Tuesday, August 05, 2003

The Transformer David Brooks writes: Over the past few months, while much of the world has been watching Tony Blair the world statesman, I've been thinking about Tony Blair the young rock-concert promoter. In 1971 the future Prime Minister had just graduated from the elite Scottish prep school Fettes; a year later he was to attend St. John's College at Oxford. During the interim he went to London, grew his hair shoulder-length, wore a modish fur coat, and hung out with a crowd of hard-partying rich kids, trying to discover the next Rolling Stones. Blair bought a van, gathered some stray musicians into a band called Jaded, set about booking it into pubs, and cruised teen gathering spots handing out leaflets for its gigs. He met a man named Norman Burt, who owned two semidetached houses in London; Burt let students live in one of them, and he lived in the other. Blair quickly wheedled his way into a room. It wasn't in the raucous youths' house, however; he lived in the quieter Burt house, and he helped Burt, who was something of a God-squadder, as a volunteer at Christian youth groups. The funny thing is, Blair never used drugs. Three years ago The Spectator and the Mail on Sunday investigated his activities during that year, a year largely missing from Blair biographies. People they interviewed recalled that Blair could do a mean Mick Jagger impersonation; they all said he didn't indulge in the pot and acid that were all around. Blair, who turned fifty in May, has transformed the Labour Party. He has pioneered a Third Way philosophy that has allowed him to dominate the political landscape of his nation. He took a courageous stand on Iraq, facing millions of protesters who marched against him, and became the most eloquent proponent of the war. Although in many ways Blair has lived a quintessential Baby Boomer's life, there is an air of loneliness and detachment about him. Imagine him as an eighteen-year-old that year in London—wearing the right clothes, apparently popular with the ladies, but passing the bong without ever taking a hit. Picture him handing out concert flyers on Saturday night, which was a fashionable activity, and handing out church announcements on Sunday morning, which was not. (08/05/03) Energy and Survival Joël de Rosnay writes: The energy crisis has revealed the physical aspect of human society in sudden and dramatic fashion. Nothing can escape the implacable laws of thermodynamics; human society, like any machine or organism, is no exception. Economists are finding this out now, apparently with some surprise, in the wake of the discoveries of biologists and ecologists. The necessary tools for considering the overall picture of the flow and degradation of energy in human society--the metabolism of the social organism, its primary function of self-maintenance--have been available for only a short time. Observing this metabolism through the macroscope, we see its dynamic behavior, heretofore impossible to grasp from within. Out of the relationship between the "anatomy" and the "physiology" of society the long-unsuspected link between energy, economy, ecology, and entropy has been brought to light. This relationship not only reveals the possible causes of the ills of the social organism, it suggests the kinds of remedies that one might apply to a system on which the lives of all of us depend. ... The story of society is usually told in history books as the political and economic evolution of a country. Yet the laws of energy are also significant. Why not retell the history of social organization from the point of view of energy? The approach is justified because energy laws have priority over political and economic laws. Energy laws are the basis of action; energy is essential to maintenance, to change, and to progress in any organization. (08/04/03) Protecting Marine Life BBC Science -- Efforts to conserve threatened marine creatures such as sharks and turtles should concentrate on so-called hotspots of biodiversity, according to a new scientific study. Researchers from Germany and Canada discovered that certain areas of the ocean seem to teem with many different species and that these locations should be developed as marine reserves. The scientists' modelling shows that preventing fishing in these "parks" would be the most efficient way of enhancing the survival prospects of those fish and other marine animals now threatened with extinction. The team, led by Dr Boris Worm from the Institute for Marine Science in Kiel, publishes its findings in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences (PNAS). It is well known that on land, some places are far richer in species than others; a couple of examples are tropical rainforests and savannah watering-holes. Many of these areas have now been turned into protected parks. But Dr Worm and colleagues have shown this concentration of life to be true also of the oceans. Although scientists have long suspected this to be the case, the new study is said to be one of the first to put some hard data to the idea.  (08/05/03) Sun Scalpel BBC Science -- Doctors in Israel have successfully used sunlight to perform surgery on rats. The procedure, explained in the journal Nature, would only work in sunny climates, but could one day provide a low-cost alternative to conventional laser treatments. Laser surgery is used often to remove tumours by simply burning them out, instead of traditional techniques of physically cutting them out of the body with a scalpel. ... In this experiment, Jeffrey Gordon and colleagues, from Ben Gurion University, Sede Boqer, Israel, transported sunlight into the operating theatre from outside through a system of optical fibres. ... The rats recovered well following the surgery; and after detailed analysis of the livers, the scientists found the treatment had worked as well as a laser. Not only could this solar surgery be a cheap alternative to laser therapy in sunny countries, it also appears to be safer for the surgeons to use. (08/05/03) Watching Babies Think BBC Science -- A burst of brain activity recorded by scientists could offer clues to a baby's level of understanding of the world around it. The researchers involved, from Birkbeck College, and University College London, believe their finding could begin to settle a controversial argument on baby brain development. When an object is shown to six-month-old babies, then hidden, they often behave as if it is no longer present. It appears to be "out of sight, out of mind", as far as their level of understanding is concerned. But scientists still suspect the baby, to some extent, does understand the object is still around, just hidden, even if it shows no physical signs of awareness. The London team wired up their babies to a harmless "hair-net" of sensors which measured electrical activity in the brain. They were looking for a burst of activity that might correspond to the infant thinking about the object while it was hidden. One of the traditional tests used for these experiments is a toy train that is pushed into and out of a tunnel. What they found was a distinctive burst of electrical activity over a part of the brain called the temporal lobe at key stages in the game. It happened both when the object was "occluded", or hidden, and again at around the time the baby might expect the train to reappear from the tunnel. The researchers believe these activity bursts represent a clear process in which the baby is thinking about the train - even though he or she cannot see it. (08/05/03) Support Your Local Fungi BBC Science -- Conservation groups in the UK say the country has some of the world's most important populations of fungi and we should do more to encourage their growth. They are calling for better management of pastures and grasslands, and to cherish the plants even when they turn up in lawns, parks and churchyards. Of particular interest are the waxcap fungi - named after their shiny, waxy or sticky caps. Species such as the pink waxcap (Hygrocybe calyptriformis), which is often likened to a ballerina because of its similarity to a dancer's tutu, may be more common in the UK than anywhere else in the world."When it matures, it does curl up rather like a tutu - it's a very nice analogy," says Dr Jenny Duckworth, the biodiversity research manager at the wild plant conservation charity Plantlife. "In Europe, this is a very threatened species but in the UK, it is less uncommon than we thought. This means we have an international responsibility to look after it," she told BBC News Online. Plantlife is part of the Fungus Conservation Forum, which is supporting efforts to protect those habitats that host waxcaps. (08/05/03) 6:21:33 AM

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