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AMNESTY TAKES AIM AT 'GULAG' IN GUANTANAMO
By Paisley Dodds
The Associated Press / Washington Post
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/25/AR2005052500
367_pf.html
LONDON -- Amnesty International <http://www.amnesty.org> branded the U.S.
prison camp at Guantanamo Bay a human rights failure Wednesday, calling it
"the gulag of our time" as it released a report that offers stinging
criticism of the United States and its detention centers around the world.
The 308-page report accused the United States of shirking its responsibility
to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has instead
created a new lexicon for abuse and torture. Amnesty International called
for the camp to be closed.
"Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and
quasi-management speak, such as 'environmental manipulation, stress
positions and sensory manipulation,' was one of the most damaging assaults
on global values," the annual report said.
Some 540 prisoners from about 40 countries are being held at the U.S.
detention center in Cuba. More than 200 others have been released, though
some have been jailed in their countries; many have been held for three
years without charge.
"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General
Irene Khan said.
A spokesman for the Department of Defense declined to comment on the report,
saying he had not seen it. But Navy Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said the U.S.
government continues to be a leader in human rights, treating detainees
humanely and investigating all claims of abuse.
At least 10 cases of abuse or mistreatment have been documented and
investigated at Guantanamo. Several other cases are pending.
"During the year, released detainees alleged that they had been tortured or
ill-treated while in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Evidence
also emerged that others, including Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
and the International Committee of the Red Cross, had found that such abuses
had been committed against detainees," the report said.
The Geneva-based ICRC is the only independent group to have access to the
Guantanamo detainees. Amnesty has been refused access to the prison camp,
although it was allowed to watch the pretrial hearings for the military
commissions. The commissions, which could try 15 prisoners facing charges,
were stalled by a U.S. court's decision that is under appeal.
"There's a myth going around that there's some kind of rule of law being
applied," said Rob Freer, an Amnesty official who specializes in detention
issues.
Amnesty acknowledged the human rights deficiencies came with a rash of
terrorist actions, including the televised beheadings of captives in Iraq.
Still, the group said, governments forgot many victims in the fight against
terrorism.
Khan singled out Sudan as one of the worst human rights violations of last
year, saying that not only had the Sudanese government turned its back on
its own people, but that the United Nations and the African Union acted too
late to help.
She also said the African Union needed to do more about speaking out against
human rights abuses in Africa, singling out Zimbabwe. She talked about human
rights failures being compounded by big business' complicity.
Amnesty's report also pointed to Haiti, saying human rights violators were
allowed to regain positions of power after armed rebels and former soldiers
ousted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide last year.
Amnesty said Congo's government offered no effective response to the
systematic rape of tens of thousands of women and children and warned of a
downward spiral of lawlessness and instability in Afghanistan.
In Asia, the report said violence and discrimination against women was
rampant last year, ranging from acid attacks for unpaid dowries in
Bangladesh to forced abortion in China, rape by soldiers in Nepal and
domestic beatings in Australia.
Amnesty also said the ouster of the conservative Islamic Taliban regime in
2001 by U.S.-led forces did little to bring relief to women.
In the western Herat region, Amnesty reported that hundreds of women had set
fire to themselves to escape violence in the home or forced marriage.
"Fear of abductions by armed groups forced women to restrict their movements
outside the home," Amnesty said. Even within families, "extreme
restrictions" on women's behavior and high levels of violence persisted, it
said.
While criticizing the detention mission at Guantanamo, Amnesty said one sign
of hope was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June that let prisoners
challenge the basis of their detention. It also said it was encouraging that
Britain's high court lords ruled on the indefinite detention without charge
or trial of "terrorist suspects."
"The challenge for the human rights movement is to harness the power of
civil society and push governments to deliver on their human rights
promises," Khan said.
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SUPPORTING DISSENT IS NOT ENOUGH
By Camilo Mejia
Znet
May 24, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=7935§ionID=15
Just about a year a go I was tried by a special Court-Martial at Fort
Stewart, Georgia. The charge: desertion with the intent to avoid hazardous
duty. My case received a lot of attention from the media, mainly because I
was the first Iraq veteran to have been to combat, returned on a two-week
furlough, and publicly refused to return to Iraq while denouncing the war as
illegal, and who then surrendered himself to military authorities. For the
first time since the invasion of Iraq the military had to deal with the
delicate issue of public dissent within the ranks.
The command at Fort Stewart restricted me to the base, and never allow me to
leave even to confer with my attorneys, and requests to travel with them to
Florida, and to meet with them off the base, all to help them prepare a
better case, were all denied. I was housed in a barracks building with about
ten rooms, yet I was the only one there. Between my surrender and the
Court-Martial, reporters were told they could interview me off base, while I
was told I could give interviews, but was prohibited from leaving the fort.
On the day of my trial, access to the base was restricted to military
personnel, my attorneys, and a few family members. Everyone else was
directed to gate number three, but the signs leading to that gate were taken
down during the three days of my trial. The entire block of the courthouse
was barricaded, and there were civilian and military police officers
patrolling the area, and they had trained dogs sniffing the area. Reporters
were contained in a media center about a mile away from the courthouse, and
everyone's computers, cameras, recording devices, and cell phones were
confiscated prior to entering the courtroom.
All of our pretrial motions were struck down, and many key witnesses and
crucial pieces of evidence were not allowed in the case. Violations of army
regulations by my unit, and violations of international law and the supreme
law of the land by the military, were readily ignored, and the prosecution
was allowed to bring the entire case down to the question of whether I got
on a plane or not, thus receiving an easy, undeserved victory.
Before the end of the trial, members of my unit had already been to my
barracks room. When my relatives got to my quarters to claim my belongings,
immediately after the sentencing, the room had been swept clean. But the
raiders forgot to take the lock they cut in order to get to my wall-locker.
My mother later used that lock in a press conference to show the military
had packed my things even before they could know I was going away. An
officer then quickly approached my mother to kindly escort her to where my
possessions had been taken.
But not even a year after being sent to a confinement facility in Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, where I spent nine months of a twelve-month sentence, I found
myself in San Diego's 32nd Street Naval Station, where Petty Officer 3rd
Class Pablo Paredes was being tried by a special Court-Martial. The charges:
Unauthorized Absence and Missing Movement.
His case, like mine, received much attention, not because of the nature of
his charges, but because on December 6th of last year, Pablo publicly
denounced the war as criminal and illegal while refusing to board his ship,
the USS Bonhomme Richard, before it left for the war in Iraq.
The military judge found Pablo guilty of Missing Movement but not guilty of
Unauthorized Absence, and even though the sentence included two months of
hard labor and three months of restriction within the base, Pablo received
no jail time, and no punitive discharge from the Navy. The same day of
Pablo's Court-Martial, a military judge from Fort Stewart, found that Army
Sergeant Kevin Benderman, another public war resistor, had been sent to
trial by a biased hearing officer, and temporarily dropped the general
Court-Martial against him, a type of trial that could have sent him to jail
for up to five years. Another investigation, to be conducted on May 26, will
determine by what type of Court-Martial Kevin is tried.
These findings represent important accomplishments for the antiwar movement,
as they seem to indicate that military authorities are handling public
dissent within the ranks with a bit more caution, as more members of the
military are speaking out against the occupation. It would be interesting to
see if these are isolated cases, or if the military is indeed making an
effort to uphold the law.
Service men and women should know that expert testimony at my trial as well
as at Pablo's trial, was that the invasion and occupation of Iraq are
illegal under international, domestic, and military law. At my trial,
professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, testified that the
Iraqi invasion and its aftermath is a crime against humanity, and a
violation of Army Field Manual 27-10, which incorporates the Geneva
Conventions. At Pablo's trial, Professor Marjory Cohn from San Diego's
Thomas Jefferson School of Law, testified that the war in Iraq violates the
United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of force only in self
defense, or with the Security Council's approval. She also noted that
according to the Nuremberg Principle and the Army Field Manual, disobeying
an unlawful order is a duty, and claiming to be following superior orders
constitutes no legal defense in the commission of war crimes. Interestingly,
neither at my trial nor at Pablo's, did the prosecution ever put on evidence
to counter the defense international law expert testimony.
America is going through a historical transformation, from disguised to
almost openly admitted (and defended) imperialism. In a time when peaceful
protesters are being put in cages, or free speech zones, in a time when
international law is being ignored or circumvented in order to conduct and
justify torture, in a time when schools are being forced to make their
students' files available to the war machine, in a time when the fear and
pain of the nation are being used to fabricate support for a criminal war of
imperial domination, it becomes imperative that members of the armed forces
act upon their principles.
An empire cannot survive without an imperial military, a military whose
members do not question the orders of their superiors, a military whose
members who choose to refuse, do so quietly to save their skins, a military
whose members rather die and kill against their moral judgments than
question the authority of their command.
It is too easy to just tell service men and women to follow their
conscience, whatever that means; this advice puts the burden back on their
shoulders and brings no sacrifice to the adviser. But peace does not come
easily, so I tell all members of the military that whenever faced with an
order, and everything in their mind and soul, and each and every cell in
their bodies screams at them to refuse and resist, then by God do so. Jail
will mean nothing when 'breaking the law' became their duty to humanity.
Pablo's trial not only marked an important step towards resistance, but it
also brought doubt to the minds of many sailors who were present during his
Court-Martial. They may not yet agree with the antiwar movement, some
probably never will, but for the first time many of them witnessed an open
debate about the immorality of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Perhaps for
a moment doubt brought a sense of humanity back into their hardened system
of military values. This would not have been possible had Pablo not put his
physical freedom on the line. His sacrifice was small compared to the
sacrifice of the over 100,000 Iraqi dead, but perhaps it is the unity of
small sacrifices, like Pablo's, that can bring about major changes into the
heart of our nation.
We probably should stop fearing so much for our personal safety and start
looking more closely at the sacrifice of others, perhaps we will be inspired
and empowered to put more of ourselves on the line for the benefit of those
who are really suffering. The light of others should not blind the path to
our own resistance. Perhaps a good place to find our own light will be the
trial of war resister Sgt. Kevin Benderman. Maybe I'll see you there, maybe
we can shine together.
To find out more information about Kevin Benderman's Court-Martial, or to
contribute to his defense, please visit:
http://www.bendermandefense.org/
...........
Article by, Camilo E. Mejia, former prisoner of conscience, Iraq war
veteran, war resister, and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War
<http://www.ivaw.net/>. Camilo's conscientious objector application is still
pending. He served nine months in confinement for refusing to return to Iraq
after a two-week leave.
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FRENCH FRIES PROTESTER REGRETS WAR JIBE
By Jamie Wilson in Washington
The Guardian
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1491463,00.html
It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, heightening the sense
of tension between Washington and Paris in the run-up to the invasion of
Iraq. But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of
french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war.
Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the
brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill
restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no
justification".
Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three
cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word
french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture". But the
name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what
it said about US-French relations and its pettiness.
Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina
News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at
the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's
request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened."
Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most
vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office
is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen".
"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this
administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances
girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress
must be told the truth."
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STUDY: QUAKE ON LA FAULT WOULD BE CALAMITY
By Alicia Chang
Associated Press
May 25, 82005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050526/ap_on_sc/la_fault
LOS ANGELES - A major earthquake on a little-known fault buried under
downtown Los Angeles would cause the most catastrophic natural disaster in
U.S. history, killing thousands of people and causing up to $250 billion in
damage, scientists said Wednesday.
Despite the doomsday forecast, the likelihood of the Puente Hills fault
generating a large temblor in the next 50 years is slim.
First discovered in 1999, the fault has ruptured at least four times in the
last 11,000 years, creating quakes with estimated magnitudes of 7.2 to 7.5.
If a temblor of similar magnitude were to occur today, it would cause
between 3,000 and 18,000 deaths and 120,000 injuries, according to estimates
by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center.
The projections are meant to help structural engineers, emergency planners
and first responders better understand the potential risks if a Puente Hills
quake were to occur, scientists said.
The deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history was a 1900 hurricane that
decimated Galveston, Texas, killing 6,000 to 10,000 people. The most costly
was Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which cost insurers more than $20 billion in
today's dollars.
The Jan. 17, 1994, magnitude-6.7 Northridge temblor, centered in the San
Fernando Valley, killed 72 people, injured 9,000 and was second to Andrew
with more than $15 billion in insured losses.
The consequences would be far more damaging during a major Puente Hills
quake because it would hit the urban core of downtown Los Angeles. Unlike
the Northridge quake, which shook mostly wood-frame houses, the Puente Hills
fault snakes beneath older and more vulnerable commercial and industrial
buildings.
The estimated casualty and damage numbers are based on the quake striking on
a weekday afternoon, when most people are at work. The death toll would be
lower if the quake struck at night.
"We need to keep this in perspective," said lead researcher Ned Field of the
USGS Pasadena office. "That being said, we do live in earthquake country and
we need to be prepared."
Scientists calculated the losses based on software developed by USGS and the
Southern California Earthquake Center and models from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. Results appear in the May issue of the journal Earthquake
Spectra.
The Puente Hills fault, which runs about 25 miles from downtown Los Angeles
to northern Orange County, is formed by the collision of the Pacific and
North American plates.
