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Monday, December 29, 2003
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 In 1996, Flemming Funch wrote: I envision a time when most people have stopped having problems they don't need to have, and where they spend most of their time dealing with what is actually going on in their lives, what is right in front of them, what needs to be done. That is, people will stop acting and reacting based on a picture of reality they see on TV, or which comes out of their fears and biases and misunderstandings, and they will start taking action in more useful ways. We live on a planet that is bountiful with resources, if we just use them in harmony with the cycles of nature. We have reached a stage of civilization where most people can live in peace. We have the technological means of having all of us live in comfort. Most of what would be in the way of allowing the world to work for all of humanity is mental problems. It is when millions of people feel a need to be fearful and insecure when just a few people's dramatic misfortune is broadcast on TV. It is when many people believe that economics or politics dictate that some people HAVE to be hungry or without work, and the rest have to work themselves to threads in meaningless occupations. It is when people feel they are justified in harming others because they are different from themselves. It is when people think that life is about acting like most other people around them. It is when people believe that pessimism and cynicism about the future is the logical outcome from studying the past. None of this has much to do with the real world. Stress and fear and pessimism and bigotry only rarely have proper relevance to the situation one is in. They are mental and emotional responses to the situation one THINKS one is in. Being fearful because of the news on TV, or stressed because of artificially created pressures from jobs with little relevance to creating lives of quality, bigotry because of false information, pessimism because of authorities who seem to imply there are no good answers to anything - all of those are induced based on overwhelming, but largely misleading, information from the outside. (12/29/03)
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 Raj Patel writes: During this season of goodwill, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, reminds us that not everyone will be eating well over the holidays. Its report on world hunger provides some dyspeptic reading. More than 840 million people worldwide will be going hungry this holiday season, and the report notes that "bluntly stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will." "Political will" is a fairly murky term, though. There is no shortage of political will when it comes to agriculture, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere. Large agricultural corporations have been buying political will in Washington for decades. The majority of the 2002 farm bill's $180-billion appropriation is earmarked for corporations and wealthy landowners, in defiance of economic or good sense. As a direct result, family farms have gone bankrupt, farming communities have been devastated and poverty is eviscerating rural America. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in November that 34.9 million citizens were hungry in 2002, 1.3 million more than the previous year. The rate of rural poverty is about one-third higher than urban poverty and since 2001 has been climbing. This at a time of an abundance of food and sufficient subsidies to bankroll agricultural corporations into the next decade. When the FAO talks of political will, it refers directly to a social commitment to ensure that the poorest people in society are able to eat. But it is a commitment that has eroded. This hurts rural communities most, not just in this nation but worldwide. In every country, the poorest people are those who live and work in agricultural communities. Policy that affects farming is necessarily policy that affects poverty. (12/29/03)
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 BBC Business -- British workers spend up to an hour a day clearing their inboxes of junk e-mails, according to research. ... The University of Nottingham study said almost all office workers are affected by the daily arrival of unsolicited and unwanted e-mails. The university's Institute for Enterprise and Innovation said a third of respondents to their survey believed staff spent 60 minutes per day dealing with unwanted e-mails. Almost a fifth of the 174 businesses contacted claimed that they lost more than an hour as staff dealt with the problem. One respondent said: "E-mail has become the bane of all of our business lives. It is the memo of this century that everyone hides behind, I truly hate it." The study was carried out as part of the UK Business Barometer, a project to provide better information about small companies. A spokeswoman for the institute said: "We undertook the survey following reports that some large companies and organisations have introduced measures to reduce the volumes of e-mails sent and received by staff. New European laws also came into force in early December, the first step towards banning the sending of spam." (12/29/03)
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 BBC Health -- Obese men diagnosed with prostate cancer may boost their chances of survival by losing weight, say experts. It follows two studies in the United States which found the disease hits obese men much harder than others. The studies involving more than 4,000 men found obese men suffered more aggressive forms of the disease and were more likely to suffer a relapse. Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers urged obese men with the disease to lose weight. In the first study, Dr Christopher Amling, who is based at the US Naval Medical Center in San Diego, examined data on 3,162 men with prostate cancer. Of these, 19% were obese. They found that obese men - with a body mass index score of 30 or more - had more aggressive forms of prostate cancer and a higher rate of recurrence. In the second study, Dr Stephen Freedland, who is based at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, examined data from 1,106 men with the disease. Some 22% of these were obese. He found that men who were moderately or severely obese - with a body mass index of 35 or more - had more aggressive forms of the disease. They were also 60% more likely to have a recurrence of cancer compared with other men. Both doctors believe that the proteins and hormones in body fat may promote tumour growth in obese men. These men also have lower levels of testosterone and higher oestrogen levels, which they said may also help fuel the disease. (12/29/03)
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 BBC Health -- Mice genetically altered to produce larger quantities of a chemical called COX-2 had faster-growing and spreading breast cancers. Drugs that "inhibit" COX-2 - from the aspirin family - could have a role fighting breast cancer, say experts. The research was carried out at the University of Connecticut, and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. One of the key factors that allows a tumour to grow is whether it has sufficient blood supply to support its new size. Many tumours can harness chemical pathways that prompt the body to create a web of new blood vessels around the cancer, a process called angiogenesis. COX-2, and another chemical linked to it, called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), are already under suspicion for having a role in this process. If this role is proven, there are already drugs available which could interfere with this process, and perhaps improve the chances of patients with breast cancer, which has become the most common cancer in women in the UK. Dr Timothy Hla, who led the study, created a genetically modified mouse which produced more COX-2 in its breast tissue - in theory producing the perfect environment for a breast tumour to create the necessary blood vessels to allow growth. This was what they found - blood vessel density increased prior to visible tumour growth in the mouse breast tissue, and during progression, the density of the blood vessels increased at an exponential way. When drugs called COX-2 inhibitors - designed to interfere with the workings of this chemical - were added to the mix, tumour growth slowed and blood vessel density decreased, pointing again to the role of COX-2 in the process. (12/29/03)
