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Tuesday, July 01, 2003
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BBC World -- Countries which exploit their oil and mineral wealth are likelier to save their forests, researchers say. The more money they make from drilling and mining, the argument runs, the less temptation there is to clear the forests. More than 12 million hectares of tropical forest are lost annually The researchers say the real message is that economics have a marked effect on the environment. They believe cheap oil could be devastating for many tropical forests. The researchers, from the Center for International Forestry Research (Cifor), based in Indonesia, say they receive no funding from oil or mining companies. Their report, Oil Wealth and the Fate of the Forest: A comparison of eight tropical countries, says high incomes from oil and minerals can relieve forest pressure in several ways. They strengthen exporters' national currencies, so alterations in exchange rates make it less attractive to invest in logging and in farming in forests. Governments may also spend oil revenues on their cities, drawing people there, and letting the forests recover - or at least slowing deforestation. Conversely, a slump in oil earnings means jobless people leaving the cities to clear the forests for crops and to hunt bushmeat. (07/01/03)
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: When we examine the relationship between self and other, we discover that we can choose actions that result in our being worse off, actions that result in our being unchanged, or actions that result in our being better off. We can choose to hurt each other, we can choose to ignore each other, or we can choose to help each other.
It was as a child on the school playgrounds of rural America in the 1950's that I first learned of these three choices first hand. My twin brother and I were seven years old when our Dad was transferred to a new job and our family moved to the small community of Palco, Kansas. We arrived there after the start of the school year, and soon found ourselves threatened by the established group of boys at our new school. For reasons unclear to me then, conflict seemed almost constant, and real knock down battles occurred all too frequently. One of my strongest childhood memories is of fear and running. A pack of boys are chasing me and my brother. If they catch us, they will beat us up. I am very tired. We have been running for nearly thirty minutes. My heart is pounding so hard I can hear little else. Perspiration fills my eyes making it difficult to see. A hundred yards ahead my twin brother is running easier. He is taller and a great runner. The pack cannot catch him. But, they are getting closer to me. Recess is almost over now, if we can just hold out until the bell rings, we will escape back into the safety of the classroom. (07/01/03) | |
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Howard Bloom writes: Neolithic centers like Catal Huyuk left only wordless clues to the new forms of diversity boiling in the cauldron of late stone age cities. The time has come to skip ahead 5,000 years to municipalities which have left their tablets and their scrolls -artifacts whose calligraphy fills in the blank spots left by archaeology. There we can see new factors focussing the frenzies of the nascent global brain. Far below the surface of familiarity, these forces tapped the power lines of psychobiology, built new arenas where instincts could chorus in harmony, and rewrote the emotional scripts which transmogrify society. The catalysts for transformation would be three: freedom to escape group boundaries; ideas; and the games subcultures were about to learn to play. While some citizens of that far-Western Asian flank now known as Turkey mixed mud to erect the housing developments of Catal Huyuk, others rowed beyond the horizon of the Aegean Sea, came across Crete and the 30 islands of the Cyclades, put down roots and stayed. Sixty miles of sea did not stop the neolithic data rush: the settlers kept up with developments back on the Anatolian plains, importing the new art of wheat cultivation and cattle raising, then joining the trade loop of obsidian which helped make Catal Huyuk's stone craftsmen rich. Archaeological evidence suggests that at the same time, other Anatolians paddled their high-prowed boats to mainland Greece, where they found accomplished sailors who had been plying the waters, fetching obsidian from distant isles, and fishing tuna since roughly 12,000 b.c. (07/01/03) | |
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BBC Science -- An aborted foetus could one day become the mother of a new baby by "donating" her eggs to an infertile woman, say researchers. The highly controversial idea has been suggested as one solution to a worldwide shortage of women prepared to donate their eggs to help other women become pregnant. It moved a little closer to reality on Monday with the unveiling of research from Israel and the Netherlands which found that the ovarian tissues taken from second and third trimester foetuses could be kept alive in the laboratory for weeks. ... The lead researcher, Dr Tal Biron-Shental, from Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba, Israel, conceded that the concept of taking egg follicles from an aborted baby was controversial. Presenting the work to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Madrid, she said: "I'm fully aware of the controversy about this - but probably, in some place, it will be ethically acceptable. "There is a shortage of donated oocytes (eggs) for IVF - oocytes from aborted foetuses might provide a new source for these. (07/01/03)
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BBC Science -- The proposed building of a massive dam to supply electricity for Namibia has met with fierce resistance from both environmental groups and local tribes. One day's water power would supply Windhoek for a year The proposed Epupa dam project - to be built on the Kunene river in the north-west of the country - would dramatically alter the environment by flooding a vast expanse of the region. Although this would require long-settled tribes to be moved and destroy the beautiful Epupa valley, government officials in the country's capital Windhoek defend the dam almost as a matter of national pride. "The government has got a responsibility to develop this country," Pete Haines, the director of resource management at Namibia's ministry of agriculture, water and rural development, told BBC World Service's Politics Of Water programme. "It will also take measures in the national interest to make sure that this development can take place." The Epupa dam project is particularly suited to hydropower because of the steep gradient of the Kunene to the coast, Mr Haines adds. In a single day, enough water flows down the Kunene river to supply Windhoek for a year. The project is necessary, contends John Langford of NamPower - which generates and supplies the country's energy - because the surplus from South Africa on which the country currently depends will shortly run out. "By about 2012-2013, they will run out of base load capacity in South Africa. (07/01/03)
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BBC Science -- It is called a "splatometer" and conservationists want car drivers in the UK to use it to count numbers of flying insects. It is about the size of a postcard The idea is to work out whether anecdotal evidence of declining numbers of insects can be supported. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says species like tree sparrows and corn bunting are on the decline. It wants to know whether the apparent decline in the number of bees, ladybirds, moths and other insects has anything to do with this. So the society has developed a postcard-sized bug-catching device which drivers can use to sample the number of insects they encounter on a journey. "If people across the country do this, we'll be able to develop a picture of the regional trends in insects and, if we do it through the future, any temporal changes as well," said the RSPB's Richard Bradbury. (07/01/03)
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5:49:16 AM
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
8/3/2003; 11:27:27 PM.
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