About face
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
People’s creditworthiness, it seems, can be seen in their looks
SCIENCE proceeds by trial and error. The successes are trumpeted. The errors are often regarded with embarrassment by subsequent generations, and locked away in attic rooms of the subject’s mansion like mad relatives in a Victorian novel. Usually, they stay there. Craniology, phrenology and eugenics, once-respectable fields of endeavour that are now regarded with a shudder, may shriek from time to time, but few sane people pay attention to them. One, however, has escaped recently, and is trying to rehabilitate itself. For years physiognomy—the idea that a person’s face is a reflection of his character—was sneered at. Now, it is making a come back.
Appearances certainly count. Women, for instance, judge men by their faces. Testosterone levels are reflected in the face, and who is seen as a one-night stand and who as a potential husband depends in part on this physical feature. Similarly, a male face betrays the owner’s underlying aggressiveness and even his business acumen. Facial beauty in either sex is also associated with higher incomes. The latest research, though, cuts to the moral quick. For Jefferson Duarte of Rice University in Houston, Texas, and his colleagues are suggesting that one of a person’s most telling moral features, his creditworthiness, can also be seen in his face.
sexta-feira, 27 de março de 2009
But not yet, Lord
But not yet, Lord
Mar 19th 2009 NEW YORK From The Economist print edition
Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker
HOW do a person’s religious beliefs influence his attitude to terminal illness? The answer is surprising. You might expect the religious to accept death as God’s will and, while not hurrying towards it, not to seek to prolong their lives using heroic and often traumatic medical procedures. Atheists, by contrast, have nothing to look forward to after death, so they might be expected to cling to life.
In fact, it is the other way round—at least according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Andrea Phelps and her colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Religious people seem to use their faith to cope with the pain and degradation that “aggressive” medical treatment entails, even though such treatment rarely makes much odds.
Dr Phelps and her team followed the last months of 345 cancer patients. The participants were not asked directly how religious they were but, rather, about how they used any religious belief they had to cope with difficult situations by, for example, “seeking God’s love and care”. The score from this questionnaire was compared with their requests for such things as the use of mechanical ventilation to keep them alive and resuscitation to bring them back from the dead.
The correlation was strong. More than 11% of those with the highest scores underwent mechanical ventilation; less than 4% of those with the lowest did so. For resuscitation the figures were 7% and 2%.
Explaining the unpleasantness and futility of the procedures does not seem to make much difference, either. Holly Prigerson, one of Dr Phelps’s co-authors, was involved in another study at Dana-Farber which was published earlier this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine. This showed that when doctors had frank conversations about the end of life with terminally ill cancer patients, the patients typically chose not to request very intensive medical interventions.
According to Dr Prigerson, though, such end-of-life chats had little impact on “religious copers”, most of whom still wanted doctors to make every effort to keep them alive. Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of Christianity’s most revered figures, famously asked God to help him achieve “chastity and continence, but not yet”. When it comes to meeting their maker, many religious people seem to have a similar attitude.
Mar 19th 2009 NEW YORK From The Economist print edition
Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker
HOW do a person’s religious beliefs influence his attitude to terminal illness? The answer is surprising. You might expect the religious to accept death as God’s will and, while not hurrying towards it, not to seek to prolong their lives using heroic and often traumatic medical procedures. Atheists, by contrast, have nothing to look forward to after death, so they might be expected to cling to life.
In fact, it is the other way round—at least according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Andrea Phelps and her colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Religious people seem to use their faith to cope with the pain and degradation that “aggressive” medical treatment entails, even though such treatment rarely makes much odds.
Dr Phelps and her team followed the last months of 345 cancer patients. The participants were not asked directly how religious they were but, rather, about how they used any religious belief they had to cope with difficult situations by, for example, “seeking God’s love and care”. The score from this questionnaire was compared with their requests for such things as the use of mechanical ventilation to keep them alive and resuscitation to bring them back from the dead.
The correlation was strong. More than 11% of those with the highest scores underwent mechanical ventilation; less than 4% of those with the lowest did so. For resuscitation the figures were 7% and 2%.
Explaining the unpleasantness and futility of the procedures does not seem to make much difference, either. Holly Prigerson, one of Dr Phelps’s co-authors, was involved in another study at Dana-Farber which was published earlier this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine. This showed that when doctors had frank conversations about the end of life with terminally ill cancer patients, the patients typically chose not to request very intensive medical interventions.