A segment of the fault last ruptured in 1987 with a magnitude-6 temblor and
aftershocks that killed eight people and caused more than $350 million in
damage to cities southeast of Los Angeles.
___
On the Net:
U.S. Geological Survey:
http://www.usgs.org
Southern California Earthquake Center:
http://www.scec.org
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CHILDHOOD SEX ABUSE HARMS MEN AS MUCH AS WOMEN
Armenian Medical Network
May 25, 05
http://www.dental.am/more.php?id=17427_0_1_0_C
A history of childhood sexual abuse appears to affect men as strongly as it
does women, according to a new study.
In the past, studies on the long-term impact of sexual abuse have focused
largely on females, leaving relatively little known about the lasting
effects abuse may have on men.
In the new study, of more than 17,000 California adults, investigators found
that men and women who said they'd been sexually abused as children were
equally likely to show lasting psychological damage.
Both sexes were twice as likely to have attempted suicide as men and women
who reported no abuse. They were also more likely to have ever used drugs or
abused alcohol.
In addition, men and women with a history of abuse more often said they had
a troubled marriage or other family problems.
Shanta R. Dube, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention in Atlanta, led the study. The findings are published in the May
issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Overall, Dube and her colleagues found, one-quarter of women and 16 percent
of men said they had been sexually abused as children. Of these adults,
about 12 percent of women and 4 percent of men reported a past suicide
attempt-compared with 3 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively, of those with
no history of abuse.
Adults who reported abuse also had higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse,
and were more likely to have married an alcoholic or to currently have
marriage and family problems.
"The data," the researchers write, "provide strong evidence that exposure to
childhood sexual among both genders is common, and acts as a strong risk
factor for multiple types of mental health, behavioral and social outcomes
for adult men and women."
The findings, according to Dube and her colleagues, point to the importance
of identifying and treating the lasting effects of sexual abuse in both
women and men.
The researchers also found that though it is commonly thought that women are
far less likely than men to sexually abuse a child, nearly 40 percent of the
men who reported abuse said a female was the perpetrator.
"Thus," they write, "the vulnerability of boys to perpetration of childhood
sexual abuse by both males and females deserves increased national
attention."
SOURCE: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, June 2005.
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OCEAN WARMTH TIED TO AFRICAN DROUGHT
By Andrew C. Revkin
New York Times
May 24, 3005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/science/earth/24clim.html
Few places are more vulnerable to drought than Africa. From the Sahel south
of the Sahara to the southern lobe of the turbulent continent, there is a
simple calculus, said Dr. Richard Washington, an expert on the region's
climate at Oxford: "When the rains fail, people die."
So a concerted effort has been made over the last five years to understand
what drives dry spells there and what will occur in a future warmed by
accumulating heat-trapping emissions in the atmosphere. Most climate experts
now say that significant human-caused warming is inevitable.
One new study bodes particularly poorly for southern Africa, indicating that
a 50-year-long drying trend there is likely to continue and appears tightly
linked to substantial warming of the Indian Ocean.
The authors of the study say that the heating of that ocean, which lacks the
natural variability of the Pacific and Atlantic, is one of the clearest
fingerprints pointing to human-caused climate change.
"In our models, the Indian Ocean shows very clear and dramatic warming into
the future, which means more and more drought for southern Africa," said Dr.
James W. Hurrell, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colo., and an author of the study. "It is consistent
with what we would expect from an increase in greenhouse gases."
Dr. Hurrell is to present the findings Tuesday at a geophysics conference in
New Orleans.
The study compared the observed 20th-century changes in the oceans and
weather patterns with 60 simulations of climate run on five computer models
developed by different research centers. The other researchers were Dr.
Martin P. Hoerling and Dr. Jon K. Eischeid of the Commerce Department's
Climate Diagnostics Center, also in Boulder.
Dr. Hurrell said the warming ocean changes the circulation of the
atmosphere, causing more air to rise over the water, generating marine
storms and rains, while at the same time causing the opposite motion in air
masses over the adjacent continent, leading to less rain. By midcentury, he
said, there could be a 10 to 20 percent drying in the February-to-April wet
season compared with the average for the last half of the 20th century.
For the Sahel, beset by drought and famine for generations, the picture is
less clear. The new study projects rainier times there as the boundary
between warm and cooler portions of the Atlantic Ocean shifts. But other
experts on African climate still see evidence that the Sahelian drought
pattern could worsen. Dr. Kerry H. Cook, an atmospheric scientist at
Cornell, said the frequency of extremely dry years matters more to
vulnerable populations than longer-term shifts in average rainfall. She said
such extreme dry seasons were directly related to warm temperatures in the
Gulf of Guinea, the Atlantic waters beneath the westward bulge of central
Africa.
Most climate experts agree that this gulf will warm as global temperatures
rise, Dr. Cook said. If emissions of greenhouse gases are not curbed, she
added, new computer simulations show that there could be twice as many
"really harmful dry years" in the latter half of this century as there were
in the late 20th century. Other experts on African climate said that
uncertainties in projections were likely to remain high as long as big gaps
persist in collecting basic meteorological data.
For the moment, those gaps are not likely to close, largely because of
political turmoil in many African countries and a lack of attention by
wealthier nations, said Dr. Washington at Oxford.
He was the lead author of a British report last year on African climate
variability and trends that concluded, "The African climate-observing system
is in a worse state than that on any continent and is deteriorating."
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CIA WAR GAME SIMULATES MAJOR INTERNET ATTACK
By David Morgan
Reuters
May 26, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050526/wr_nm/security_wargame_
dc
WASHINGTON - The CIA is conducting a cyber-war game this week geared to
simulate a major Internet attack by enemy computer hackers, an intelligence
official said Thursday.
Dubbed "Silent Horizon," the three-day unclassified exercise is based on a
scenario set five years in the future and involves participants from
government and the private sector.
"These are people who could likely be affected or enlisted in a real
situation," the intelligence official said.
"Its goal is to help the United States recognize indicators of a large-scale
cyber attack."
The exercise was being conducted in Charlottesville, Virginia, by members of
the CIA's Information Operations Center, which evaluates foreign threats to
U.S. computer systems, particularly those that support critical
infrastructures. It was expected to conclude Thursday.
The federal government has conducted various attack simulations since the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, which killed about 3,000
people and prompted the U.S. war on terrorism.
Top U.S. intelligence officials say it may be only a matter of time before
the United States is attacked again by terrorist groups including Osama bin
Laden's al Qaeda.
Cyber attacks, which have drawn less publicity than possible chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear attacks, are viewed by U.S. officials
as a potential al Qaeda weapon against the U.S. economy.
Online crime has exploded in recent years, a result of organized crime
groups based in Eastern Europe. But investigators so far have uncovered few
links to Islamic extremists.
"We have not uncovered any significant links to terrorism," said Brian
Nagel, assistant director of investigations for the U.S. Secret Service, in
an interview with Reuters last week.
But there are some signs that Islamic extremists are getting into the act.
An Indonesian man named Imam Samudra, who was found guilty of the 2002 Bali
nightclub blasts, included a chapter entitled "Hacking: Why Not?" in his
autobiography.
While hackers have uncovered holes in power plants and other infrastructure,
experts say terrorists are likely to favor conventional attacks as long as
they are possible.
"When it's really too hard to bring kinetic weapons in ... the bad guys will
turn to cyber attacks," said Allan Paller, chief executive of the SANS
Institute, a nonprofit security-training organization.
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HOBBIT-LIKE HUMAN REMAINS RETURNED TO THEIR FINDERS
By George Stuteville
National Geographic Magazine
for National Geographic News
May 23, 2005
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0523_050523_ngm_hobbit.html
For at least 13,000 years the bones of a miniature, female, human creature
lay in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores along with the simple tools
she may have used. She was undisturbed by natural forces.
It's been only months since she was introduced to the world as a new species
of hominid, setting off scientific acclaim and acrimonious controversy.
(Hominids include humans and extinct ancestral and related species.)
And now, some of the fragile skeletal remains that were in the custody of
scientists not connected to the expedition have been returned to the
finders. On their return, the remains were severely damaged, with slice
marks from a sharp object, cracks in the pelvis, and two teeth that appeared
to have been glued into place.
"Some of the most important items are irretrievably damaged," said Mike
Morwood, a co-leader of the Australian and Indonesian archaeological team
that found the remains.
Officially named Homo floresiensis, the specimen was no taller than a
three-year-old modern human, which led researchers to call her species
hobbits, after the tiny creatures from the Lord of the Rings novels.
Though partial remains of seven other "hobbits" have since been found, the
first skeleton, including the skull, was of a female who died when she was
around 30 years old. Standing at just about a meter (3.3 feet) tall, she
would have weighed about 25 kilograms (55 pounds).
Paleoanthropologists used the dimensions and contours of the skull to
reconstruct her face. Their reconstruction is similar to that on the cover
of the April issue of National Geographic. An entire 3-D model can be found
seen at National Geographic magazine online.
Almost immediately after the October 2004 announcement, some
paleoanthropologists questioned whether the find represents a new species.
Indonesia's preeminent authority of paleoanthropology, Teuku Jacob,
professor emeritus at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, theorized that the
remains were likely to be those of a modern human dwarf with a birth defect
called microcephaly, in which a person has an abnormally small brain. Others
contended that the creatures, if indeed it was a hominid, was related to
pygmies.
The original finders and researchers, in announcing their discovery in the
October 28, 2004, issue of the science journal Nature, contended that what
they had found in the hobbit was a wholly unanticipated, extinct member of
the human family.
The conflicting views reflect the widely divergent theories of human
evolution among paleoanthropologists and archaeologists.
Multiregionalists such as the 75-year-old Jacob say that evolution
progressed in various regions of the world along a single line to produce
modern Homo sapiens.
The other theory, a more prevalent one since the debut of genetic testing,
is that modern humans evolved in Africa and migrated into Europe and Asia.
Just after the announcement, however, Radien Soejono, the senior
archaeologist at the Jakarta-based Indonesian Centre for Archeology, signed
agreements to hand the specimens over to Jacob's lab, some 275 miles (440
kilometers) away.
Because of the growing controversy, the team's co-leader, Mike Morwood of
the University of New England, Australia, was apprehensive. He told Nature
magazine, "We thought we would never see them again." He added that his
colleague, Peter Brown, the lead author on the paper announcing the
discovery, took careful measurements and photos of the specimens before they
were transported.
The situation heated up earlier this year as Jacob kept possession of the
remains for about two months longer than he had agreed, and after it was
discovered that some of the bone material was removed for further genetic
analysis by a German lab.
On February 23 Jacob's lab returned all but three leg bones and a portion of
the cut jaw.
In the meantime, the hobbit continued to dominate archaeology news.
Paleoneurologist Dean Falk announced research findings in early March at a
press conference hosted by National Geographic.
Her team created an endocast -- a virtual, 3-D view of the interior of the
skull showing detailed features, including the size, shape, and vascular
structure of the brain. Falk, a professor at Florida State University, said
that the research concluded that the hobbit, despite her grapefruit-size
brain, could have been capable of higher forms of intelligence and
reasoning.
Now the hobbit is again at the epicenter of news, this time over the damages
that were documented after their return from Jacob.
The Indonesian Center for Archeology, which now has the remains, believe
that most damage resulted from improper techniques in making molds, said the
center's director, Tony Djubiantono.
The molding procedures stripped anatomical detail from the base of the
cranium and broke a portion of the skull. Two teeth in the jaw were removed
and glued back in. Those damages could deprive researchers of critical
information.
Researchers also reported that a mandible showed long, deep cut marks along
the lower edge on both sides where material to make the molds was trimmed.
Jacob has denied that his lab caused the damage while the specimens were in
his possession. Attempts to contact him by phone, fax, or e-mail have been
unsuccessful.
Djubiantono, though distressed by the condition of the bones, is reluctant
to point the finger of blame directly at Jacob, and he declined to sign a
draft letter from Morwood and others. However, in a phone interview, he said
he had had a serious discussion with Jacob.
Falk said the incidents surrounding the hobbit are regrettable.
"It sounds awful. If these were damaged -- and I have no reason to think
otherwise, because Morwood is a credible source -- then the loss could be
substantial," Falk said, adding that casting, a common procedure, can be
extremely destructive to the specimen.
While some have called for a formal investigation, it doesn't appear that
such an action will occur. Falk, like several other researchers, said that
she hoped the paleoarchaeological community will take a stand and express
their collective concern.
Djubiantono said the remains in repository at the center will never again be
shared off-site. "We have hope that the information that may have been lost
to the damage can be filled in with what we continue to learn. We have found
other skeletons at the general area of the excavations. We believe it will
tell us much more."
Among the things they hope to discover are clues that would reveal how the
small creatures lived their lives and interacted with others of their
species.
