- Signs of the Times Archive for Wed, 06 Aug 2008 -



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Best of the Web
Living Death: The Eternal Now of Hiroshima


Empire Burlesque
2008-08-06 15:50:00

Image
Picture from The Hiroshima Panels by Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi.


I once shared an office for a time with a Japanese scientist from Hiroshima. It was a strange setting for such an association: we were working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where the atomic bomb that obliterated my colleague's city -- 63 years ago today -- was fashioned.

He never mentioned the bombing; he was too young to have experienced it himself, although some of his family certainly would have. I sometimes felt a bit awkward in his presence, as if I should say something about it, make some kind of apology. But what could you say? "Oh, sorry we destroyed your city and killed all those people in such a gruesome way when we really didn't have to. Hey, could you pass me that stapler?" Ridiculous. Pointless.


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U.S. News
Arizona: Boy finds family cat cut in half


azfamily.com
2008-08-05 09:07:00

Sylvester the cat met a sad and violent end.

"Half of him was over here and the rest of him was gone," says Andre, the child who found his 1 year old pet cut in half.

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A Growing Trend of Leaving America

Jay Tolson
US News
2008-07-28 16:43:00

By some estimates 3 million citizens become expatriates a year, but most not for political reasons

Panama City, Panama - Dressed in workout casual and sipping a soda in one of the apartment-style rooms of Los Cuatro Tulipanes hotel, Matt Landau appears very much at home in Panama. One might even be tempted to call him an old hand were he not, at age 25, so confoundingly young. Part owner of this lovely boutique hotel in Panama City's historic Casco Viejo, he is also a travel writer (99 Things to Do in Costa Rica), a real estate marketing consultant, and editor of The Panama Report, an online news and opinion monthly. Between fielding occasional calls and text messages, the New Jersey native is explaining what drew him here, by way of Costa Rica, after he graduated from college in 2005. In addition to having great weather, pristine beaches, a rich melting-pot culture, a reliable infrastructure, and a clean-enough legal system, "what Panama is all about," he says, "is the chance to get into some kind of market first." Landau cites other attractions: "There is more room for error here," he says. "You can make mistakes without being put under. That, to me, as an entrepreneur, is the biggest draw."

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California: 9 believed dead, 4 injured in firefighter helicopter crash


Associated Press
2008-08-06 16:50:00

The Federal Aviation Administration says nine people are missing and feared dead in the crash of a helicopter carrying firefighters in Northern California.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor says the helicopter was carrying 11 firefighters and two crew members when it went down Tuesday night. Four people have been taken to a hospital with severe burns. Two are in critical condition.

Gregor says the Sikorsky S-61 chopper was destroyed by fire after crashing in a remote mountain location in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

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New York: Coney Island Sideshow Has Guantánamo Theme

Ariel Kaminer
The New York Times
2008-08-06 15:39:00

Image
©Michael Nagle for The New York Times
A visitor to Coney Island steps right up to see the artist Steve Powers's simulated display of the waterboarding interrogation technique.


Some people look at Coney Island and see a paradise of carefree entertainment. Others see a cesspool of gritty squalor. Few are those who gaze upon its shrieking kids, grizzled wanderers and fast-talking flimflam artists and see an opportunity for engaged political discourse.

But it was just that improbable impulse that drove the artist Steve Powers to open the new "Waterboard Thrill Ride" on West 12th Street, just off Surf Avenue, in the shadow of the Cyclone and a mere corn dog's throw from Nathan's.

It looks at first like any other shuttered storefront near the boardwalk: some garish lettering and a cartoonish invitation to a delight or a scam - in this case there's SpongeBob SquarePants saying, "It don't Gitmo better!"

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Rockefeller mystery deepens

Maria Cramer and Eric Moscowitz
Sydney Morning Herald
2008-08-06 13:25:00

Police in Los Angeles have declared the accused kidnapper Clark Rockefeller a "person of interest" in the disappearance of a newlywed couple from a wealthy suburb in 1985, adding a gruesome new dimension to the mystery over Rockefeller's true identity.


