is about the size of the United States," said Thorsten Markus, a co-author of the paper and a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Far-flung locations like the Arctic and Antarctic actually impact our temperature and climate where we live."

 

Polar sea ice formation and climate patterns drive large ocean circulation currents, which in turn affect local climates at moderate latitudes where most people live. A warmer world should fuel more precipitation, most experts agree.

 

For Antarctica, the new study concludes, the extra precipitation will mean deeper snow, which will suppress sea ice below, making it thicker over time.

 

The idea runs counter to a study earlier this year that found glaciers in part of Antarctica are melting rapidly.

 

"We used computer-generated simulations to get this research result," Powell cautioned. "I hope that in the future we'll be able to verify this result with real data through a long-term ice thickness measurement campaign."

Collide

Howie Day

 

For some reason this song is soooo relaxing to me. I'm also realizing I'm very soppy today. <_<

 

 

 

The dawn is breaking

A light shining through

You're barely waking

And I'm tangled up in you

Yeah

 

I'm open, you're closed

Where I follow, you'll go

I worry I won't see your face

Light up again

 

Even the best fall down sometimes

Even the wrong words seem to rhyme

Out of the doubt that fills my mind

I somehow find

You and I collide

 

I'm quiet you know

You make a frist impression

I've found I'm scared to know I'm always on your mind

 

Even the best fall down sometimes

Even the stars refuse to shine

Out of the back you fall in time

I somehow find

You and I collide

 

Even the best fall down sometimes

Even the wrong words seem to ryhme

Out of the doubt that fills your mind

You finally find

You and I collide

 

You finally find

You and I collide

You finally find

You and I collide

To Make You Feel My Love

 

When the rain is blowing in your face

And the whole world is on your case

I would offer you a warm embrace

To make you feel my love

 

When the evening shadows and the stars appear

And there is no one to dry your tears

I could hold you for a million years

To make you feel my love

 

I know you haven't made your mind up yet

But I would never do you wrong

 

I've known it from the moment that we met

No doubt in my mind where you belong

 

I'd go hungry, I'd go blind for you

I'd go crawling down the aisle for you

There ain't nothing that I wouldn't do

To make you feel my love

 

The storms are raging on a rolling sea

Down the highway of regret

The winds of change are blowing wild and free

But you ain't seen nothing like me yet

 

There ain't nothing that I wouldn't do

Go to the ends of the earth for you

Make you happy, make your dreams come true

To make you feel my love

Troops Put Lives on Line to be Called Americans

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

 

It is the hardest way to become an American citizen: fighting for a country that is not yet yours, and in some cases dying for it.

 

Catalin Dima took this path, and his family has no regrets. Born in Romania, where he served in the military, Dima immigrated to America in 1996 and came to adore his new country. Living in Queens, N.Y., and later upstate, he married, fathered three children and worked as a big-rig truck driver.

 

 

After becoming a legal resident in 2001, he joined the Army Reserve in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. "I tried talking him out of the Army because I was afraid, but there was no talking him out of it," says his wife, Florika Dima. "He said he had to do it."

 

"He bought the whole package," says his uncle, Peter Danciu. "He loved this country."

 

While deployed in Iraq last October, Dima, 36, took the oath of allegiance administered by Eduardo Aguirre Jr., outgoing head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In a fit of joy, he shouted "USA, USA," as he left the ceremony. Six weeks later, the day he was promoted to sergeant, Dima died in a mortar attack near Baghdad.

 

Aguirre says, "The moral of the story for me is he died as he would have liked to have died: a U.S. citizen and an officer in the U.S. Army."

 

As the Fourth of July approaches and a nation at war struggles to fill its armed ranks with volunteers, the United States is doing what it has done in every major conflict since the Civil War: It is making it easier for legal resident aliens to become U.S. citizens if they choose to fight.

 

The result has been mixed in this war. The recruiting of legal residents hasn't changed. They make up 2% to 3% of the U.S. military, as they have for the past five years. But legal residents already in the military are becoming citizens in record numbers.

 

In fiscal 2004, 7,627 alien soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines took the oath of allegiance. That's nearly 15 times as many as the 518 who became citizens in 2000, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In the first three-quarters of the current fiscal year, 3,397 servicemembers have been naturalized.

 

President Bush issued an executive order in 2002 making it easier for foreign-born U.S. troops to naturalize. Congress further modified immigration laws late last year.