According to Dr Prigerson, though, such end-of-life chats had little impact on “religious copers”, most of whom still wanted doctors to make every effort to keep them alive. Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of Christianity’s most revered figures, famously asked God to help him achieve “chastity and continence, but not yet”. When it comes to meeting their maker, many religious people seem to have a similar attitude.
Haunted by the past
Haunted by the past
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Sharing a womb with a living twin is bad for you. A dead one is worse
HUMANS do not normally produce litters. Nevertheless, it is estimated that one person in 20 who was born alone has a lost twin who was conceived at the same time, but failed to reach term.
It has been known for many years that the loss of one twin in this way late in a pregnancy is bad for the other. That other is more likely to be born prematurely, to have cerebral palsy, or even to die as well. What has not been known until now is whether such a loss in the first few months has any effect on the survivor. But a paper just published in Human Reproduction by Peter Pharoah of the University of Liverpool, in Britain, suggests that it does.
There are several ways that a “vanished twin” can come to light. Most gruesomely, fully formed body parts of the dead twin may be found embedded in the body of its surviving sibling. More commonly, lost twins are discovered as tiny mummified attachments to the placenta of the live twin, after it is born. And the widespread use of ultrasonic scanning means that, increasingly often, twins are spotted in early scans and subsequently vanish. Neither early ultrasonic “sightings” nor papery mummified corpses are always officially registered. They may not even be mentioned to the mother, so it is hard to know just how often a twin goes missing.
Dr Pharoah, however, made a stab at finding out. He examined three sets of data from northern England. One collated information about infant deaths. A second recorded congenital abnormalities. The third was a register of all pregnancies of twins, triplets or other multiple births.
What made this last register so useful was that it recorded multiple pregnancies as soon as they were recognised ultrasonically, rather than at birth. That made it possible to identify which babies born as “singletons” had actually started their lives as twins.
The rate of congenital anomalies was 1.6 times higher for twins than for singletons. But when Dr Pharoah looked at what happened to fetuses who had survived the early death of their co-twin, the numbers got worse.
Whether this knowledge can be used to help surviving twins is moot. But identifying a problem is the first step to remedying it. Dr Pharoah seems to have done that.
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Sharing a womb with a living twin is bad for you. A dead one is worse
HUMANS do not normally produce litters. Nevertheless, it is estimated that one person in 20 who was born alone has a lost twin who was conceived at the same time, but failed to reach term.
It has been known for many years that the loss of one twin in this way late in a pregnancy is bad for the other. That other is more likely to be born prematurely, to have cerebral palsy, or even to die as well. What has not been known until now is whether such a loss in the first few months has any effect on the survivor. But a paper just published in Human Reproduction by Peter Pharoah of the University of Liverpool, in Britain, suggests that it does.
There are several ways that a “vanished twin” can come to light. Most gruesomely, fully formed body parts of the dead twin may be found embedded in the body of its surviving sibling. More commonly, lost twins are discovered as tiny mummified attachments to the placenta of the live twin, after it is born. And the widespread use of ultrasonic scanning means that, increasingly often, twins are spotted in early scans and subsequently vanish. Neither early ultrasonic “sightings” nor papery mummified corpses are always officially registered. They may not even be mentioned to the mother, so it is hard to know just how often a twin goes missing.
Dr Pharoah, however, made a stab at finding out. He examined three sets of data from northern England. One collated information about infant deaths. A second recorded congenital abnormalities. The third was a register of all pregnancies of twins, triplets or other multiple births.
What made this last register so useful was that it recorded multiple pregnancies as soon as they were recognised ultrasonically, rather than at birth. That made it possible to identify which babies born as “singletons” had actually started their lives as twins.
The rate of congenital anomalies was 1.6 times higher for twins than for singletons. But when Dr Pharoah looked at what happened to fetuses who had survived the early death of their co-twin, the numbers got worse.
Whether this knowledge can be used to help surviving twins is moot. But identifying a problem is the first step to remedying it. Dr Pharoah seems to have done that.