------------
PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLE:
60 MINUTES & NATIONAL GEO: THE 'HOBBITS' OF FLORES (5/4/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9119
PYGMY VILLAGE FOUND NEAR HOME OF HOBBITS (5/2/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9109
'HOBBIT' BRAIN SUPPORTS NEW HUMAN ANCESTOR THEORY (3/3/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8929
TOURISM REBOUNDS ON ISLAND OF "HOBBIT" FOSSILS (12/27/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8609
TINY HUMAN ANCESTOR FOUND IN ASIA (10/27/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8158
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SHRINKS FIND BASIS FOR SUBLIMINAL LEARNING
Boston University / ScienceBlog
May 26, 2005
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8018
Watch out -- you may learn something and not even know it, says Takeo
Watanabe, an associate professor of psychology at Boston University's Center
for Brain and Memory. Watanabe and his team recently pinpointed the
mechanism that makes subliminal learning work. Watanabe will present the
team's findings at the American Psychological Society meeting in Los
Angeles, May 27 and 28.
Long considered the realm of science fiction, subliminal learning occurs
when individuals are influenced by a stimulus they are unaware of, like
words played back below the threshold of hearing or images flashed on screen
faster than the eye can perceive. Watanabe's recent findings grew out of his
team's previous work in which they established that subliminal learning is
real and that the brain is capable of learning without consciously focused
attention.
In this latest research, Watanabe and his team uncovered the mechanism that
primes the subconscious, enabling individuals to learn a task without
actually realizing it. They also showed this type of learning is retained,
giving a new interpretation to how long a learned behavior is retained in
the visual cortex -- an area of the brain thought to be fixed very early in
life.
To establish how the mechanism worked, Watanabe's team devised a series of
perception tests. Initially, participants watched a computer screen as a
series of letters flashed by and were instructed to signal when they saw a
gray letter. As individuals concentrated on watching for gray letters, sets
of dots jiggled on the screen in areas that were at the periphery of the
visual field. Five to 10 percent of the dots moved together in a coherent
direction -- a fraction smaller than that easily detectible by the human
eye. Letters flashing on the screen were randomly paired with the moving
dots.
From this test, the researchers established the length of time it took each
participant to identify the direction and coherent movement of the dots on
the screen.
Participants were next exposed to a similar set of computer screens, this
time with the fraction of the moving dots faded to just below the level of
human perception. As participants watched for gray letters to appear in the
center of the screen, the imperceptible dots moved coherently just outside
their field of vision. Participants were exposed again and again to the
imperceptible, moving dots as they signaled the gray letters and were later
tested to see if their recognition time had improved.
In a subsequent round of tests, participants showed marked improvement in
the time they took to recognize the coherently moving dots. Watanabe says
this improvement demonstrates the participants learned to recognize and
better identify the movement during the trials, even though their attention
was focused somewhere else and the moving dots were faded to the point of
being imperceptible.
The experiment differed from previous studies in having participants focus
on something other than the moving dots -- in this case, the letters on the
screen -- while being exposed to the movement of the imperceptible dots.
Watanabe says that having subjects focus on letters activated an internal
"reward" pathway in their brains, priming their subconscious to learn more
efficiently.
According to Watanabe, the visual cortex, the area of the brain tested in
his experiments, has long been considered unchangeable in humans past 6
months of age. Watanabe found it could be "changed" and that the changes
could last for a considerable period; individuals were tested again six
months after the initial trials and show little or no deterioration in their
ability to recognize moving dots in a visually noisy background.
"It's possible that other parts of the brain could work this way too,"
Watanabe says. "People might be able to improve their pronunciation of a new
language, if it's presented simply, without paying attention. It's possible
the brain could be changed without a lot of effort."
The Watanabe group plans to repeat their experiments using functional
magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to peer into the brains of
participants. Using fMRI, the team will essentially be able to look directly
into the portion of the brain involved in subliminal learning.
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SEAWEED MAY HELP FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING
FishUpdate
May 16, 2005
http://www.fishupdate.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/2610/Seaweed_may_help_fight
_global_warming_.html
Seaweed may be the answer to fighting global warming, a group of Japanese
scientists have claimed. The team envisages 100 vast nets full of
quick-growing seaweed, each measuring six miles by six miles, floating off
the northeast coast of Japan.
The seaweed in each net, will absorb prodigious quantities of greenhouse
gases and convert them to oxygen before being harvested 12 months later as a
rich source of biomass energy. If a pilot version of the project indicates
that the idea is viable, and sufficient funding can be found, the concept of
fighting global warming through giant seaweed farms across the world¹s
oceans could be included in the upcoming revision to the Kyoto Protocol. The
project is led by Masahiro Notoya, a world expert on seaweed from the Tokyo
University of Marine Science and Technology. Dr Notoya believes that Sostera
marina and sargassum, herded to the right parts of the ocean, will grow up
to 40ft every year, absorbing about 36 tonnes of carbon dioxide in the
process.
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OIL: CAVEAT EMPTY
By Alfred J. Cavallo
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
May/June 2005
pp. 16-18 (vol. 61, no. 03)
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallo
Without any press conferences, grand announcements, or hyperbolic
advertising campaigns, the Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the world's
largest publicly owned petroleum companies, has quietly joined the ranks of
those who are predicting an impending plateau in non-OPEC oil production.
Their report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, forecasts a peak in just
five years.
In the past, many who expressed such concerns were dismissed as eager
catastrophists, peddling the latest Malthusian prophecy of the impending
collapse of fossil-fueled civilization. Their reliance on private
oil-reserve data that is unverifiable by other analysts, and their use of
models that ignore political and economic factors, have led to frequent
erroneous pronouncements. They were countered by the extreme optimists, who
believed that we would never need to think about such problems and that the
markets would take care of everything. Up to now, those who worried about
limited petroleum supplies have been at best ignored, and at worst openly
ridiculed.
Meanwhile, average consumers have taken their cue from the market, where
rising prices have always been followed by falling prices, leading to the
assumption that this pattern will continue forever. In truth, the market
price of crude oil is completely decoupled from and independent of
production costs, which average about $6 per barrel for non-OPEC producers
and $1.50 per barrel for OPEC producers. This situation has nothing to do
with a free market, and everything to do with what OPEC believes will be
accepted or tolerated by the United States. The completely affordable market
price -- what consumers pay at the gasoline pump -- provides magisterial
profits to the owners of the resource and gives no warning of impending
shortages.
All the more reason that the public should heed the silent alarm sounded by
the ExxonMobil report, which is more credible than other predictions for
several reasons.
First and foremost is that the source is ExxonMobil. No oil company, much
less one with so much managerial, scientific, and engineering talent, has
ever discussed peak oil production before. Given the profound implications
of this forecast, it must have been published only after a thorough review.
Second, the majority of non-OPEC producers such as the United States,
Britain, Norway, and Mexico, who satisfy 60 percent of world oil demand, are
already in a production plateau or decline. (All of ExxonMobil's crude oil
production comes from non-OPEC fields.)
Third, the production peak cited by the report is quite close at hand. If it
were twenty-five years instead of five years in the future, one might be
more skeptical, since new technologies or new discoveries could change the
outlook during that longer period. But five years is too short a time frame
for any new developments to have an impact on this result.
Also noteworthy is the manner in which the Outlook addresses so-called
frontier resources, such as extra-heavy oil, "oil sands," and "oil shale."
The report cites the existence of more than 4 trillion barrels of extra
heavy oil and "oil sands" -- producing potentially 800 billion barrels of
oil, assuming a 20-25 percent extraction efficiency. The Outlook also cites
an estimate of 3 trillion barrels of "oil shale." These numbers have figured
prominently in advertisements that ExxonMobil and other petroleum companies
have placed in newspapers and magazines, clearly in an attempt to reassure
consumers (and perhaps stockholders) that there is no need to worry about
resource constraints for many decades.
However, as with all advertisements, it's best to read the fine print.
ExxonMobil's world oil production forecast shows no contribution from "oil
shale" even by 2030. Only about 4 million barrels of oil per day from
Canadian "oil sands" are projected by 2030, accounting for a mere 3.3
percent of the predicted total world demand of 120 million barrels per day.
What explains this striking disconnection between the magnitude of the
frontier resources and the minimal amount of projected oil production from
them? Canadian "oil sands" are actually deposits of bitumen (tar), which are
the result of conventional oil degradation by water and air. Tar sands are
of a completely different character than conventional oil deposits; making
tar sands usable is a capital-intensive venture that requires special
procedures such as heating to separate the tar from the sand, mixing the tar
with a diluting agent for pipeline transport, and constructing specially
equipped refineries for processing.
The most serious constraint, though, is natural gas supplies. Production of
oil from tar sands requires between 400 and 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas
per barrel of oil produced, depending on the extraction method used. Natural
gas production, despite a near doubling of drilling activity, is flat or
decreasing both in Canada and in the United States -- which has prompted
prices to triple over the past few years. Given these high gas prices, it
almost makes more sense just to sell the natural gas directly rather than
use it to produce oil from tar sands.
Extracting oil from the 3 trillion barrels of oil shale cited in the Outlook
presents its own challenges. The term "oil shale" is also quite misleading,
since there is no oil in this mineral, but rather an organic material called
kerogen, which is a precursor of petroleum. To extract oil, the shale
(typically between 5 and 25 percent kerogen) must first be mined, then
transported to a plant where it is crushed, then heated to 500 degrees
Celsius, which pyrolyzes, or decomposes, the kerogen to form oil. After
processing, most of the shale remains on the surface in the form of coarse
sand, so large-scale mining operations will produce immense amounts of waste
material. An estimated 1-4 barrels of water are required for each barrel of
oil produced, both for cooling the products and stabilizing the sand waste.
To satisfy these water requirements, petroleum companies once contemplated
diverting the Columbia River -- a feat that can be excluded today on
political and environmental grounds.
With non-OPEC oil production reaching a plateau and frontier resources not
viable, ExxonMobil proposes that increased demand be met in two ways. The
first is greater fuel efficiency. (That alone should convey the seriousness
of this report: When have you ever heard a petroleum company make a plea for
vehicles that use less gas?) New cars in the United States are expected to
go 38 miles on a gallon of gas in 2030, instead of the current value of 21
miles per gallon. This goal is actually quite modest, as new cars sold in
Europe since 2003 already achieve 35 miles per gallon.
The other way ExxonMobil believes demand will be satisfied is from vastly
and rapidly increased OPEC production: "After 2010, the call on OPEC
increases quickly, requiring OPEC to add more than 1 MBD [million barrels
per day] of capacity every year," notes the Outlook. "OPEC's resources are
large enough to achieve this rate of expansion, and we expect that
investments will be made in a timely manner."
This assessment is somewhat ominous. OPEC has not expanded production
capacity much at all recently. Moreover, such production increases are only
possible from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. For
these countries, and indeed for most OPEC members, petroleum and petroleum
products are their only significant export. As such, they have a vested
interest in obtaining the best possible price for their non-renewable
resources. OPEC nations would be quite unlikely to increase production as
rapidly as needed unless compelled to do so. To put this shortfall in
perspective, in 2003 Algeria produced 1.1 million barrels per day; a new
Algeria would need to be brought on line in the Persian Gulf each and every
year beyond 2010 just to keep up with the projected increase in demand.
Consequently, once non-OPEC production reaches a peak, conventional world
oil production could peak shortly thereafter, and prices (never explicitly
mentioned in the Outlook) would rise in accordance with the laws of supply
and demand.
What all this means is that the petroleum industry is approaching a turning
point. Conventional petroleum production will soon -- perhaps in five years,
ten at best -- no longer be able to satisfy demand. For their part, American
consumers would do well to take a cue from their Western European
counterparts, who enjoy a comfortable lifestyle despite a per capita use of
petroleum that is half of that in the United States. The sooner the United
States begins this transition away from oil, the easier it will be. That's a
far more attractive option than trying to squeeze oil from stone.
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RISING SEA LEVELS POSE GLOBAL THREAT
Reuters
Thursday, May 26, 2005
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/05/26/seawalls.floods.reut/
NIJMEGEN, NETHERLANDS - Building higher and stronger sea walls is no longer
enough to protect the world's low-lying areas against rising sea levels and
global warming, a conference in the Netherlands has heard.
Countries should also develop disaster management to raise safety and
awareness, experts said.
Many scientists fear rising temperatures, blamed mainly on heat-trapping
gases from burning fossil fuels, will melt ice caps, raise sea levels by
almost a meter (three feet) by the end of this century and bring more
floods, droughts and storms.
"It is time for us to say goodbye to the traditional approach of higher and
higher dikes and more and more powerful pumps," said Melanie Schultz van
Haegen, Dutch State Secretary for Transport, Public Works and Water
Management.
"There is very little that can be built against the consequences of climate
change."
An effective approach would be to move dikes further from rivers to leave
more space to hold flood water, lower land levels on flood plains and
include dredging, hazard maps and flood-proof buildings, she said.
The Netherlands, two-thirds of which lies below sea level, has battled for
centuries to claw back land from the sea and protect itself against floods.
It has invested heavily to shore up coastal defenses with high-tech dams,
sluices, stronger dikes and flood barriers.
Van Haegen said the government had recently set aside 2.2 billion euros
($2.8 billion) to make sure defenses are maintained.
But the Dutch model of flood protection is too expensive for developing
countries to imitate, said Michel Jerraud, head of the World Meteorological
Organization.
Instead, countries could use the Dutch experience in flood management,
including early warnings and forecasts, to identify land that could be
sacrificed to flooding in order to save more valuable areas, Jerraud said.