Image
©Unknown
No past ... Clark Rockefeller appears in a Boston court on Tuesday; (right) with his seven-year-old daughter, Reigh.


Rockefeller made headlines last week after he disappeared with his daughter Reigh, 7, while on an access visit in Boston. The subsequent manhunt revealed not only was he not a scion of the wealthy clan that made its fortune in the oil business, but had no documented past at all.

He had gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal his history, even refusing to provide proof of his identity in his divorce case last year, a decision that cost him custody of the daughter he played an active role in raising.

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Do Women Have an Inner Glass Ceiling?

J. Goodrich
AlterNet
2008-07-30 11:56:00

Imagine this: You are running for Congress, campaigning and trying to carry out all your usual obligations. Then one morning your home burns down. While you and your family escape unharmed, almost every single thing you owned has disappeared. How long would you take before you'd start campaigning again? Six months? A year? Never?

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Mr. President, stop your raids on our communities

Luis Gutierrez and Joe Baca
Chicago Tribune
2008-08-06 06:02:00

As members of Congress, we have traveled to remote corners of the world and had our eyes opened to some of the worst human suffering imaginable - abject poverty, meager wages, poor working conditions, paltry access to legal counsel and a jarring lack of fairness in the courts.

We never imagined that we would witness the same injustices in a small American town just a five-hour drive from Chicago.

During a visit to Postville, Iowa, last weekend, site of the May 12 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, we saw firsthand how a broken Immigration system devastates a small town.

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UK & Euro-Asian News
Polish fare dodger takes bite out of ticket inspector on tram


RIA Novosti
2008-08-06 16:33:00

A Polish woman took a bite out of a ticket inspector's shoulder after she was caught traveling on a tram without a ticket, local police said.

The incident occurred in Poznan, west central Poland, on Monday, when a 26-year-old woman, who was with her child, was approached and asked to produce her ticket as part of a routine ticket check.

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Georgia, Britain to hold joint military drills in September


RIA Novosti
2008-08-06 16:31:00

Georgia and the U.K. will hold joint military training exercises in September at the Vaziani base near the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the South Caucasus country's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

During the two-week exercise, dubbed Georgian Express 2008, Georgian and British military personnel will practice interoperability in peacekeeping operations, including patrolling, urban warfare and base security operations.

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Around the World
'Dead' Indian pilgrim wakes up among bodies awaiting autopsies


RIA Novosti
2008-08-06 16:10:00

An Indian pilgrim who fainted in a stampede that killed 150 people woke up in a morgue among bodies lined up for autopsies, local media reported Wednesday.

Mange Ram, 19, lost consciousness Sunday at a Hindu temple in the northern India's state of Himachal Pradesh during a stampede triggered by the rumors of a landslide.

Thousands of worshipers at the religious festival, which began Saturday, rushed back down a path leading to the temple, colliding with crowds on their way up the mountain.

"When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for postmortem," Ram told the Times of India.

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Australia: preserving traditional languages

Sarah Price
The Sun-Herald
2008-08-03 15:06:00

A new program designed to preserve traditional languages is set to improve literacy rates in Aboriginal communities.

The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation believes committing the oral languages to paper will help indigenous Australians with their English language skills.

Foundation founder Mary-Ruth Mendel said the indigenous languages needed to be converted from oral formats into the written word.

"It's needed for the preservation of the language and to bring the language into the space of a living language again because, as the elders pass on, the knowledge and understanding . . . are passing with them," Mrs Mendel said.

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Another chikungunya virus outbreak hits 18 in Singapore


Xinhua News Network
2008-08-06 11:40:00

SINGAPORE -- An outbreak of the mosquito-borne chikungunya fever infected 17 workers in an area of Singapore and a Chinese national in another area, as health officers are trying to contain the virus in the city-state.

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Tanzania: Mbozi road accident toll reaches twelve

Jonas Mwasumbi
TSN Daily News
2008-08-05 11:36:00

THE death toll from the road accident at Senjele village, Mbozi district has reached 12 people including the husband of the Ileje District Commissioner, Mr Abel Ismail.