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 BBC Science -- A lecturer has developed a system for detecting and plugging leaks in pipelines which could save the oil and water industries millions of pounds. It is based on the way the human body naturally stops wounds bleeding. Ian McEwan, from Aberdeen, got a paper cut while reading a research document on a train and had a "Eureka" moment. He has developed a way of introducing artificial platelets to pipelines that mimic those in blood which congeal around a cut to stem the flow. ... Dr. McEwan said putting the theory into practice proved to be the biggest stumbling block. "The analogy with the human body only takes it so far and we then had to actually adapt that so it could function in a pressurised pipeline," he added. A platelet is a mechanical object which is made out of a polymer. It is moulded and shaped in such a way that the fluid mechanics around the leak will pull the platelet into the leak. The platelet then blocks the leak. "Once there, it's important that the platelet has the strength to resist the pressure forces of the fluid in the pipe and they're designed to hold these forces and calculations are made to ensure they can do that," Dr McEwan said. A company has been set up to develop the idea and it has already attracted investment from major North Sea oil firms. Analysts say the invention has huge potential across a range of industries, preventing expensive losses and protecting the environment. (12/29/03)
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 BBC Environment -- Recent outbreaks of piranha attacks on bathers in south-east Brazil may have been caused by the damming of rivers. Dams slow the flow of rivers, and may cause an increase in piranha numbers because the fish favour gentle stretches of water for breeding. Details of the outbreaks appear in the scientific journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. One outbreak occurred in the town of Santa Cruz of Conceicao, whose main river is the Rio Mogi Guacu. Dammed portions of the stream are popular with tourists and locals who go there to bathe and swim at weekends. ... The rise in attacks has occurred since a dam was built on the river. Two more outbreaks were recorded at the towns of Itapui and Iacanga, close to dams on the river Tiete in southeastern Brazil. Over 50 attacks were recorded in total over two weeks at the sites. Neither of the towns previously reported a high frequency of injuries from piranhas. "It's a direct consequence of damming. When you dam a river, you create ideal conditions for the piranha population to rise," Professor Ivan Sazima, a zoologist at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil, told BBC News Online. Bathers often ignore signs like this, which warn of piranhas in the water Professor Sazima says damming rivers may cause as much as a ten-fold increase in piranha numbers. (12/29/03)
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 BBC World News -- At least 20,000 people have died in the huge earthquake which struck south-eastern Iran, according to officials. Rescuers are working through the night to hunt for survivors from the quake, which struck before dawn on Friday. The ancient city of Bam has been devastated - most of its buildings have been flattened including two hospitals and a 16th Century citadel. A big relief operation is under way, with many foreign countries sending supplies and rescue workers to Iran. President Mohammad Khatami described the quake as a "national tragedy" and said it was too huge for Iran to cope with alone. The United States offered humanitarian assistance, and President George W Bush said he was "ready to help" Iran. Aid agencies are making urgent appeals for supplies such as tents, blankets and field hospitals. But there are immediate fears for the safety of survivors - temperatures at night in the desert city drop to well below freezing, and food and water are in short supply. (12/26/03)
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 BBC Technology -- Despite efforts to stem the billions of spam e-mails flooding inboxes, unwanted messages are still turning e-mail into a quagmire of misery. Spammers send out tens of millions of e-mails to unsuspecting computer users every day, employing a myriad of methods to ensure their pills, loans and "requests for our lord" pleas fox e-mail filters. Some are even turning to prose and poetry to fool the technological safeguards people put in place. But a group of researchers at Microsoft think they may have come up with a solution that could, at least, slow down and deter the spammers. The development has been called the Penny Black project, because it works on the idea that revolutionised the British postage system in the 1830s - that senders of mail should have to pay for it, not whoever is on the receiving end. "The basic idea is that we are trying to shift the equation to make it possible and necessary for a sender to 'pay' for e-mail," explained Ted Wobber of the Microsoft Research group (MSR). The payment is not made in the currency of money, but in the memory and the computer power required to work out cryptographic puzzles. "For any piece of e-mail I send, it will take a small amount computing power of about 10 to 20 seconds." ... "Spammers are sending tens of millions of e-mails, so if they had to do that with all the messages, they would have to invest heavily in machines." As a result of this extra investment, spamming would become less profitable because costs would skyrocket in order to send as many e-mails. All this clever puzzle-solving is done without the recipient of the e-mail being affected. (12/26/03)
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 BBC Science -- The scientist leading the Beagle project says he has not given up hope of contacting the missing Mars lander. The UK-built probe failed to transmit a signal on reaching the planet early on Christmas Day. A later sweep of Mars by the Jodrell Bank radio telescope also failed to detect any sign of the probe, and there are fears it could have crashed. But Professor Colin Pillinger said he had faith it had landed safely, adding: "We will hang on testing and waiting." He told a press conference on Boxing Day the robotic probe was programmed to make several more transmissions in the coming days. The next chance to hear from it was at 1815 GMT on Friday, when the US Mars orbiter Odyssey passes over its planned landing zone. Jodrell Bank will also try again to pick up a signal from the craft between 1800 GMT and midnight. Long-term, the Mars Express [Beagle's mothership, which carried it into space and set it loose about a week ago] should be in position to try to make contact with its "baby" early in the New Year. (12/26/03)
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5:41:12 AM 
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2004
Timothy Wilken.
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