"One of the reasons for changing from flood defenses to flood management is
the impossibility to be protected from all floods," he told Reuters on the
sidelines of the conference.
"What we aim for is a new approach, to move from seeing floods only as
negative to seeing also the positive aspects. For instance many flood plains
are extremely fertile thanks to the sediments brought by floods."
China, hit by a series of droughts and floods in the past several years,
embraced a new strategy in 2003 trying to use flood water to solve drought
problems, said Cheng Xiaotao of the Chinese Institute of Water Resources and
Hydropower Research.
The world suffered 600 floods in the past two and a half years, which
claimed the lives of about 19,000 people and caused $25 billion in damages,
excluding December's devastating tsunami in southeast Asia that killed more
than 180,000.
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SOLAR FIREWORKS SIGNAL NEW SPACE WEATHER MYSTERY
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center--EOS Project Science Office
May 25, 2005
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-05/nsfc-sfs052405.php
The most intense burst of solar radiation in five decades accompanied a
large solar flare on January 20. It shook space weather theory and
highlighted the need for new forecasting techniques, according to several
presentations at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting this week in
New Orleans.
The solar flare, which occurred at 2 a.m. EST, tripped radiation monitors
all over the planet and scrambled detectors on spacecraft. The shower of
energetic protons came minutes after the first sign of the flare. This flare
was an extreme example of the type of radiation storm that arrives too
quickly to warn interplanetary astronauts.
"This flare produced the largest solar radiation signal on the ground in
nearly 50 years," said Dr. Richard Mewaldt of the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, Calif. He is a co-investigator on NASA's Advanced
Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft. "But we were really surprised when we
saw how fast the particles reached their peak intensity and arrived at
Earth."
Normally it takes two or more hours for a dangerous proton shower to reach
maximum intensity at Earth after a solar flare. The particles from the
January 20 flare peaked about 15 minutes after the first sign.
"That's important because it's too fast to respond with much warning to
astronauts or spacecraft that might be outside Earth's protective
magnetosphere," Mewaldt said. "In addition to monitoring the sun, we need to
develop the ability to predict flares in advance if we are going to send
humans to explore our solar system."
The event shakes the theory about the origin of proton storms at Earth.
"Since about 1990, we've believed proton storms at Earth are caused by shock
waves in the inner solar system as coronal mass ejections plow through
interplanetary space," said Professor Robert Lin of the University of
California at Berkeley. He is principal investigator for the Reuven Ramaty
High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). "But the protons from this
event may have come from the sun itself, which is very confusing."
The origin of the protons is imprinted in their energy spectrum, as measured
by ACE and other spacecraft, which matches the energy spectrum of gamma-rays
thrown off by the flare, as measured by RHESSI. "This is surprising because
in the past we believed the protons making gamma-rays at the flare were
produced locally and the ones at the Earth were produced instead by shock
acceleration in interplanetary space," Lin said. "The similarity of the
spectra suggests they are the same."
Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), associated giant clouds of
plasma in space, are the largest explosions in the solar system. They are
caused by the buildup and sudden release of magnetic stress in the solar
atmosphere above the giant magnetic poles we see as sunspots. The
Transitional Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) and the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft are devoted to observing the sun
and identifying the root causes of flares and CMEs, with an eye toward
forecasting them.
"We do not know how to predict the flow of energy into and through these
large flares", said Dr. Richard Nightingale of the Lockheed Martin Solar and
Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alta, Calif. "Instruments like TRACE give us
new clues with each event we observe."
TRACE has identified a possible source of the magnetic stress that causes
solar flares. The sunspots that give off the very largest (X-class) flares
appear to rotate in the days around the flare. "This rotation stretches and
twists the magnetic field lines over the sunspots", Nightingale said. "We
have seen it before virtually every X-flare that TRACE has observed since it
was launched and more than half of all flares in that time."
However, rotating sunspots are not the whole story. The unique flare came at
the end of a string of five other very large flares from the same sunspot
group, and no one knows why this one produced more sudden high energy
particles than the first four.
"It means we really don't understand how the sun works," Lin said. "We need
to continue to operate and exploit our fleet of solar-observing spacecraft
to identify how it works."
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A CALL TO (CONSIDERED) ACTION
By Russell L. Schweickart
spaceref.com
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1024
PDF version:
http://www.b612foundation.org/papers/Call_for_Action.pdf
Presented at the National Space Society International Space Development
Conference, Washington, DC
By Russell L. Schweickart, Chairman, B612 Foundation
May 20, 2005
EXCERPTS:
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to call upon the Congress of the
United States to initiate, via the National Research Council or other
appropriate body, a formal analysis of the circumstances presented by the
close encounter between the Earth and asteroid 2004MN4 in April 2029, and
the potential for a subsequent collision with Earth in 2036. Informal
analysis indicates that the accuracy of our knowledge of the asteroid's
trajectory using optical and radar tracking is likely to be inadequate to
make a timely deflection decision in the improbable event that one should be
needed. Should this claim prove to be correct after formal analysis serious
consideration should be given to placing a radio transponder on 2004MN4,
perhaps as one of several scientific objectives. This mission should be
launched in the near future in order to provide adequately accurate
trajectory information about the asteroid by 2014, the approximate date by
which a deflection mission decision, if required, would have to be made...
Introduction
The near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 2004MN4, discovered in 2004 through the
efforts of NASA's Spaceguard Survey, will make an unusually close pass by
the Earth on April 13, 2029. This asteroid, estimated by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to be 320 meters in diameter, will come within
30,000 km. of the Earth, passing just behind the Earth in its orbit but well
within the geostationary satellite orbit. A collision with the Earth during
this 2029 close encounter has been definitively ruled out. Observers in
Europe and North Africa, however, will be treated to an unusual sight; the
opportunity to view an asteroid with the unaided eye as it passes through
the early evening sky toward the just set Sun.
This close encounter with Earth will significantly alter the orbit of the
asteroid and create a low, but real possibility that the asteroid will
return to impact the Earth seven years later on April 13, 2036. The
probability of this impact, based on our current best information, is
slightly less than 1 in 10,000. (while seemingly a low probability 1 in
10,000 is almost identical to the probability of the average American driver
having an auto accident on any given day). Due to the near-center location
of the 2036 keyhole in the error ellipse it is anticipated that the
probability of impact will gradually increase to about 1 in 3,000 over the
period of the next year. From mid-2006 through late 2012 the asteroid will
be largely out of sight of the Spaceguard telescopes with only two potential
opportunities during that time to further refine its orbit.
When 2004MN4 comes back into view in late 2012 it is highly likely that we
will learn that it is no longer a threat to Earth. However there is a slim
chance that we will not be able to draw this conclusion and that an impact
will still be possible.
Due to the unique orbital circumstances posed by this asteroid's close
encounter with the Earth in 2029, unusually accurate knowledge of its orbit
is required in order to know, in time to take protective action, whether or
not it is headed for an impact. Given that a decision to mount a deflection
mission would be required by 2014 in order to design, manufacture, launch,
and operate such a mission, we are currently confronted with the
circumstance that our best optical tracking will be inadequate to enable us
to make such a momentous decision. Using optical information alone, it will
appear that the maximum probability of impact is approximately 1 in 100,
even if the asteroid is in fact headed for a direct impact with Earth. Given
that the corollary to this probability statement is that there will appear
to be 99 chances out of 100 that the asteroid will miss us, launching an
expensive deflection mission will be problematic at best.
There is a possibility in January 2013 that we will be able to see 2004MN4
using active Earth-based radar, albeit this is far from certain. If this
attempt is successful the accuracy of our impact prediction will improve to
perhaps 1 in 50.
If, however, a scientific mission to the asteroid is performed prior to 2014
our knowledge of its impact probability in 2036 will be materially improved.
Any such mission will routinely carry with it a radio transponder which
would, by its presence, improve our knowledge of the asteroid's orbit by
approximately a factor of 10 over optical measurements. In the low
probability case that the asteroid is indeed headed for an impact, we will
be able, with a transponder on the asteroid, to judge by 2014 whether a
deflection mission is necessary. A probability of impact of 1 in 10 should
provide a more than adequate basis for preparing a deflection mission.
The question arises as to whether the expense of an immediate science
mission to asteroid 2004MN4 is warranted. From an economic point of view the
justifiable expense to mitigate the cost of an undesired event is determined
by the product of the probability of the event occurring and the cost of the
event were it to occur. In this instance where the impact "path of risk"
passes from the western Pacific Ocean north of Japan, along the Mexican west
coast, through Central America and out into the Atlantic Ocean, the most
likely result of a collision with asteroid 2004MN4 in 2036 is a massive
tsunami. The societal cost of a tsunami which would be generated by the
impact of this asteroid is estimated to be $400B. Given that the current
probability of impact is 1 in 10,000 the justifiable investment in current
action to mitigate against this eventuality is $40M. By mid-2006 the
probability of impact (and with it the justifiable investment in mitigation)
is likely to increase by a factor of 4 and by mid-2012 by a factor of 10.
The cost of a $3-400M scientific mission to the asteroid would therefore be
a rational and prudent investment in public safety.
The analysis presented in this paper is, of necessity, a first order
approximation only. It needs to be formally investigated and refined by
competent experts.
There is, however, no agency of the US Government whose responsibility it is
to address the issue of asteroid impacts with the Earth and the multitude of
policy issues raised by NEA impacts and deflection operations. While the
general public may assume that NASA has such responsibility this is not the
case; NASA has no such responsibility and is, in fact, a somewhat reluctant
agent in the current NEA discovery program.
The purpose of this paper then, based on both the specific situation re
asteroid 2004MN4 and the general circumstance of no assigned responsibility
for protection of the Earth with respect to asteroid impacts, is to call
upon the Congress to act. Congress is called upon to investigate this matter
and to direct the National Research Council or other competent body to
recommend:
1) appropriate action in the specific instance of asteroid 2004MN4 and
2) in the general case an appropriate assignment of governmental
responsibility for NEA matters.
Complete Call To Action Letter:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1024
PDF version:
http://www.b612foundation.org/papers/Call_for_Action.pdf
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SENATE COMMITTEE CONSIDERS INDIAN APOLOGY RESOLUTION
WFTV
May 25, 2005
http://www.wftv.com/news/4533371/detail.html
WASHINGTON -- A Senate committee is considering legislation that would offer
a formal apology to American Indians from the government.
Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate's Committee on Indian Affairs, said
he will try and help the resolution reach the full Senate.
The resolution -- introduced by Kansas Republican Sam Brownback -- recounts
the long history of government mistreatment of American Indians, including
forced relocation, the outlawing of traditional religions and destruction of
sacred sites. The president of the National Congress of American Indians
said the apology has been "a long time coming."
Congress rarely apologizes for official government conduct. Exceptions
include a 1993 apology to native Hawaiians for the unlawful overthrow of the
Hawaiian Kingdom, and a 1988 apology to Japanese Americans placed in
detention camps during World War II.
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NANO WORLD: NANO COULD LEAD TO NEW WMDS
By Charles Q. Choi
UPI
May 23, 2005
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050520-114429-1570r.htm
NEW YORK, NY - Nanotechnology could soon enable a new generation of chemical
and biological weapons that could escape current arms inspection schemes,
experts told UPI's Nano World.
"There is a very good possibility of weapons developed on the most recent
advancements in nanotechnology in the next 10 years or so," said social
scientist Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra of the National University of Mexico in
Mexico City. "Nanotechnology does have a lot of potential benefits,
especially in terms of preventing chemical and biological attacks with more
effective sensors, and with more effective means of containing chemical or
biological releases.
"But it is important to keep in mind advances in nanotechnology that can
enter the military sphere, in case some actually crystallize in the future,"
he added.
In talking about nanotechnology-enabled weapons of mass destruction,
Pardo-Guerra set aside long-term and purely theoretical nanotechnological
innovations such as self-replicating nanorobots. "There are other
nanotechnologies that are much easier to implement in the near term," he
explained.
Pardo-Guerra and colleague Francisco Aguayo, of the College of Mexico,
outlined in Nanotechnology Law & Business Journal three ways in which
nanotechnology could enable new weapons.
First, nanotechnology could make delivery of existing drugs more effective.
For instance, pharmaceutical companies such as Elan in Ireland, Nanocarrier
in Japan, and Solubest in Israel are working on nanoparticles that help the
body absorb drugs. Elan noted up to half of all drug candidates show promise
against their targets but are rejected because the body cannot absorb them
due to poor solubility.
Nanotechnology could help make a series of drugs viable medicines, but also
could, in principle, boost the power of compounds that once would have made
ineffective chemical weapons.
"Nicotine is a poison in large amounts, something easy to produce.
Delivering nicotine in lethal amounts is difficult but if you can develop
something that could help nicotine go through the barriers the body has, you
could make a weapon based on something that is not lethal," Pardo-Guerra
said.
Second, by improving our knowledge of biology, nanotechnology could help
find new ways to attack the body novel weapons inspectors might not
recognize.
"For instance, with cyanide you have well-established means of synthesizing
it, so you can follow the whole production process and detect it at an early
stage. But you could design new agents that attack very specific functions
in the body, say the central nervous system, and the amount of chemical you
would need would be much less, so you wouldn't need a big industrial base to
do that. It would be very difficult to trace," Pardo-Guerra said.