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Mauritania: Army Stages Coup; Junta Takes Charge

Ahmed Mohamed
Associated Press
2008-08-06 09:43:00

Army officers staged a coup in Mauritania on Wednesday and detained the president and prime minister, overthrowing the first government to be freely elected in the desert country in more than 20 years.

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Myanmar: Suu Kyi house arrest 'violates human rights'


The Associated Press
2008-08-06 08:49:00

The political party of democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi told a U.N. envoy Wednesday that Myanmar's decision to keep her under house arrest for a sixth year violates her human rights.

The junta's ruling in May to extend Suu Kyi's detention by one year sparked international outrage and Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party denounced the extension as illegal. Her party tried to fight the case in court but the government has so far rejected its appeal.

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Pakistan's Musharraf scraps Olympic visit amid ouster talks


Agence France-Presse
2008-08-06 05:44:00

President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday abruptly cancelled plans to attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, as Pakistan's coalition government held talks on his possible impeachment.

The US-backed leader scrapped the trip ahead of a second day of crucial meetings between the leaders of the fragile coalition, which trounced Musharraf's allies in elections in February.

"The Chinese government has been informed that the president will not be able to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq told AFP.

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Canada bus beheading suspect says 'please kill me'


Associated Press
2008-08-05 23:34:00

TORONTO - A man accused of stabbing and beheading another passenger on a Greyhound bus in Canada pleaded Tuesday in court for someone to "please kill me," and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

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Rwanda accuses France over genocide


Al Jazeera
2008-08-05 22:44:00

Rwanda has accused France of having an active, direct role in the African country's 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed.

A report commissioned by the Rwandan government named 33 senior French military and political figures, among them Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister, and Francois Mitterrand the late former president, who it said should be prosecuted. It also accused French troops of directly taking part in the slaughter.

"The French support was of a political, military, diplomatic and logistic nature," the report said.

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Big Brother
Big Brother Reversed: New York's Video Vigilante, Scourge of the Police

Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post
2008-08-03 16:57:00

Jimmy Justice' Posts Images of Officers Breaking the Law

New York -- He calls himself "Jimmy Justice," a self-styled "cop-arazzi," armed only with a video camera as he prowls the streets of New York looking for law enforcement officers who are breaking the law. His targets are illegally parked city government vehicles -- particularly cars of traffic cops blocking bus stops, sitting in "no parking" zones or double-parked.

Cop cars blocking fire hydrants make him particularly incensed.

"Something like that is just despicable," Jimmy fumed, pointing to a police enforcement vehicle parked next to a fire hydrant on 33rd Street on Manhattan's West Side on a muggy July afternoon. "They're never allowed to block a fire hydrant -- but they do it."

Image
©Keith B. Richburg -- The Washington Post
The man who calls himself "Jimmy Justice" roams New York with a video camera to find illegally parked government cars. He puts his videos online, trying to shame parking enforcers into obeying laws they ticket others for violating.



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Police find clues in deleted information from cell phones

Carol Robinson
Newhouse News Service
2008-07-17 00:46:00

Who knew Big Brother could get people to pay to be spied on?

Think hitting that delete option on a text message kills it forever? Think again.

That thought-to-be-erased information is often stored in the handset, sometimes for years to come, and is proving to be an increasingly valuable tool for law enforcement officers.

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Axis of Evil
The lies of Hiroshima live on

John Pilger
The Guardian
2008-08-06 05:50:00

The 1945 attack was murder on an epic scale. In its victims' names, we must not allow a nuclear repeat in the Middle East.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

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Israel's Lopsided and Farcical Legal System

Joharah Baker
MIFTAH
2008-07-31 22:59:00

Palestinians behind fence
©Unknown


Israel's policy of demolishing Palestinian homes is nothing new. Since the inception of the occupation in 1967, thousands of Israeli military orders have been handed to Palestinians informing them of the imminent destruction of their houses. The reasons - or excuses - for this destructive policy are many: involvement in resistance against the Israeli occupation [known as "terror" to Israel], illegal construction, or for "urban planning" [i.e., when the decades-old home and surrounding land is in the way of a new Jewish settlement in the West Bank or east Jerusalem].

