Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Trusting Our Leaders John Brand writes: Majoring in accounting in undergraduate school, I nevertheless took a fair dose of liberal arts courses. I finished law school at a prestigious university, Northwestern School of Law in Evanston, Illinois. Yet at no time in my academic career was I exposed to The Federalist. I think that perchance in a course on government those papers might have been mentioned. However, I was at no time required to read or study them. I believe that the vast majority of educated Americans have little knowledge about the basic concepts underlying our heritage. Experiencing the present decline of U.S. Constitutional government, I took it upon myself to find out what Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay had to say about the founding of our nation. I discovered that these brilliant men had a profound understanding of human nature. The bottom line is they just did not trust that men and women in power would act in a manner beneficial to the common weal of the nation. (07/23/03) Defining ORTEGRITY Timothy Wilken, MD writes: The Ortegrity is a “system of human organization that creates a conflict-free environment for decision making and action implementation”. This is an environment so ergometrically suited to human thinking that efficiency and productivity are predicted to increase 10 to 1000 times. Yes, that is 10 to 1000 times more efficient and productive. The Ortegrity achieves its great power by creating an ideal psychological environment for human thinking. One important finding of recent mind-brain research, is “that whenever humans experience conflict they lose access to their full intelligence”. When humans are confronted with conflict, their mind-brains shift to a very primitive and highly reactive way of thinking called the survive mode. The survive mode  evolved in the jungle to insure physical survival. Its primary skills are fighting and fleeing. Its extremes are rage and terror. All humans thinking in the survive mode will find their intelligence to be severely limited. Access is lost to the faculties of reason and intuition. In severe conflict, many of us lose even our ability to speak. Unfortunately, the survive mode turns on with the slightest conflict, and instantaneously our intelligence begins to decrease. It is not simply on or off. It is more like the rheostat dimmer switch controlling a dinning room light. A little conflict will produce a little loss of intelligence, while a large conflict will produce a large loss of intelligence. If we remain in conflict for weeks, then we will operate at limited intelligence for weeks. And in full rage or terror, we humans access only a tiny fraction of our potential intelligence. Conflict is to organizations as friction is to machinery. The power of the Ortegrity results then from its unique ability to create a conflict-free state. It is this conflict-free state that optimizes human intelligence and creativity. It is this conflict-free state that maximizes efficiency and productivity. It is this conflict-free state that increases the quality of work-life. It is the conflict-free state that allows all relationships between all members to become win-win. In the difficult political-economic times ahead, organizations must learn to work smarter. Only by optimizing the human factor can they hope to survive. The Ortegrity promises to increase efficiency and productivity by 10 to 1000 times. It accomplishes this by increasing the intelligence and creativity of all members in the system. This is working “smartest”. The Ortegrity was designed to fit the human “mind-brain” like a well tailored glove fits your hand, it could change the way we all work and live in the future. (03/13/02) Ape Diet Lowers Cholesterol The New Scientist -- A vegetarian "ape-diet", based on the foods our simian cousins eat, is as effective in lowering cholesterol as an established cholesterol-lowering drug, reveals a new study. High cholesterol levels increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. The key components of the ape diet are plant sterols, found in plant oils and enriched margarines, viscous fibre, found in oats, barley and aubergine, and soy protein and nuts. People with raised cholesterol following this primitive diet had their levels of bad cholesterol slashed by about a third - the same reduction provided by the statin drug, lovastatin. Study leader David Jenkins, a vascular biologist at the University of Toronto, says these foods are accepted to have cholesterol-lowering properties. "The thing we did was to put them all together and see that they didn't cancel out but actually added up." ... Jenkins and colleagues assigned 46 patients to either the special ape diet, a standard cholesterol-lowering diet or the standard diet plus lovastatin. A typical dinner from the ape menu would be tofu bake with ratatouille of aubergine, onions and sweet peppers, with pearled barley and vegetable side dishes, says the team. After four-weeks, levels of the harmful LDL-cholesterol plummeted by 29 per cent on the ape diet, and 31 per cent for those on lovastatin. Bad cholesterol fell by only 8 per cent for those on the standard low-fat diet. (07/23/03) Our Oldest Ancestor BBC Science -- The fundamental processes which keep humans and all animals alive evolved more than 600 million years ago in single-celled organisms, scientists say. The research, published in the journal Science, highlights the ancient genetic lineage we all carry in every cell of our bodies. The way our cells function, grow and interact with others uses molecules and methods that first appeared long ago, when the most advanced forms of life were microbes living in the sea. Studying an obscure microorganism with ancient roots led scientists to this far-reaching conclusion. It is one which sheds light on one of the most dramatic evolutionary leaps in life's history - the origin of animals. The evolution of animals from a single-celled ancestor is one of the major milestones in the development of life. The identity of this ancestor and how it did it are shrouded in mystery. Clues to what happened may be contained within the molecular machinery of the Choanoflagellates - a group of about 150 species of transparent, single-celled microbes that move around by using a whip-like appendage. Scientists have long suspected that they might be modern examples of what the ancestors of multi-cellular animals, or metazoans, looked like when they lived more than 600 million years ago. (07/23/03) Humans Entered America 18,000 Years Ago BBC Science -- A new genetic study deals a blow to claims that humans reached America at least 30,000 years ago - around the same time that people were colonising Europe. The subject of when humans first arrived in America is hotly contested by academics. On one side of the argument are researchers who claim America was first populated around 13,000 years ago, toward the end of the last Ice Age. On the other are those who propose a much earlier date for colonisation of the continent - possibly around 30,000-40,000 years ago. The authors of the latest study reject the latter theory, proposing that humans entered America no earlier than 18,000 years ago. They looked at mutations on the form of the human Y chromosome known as haplotype 10. This is one of only two haplotypes carried by Native American men and is thought to have reached the continent first. Haplotype 10 is also found in Asia, confirming that the earliest Americans came from there. (07/23/03) Engineering Safer Cars CNN Technology -- Electronic stability control, which has different trade names, is a system that applies brakes to specific tires and decelerates if it senses a driver is veering off course. If a driver swerves to the left to avoid an animal in the road, for example, a vehicle with stability control will apply brakes to the outside front tire to prevent the vehicle from fishtailing. Stability control is different from traction control, which keeps wheels from spinning when the driver accelerates. It's also different from all-wheel drive, which distributes energy to all four tires to increase traction. Developed in Germany Stability control was developed in Germany by Bosch and Mercedes-Benz and started appearing on luxury vehicles in the mid-1990s. In 1999, Mercedes was the first to make it standard in all its vehicles. According to a study of German government data released last year by DaimlerChrysler AG, accident rates for Mercedes vehicles in Germany fell by 29 percent between 1999 and 2000 after stability control became standard. In 1999, Mercedes vehicles were in 15,000 crashes, while in 2000 they were in 10,600 crashes. In 2001, Mercedes vehicles were in 10,700 crashes, the study said. Crash rates for all other vehicles remained steady during that time, the study said. (07/23/03) 6:24:05 AM

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