Third, nanotechnology could help make chemical and biological weapons
controllable.
"There are some medical applications under development that involve
nanocapsules that deliver a drug when activated by temperature, or go to
tumors and heat up when beamed with microwaves. The strategic advantage of
those weapons is that you can contaminate as many people as possible and
then selectively activate them," Pardo-Guerra said. "This scenario is quite
difficult, but not impossible."
Much remains unknown about to how feasible such novel weapons are.
"It's not clear what the costs of producing these are. They might not be
economically viable," Pardo-Guerra said.
Microbiologist Mark Wheelis, of the University of California at Davis, told
Nano World it is one thing to develop a chemical and deliver it to a willing
recipient -- as with a prescription drug -- and another to develop a
technology that could target troops or civilians over a large area without
their consent in an attack.
"There is a streak of alarmism in the communities concerned about these
things that isn't really helpful because it tends to alienate those
knowledgeable about the threat and make otherwise sympathetic people more
skeptical," said Wheelis, a member of the Washington-based Center for Arms
Control and Nonproliferation's scientific working group on biological and
chemical weapons.
"Still, I and most other people in the arms control field do feel
nanotechnology has a lot of significant potential for use in novel weapons,"
he said. "This is somewhat a threat in the future, but we ignore emerging
future threats at our very grave peril."
In the future, political and industry groups should consider initiating
special training programs directed at helping future weapons inspectors get
a quick capability to identify existing and emerging nanotechnologies that
might pose a danger, Pardo-Guerra said. For instance, key developments in
nanotechnology-based weapons might grow from otherwise benign fields such as
law enforcement.
"There is a lot of research right now for non-lethal weapons for policing
operations or riot control that are allowed under the chemical weapons
convention. In the hostage situation in Moscow in 2002, the efficiency of
the chemical weapons used by police there was very, very low, with a lot of
unintended deaths with use of the agent. So there could be development in
new delivery mechanisms for new incapacitating weapons that could quickly
find other lethal uses," Pardo-Guerra said.
New regulations concerning potential use of nanotechnology in weapons of
mass destruction are likely worldwide in the future, Wheelis predicted.
"The nanotechnology community can get ahead on this now and largely
determine the nature of the regulatory apparatus if they take as one of
their responsibilities the mapping out of harmful applications of
nanotechnology and suggest rational and effective ways of reducing and
mitigating that harm to the public sector," he said, and added if that
responsibility is ignored, "the public and governments are going to wake up
to the hazards and start calling for regulations anyhow. Any kind of
regulatory approaches led by the community itself are almost certainly going
to be better because they're technically informed."
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NEW ALERT OVER GENDER BENDING CHEMICALS
By Mark Prigg
This Is London
May 27, 2005
http://tinyurl.com/8osgc
A new health alert over chemicals used in make-up, shampoo and soaps is
issued today.
Experts say products containing the chemicals -- called phthalates -- could
cause women to give birth to boys with female characteristics. Their
research found shrunken genitals and less masculine behaviour in babies.
Phthalates help to give cosmetics colour and bond perfume molecules. They
are also used in pliable plastics such as clingfilm, kidney dialysis tubes,
blood bags and even children's toys.
"This is a very big problem," said study leader Professor Shanna Swan, of
the University of Rochester. The research, to be published-next month in the
journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found 90 per cent of babies
exposed to high levels of the chemicals in the womb exhibited "more female
physical traits".
Professor Swan said: "We need to eradicate these chemicals. But it is
rather like taking lead out of petrol -- a slow process."
The study of 134 boys found a range of problems including shrunken genitalia
and undescended testicles. They believe the effects could be permanent,
although this needs to be confirmed over time.
Professor Swan urged manufacturers to reveal which of their products contain
phthalates - previously supposed not to be harmful - as a matter of urgency.
"I would urge people to write and ask for that information," she said. "The
problem for consumers is at the moment we just don't know where this
chemical will show up."
Andreas Kortenkamp, an expert in environmental pollutants at the London
School of Pharmacy, said: "If it's true, it's sensational. This is the first
time anyone's shown this effect in humans."
He added: "These are mass chemicals. They are used in any plastic that is
pliable. Sorting this out is going to be an interesting challenge for
industry as well as society."
A spokesman for the European Council for Plasticisers and Intermediates said
reproductive effects had been seen in rats and mice only at levels of
exposure "many times higher than those experienced by humans".
------------
COMMON CHEMICAL MAY CAUSE DEFECTS IN BABY BOYS
By Elizabeth Weise
USA Today
May 26, 2005
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-05-26-plastics_x.htm?csp=22_elp
For the first time, scientists have shown that pregnant mothers exposed to
high but common levels of a widely used ingredient in cosmetics, fragrances,
plastics and paints can have baby boys with smaller genitals and incomplete
testicular descent.
The paper, published Friday in the journal Environmental Health
Perspectives, found that the more a mother was exposed to the chemicals,
called phthalates (THAL-ates), the greater the chance her boy's reproductive
development would be harmed. Similar changes have led to decreased semen
quality and fertility in rodents.
"We'll follow our children to see what the consequences are," says lead
researcher Shanna Swan, a professor of epidemiology at the University of
Rochester (N.Y.) School of Medicine.
The changes described in the federally financed study were seen at phthalate
levels found in one-quarter of the female population in the USA.
The study tested levels of four kinds of phthalates in the urine of pregnant
women. Researchers later examined 134 of the baby boys 2 months to 30 months
old who were born to those women.
Previous work had shown that prenatal phthalate exposure in rodents can
critically affect male hormones, resulting in impaired testicular descent
and smaller genital size. The Swan study is the first to look at effects in
humans.
While none of the boys showed clear malformation or disease, in the 25% of
mothers with the highest levels of phthalate exposure, the odds were 10
times higher that their sons would have a shorter than expected distance
between the anus and the base of the penis. This so-called AGD measurement
is a sensitive indicator of impacts on their reproductive system.
A statement from the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association said the
"use of phthalates in cosmetics and personal care products is supported by
an extensive body of scientific research and data that confirms safety."
But, Swan says, no one had ever studied phthalate exposure in infant boys.
"It's way premature to have concern," says Marian Stanley, who manages the
Phthalate Esters Panel of the American Chemistry Council in Arlington, Va.
"More study is needed."
Andrea Dunaif, chief of endocrinology at Northwestern University, called the
findings "strong evidence in humans that this endocrine-disrupting chemical
is associated with changes in boys."
The changes are subtle, but male infertility rates appear to be rising, she
said, and it's hard to know if the problem is environmental or just
diagnosed more often. "The public health implications are enormous."
------------
PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLE:
THE UGLY SIDE OF PRETTY (5/6/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9130
THE DARK SIDE OF COSMETICS
(& How To Tell The Good From The Bad) (6/10/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/7369
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US WANTS TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS BRITONS' ID CARDS
By Kim Sengupta
The Independent
May 27, 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=641731&host=3&dir=62
The United States wants Britain's proposed identity cards to have the same
microchip and technology as the ones used on American documents.
The aim of getting the same microchip is to ensure compatability in
screening terrorist suspects. But it will also mean that information
contained in the British cards can be accessed across the Atlantic.
Michael Chertoff, the newly appointed US Secretary for Homeland Security,
has already had talks with the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, and the
Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, to discuss the matter.
Mr Chertoff said yesterday that it was vital to seek compatibility, holding
up the example of the "video war" of 25 years ago, when VHS and Betamax were
in fierce competition to win the status of industry standard for video
recording systems.
"I certainly hope we have the same chip... It would be very bad if we all
invested huge amounts of money in biometric systems and they didn't work
with each other.Hopefully, we are not going to do VHS and Betamax with our
chips. I was one of the ones who bought Betamax, and that's now in the
garbage," he said.
Mr Chertoff also proposed that British citizens wishing to visit the US
should consider entering a "Trusted Traveller" scheme. Under this, they
would forward their details to the US embassy to be vetted. If successful,
they would receive a document allowing "fast- tracking" through the US
immigration system.
A pilot scheme will start within a few months between the US and the
Netherlands, allowing Dutch visitors to use a Trusted Traveller card to
enter the US without being subjected to further questioning or screening.
Britain is one of 27 countries whose citizens do not need visas to enter the
US if they intend to stay less than 90 days. The American government has
said it wants 27 to issue new passports by 26 October this year containing a
computer chip and a digital photograph.
Mr Chertoff said compatability and the checking system was intended purely
to track down "terrorists and criminals" and the main aim was to provide a
"fair and reasonable system".
US diplomatic sources stated later that Washington did not wish to interfere
in the domestic affairs of other countries.
"When we screen based on names, we're screening on the most primitive and
least technological basis of identification - it's the most susceptible to
misspelling, or people changing their identity, or fraud," he said.
The scheme will also, say diplomats, ease confusion over who exactly
constitutes a suspect. The most high-profile case was that of Yusuf Islam,
the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, who was barred from entering the
US because his activities "could be potentially linked to terrorism". The
British government is insistent that Mr Islam had no such links.
However, this is the latest controversy to surround Britain's proposed
combined identity card and passport due to be introduced in three years'
time. Rising costs have pushed the cost up to £93 each after the overall
estimated 10-year cost of the project grew from £3.1bn to £ 5.8 bn.
There have also been problems over the effectiveness of the biometric
technology which is supposed to safeguard the security of the cards. There
were also verification problems with 30 per cent of those whose fingerprint
was taken during an enrolment trial of 10,000 volunteers.
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100,000 SIGNATURES NEEDED ON DOWNING STREET LETTER
By Congressman John Conyers
dailykos.com
May 27th, 2005
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/27/164317/949
I have written to you in this space on a number of occasions about my
profound concern about the implications of the "Downing Street Memo," which
actually consists of the minutes of a July 2002 meeting between British
Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. During this meeting, Blair
and his advisers reveal details about conversations with their American
counterparts. These details cast substantial doubt on the honesty of
contemporaneous claims made by the Administration to Congress and to the
American people about the Iraq war.
First, the memo appears to directly contradict the Administration's
assertions to Congress and the American people that it would exhaust all
options before going to war. According to the minutes, in July 2002, the
Administration had already decided to go to war against Iraq.
Second, a debate has raged in the United States over the last year and one
half about whether the obviously flawed intelligence that falsely stated
that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was a mere "failure" or the
result of intentional manipulation to reach foreordained conclusions
supporting the case for war. The memo appears to close the case on that
issue stating that in the United States the intelligence and facts were
being "fixed" around the decision to go to war.
These are not routine questions within a partisan give and take. Under the
United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8), the Congress has the sole
power to declare war. If the Executive Branch deceives the Congress in this
duty, it represents an attack of our democracy of the most serious nature.
These Constitutional questions are not going away and must be answered
forthrightly and completely by this Administration.
I and 88 of my colleagues (that number is growing - more on that soon) asked
the Administration to come clean about these troubling allegations. Our
inquiries have been met with silence.
The press has also been negligent in giving this matter the attention it
deserves.
I am committed to seeing this through until we get the answers we deserve.
But I need your help.
The conventional wisdom, which unfortunately governs Washington's political
discourse, hold that the American people have long ago made peace with the
mistakes or deceptions which led us into war. Help me prove them all wrong.
I want to show the White House, the Press and my congressional colleagues
that nothing could be further from the truth.
That is why today I am giving you the opportunity to sign on to a letter
asking the same questions of the President that now nearly 100 Members of
Congress have asked. If I get at least 100,000 signatures on this, I will
personally deliver the letter to the White House.
If you want to sign on to this letter, go to my website:
http://www.johnconyers.com/
I also want you to know that I am exploring many, many avenues to get to the
truth about this matter.
Thank you in advance for your help and assistance.
------------
LETTER TO PRES BUSH CONCERNING "DOWNING STREET MEMO"
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Mr. President:
We the undersigned write to you because of our concern regarding recent
disclosures of a "Downing Street Memo" in the London Times, comprising the
minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers.
These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed to by
the summer of 2002 to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you
even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that
U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the
war.
Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking
British official as stating that by July, 2002, "Bush had made up his mind
to take military action." Yet, a month later, the you stated you were still
willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war.
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president
has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq."
In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction remains a serious and lingering question about the lead up
to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of
a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of
intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case
for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head
of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the
following questions:
1) Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the
leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies,
before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or
anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to
this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in
order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it
was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community
and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the
policy as the leaked document states?
These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John
Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers,
we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government
and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements
regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you
publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely...
http://www.johnconyers.com/
------------
PREVIOUS NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:
IRAQ BOMBSHELL GOES MOSTLY UNREPORTED IN US MEDIA (5/11/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9156
88 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS SEEK IRAQ WAR ANSWERS FROM BUSH (5/8/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/9133
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-----------
HALF OF WOMEN SEXUALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL, STUDY FINDS
Yale University / ScienceBlog
May 27, 2005
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8020
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine have found that female sexual dysfunction (FSD) affects 48.2
percent of women in a new study and that these women had decreased sensation
in the clitoris, which increased the risk of sexual dysfunction.