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Flashback: Noam Chomsky and the Pro-Israel Lobby: Fourteen Erroneous Theses

James Petras
Axis of Logic
2006-04-03 21:29:00

Introduction

Noam Chomsky has been called the US leading intellectual by pundits and even some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the world especially in academic circles, in large part because of his vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices resulting from those policies. Chomsky has nonetheless been reviled by all of the major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations and media for his criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians even as he has defended the existence of the Zionist state of Israel. Despite his respected reputation for documenting, dissecting and exposing the hypocrisy of the US and European regimes and acutely analyzing the intellectual deceptions of imperial apologists, these analytical virtues are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish Pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government. This political blindness is not unknown or uncommon. History is replete of intellectual critics of all imperialisms except their own, the abuses of power by others, but not of one's own kin and kind. Chomsky's long history denying the power and role of the pro-Israel lobby in decisively shaping US Middle East policy culminated in his recent conjoining with the US Zionist propaganda machine attacking a study critical of the Israeli lobby. I am referring to the essay published by the London Review of Books entitled "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" by Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Professor Stephan Walt, the purged Academic Dean of the Kenney School of Government at Harvard University. (A complete version of the study was published by the Kennedy School of Government in March 2006.)

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Middle East Madness
The looting and destruction of Iraq's ancient sites


Europe Turkmen Friendships
2008-07-23 16:29:00

One of the great crimes committed against the people of Iraq was the looting of the Baghdad Museum and the destruction of many important ancient sites inside Iraq.

As the drums beat for more war in Iran, there is a valid concern that Iran's ancient archeological sites face risk of destruction. I agree. And more to the point, I think that destruction of ancient sites is deliberate policy.

Egypt is literally littered with the ruins of the ancient temples and palaces of her rulers. As much as has been found, it is estimated that only 1/3 of Egypt's archeological wonders have been uncovered. A newly discovered temple was uncovered while digging a sewer line, and a cache of finely preserved mummies was literally stumbled over by a cow in a pasture.

Iraq's ancient heritage was enshrined in its ancient sites and museum. As a result of the war, many of those sites have been damaged or destroyed. Part of the ancient city of Ur now lies underneath a US air base runway. The treasures of the museum have only partly been recovered. The treasures from the looted archaeological sites have been scattered to the world.

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Palestinians stranded at Rafah terminal go on hunger strike


The Palestine Information Center
2008-08-06 16:09:00

Image
©Unknown


Palestinians trapped at the Rafah border terminal between Gaza Strip and Egypt have gone on hunger strike to protest the Egyptian authority's continued refusal to open the border for them.

They said in an urgent appeal sent to the PIC on Wednesday that they have been suffering for the past few months on the border terminal and have been sleeping in the desert in the open. They said that out of their total number of 150 persons they group old people and women who suffer chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart ailments.

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The Iraq Mines Nightmare

Afif Sarhan
Islam Online
2008-08-06 15:44:00

Basra - Iraqi children are life-threatened with nearly 25 million unexploded ordinances, about 25 percent of the global unexploded ordinances, left behind by wars that plagued the country in recent decades.

"I lost my son and my daughter is now handicapped because of the mines near our farm," cried Um Khalid, 34, a mother of two who lives in a rural area near the Kuwait-Iraq border south of Basra.

"We never know were to step and had called many times for the government to clean the area but in vain. Had I to lose a child to bring some attention to our area?" she fumed.

I raqi mines, which are about 25 percent of the global unexploded ordinances, were placed during the Iraq-Iran war, the first Gulf War and the 2003 US-led invasion.

Image
©UN
There are nearly 25 million unexploded ordinances in Iraq, about 25 percent of the global unexploded ordinances.