domingo, 22 de março de 2009
2009 VOCABULARY TEXTOS
2009 VOCABULARY TEXTOS
Novel:estranho, novidade
Twist; virada
Lug around;arrastar
Beckons;acenar
Spun out(spin)gastar até o último
Droughtsêca
Besiege;rodear
Stuff:papelada,aquele negócio
Conjure up: imaginar
Quicksilver:mercúrio
Inkling:idéia
Entrapment:armadilha
Laymen:leigo
Burgeoning: crescente
Bourgeosie:burguesia
Instalment credit;prestações
Mounting:crescente,totalizar
Tracking;seguir, perseguir, na pista
Impoverished; empobrecido
To turn a blind eye;ignoar
Smoothly;suavemente
Fraught: involving, threatening
Treacherous:traiçoeiro
Plotlines;enredo
Peer;semelhantes
Deemed; acreditou
Prompt;estimulo
Get rid of ;livrar-se de
Frothy;espumoso
Muster:montar, combine
Woozy;com tontura
Belligerant;briguento
Rollercoaster:montanha russa
Injury-prone;proenso a acidentes
Stick;grudar, ligar-se
Harkback:lembra-se de algo feito anteriormente
Wonders:maravilahs
Newborn:recém nsacido
Household:doméstico
Instead of :ao:inves de
Randomly: ao acaso
Perked up: reviver, ficar ativo
Likewise;também
Blooming: desabrochar
Novelty:nvidade
Roly-poly clown:joão bobo
Overwhelming;surpreendente
Taking into account:levar em conta
Highlight:enfatizar
To ennoble:enobrecer
Improve:melhoprar
Texte o teu vocabulário Laggard:atraso
Out-innovate:superar
Slum:favela
Scruffy:sujo
Bullet-riddled:cravejado
Shantytown:favela
Eponymous: que dá o nome a
Thugs:sujeitos violentos
Rattled:conduzir um a um
Hawking: de casa em casa
Markup:aumento
Steep:profundo, excessivo
Heel:calcanhar
Meanest: os piores
Hedge :cercar
Grabbing:agarrar
Measlessarampo
Mumps:cachumba
Novel:estranho, novidade
Twist; virada
Lug around;arrastar
Beckons;acenar
Spun out(spin)gastar até o último
Droughtsêca
Besiege;rodear
Stuff:papelada,aquele negócio
Conjure up: imaginar
Quicksilver:mercúrio
Inkling:idéia
Entrapment:armadilha
Laymen:leigo
Burgeoning: crescente
Bourgeosie:burguesia
Instalment credit;prestações
Mounting:crescente,totalizar
Tracking;seguir, perseguir, na pista
Impoverished; empobrecido
To turn a blind eye;ignoar
Smoothly;suavemente
Fraught: involving, threatening
Treacherous:traiçoeiro
Plotlines;enredo
Peer;semelhantes
Deemed; acreditou
Prompt;estimulo
Get rid of ;livrar-se de
Frothy;espumoso
Muster:montar, combine
Woozy;com tontura
Belligerant;briguento
Rollercoaster:montanha russa
Injury-prone;proenso a acidentes
Stick;grudar, ligar-se
Harkback:lembra-se de algo feito anteriormente
Wonders:maravilahs
Newborn:recém nsacido
Household:doméstico
Instead of :ao:inves de
Randomly: ao acaso
Perked up: reviver, ficar ativo
Likewise;também
Blooming: desabrochar
Novelty:nvidade
Roly-poly clown:joão bobo
Overwhelming;surpreendente
Taking into account:levar em conta
Highlight:enfatizar
To ennoble:enobrecer
Improve:melhoprar
Texte o teu vocabulário Laggard:atraso
Out-innovate:superar
Slum:favela
Scruffy:sujo
Bullet-riddled:cravejado
Shantytown:favela
Eponymous: que dá o nome a
Thugs:sujeitos violentos
Rattled:conduzir um a um
Hawking: de casa em casa
Markup:aumento
Steep:profundo, excessivo
Heel:calcanhar
Meanest: os piores
Hedge :cercar
Grabbing:agarrar
Measlessarampo
Mumps:cachumba
Death Of A Cult Beverage
Death Of A Cult Beverage
Farewell to Sparks, the alcoholic energy drink that prompted 20-somethings to wonder, 'How drunk am I?'
Kurt Soller Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan02,2009
Like many of you, I lost a lot in 2008. But this week, things got worse. On Thursday (right before the weekend!), I found out that I'd soon be losing a core member of my social group: the life of the party, the cheap date, the friend that was never more than a convenience store away. I'm serious: alcohol giant MillerCoors announced they'd be getting rid of their alcopop beverage Sparks. If you're over 30, this may mean nothing to you. But for cash-strapped 20-somethings around the country, this is another reason, besides the unemployment rate, we'll be staying home on weekends.
.If you're not familiar with Sparks, you might think that mixing an energy beverage and malt liquor in one can is a little bit like buying premade s'mores or those jars that come with the peanut butter and jelly already swirled together. (And if you haven't thought of mixing caffeine and alcohol in the first place, then you really are over 30.) But Sparks has a taste all its own—more like frothy Tang than beer and Red Bull combined.