"There is a paucity of data available on FSD and this study brings attention
to the possibility of a neurological cause for the dysfunction," said lead
author Kathleen Connell, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of
Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine.
Connell said previous epidemiological studies have shown that about 10
million women between the ages of 50 and 74 report abnormal sexual
complaints, including decreased desire, inability to reach orgasm and
increased pain with intercourse. In contrast to data on men, Connell said
clinical trials evaluating the physiologic mechanisms responsible for sexual
function in women are few, despite reports of other investigators, which
suggest that sexual dysfunctions may be more common in women than men.
"The sexual response is complex and involves interaction between the nervous
system, the vascular system and the musculoskeletal system," said Connell.
"Alterations in any of these systems could potentially cause FSD."
The trial was conducted while Connell was at the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine. The team studied the pudenal nerve, which provides nerve fibers to
the pelvic floor muscles and is also responsible for sensation in the
genital region. They evaluated the role of genital neurological integrity
and sexual function in 56 women. They used a validated screening
questionnaire to identify women between ages 18 and 68 with FSD and tested
vibratory and pressure sensation in the genital region.
The team found that almost half of the women studied reported sexual
dysfunction. Of the women with FSD, 23.2 percent had more than one form of
sexual dysfunction. Those with sexual dysfunction had decreased sensation in
the clitoris compared to asymptomatic women.
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-----------
DOES SIZE MATTER? MOST ROMANTIC PARTNERS SAY 'NO'
STUDIES FIND BOTH SEXES' BODY INSECURITIES MAY BE MISGUIDED
By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay News / medicinenet.com
May 27, 2005
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=47337&pf=3
A survey of 50,000 American adults finds 70 percent of female respondents
desiring more ample or rounder breasts -- even though the majority of male
respondents say they are perfectly happy with their partner's breast size.
Men have their own insecurities: The same survey finds nearly half of
American males wishing for a larger penis. At the same time, however, 85
percent of females say they are "very satisfied" with their partner's
endowment.
"The picture this paints for us is that people are way more self-critical of
themselves than they need to be. In reality, their partners are generally
quite satisfied with them and their physical attractiveness," said David A.
Frederick, a researcher in body-image issues at the University of
California, Los Angeles.
Frederick is lead author of the two studies, each based on data collected
from a 27-item MSNBC/Elle magazine online survey on body image, posted on
both organization's Web sites for a two-week period in February 2003.
More than 50,000 adults averaging between 33 to 36 years of age responded to
the anonymous survey. The vast majority (98 percent) of respondents filled
out the survey while visiting the MSNBC site.
Frederick believes Americans of both genders face incredible media and
social pressures to conform to nearly unattainable physical ideals.
For women, "the popular Barbie doll, with her slender body, narrow hips and
large breasts represents this ideal," his team wrote in a study presented
Friday at the American Psychological Society annual meeting, in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, Barbie's proportions are "so extreme that it is estimated
that just one in every 100,000 women possesses her body type," the
researchers added. The drive to achieve an ideal feminine body type is
helping fuel a continuing boom in cosmetic surgery, experts say. According
to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, more than 264,000 women
underwent breast augmentation in 2004 alone.
While men may feel less pressure than women to attain the perfect physique,
one body part, especially, remains a focus of concern. According to
Frederick, previous studies have shown that men overwhelming link the size
of their penis to their sense of masculinity, and often worry that their
partners are dissatisfied with their endowment.
But how valid are these fears? According to Frederick, the MSNBC/Elle survey
results suggest many Americans are their own worst critics.
When asked about their breasts, seven out of 10 women surveyed expressed
dissatisfaction with either size (usually "too small") or shape ("too
droopy"). Women in the youngest age group (18 to 25) were most likely to be
content with their breasts (33 percent), but they were also the most likely
to desire bigger breasts (37 percent), according to the researchers. As
women aged, concerns turned from breast size to dissatisfaction with shape,
or "droopiness."
Males were much less critical when it came to judging their wife's or
girlfriend's breasts, however. Overall, "a majority of men (56 percent) were
satisfied with their partner's breasts," the researchers concluded. "A mere
20 percent of men in our sample wished their partner had larger breasts."
Frederick acknowledges that previous, smaller studies have suggested that
men view large breasts as "ideal." That's because those studies have usually
asked men to simply pick their favorite from a series of photos, he said.
"What we wanted to get at in this study was how satisfied men are with their
partner, because it could be that men find a variety of breast sizes to be
attractive, regardless of what they rate as ideal."
For their part, women appear to be very accepting of male endowment, the
survey found. But even though 85 percent of women said they had no problem
with their boyfriend's or husband's size, nearly half (45 percent) of all
males surveyed said they wished for something larger. That number rose to 54
percent among males who rated their penis length as just "average."
"The really good news for men, though, was that only 6 percent of women
considered their partner 'smaller than average,'" Frederick pointed out.
(For the record, Frederick said the most reliable U.S. studies peg "average"
penis size at an erect length of approximately 5.5 inches.) The full results
of this study will be published soon, Frederick said.
"What's so interesting about these studies is the way women and men see
themselves," said Courtney Fea, another body-image researcher and social
psychologist who presented her own study Friday at the Los Angeles meeting.
"Even though many feel inadequate, they really don't understand that others
see them as quite adequate," she said.
Her study points to one obvious remedy for some of this insecurity:
compliments.
Focusing on college-age women, her team at Kansas State University had
participants engage in an evaluation session that included a
"Self-Objectification Questionnaire" aimed at spotting women with an
unhealthy body-image fixation.
At the end of the session, a female researcher casually offered the women
one of three remarks: "Thank you for participating," (neutral); "You are a
nice-looking person" (body compliment); and "You sound like a nice person"
(character compliment). The women were then retested using the
Self-Objectification Questionnaire.
"Women who looked at themselves first as bodies had less shame and became
less concerned about their appearance after a compliment," Fea said. "And
the interesting finding was that it didn't matter what kind of a compliment
it was -- whether it was about their body or character." On the other hand,
compliments had little impact either way on shame or depression in women
without major body-image concerns, Fea said.
The take-home message? "If you're thinking about complimenting someone, go
ahead and do it," Fea said. The study wasn't designed to test how long the
feel-good effects of a compliment can last, she said, but saying something
nice certainly can't hurt. "It not only makes them feel better, but it'll
probably make you feel better, too."
Frederick agreed that people shouldn't take it for granted that their
partner knows exactly how much they are valued.
"On both sides of the coin, men and women should express themselves, and if
they are satisfied with their partner's appearance, this needs to be
communicated," he said. That kind of communication could help dispel fears
that specific physiques or body parts aren't up to par, he said.
It might even spice up relationships, Frederick said. "The more confident
your partner is, the healthier they'll be, including being more interested
in sex. There can be all kinds of positive outcomes."
------------
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LEAKED G8 DRAFT ANGERS GREEN GROUPS
By Paul Brown, Patrick Wintour and Michael White
The Guardian
Saturday, May 28, 2005
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1494540,00.html
A leak of the draft communique on climate change for the G8 summit has
dismayed green lobbyists by failing to include a single target or timetable
to achieve greater action.
The draft, which Downing Street said was only work in progress and was being
improved, spells out the danger of inaction to combat global warming. It
says: "If we miss this opportunity and fail to give a clear sense of
direction, then we will be locked into an unsustainable future that will
threaten our long-term security and prosperity.
"The world's developed economies have a responsibility to lead this agenda,
and to work in partnership with the developing world to support strong and
sustainable economic growth. The G8 therefore pledge to take action to
promote a fundamental step change in the way we produce and use energy."
But the 2,000-word text for the July 6 summit at Gleneagles was denounced
yesterday by environmental groups for lacking substance.
It was described by Greenpeace as "a mush of warm words carefully crafted by
civil servants to make sure no one is committed to anything".
The leak came as Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, appealed to
the US to accept overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change was
happening and manmade.
In an interview with the Guardian she said: "We think the science is
incontrovertible. We want that understanding to be widened and deepened."
She said that President George Bush had yet to endorse the report on climate
change that he commissioned from his own National Academy of Sciences.
"The report is there, and they said 'yes this is real'. Those who argue
against the science are fewer and fewer in the number and treated with less
and less respect."
Greenpeace's spokesman, Blake Lee-Harwood, said the communique would cause
"bitter disappointment" because it showed little sign of concrete action. He
said: "This whole document falls short of the urgency needed for what the
prime minister has called the greatest threat to mankind."
Catherine Pearce, Friends of the Earth's international climate campaigner,
said: "The alarm bells on climate change are ringing, but the world's
richest nations aren't listening. President Bush is continuing to block
attempts by Tony Blair for any meaningful international action on climate
change. Fine words are not enough. G8 countries represent just 13% of the
world's population, but account for 45% of greenhouse gas emissions."
Reflecting concern about the impact of aviation growth on climate change,
the G8 is to set up a commission to study its effects. The leaked draft also
promises a fund to support a market in sustainable energy in developing
countries.
The text gives examples of action taken to combat climate change including
an EU directive which lays down requirements for minimum standards for
energy performance in buildings.
No 10 said the draft was three weeks old and progress had been made in the
interim. A final judgment should be made after the summit.
The main British goal for the summit is to draw the US into multilateral
discussions on cutting emissions after the present Kyoto agreement expires
in 2012. The US boycotted Kyoto for what Mrs Beckett described as
inconsistent reasons. "If there were flaws in the Kyoto process, what would
be a better one? That is the question the US must answer," she said.
"The US administration is doing more than people give them credit in terms
of new technology investment, such as carbon sequestration, and also in
aiming to reduce their emissions intensity in relation to its GDP. But the
question is is that enough?" She said the general feeling in the world
community was "no".
Mrs Beckett also wants to use the British presidency of the EU to reach
agreements with China on its energy policy, including help with clean coal
technology. China is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after
the US.
Mrs Beckett also hinted that there would be no early decision on the
commissioning of new domestic nuclear power stations, pointing out that
nuclear could not be the solution to meeting Britain's goal of cutting
emissions by 20% by 2010 from 1990 levels.
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------------
STATE TO TACKLE GLOBAL WARMING
GOVERNOR BUCKS BUSH, WILL SET OWN GOALS
By Dion Nissenbaum
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau
Sunday, May 29, 2005
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/nort
hern_california/11767896.htm
SACRAMENTO - Bucking the Bush administration, Republican Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger is set to unveil an ambitious plan this week to combat global
warming that would make California the largest state in the nation to set
concrete goals for cutting greenhouse gases, the Mercury News has learned.
Under an executive order Schwarzenegger plans to sign Wednesday, the
governor will call on state officials to develop new ways to reduce
greenhouse gases by 11 percent over the next five years, 25 percent by 2020
and 80 percent by 2050.
The proposal would put California at the forefront of a burgeoning state and
local effort to try to curtail emissions heating the Earth's atmosphere and
place Schwarzenegger at odds with President Bush, who has rejected
international efforts to combat global warming.
But critics said Saturday that the governor's plan is long on symbolism and
short on substance. The executive order, the specifics of which were
outlined in a two-page administration fact sheet obtained by the Mercury
News, essentially sets goals without offering any laws or regulations to
enforce the governor's agenda.
"Toothless"
"Until you bind someone in the law to meet a target, the pronouncements are
all toothless," said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Los Angeles Democrat. She
and other lawmakers plan Tuesday to call on Schwarzenegger to go further and
embrace new anti-global-warming measures the group plans to champion this
year.
Skeptics also suggested that Schwarzenegger was merely piggy-backing on
existing anti-global-warming efforts, including a pioneering 2002 measure
law that requires automakers to set tighter emissions standards for millions
of cars, trucks and other vehicles on California roads.
Administration officials declined to discuss the governor's proposal until
he unveils it before attending the World Environment Day conference in San
Francisco on Wednesday.
Business executives briefed on the proposal could not be reached for comment
Saturday. But one industry executive said global warming is a difficult
issue for one state to tackle.
"Climate change is a global concern and there is a limit to the impact that
any one state, let alone any one country, can have," said Dan Riedinger, a
spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based
association of power companies.
Global warming remains one of the world's most intractable environmental
problems. Most scientists now believe that greenhouse gases are raising
atmospheric temperatures, which then melt polar ice, increase ocean levels
and alter global weather.
More than 140 nations have signed the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which took effect
three months ago. By 2012 they have pledged to reduce or limit output of six
gases -- chiefly carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning coal and oil
products -- by 5 percent of 1990 levels.
Critics unhappy
Schwarzenegger's plan takes longer to meet a similar goal by calling on
California to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Because
California has long been at the forefront of environmental issues, critics
said Schwarzenegger should set more visionary targets for the state.
"It's ambitious in 2050, but the impacts of climate change are already being
felt in California today," said Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, the Woodland
Hills Democrat who was the author of the 2002 anti-global-warming bill
targeting cars. In September, the state's Air Resources Board adopted new
rules to implement the law, which require automakers to reduce vehicle
greenhouse-gas emissions starting in 2009, with a 30 percent reduction by
2016.
Enforcement power
Pavley and Kuehl praised Schwarzenegger for taking a lead on the issue and
urged the governor to work with the Legislature to give state officials the
power to enforce the global-warming proposal.