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Olmert's departure: The perfect alibi

Hasan Abu Nimah
The Electronic Intifada
2008-08-06 07:51:00

abbas bush olmert
©Omar Rashidi/MaanImages
Mahmoud Abbas, George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert at the Annapolis summit, November 2007.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, engulfed in scandal, has finally bowed to the inevitable and announced he will resign as soon as his Kadima party chooses a new leader.

The conventional wisdom quickly developed among peace process industry analysts that Olmert's departure would be a "setback" for ongoing negotiations with the Ramallah Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, endangering the much-touted goal announced at last November's Annapolis summit of reaching a final agreement by the end of this year.

While some of his lieutenants lamented the departure of yet another Israeli "man of peace," Abbas put on a brave face saying negotiations would continue no matter what. Yet the mood was one of mourning and despair.

The truth is that there is not a peace process to mourn. Yes, there have been constant meetings, including between Abbas and Olmert, but these never produced even modest progress on any of the "final status" issues. On the contrary, there were repeated admissions from both sides that chances of an agreement were close to nil.

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The Jewish Settler Pogrom Against Palestinians Must Be Stopped Now

Khalid Amayreh
DesertPeace Blog
2008-08-05 06:14:00

Settler trash
©Unknown
Nets run over the pavements of the Old Quarter of Hebron, to spare the pedestrians getting hit by the trash dropped out the windows by the settlers.


Nazi-like Jewish settlers have of late stepped up their indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians and their property throughout the West Bank.

In some areas, like in the Hebron region, settler attacks have assumed pogrom-like proportions. What is particularly outrageous is that most of these attacks take place in full view of Israeli soldiers who watch passively as heavily armed settlers gang up on helpless Palestinian civilians.

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The Palestinians of Iraq

Iqbal Tamimi
Palestine Think Tank
2008-08-05 23:48:00

Palestine camp in Iraq
©Unknown


The Palestinians residing in Iraq came from villages around Haifa, which used to be called the villages of Alhamamah Albeda (The White Dove). Those were the villages of (Ijzim, Jabaa and Ayn Ghazal). These villages have witnessed many battles between the Palestinian citizens and the Zionist gangs. Many families lost their men while defending their land. Some of the most famous names are: Ali Massoud Almadi, Tawfiq Msheenesh, and Khader Abu Abdul Aziz Shukair.

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United by Misery in Gaza and Nilin

Ramzy Baroud
Arab News
2008-08-05 22:51:00

Ahmad Musa was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from the West Bank village of Nilin, near Ramallah. Mohammed Bahloul is a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza City. The former was shot and killed July 29, by Israeli forces, following a peaceful protest against the Israeli wall. The latter is awaiting death in a dilapidated hospital in Gaza.

Reports on Ahmad's death vary. Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign's report said that the boy was "sitting under a tree with his friends when a military jeep drove up and the army shot him - a live bullet pierced his head. The boy died immediately."

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Grand Theft Economics
US: Hundreds of Banks Will Fail

Robert MacMillan
Reuters
2008-08-03 14:56:00

The United States is in the second inning of a recession that will last for at least 18 months and help kill off hundreds of banks, influential economist and New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini told Barron's in Sunday's edition.

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US: Freddie Mac Reports $821 Million Loss

Al Yoon
Reuters
2008-08-06 09:35:00

Freddie Mac on Wednesday posted its fourth consecutive quarterly loss, set plans to slash its common stock dividend and warned of more difficulty ahead amid the steepest U.S. housing market slump since the Great Depression.

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Housing crisis likely to wipe out two decades of family-earned wealth


Seeking Alpha
2008-08-03 08:08:00

The collapse of the housing bubble is likely to eliminate most, if not all, of the gains that families had made in accumulating wealth over the last two decades, according to a new study from the Center for Economic Policy & Research in Washington, DC.

In the report, entitled The Impact of the Housing Crash on Family Wealth [pdf file], the authors project that the sharpest falloffs are projected to occur for the youngest families.

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Fed Keeps Rate at 2% as Economic Growth Stagnates

Craig Torres
Bloomberg
2008-08-05 21:46:00

The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rate at 2 percent and signaled that weak employment and financial instability will delay any increase in borrowing costs.