 

As a result, any legal resident who enlists in the military can immediately petition for citizenship rather than wait the five years required for civilians to start the process. Those in the military previously had to wait three years to become citizens. And $390 in petition and fingerprinting fees are waived for servicemembers.

 

Citizenship applications from servicemembers more than doubled in one year to almost 10,000 after Bush's executive order in 2002. In the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, the Immigration Service has received more than 11,000 naturalization petitions from soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen.

 

In naturalization ceremonies across the country that are geared to the upcoming holiday, several hundred military servicemembers are among the 15,000 people who will be sworn in as citizens.

 

Posthumous citizenship

 

In addition, there are cases in which U.S. citizenship has been granted posthumously to those killed in combat. According to the Defense Department and the immigration service, at least 73 non-citizens serving in the U.S. armed forces have died in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Historically, the nation has expedited citizenship during war both to reward those who serve and to recruit other non-citizens, says Marion Smith, an immigration service historian. "It is a demonstration of good citizenship, is it not, to put your life on the line?" she says. "And so it just seemed in most people's minds that Congress should do something for these alien soldiers. This is also when the recruitment needs are higher, and so maybe you need to add a little more incentive."

 

Beyond the rights that citizenship confers, such as voting, there are practical career benefits for servicemembers. Non-citizens are barred from re-enlisting in the Air Force after four years, and after eight years in the Army. In most cases, commissioned officers must be citizens. And security clearances, necessary for many military job classifications, can be granted only to citizens.

 

"I need to be a citizen if I'm going to serve my country, especially if I'm planning to make a career out of the Army," says Pfc. Areli Marisa Lopez, 19, a native of Mexico. She took the oath of allegiance in a ceremony Wednesday in El Paso.

 

Non-citizens in uniform often speak with a rough-hewn eloquence of how citizenship is a fitting consequence of their service.

 

"I choose the citizenship because I believe what the Americans believe, their value system, their freedoms," says Army chaplain Jin Hee Chang, 41, a native of South Korea who came to the USA 12 years ago. He was naturalized June 23 in Syracuse, N.Y. "Now I feel like they are my people."

 

Birgit Smith, a native of Germany, felt an overwhelming sense of inclusion from Americans long before she took the oath of allegiance in May. A civilian, she is the widow of Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith, who died April 4, 2003, while single-handedly fighting off a counterattack by dozens of Iraqi troops during the invasion. He saved an equal number of American troops through his actions. He was the first servicemember to receive the highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, in more than a decade.

 

On the Ford Explorer that Birgit Smith drove on shopping trips in Holiday, Fla., she had a decal with gold lettering that read: "In loving memory of Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith." People recognizing the name would honk horns, salute or wave to her. Others would motion for Birgit to pull over so they could give her a tearful hug, or would leave notes of appreciation on her windshield in parking lots.

 

She was overwhelmed by the response. "After Paul's death, I definitely wanted to become an American," she says. "I saw more how the American people are, how grateful they are, how they care."

 

Although Birgit Smith's citizenship process was already underway before her husband died, one of the immigration changes instituted by Congress for servicemembers is designed to benefit their families. If a servicemember who is a U.S. citizen dies in the line of duty, foreign-born members of his or her family can now seek citizenship, even if they are not legal residents. This is also possible in cases in which the servicemember is made a citizen posthumously.

 

The naturalization process is still cumbersome. Fingerprints and photographs must be taken, and eligibility and background investigations completed. Applicants are interviewed and given a civics test.

 

However, military petitioners are moved to the front of the citizenship line. A process that takes a year for average aliens is reduced for non-citizen servicemembers, with the goal of having citizenship applications processed within 90 days, says Christopher Bentley, spokesman for the immigration service.

 

The naturalization process is "much easier and it's free," says Agnieszka Grzelczyk, 24, a Navy petty officer 3rd class who was born in Poland and naturalized at the Los Angeles Convention Center last Thursday with more than 8,400 people. She filed for citizenship in February, responding to the expedited immigration changes.

 

Last year's changes allow soldiers to be naturalized in war zones. But the war sometimes gets in the way. The immigration service has sent officials to administer the oath in Iraq and Afghanistan only once, and that was Aguirre's trip in October. Commonly, applicants serving in Iraq must wait until they are home.