Although the plan does not go as far as some environmentalists would like,
it does put Schwarzenegger at odds with the Bush administration, which
abandoned a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and shelved
any plans to embrace the Kyoto treaty.
The Bush administration opted out of the treaty in 2001, objecting that big
polluters in the developing world, such as China and India, are excused from
the strict curbs placed on industrialized nations. Bush proposed an
alternative to Kyoto, setting voluntary emission targets pegged to economic
growth. His plan would let emissions increase, but at a reduced rate.
Since Bush derailed efforts to secure Senate ratification for the treaty,
several states and cities have stepped into the void.
In 2001, six New England states joined with several Canadian provinces in a
pact to cut greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2010 and 10 percent further
by 2020. At the same time, more than 150 cities across America -- including
San Francisco, Los Angeles and Palo Alto -- are taking part in a separate
initiative to go farther than Kyoto. By 2012, the pact calls for cities to
cut their global-warming emissions by 7 percent of 1990 levels.
Last year, some of Silicon Valley's biggest businesses unveiled their own
private initiative to help cut Santa Clara County's greenhouse-gas emissions
to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010.
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MASS EXTINCTIONS WITHOUT ASTROPHYSICAL CALAMITIES
American Physical Society / Science Blog
May 27, 2005
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8041
Mass extinctions seem to occur on Earth roughly every 26 million years,
leading some scientists to propose that they may be caused by rare
collisions with comets or asteroids. A researcher in Poland thinks it may be
possible that extraordinary predators are at fault instead.
Adam Lipowski (Adam Mickiewicz University) constructed a numerical model of
many species competing for both food and living space. The model also
included a term that controls mutation rates, allowing new species to
develop over time. The model shows that at much of time the system is
populated with ³medium efficiency² predators whose numbers fluctuate only
slightly as the prey population waxes and wanes. Inevitably, their stable
community is disrupted when mutations lead to a super predator that quickly
decimates the prey population, which in turn leads to its own demise. The
few creatures that survive the predatory apocalypse gradually mutate to fill
the existing ecological niches, and the cycle begins again.
The period of the cycle depends on mutation rates in the model. The lower
the mutation rate, the longer the periods between super predators. For a
sufficiently low mutation rate, the model can lead to cycles that correspond
to our 26 million year mass extinctions.
Previous models that do not show these sorts of cycles could be faulty,
according to Lipowski, because they failed to account for the effects of
limited living spaces shared by a large number of different species.
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WATCHING NEW LOVE AS IT SEARS THE BRAIN
By Benedict Carey
New York Times
May 31, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/health/psychology/31love.html
New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania,
dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and
prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades,
yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.
Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of
this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of
romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.
In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of
Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic
love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.
It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug
craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or
affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural
activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases
primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term
attachment.
The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from
euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense
when it is withdrawn. In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers
are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their
lovers.
"When you're in the throes of this romantic love it's overwhelming, you're
out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m. every
day - why? Because she's there," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at
Rutgers University and the co-author of the analysis. "And when rejected,
some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide. This drive for romantic
love can be stronger than the will to live."
Brain imaging technology cannot read people's minds, experts caution, and a
phenomenon as many sided and socially influenced as love transcends simple
computer graphics, like those produced by the technique used in the study,
called functional M.R.I.
Still, said Dr. Hans Breiter, director of the Motivation and Emotion
Neuroscience Collaboration at Massachusetts General Hospital, "I distrust
about 95 percent of the M.R.I. literature and I would give this study an
'A'; it really moves the ball in terms of understanding infatuation love."
He added: "The findings fit nicely with a large, growing body of literature
describing a generalized reward and aversion system in the brain, and put
this intellectual construct of love directly onto the same axis as
homeostatic rewards such as food, warmth, craving for drugs."
In the study, Dr. Fisher, Dr. Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of
Medicine in the Bronx and Dr. Arthur Aron, a psychologist at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, led a team that analyzed about 2,500
brain images from 17 college students who were in the first weeks or months
of new love. The students looked at a picture of their beloved while an
M.R.I. machine scanned their brains. The researchers then compared the
images with others taken while the students looked at picture of an
acquaintance.
Functional M.R.I. technology detects increases or decreases of blood flow in
the brain, which reflect changes in neural activity.
In the study, a computer-generated map of particularly active areas showed
hot spots deep in the brain, below conscious awareness, in areas called the
caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area, which communicate with each
other as part of a circuit.
These areas are dense with cells that produce or receive a brain chemical
called dopamine, which circulates actively when people desire or anticipate
a reward. In studies of gamblers, cocaine users and even people playing
computer games for small amounts of money, these dopamine sites become
extremely active as people score or win, neuroscientists say.
Yet falling in love is among the most irrational of human behaviors, not
merely a matter of satisfying a simple pleasure, or winning a reward. And
the researchers found that one particular spot in the M.R.I. images, in the
caudate nucleus, was especially active in people who scored highly on a
questionnaire measuring passionate love.
This passion-related region was on the opposite side of the brain from
another area that registers physical attractiveness, the researchers found,
and appeared to be involved in longing, desire and the unexplainable tug
that people feel toward one person, among many attractive alternative
partners.
This distinction, between finding someone attractive and desiring him or
her, between liking and wanting, "is all happening in an area of the
mammalian brain that takes care of most basic functions, like eating,
drinking, eye movements, all at an unconscious level, and I don't think
anyone expected this part of the brain to be so specialized," Dr. Brown
said.
The intoxication of new love mellows with time, of course, and the brain
scan findings reflect some evidence of this change, Dr. Fisher said.
In an earlier functional M.R.I. study of romance, published in 2000,
researchers at University College London monitored brain activity in young
men and women who had been in relationships for about two years. The brain
images, also taken while participants looked at photos of their beloved,
showed activation in many of the same areas found in the new study - but
significantly less so, in the region correlated with passionate love, she
said.
In the new study, the researchers also saw individual differences in their
group of smitten lovers, based on how long the participants had been in the
relationships. Compared with the students who were in the first weeks of a
new love, those who had been paired off for a year or more showed
significantly more activity in an area of the brain linked to long-term
commitment.
Last summer, scientists at Emory University in Atlanta reported that
injecting a ratlike animal called a vole with a single gene turned
promiscuous males into stay-at-home dads - by activating precisely the same
area of the brain where researchers in the new study found increased
activity over time.
"This is very suggestive of attachment processes taking place," Dr. Brown
said. "You can almost imagine a time where instead of going to Match.com you
could have a test to find out whether you're an attachment type or not."
One reason new love is so heart-stopping is the possibility, the
ever-present fear, that the feeling may not be entirely requited, that the
dream could suddenly end.
In a follow-up experiment, Dr. Fisher, Dr. Aron and Dr. Brown have carried
out brain scans on 17 other young men and women who recently were dumped by
their lovers. As in the new love study, the researchers compared two sets of
images, one taken when the participants were looking at a photo of a friend,
the other when looking at a picture of their ex.
Although they are still sorting through the images, the investigators have
noticed one preliminary finding: increased activation in an area of the
brain related to the region associated with passionate love. "It seems to
suggest what the psychological literature, poetry and people have long
noticed: that being dumped actually does heighten romantic love, a
phenomenon I call frustration-attraction," Dr. Fisher said in an e-mail
message.
One volunteer in the study was Suzanna Katz, 22, of New York, who suffered
through a breakup with her boyfriend three years ago. Ms. Katz said she
became hyperactive to distract herself after the split, but said she also
had moments of almost physical withdrawal, as if weaning herself from a
drug.
"It had little to do with him, but more with the fact that there was
something there, inside myself, a hope, a knowledge that there's someone out
there for you, and that you're capable of feeling this way, and suddenly I
felt like that was being lost," she said in an interview.
And no wonder. In a series of studies, researchers have found that, among
other processes, new love involves psychologically internalizing a lover,
absorbing elements of the other person's opinions, hobbies, expressions,
character, as well as sharing one's own. "The expansion of the self happens
very rapidly, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences there is, and
short of threatening our survival it is one thing that most motivates us,"
said Dr. Aron, of SUNY, a co-author of the study.
To lose all that, all at once, while still in love, plays havoc with the
emotional, cognitive and deeper reward-driven areas of the brain. But the
heightened activity in these areas inevitably settles down. And the circuits
in the brain related to passion remain intact, the researchers say - intact
and capable in time of flaring to life with someone new.
------------
RELATED NHNE NEWS LIST ARTICLES:
FALLING IN LOVE IN THREE MINUTES OR LESS (2/11/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8842
NEUROSCIENCE REVEALS LOVE REALLY IS BLIND (6/14/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/7400
ANTIDEPRESSANTS THREATEN ABILITY TO FALL IN LOVE & STAY IN LOVE (5/13/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/7203
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN IN LOVE (1/28/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6669
THAT CRAZY THING CALLED LOVE (1/2/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6527
LOVE 'AS ADDICTIVE AS COCAINE' (11/25/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6312
FIRST FLUSH OF LOVE NOT EMOTIONAL (11/15/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6259
ROMANTIC LOVE PUT UNDER THE MICROSCOPE (2/28/2003):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/4570
LOVE MAKES PEOPLE STUPID (4/18/2001):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/1385
HOW THE BRAIN REGISTERS LOVE (7/6/2000):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/468
WHY WE FALL IN LOVE (2/5/2000):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/111
------------
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------------
WORLD'S MAYORS SEEK TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING, MAKE CITIES GREENER
By Terence Chea
Associated Press
Monday, May 30, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/05/29/state/n122800
D35.DTL
SAN FRANCISCO - Mayors from some of the world's biggest cities are gathering
here this week to forge a set of international guidelines for sustainable
urban living -- billed as a municipal version of the Kyoto Protocol on
global warming that the United States never ratified.
The Urban Environmental Accords, to be signed at the United Nations World
Environment Day Conference, is the latest example of cities seeking to
tackle climate change despite reluctance from their national governments.
"We cannot afford to wait for the state or federal government to do the job.
There are too many excuses going around, particularly in this country," said
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "Increasingly, the world will look at
mayors to become the stewards of the environment since the vast majority of
the pollution comes from cities."
At least 70 mayors from cities such as London, Rio de Janeiro, Tehran,
Capetown, Sydney and Shanghai are scheduled to attend the five-day
conference in San Francisco -- the first U.S. city to host the annual event.
World Environment Day, celebrated each June 5, was established in 1974, with
annual conferences held since 1987.
At this year's gathering, themed "Green Cities" and running June 1-5, the
mayors will trade ideas on sustainable urban living in areas such as
renewable energy, recycling, public transportation, city parks and clean air
and water. More than 230 community activities for World Environment Day are
scheduled around the San Francisco Bay area.
On Wednesday, when the conference opens, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will
unveil California's plan to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other
"greenhouse gases" blamed for trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere and
raising temperatures worldwide.
San Francisco, where the United Nations was founded 60 years ago, is known
as an environmental trendsetter, and city officials plan to showcase its
green successes. The city now recycles two-thirds of its garbage, claims the
largest fleet of alternative fuel vehicles and boasts the country's largest
city-owned solar power installation at the Moscone Convention Center.
"There's so much we can share, but there's also an enormous amount we can
learn from other cities," Newsom said.
Until recently, international treaties have been the main forum for
addressing global environmental problems such as climate change, which
scientists say is causing increasingly violent storms, shrinking wildlife
habitats and rising sea levels that threaten coastal cities.
The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in the Japanese city in 1997, requires
industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five
percent below 1990 levels. The treaty was ratified by at least 140 countries
and went into effect in February.
But the United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, did
not sign because Bush administration officials believed the treaty would
result in the loss of five million U.S. jobs and raise energy prices, said
Michele St. Martin, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on
Environmental Quality.
"President Bush favors an aggressive approach on climate change -- one that
fosters economic growth that will lead to new technology and innovation,"
St. Martin said, pointing to the administration's $2 billion climate change
initiative that promotes clean-coal technology, hydrogen-powered vehicles,
nuclear power and renewable energy.
Environmentalists and government officials are questioning whether Kyoto and
other global treaties between national governments are the solution.
"We have all these laws on the books, but none of them are being
implemented," said Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco's Department
of the Environment. "They have to teeth. Nothing happens if you don't
implement them. No one's going to hold them accountable."
Frustrated by the U.S. government's stance on global warming, many Americans
states, cities and corporations are taking steps to reduce emissions of
heat-trapping gases from factories, automobiles and power plants.
Last year, San Francisco was perhaps the first U.S. city to adopt its own
"climate action plan" that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- to 20
percent lower than 1990 levels by 2012 -- by increasing public
transportation use, recycling rates, renewable power and energy efficiency.
In May, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, worried about dry winters in his
famously wet city, announced that more than 130 U.S. mayors have signed an
agreement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by meeting or beating the Kyoto
targets.
"The mayors, the corporations and even the governor of California are
starting to show global leadership in the face of a vacuum," said Kathleen
Rogers, president of Earth Day Network. "It's the new trend, and it's out of
pure desperation."