''Labor markets have softened further,'' the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement today in Washington. ''Tight credit conditions, the ongoing housing contraction, and elevated energy prices are likely to weigh on economic growth.''

Stocks extended gains on speculation that policy makers will leave the rate unchanged in coming months. Officials said they still expect inflation to slow, while acknowledging that the outlook for prices is ''highly uncertain.''

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The Living Planet
Arctic Map Plots New 'Gold Rush'


Science Daily
2008-08-06 16:27:00

The new map design follows a series of historical and ongoing arguments about ownership, and the race for resources, in the frozen lands and seas of the Arctic.

Image
©International Boundaries Research Unit
The Arctic map is believed to be the first published map that depicts maritime jurisdictional issues in the Arctic with geographic precision.


The potential for conflicts is increasing as the search for new oil, gas and minerals intensifies. The move to comprehensively map the region illustrates the urgent need for clear policy-making on Arctic issues - an area rich in natural resources. The Durham map shows:

1) where boundaries have been agreed
2) where known claims are
3) the potential areas that states might claim

Director of Research at the International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU), Martin Pratt says: "The map is the most precise depiction yet of the limits and the future dividing lines that could be drawn across the Arctic region.

"The results have huge implications for policy-making as the rush to carve up the polar region continues.

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Fires Threaten Several Ancient Sites In Turkey


RedOrbit
2008-08-01 15:32:00

On Friday, fires threatened several sites of ancient culture in Istanbul as fire fighters backed by a dozen aircraft struggled to extinguish scattered blazes engulfing woodlands in the coastal tourism province of Antalya.

Fire fighters said up to 4,000 hectares (9,885 acres) of woodlands in Antalya could be destroyed if they are not contained. No deaths or injuries have been reported, but television images showed destroyed houses and fleeing villagers.

Antalya Forest Directorate spokesman Aydogan Turedi said flames were approaching an ancient Greek amphitheatre in Aspendos, 37 km (23 miles) from the Mediterranean resort of Side.

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Ancient sea turtles jeopardized by poachers, fisheries

Reese Halter
The Calgary Herald
2008-08-03 15:29:00

Sea turtles are ancient, but not primitive. Having evolved on land some 200 million years ago, they spend their entire lives at sea except to lay eggs on rugged beaches around the globe.

Leatherback turtles are the largest of the seven seafaring species and they are truly remarkable, most worthy of admiration and in need of protection.

Leatherbacks are Earth's last warm-blooded reptiles and their weight can easily exceed one ton.

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China: Death toll rises in latest Sichuan earthquake


CNN
2008-08-06 05:38:00

The death toll from a 6.2-magnitude earthquake that struck central China's battered Sichuan province climbed to two Wednesday, with another 22 injured, local emergency officials reported. A light, 4.8-magnitude quake rattled the same area on Wednesday.

Sichuan is still recovering from a devastating 7.9-magnitude temblor in May.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of Tuesday's strong quake was about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north-northwest of Guangyuan, near Sichuan's border with neighboring Gansu province.

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Health & Wellness
I Can, Automatically, Become Just Like You: The Effects of Exclusion on Nonconscious Mimicry

Jessica Lakin
Association for Psychological Science
2008-08-06 16:44:00

No one likes to be excluded from a group: exclusion can decrease mood, reduce self-esteem and feelings of belonging, and even ultimately lead to negative behavior (e.g., the shootings at Virginia Tech). As a result, we often try to fit in with others in both conscious and automatic ways.

Psychologists Jessica L. Lakin of Drew University, Tanya L. Chartrand of Duke University, and Robert M. Arkin of The Ohio State University studied people's tendency to copy automatically the behaviors of others in order to find out how this mimicry can be used as an affiliation strategy.

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Hot peppers really do bring the heat


American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
2008-08-06 16:35:00

Chili peppers can do more than just make you feel hot, reports a study in the August 1 Journal of Biological Chemistry; the active chemical in peppers can directly induce thermogenesis, the process by which cells convert energy into heat.