 

A commitment

 

Army Spc. Uday Singh, a native of India who was eager to become a U.S. citizen, wrote from Iraq last November to a favorite aunt living in Lake Forest, Ill.: "I got some more good news. My citizenship process has finally gone through."

 

Singh, 21, had hoped to complete the process by January. But on Dec. 1, he was killed in action when his platoon was ambushed along a highway near Habbaniyah.

 

Singh was posthumously awarded citizenship. His remains were transported to India for a Sikh funeral service and cremation. The ashes are interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

"He was committed to bettering himself," says his aunt, Harpreet Datt. "He felt that being on his own, with some distance from his parents (in India), would allow him to reach his potential. And citizenship was very much a part of that potential. It allows you to be what you can be."

 

A Defense Department survey of recruits last year found that non-citizens enlist for many of the same reasons as the native-born: to serve the country, to earn money for education or to learn new skills.

 

Army 1st Sgt. Olympio Magofna is a recruiter based in Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific. He says the offer of expedited U.S. citizenship is "icing on the cake" when Filipinos, Japanese, Australians and Koreans who are legal residents of Guam choose to enlist. "We use that as a selling tool," Magofna says. "They can join the Army and get all the benefits. And then on top of that, if they're looking forward to becoming a U.S. citizen, it will be expedited and acted on quickly. That is an additional incentive."

 

Aguirre, a naturalized citizen and native of Cuba who is leaving the immigration service to become ambassador to Spain, says the individual choice to become a U.S. citizen is difficult to categorize.

 

"Citizenship is such a private, personal decision. I truly believe that everybody has a slightly different rationale for doing it. I equate it to getting married," Aguirre says. "It's a matter of the moment when you are ready."

 

He remembers administering the oath to a Marine gunnery sergeant who had been eligible for citizenship for more than a decade. "I said, 'Whatever motivated you to that right now?' " Aguirre recalls. "He said, 'I'm ready now.' "

 

A wartime decision

 

In a number of cases, soldiers who are just now taking their citizenship oaths are veterans of combat who face a return to the battlefield. This second round of risk somehow galvanized their decision to finally naturalize.

 

"I decided before I deploy again, I'd like to do it," says Army Sgt. Paul Falzarano, 25, a London-born member of Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, based at Fort Drum in New York. After seven years as a legal resident here, Falzarano became a U.S. citizen June 23. His unit is set to go into Iraq in the next few months.

 

Falzarano says that despite his English accent, his squad mates have long since embraced him as one of their own. They even show admiration that a foreign national would serve next to them in combat while the Army is struggling to fill its ranks with U.S. citizens.

 

"I do more American-patriotic things than most Americans do, by serving," Falzarano says. "That's been noticed by a lot of people I work with. Swearing in as a citizen is pretty much a formality."

 

Army Spc. Nigel Gamble, 28, left the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago for the USA more than 10 years ago. Today, he is a soldier with the 10th Mountain Division based at Fort Drum. He became a U.S. citizen June 14. Gamble said he chose to naturalize after a tour in Afghanistan. His unit is also preparing to deploy to Iraq.

 

"You're putting yourself on the line for 11 months every day and then you come back," Gamble says. "It's like, 'All right, I'm getting ready to do this (combat tour) again, let me go ahead and be a part of this and do it fully.' "

Bliss

Alice Peacock with John Mayer

 

Your touch is electric

I felt it the first time you held me

The way we connected

So easily

 

I've tried to define it

Searched for the perfect phrase

I've tried to describe it

In a million different ways

 

 

It's joy,

it's ecstacy,

it's truth,

it's destiny

And even love is not enough to tell you how you make me feel

There's only one word for this

 

I've got to admit it

You took my heart by surprise

Don't know how you did it

But baby, I've never felt so alive

 

 

It's joy,

it's ecstacy,

it's truth,

it's destiny

And even love is not enough to tell you how you make me feel

There's only one word for this

It's bliss

 

Hey, know baby, know what the future holds

As long as you're here with me

 

 

It's joy,

it's ecstacy,

it's truth,

it's destiny

And even love is not enough to tell you how you make me feel

 

It's faith,

it's honesty,

it's life,

it's everything

To say "I love you"'s not enough to tell you how you make me feel

 

It's in your smile,

in your kiss

It's the reason that I exist

There's only one word for this

It's bliss

 

It's bliss

 

It's bliss