Now, mayors from around the world are joining America's city leaders to
fight global warming and other environmental problems. By signing the Urban
Environmental Accords, the mayors will pledge their commitment to
eco-friendly urban development in seven areas: energy, environmental health,
transportation, urban design, urban nature, waste reduction and water.
Organizers say global environmental problems must be addressed on the
municipal level because half the world's population now live in cities -- a
proportion that's projected to rise dramatically this century. And cities
consume about three-quarters of the world's resources while producing
three-quarters of the world's pollution.
"Unlike the federal governments that seem to find a lot of wiggle room in
treaties, mayors are much more responsible to their constituents," Rogers
said. "Mayors are much more in tune with what people want."
The accords spell out 21 specific actions mayors can take to make their
cities greener, and signers promise to annually adopt at least three new
policies, many of which involve economic incentives or legislation. In the
energy arena, for instance, cities can adopt policies to increase use of
renewable power, boost energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
-- actions that can help cities save money and clean up the environment.
"It's a real roll-up-your-sleeves approach," said Susan Ode, outreach
coordinator for Local Governments for Sustainability. "They're actions that
truly will help and can be implemented by local governments and
communities."
While the accords are not legally binding, organizers hope that community
activists will hold the mayors to their promises once they return home.
"I hope that at the end of the day we're not just signing a piece of paper,"
Newsom said, "but making real commitments to take real action."
...........
On the Net:
UN World Environment Day:
http://www.wed2005.org/
San Francisco's Environment Department:
http://www.sfenvironment.com
------------
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Published by David Sunfellow
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-----------
EX-FBI OFFICIAL SAYS HE WAS 'DEEP THROAT'
By Greg Sandoval
Associated Press
May 31, 2005
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050531/D8AEBBCO0.html
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - A former FBI official claims he was "Deep Throat," the
long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon's Watergate
coverup to The Washington Post, his family said Tuesday.
W. Mark Felt, 91, was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s. His
identity was revealed Tuesday by Vanity Fair magazine, and family members
said they believe his account is true.
"The family believes my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero
who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to
save his country from a horrible injustice," a family statement read by
grandson Nick Jones said. "We all sincerely hope the country will see him
this way as well."
Felt, who lives with his daughter Joan in Santa Rosa and is in declining
health, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to
a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine
said.
"My grandfather is pleased he is being honored for his role as Deep Throat
with his friend Bob Woodward," Jones said.
"As he recently told my mother, 'I guess people used to think Deep Throat
was a criminal, but now they think he was a hero.'"
The Washington Post had no immediate comment on the report.
The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for a popular porn movie of the
early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's best-selling book
"All the President's Men." In the hit movie based on the book, Deep Throat
was played by Hal Holbrook.
But his identity of the source whose disclosures helped bring down the Nixon
presidency remained a mystery.
Among those named over the years as Deep Throat were Assistant Attorney
General Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, and even
ABC newswoman Diane Sawyer, who then worked in the White House press office.
Ron Zeigler, Nixon's press secretary, White House aide Steven Bull,
speechwriters Ray Price and Pat Buchanan, and John Dean, the White House
counsel who warned Nixon of "a cancer growing on the presidency," also were
considered candidates.
And some theorized Deep Throat wasn't a single source at all but a composite
figure.
In 1999, Felt denied he was the man.
"I would have done better," Felt told The Hartford Courant. "I would have
been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House
crashing down, did he?"
In 2003, Woodward and Bernstein reached an agreement to keep their Watergate
papers at the University of Texas at Austin.
At the time, the pair said documents naming "Deep Throat" would be kept
secure at an undisclosed location in Washington until the source's death.
MSNBC quoted Bernstein as saying Tuesday that he and Woodward would stick to
their pledge not to say anything until Deep Throat dies.
In the family statement, Jones said his grandfather believes "the men and
women of the FBI who have put their lives at risk for more than 50 years to
keep this country safe deserve recognition more than he."
"On behalf of the Felt family we hope you see him as worthy of honor and
respect as we do," Jones said.
------------
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-----------
IMMUNITY IN SUIT SOUGHT FOR POPE
Houston Chronicle
May 27, 2005
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3201751
The Vatican has sought the intervention of the U.S. State Department to
declare Pope Benedict XVI immune from a sexual abuse lawsuit filed here,
according to court documents.
A church official contacted the State Department May 20, asking it to notify
a Houston federal court of the pope's immunity as the head of a foreign
state, according to the defense motion. Vatican attorneys requested a delay
on the matter Thursday.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, which also was named
as a defendant in the suit, could not be reached for comment Friday.
The lawsuit filed by plaintiffs identified as John Does I, II and III
accuses the pope, then acting as a cardinal, of conspiring to cover up the
alleged abuse about a decade ago. The suit names a former seminary student
as the alleged abuser.
------------
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ADVANCED VEHICLES DEMONSTRATE ZERO OIL-CONSUMPTION, REDUCED EMISSIONS
By Meg Herbert
Boston.com Staff
May 18, 2005
http://www.boston.com/cars/news/2005/may/0518_tourdesol.html
There is no doubt that with the rising cost of fuel and environmental
concerns, extra attention is being paid to hybrid and alternative-fuel
vehicles. But besides all the hype around these issues, progress toward
alternative fuels has been slow.
However, carmakers such as Toyota and Honda can't seem to make hybrid
vehicles fast enough to keep up with public interest. Interest in this new
technology is growing, and one group is highlighting these technical marvels
in a yearly event called the Tour de Sol <http://www.TourdeSol.org/>.
The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, or NESEA
<http://www.nesea.org/>, just wrapped-up its 17th annual event, which was
held in Saratoga Springs, NY. There are many components to the Tour de Sol,
including a Monte-Carlo rally, in which drivers of hybrids and modified
hybrids drive a minimum of 150 miles to see who can get the best gas
mileage.
"The students, businesses, New York State government officials, auto
companies producing advanced vehicles, and people using new hybrid and
biofuel vehicles in the Tour de Sol are the new American heroes of the 21st
century," said Nancy Hazard, executive director of the Northeast Sustainable
Energy Association.
Another component of the event is the Tour de Sol championship, where
students and entrepreneurs showcase their efforts to design vehicles that
approach zero carbon emissions and use renewable fuels. The cars are put
through rigorous tests as a technical, emissions, and fuel economy. St.
Mark's High School in Southboro, and North Haven Community School, North
Haven, ME, demonstrated true zero-oil consumption and true zero
climate-change emissions with their modified electric Ford pick-up and
Volkswagen bus.
"Each year, the Tour de Sol highlights the largest innovations in
alternative-energy technology and advanced fuel vehicles, showcasing the
future of the clean-energy and transportation industry," said New York Gov.
George E. Pataki. "Over the last 10 years, we've invested unprecedented
funding into the research and development of clean-fuel technology and
currently deploy more than 4,300 clean-fuel vehicles in our state-operated
fleets."
Top prize for the Monte-Carlo Rally went to a modified Honda Insight driven
by Brian Hardegen, of Pepperell, who broke the 100-mile-per-gallon barrier
over a 150-mile range. The car actually got 107 miles-per gallon. An
honorable mention in the rally went to a modified "plug-in" Toyota Prius
from Valence Corp. in Austin, TX, averaging 102 miles-per-gallon over a
150-mile range.
The winner of the Tour de Sol championship was a student team from West
Philadelphia High School in Philadelphia, Penn. Their purpose-built hybrid
uses biodiesel (or treated vegetable oil) instead of gasoline, which
produces 77% less emissions compared to a conventional gas car. Teams from
Western Washington University and Quebec Advanced Transportation Institute
(ITAQ) in St. Jerome, Quebec, Canada demonstrated incredibly low
greenhouse-gas emissions by running their vehicles on biodiesel. The ITAQ
entry got 67 MPG in a diesel Mercedes SMART vehicle.
More than 60 hybrid, electric and biofueled vehicles from throughout the US
and Canada demonstrated that we have the technology today to power our
transportation system with zero-oil consumption and zero climate-change
emissions.
BACKGROUND:
Monte Carlo-style Rally & 100 MPG Challenge
The Monte Carlo-style Rally was created this year to offer advanced vehicle
owners the opportunity to demonstrate what their vehicles (production-line
or modified) can deliver as well as to compete for up to $10,000 in prizes.
To compete for the 100 MPG Challenge (which no entrant achieved this year),
entrants began at one of the 11 official starting sites around the US and
Canada, and drove a minimum of 500 miles to Stewart's Shops in Saratoga
Springs, NY. Other entrants traveled a minimum of 150 miles to Saratoga
Springs, for other prizes.
Key Monte Carlo-style Rally organizers are the Automotive Career Development
Center and the Center for Technology Commercialization, with Stewart's Shops
and biodiesel supplier Environmental Alternatives providing the fuel for all
the entries. This year, 40 teams entered the new Monte Carlo-style Rally.
E-Bike and NEV Competition
The E-bike and NEV (neighborhood electric vehicle) competition was created
last year by RunAbout Cycles in Sunderland, MA. E-bike and NEV
manufacturers, distributors, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, and students are
invited to participate in this two-day event. This year, over a dozen
entrants went through technical specification checks and displayed their
vehicles.
Tour de Sol Championship
Over a half million consumers have visited the Tour de Sol since its
creation in 1989 by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA).
The Tour de Sol provides a key platform for vehicle manufacturers, students,
and entrepreneurs to demonstrate future designs and current products that
aim to reduce oil and carbon emissions to zero. The event provides news
media the opportunity to provide timely and topical updates on the status of
sustainable energy and mobility. This year, over a dozen teams participated
in the Tour de Sol Championship, which began in 1989. It aims to inspire
students and businesses to design, build, showcase, and use concept vehicles
that push the envelope and work toward the ultimate goal of the event.
Sponsors
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the Center
for Technology Commercialization are the event's premier sponsors. Key
sponsors are the US Department of Energy, the New York Power Authority,
Toyota, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, New
York State Parks, Honda, Environmental Alternatives, and the Federal Highway
Administration.
NESEA - NESEA, the nation's leading regional education and advocacy
association, is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. NESEA aims to
accelerate the deployment and use of renewable energy and energy efficiency
by producing major sustainable-energy events that inspire and motivate large
numbers of people to get involved and make a difference.
------------
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VIOLENCE MAY BE VIEWED AS INFECTIOUS DISEASE
Harvard Medical School / Science Blog
May 31, 2005
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8055
In a study designed to isolate the root causes of violent behavior, Harvard
Medical School researchers found that young teens who witnessed gun violence
were more than twice as likely as non-witnesses to commit violent crime
themselves in the following years. The study will appear in the May 27 issue
of Science.
"Based on this study's results, showing the importance of personal contact
with violence, the best model for violence may be that of a socially
infectious disease," says Felton Earls, MD, HMS professor of social medicine
and principal investigator of the study and of the the Project on Human
Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. "Preventing one violent crime may
prevent a downstream cascade of 'infections'. And the lessons learned in
Chicago should be broadly applicable. Generalizing this to any large city
should be valid," Earls said.
The study, a five-year project that included interviews of over 1,500
children and teenagers from 78 Chicago neighborhoods, used statistical
advances and extremely detailed information about the study subjects to go
beyond the correlations and associations typically used by social scientists
to determine violent behavior. "We have a broad range of factors, and a long
course of study, so we can tease out the causal mechanisms," said first
author Jeffrey Bingenheimer, currently a doctoral candidate at the
University of Michigan who will be joining the Harvard School of Public
Health in September as Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar.
Previous work has shown that a large network of factors pushes or pulls
young people away from or into violent crime. Researchers suspected that
exposure to violence in the community played a role, but many argued that a
common factor, perhaps in family structure or personality, might be the
common cause of both exposure to violence and later acts of violence.
Demonstrating cause and effect with a controlled experiment, deliberately
exposing some children to mayhem, would be ethically impossible. But by
grouping together and comparing teens with similar likelihood of exposure,
some of whom were and some of whom were not actually witnesses to violence,
the researchers were able to isolate the independent contribution made by
seeing gun violence. And it turned out to be large, swamping other single
factors like poverty, drug use, or being raised by a single parent.
The researchers studied the subject teens at three points in their
adolescence. Initially they and their caregivers were intensively
interviewed and data was collected about their families, personalities,
neighborhoods, school performance, and many other factors; this allowed the
researchers to group the teens by their propensity to witness gun violence.
Two years later, the subjects were interviewed to see which of them had
actually seen someone being shot, or shot at. Finally, almost three years
further on, they were interviewed again to determine who had participated in
gang violence or other violent actions.
After finding that witnessing violence more than doubled the risk that teens
would violently offend, the team looked at their statistics to check whether
an unknown factor could be hiding from them. They found that something
significant would have to be at work to change the findings substantially,
and it would have to be uncorrelated with the factors they did examine. "And
honestly, it's very difficult to think what we might have left out," Earls
said, pointing to the 153 variables that were embraced in the study.
There is no shortage of medical ways to view urban violence, but the
challenge for social medicine researchers is to choose the best one - is
violence a product of families, akin to a hereditary disorder? Or is
violence like an environmental contaminant, lurking in some communities and
leaving others unscathed? Based this study's results, showing the importance
of personal contact with violence, Earls feels the best model may be an
socially contagious disease.
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Published by David Sunfellow
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