Capsaicin is the chemical in chili peppers that contributes to their spiciness; CPS stimulates a receptor found in sensory neurons, creating the heat sensation and subsequent reactions like redness and sweating.

Now, Yasser Mahmoud has found that capsaicin can create "heat" in a more direct manner by altering the activity of a muscle protein called SERCA. Normally, muscle contraction initiates following the release of a wave of calcium ions from a compartment called the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR); SERCA then actively pumps the calcium back into the SR (using ATP energy), causing muscle relaxation and renewing the cycle.

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Tysabri medication brain disease cases reported

Deena Beasley and Bill Berkrot
Reuters
2008-08-05 11:00:00

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK - Biogen Idec and Elan have notified regulators of two new cases of a potentially deadly brain disease in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients being treated with Tysabri.

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More than 10 million Americans with chronic illness are uninsured

Anne Harding
Reuters
2008-08-04 22:37:00

An estimated 11.4 million Americans with at least one chronic illness have no health insurance, new research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows.

These people are much less likely to have a regular place to get medical care, much less likely to have seen a doctor in the past year, and much more likely to use the emergency room than chronically ill people who are insured, Dr. Andrew P. Wilper and colleagues from Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found.

"Primary care doctors know that people who don't have access to health care due to health insurance suffer," Wilper, who is now with the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, told Reuters Health. "We wanted to study that issue and bring public attention to it."

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US: Medication increasingly replaces psychotherapy, study finds

Denise Gellene
Los Angeles Times
2008-08-05 22:33:00

Fewer patients are undergoing in-depth treatment as antidepressants and other drugs are more widely used. The shift is attributed partly to insurance reimbursement policies.

Wider use of antidepressants and other prescription medications has reduced the role of psychotherapy, once the defining characteristic of psychiatric care, according to an analysis published today.

The percentage of patients who received psychotherapy fell to 28.9% in 2004-05 from 44.4% in 1996-97, the report in Archives of General Psychiatry said.

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Unhappy News on Happy Meal Nutrition


The Washington Post
2008-08-05 22:30:00

Most kids' meals at top restaurant chains have way too many calories to be healthy, according to a report released yesterday.

Nearly every possible combination of the children's meals at KFC, Taco Bell, Sonic and Chick-fil-A are too fattening, the report on meals at 13 major restaurants found.

The average 8-year-old should eat about 1,200 to 1,300 calories a day, or about 430 calories a meal. But 93 percent of the meals at the chains had more calories than that. Instead of fried and fatty foods, restaurants should offer more choices that include fruits and whole grains, the report said.

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Science & Technology
Even viruses get sick

Ben Hirschler
Reuters
2008-08-06 16:51:00

Even viruses can go down with a viral infection, French scientists reported on Wednesday, in a discovery that may help explain how they swap genes and evolve so rapidly.

A new strain of giant virus was isolated from a cooling tower in Paris and found to be infected by a smaller type of virus, named Sputnik, after the first man-made satellite.

Sputnik is the first example of a virus infecting another virus to make it sick.

Bernard La Scola and colleagues from the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille reported in the journal Nature that Sputnik was able to achieve a remarkable degree of gene mixing by "looting" genes from its host virus and other organisms.

Viruses are already known to infect and sicken bacteria but this is the first example of a virus infecting one of its own kind.

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Neurobiologists Discover Individuals Who 'Hear' Movement


Science Daily
2008-08-06 16:40:00

Individuals with synesthesia perceive the world in a different way from the rest of us. Because their senses are cross-activated, some synesthetes perceive numbers or letters as having colors or days of the week as possessing personalities, even as they function normally in the world.

Image
©California Institute of Technology
Image from a short video of moving dots. Some people hear sound when watching the video. Link to video.


Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered a type of synesthesia in which individuals hear sounds, such as tapping, beeping, or whirring, when they see things move or flash. Surprisingly, the scientists say, auditory synesthesia may not be unusual--and may simply represent an enhanced form of how the brain normally processes visual information.

Psychologists previously reported visual, tactile, and taste synesthesias, but auditory synesthesia had never been identified. Caltech lecturer in computation and neural systems Melissa Saenz discovered the phenomenon quite by accident.



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Eye spy: U.S. scientists develop eye-shaped camera

Julie Steenhuysen
Reuters
2008-08-06 16:36:00

Borrowing one of nature's best designs, U.S. scientists have built an eye-shaped camera using standard sensor materials and say it could improve the performance of digital cameras and enhance imaging of the human body.

The device might even lead to the development of prosthetic devices including a bionic eye, they said.

"This is the first time we've demonstrated a camera on a curved surface to really make it look like a human eye," said Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who reported his findings on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

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Genetic evidence traces ancient African migration

Erin Digitale
Stanford School of Medicine
2008-08-06 15:09:00

Image
©Sarah Tishkoff
This man speaks a Nilotic language. Genetic evidence suggests Nilotic speakers migrated from eastern to southern Africa about 2,000 years ago.


Stanford researchers peering at history's footprints on human DNA have found new evidence for how prehistoric people shared knowledge that advanced civilization.

Using a genetic technique pioneered at Stanford, the team found that animal-herding methods arrived in southern Africa 2,000 years ago on a wave of human migration, rather than by movement of ideas between neighbors. The findings shed light on how early cultures interacted with each other and how societies learned to adopt advances.

"There's a tradition in archaeology of saying people don't move very much; they just transfer ideas through space," said Joanna Mountain, PhD, consulting assistant professor of anthropology. Mountain and Peter Underhill, PhD, senior research scientist in genetics at the School of Medicine, were the study's senior authors. Their findings appeared in the Aug. 5 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Egypt to test fetuses for Tutankhamun family tree

Will Rasmussen
Reuters
2008-08-06 12:49:00

CAIRO - Egyptian scientists are doing DNA tests on stillborn children found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the hope of identifying their mother and grandmother, who may be the powerful queen Nefertiti, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Wednesday.

mummy of King Tutankhamun
©REUTERS/Nasser Nuri
The stone sarcophagus containing the mummy of King Tutankhamun is seen in his underground tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings in Luxor November 4, 2007.


British archaeologist Howard Carter found the mummified fetuses when he discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Archaeologists assume they are the children of the teenage pharaoh but their mother has not been identified.

Many scholars believe their mother to be Ankhesenamun, the boy king's only known wife. Ankhesenamun is the daughter of Nefertiti, renowned for her beauty.

"For the first time we will be able to identify the family of King Tut," Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, told Reuters. "This should allow us for the first time to discover the mummy of Nefertiti."

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Chronic Exposure To Estrogen Impairs Some Cognitive Functions


Science Daily
2008-08-05 23:36:00


Estradiol Researchers
©L. Brian Stauffer, U. of I. News Bureau
Veterinary biosciences professor Susan Schantz and graduate student Victor Wang found that rats exposed to estradiol were significantly impaired on tasks involving working memory and response inhibition.


University of Illinois researchers report this week that chronic exposure to estradiol, the main estrogen in the body, diminishes some cognitive functions. Rats exposed to a steady dose of estradiol were impaired on tasks involving working memory and response inhibition, the researchers found.

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Our Haunted Planet

No new articles.


Don't Panic! Lighten Up!
'Weapons of Grass Destruction': Goats slip past security fence near NYC bridge


Associated Press
2008-08-06 16:08:00

It was a report calculated to send chills through those charged with anti-terrorist vigilance in New York City: Bearded intruders secretly penetrate heavily guarded transportation site.

But it turned out the would-be trespassers were goats imported by the National Park Service to clean up poison ivy and other unwanted weeds at historic Fort Wadsworth, a 200-year-old Revolutionary War rampart on Staten Island near the Verrazano Bridge.

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Make. It. Stop.

Steve Tuttle
Newsweek
2008-08-05 19:45:00

The case for ending our long national nightmare.



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