Its appeal? When I don't sleep well on Thursday, it helps me muster up the energy to celebrate on Friday night. When I want to head home from a birthday party at midnight, it reminds me that, not so long ago, I was in college. It's a completely legal and safe way (in moderation, of course) of enjoying a night out with too many friends and too many drinks without feeling woozy, belligerent or what can be only be referred to as "out of it."
It's a sign of the times that I didn't read about this disaster in the newspaper, I read about it on Facebook... Scientists have also argued that mixing a downer (alcohol) with an upper (caffeine) can send your heart rate on a rollercoaster ride (all while your mind rattles with the question "How drunk am I?"). And research conducted at Wake Forest University found that students who mixed both ingredients—as in, vodka and Red Bull—were more injury-prone than those who stuck to straight alcohol.
As an adult of consenting age, I say the kids are ruining all the fun. And while I recognize that underage drinking is a serious problem, Sparks clearly noted its alcoholic content (6 percent alcohol by volume) on its wonderfully metallic cans. In the end, authorities won out and MillerCoors chose to "reformulate" the beverage (removing the uppers) in an agreement reached on Thursday. In short, I'll lose my stimulant-filled Saturday evenings, and the corporation will pay $550,000 to the 13 states that challenged it, as well as the city of San Francisco.
So goodbye, Sparks. I'll miss side effects like orange tongue (which, I admit, was a low point) and I'll miss introducing you to people who aren't yet familiar with you, only to have them argue that you taste gross and made me look homeless. I'll miss staying up late and not needing naps. And I'll miss the convenience of buying just one beverage—sans mixers—at the convenience store. When it comes down to it, I'm sure that I have other options. I could hark back a few years, when Red Bull and vodka was all the rage. I'm less interested, though, because the reason I like you, Sparks, is that you're not hard liquor; you're hard beer. I guess this is the end. Goodbye, fun, and goodbye, laughter.
We have until Jan. 10 before the good old caffeinated Sparks disappears entirely from the shelves. So if you haven't tasted its succulent sweetness, or you've always wondered what you'd look like with orange teeth, go stock up. Though if you live in New York, you'll have to beat me there. Because just the thought of a weekend without Sparks puts me to sleep.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/176148 © 2008
Glossary:Prompt:estimular get(ting) rid of:livrar-se de frothy: espumoso muster:montar. Juntar woozy; ter tontura Belligerent: briguento rollercoaster ride: passeio na montanha russa injury-prone: inclinado a acidentes stick(stuck): ligado hark back; s
Farewell to Sparks, the alcoholic energy drink that prompted 20-somethings to wonder, 'How drunk am I?'
Kurt Soller Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan02,2009
Like many of you, I lost a lot in 2008. But this week, things got worse. On Thursday (right before the weekend!), I found out that I'd soon be losing a core member of my social group: the life of the party, the cheap date, the friend that was never more than a convenience store away. I'm serious: alcohol giant MillerCoors announced they'd be getting rid of their alcopop beverage Sparks. If you're over 30, this may mean nothing to you. But for cash-strapped 20-somethings around the country, this is another reason, besides the unemployment rate, we'll be staying home on weekends.
.If you're not familiar with Sparks, you might think that mixing an energy beverage and malt liquor in one can is a little bit like buying premade s'mores or those jars that come with the peanut butter and jelly already swirled together. (And if you haven't thought of mixing caffeine and alcohol in the first place, then you really are over 30.) But Sparks has a taste all its own—more like frothy Tang than beer and Red Bull combined.
Its appeal? When I don't sleep well on Thursday, it helps me muster up the energy to celebrate on Friday night. When I want to head home from a birthday party at midnight, it reminds me that, not so long ago, I was in college. It's a completely legal and safe way (in moderation, of course) of enjoying a night out with too many friends and too many drinks without feeling woozy, belligerent or what can be only be referred to as "out of it."
It's a sign of the times that I didn't read about this disaster in the newspaper, I read about it on Facebook... Scientists have also argued that mixing a downer (alcohol) with an upper (caffeine) can send your heart rate on a rollercoaster ride (all while your mind rattles with the question "How drunk am I?"). And research conducted at Wake Forest University found that students who mixed both ingredients—as in, vodka and Red Bull—were more injury-prone than those who stuck to straight alcohol.
As an adult of consenting age, I say the kids are ruining all the fun. And while I recognize that underage drinking is a serious problem, Sparks clearly noted its alcoholic content (6 percent alcohol by volume) on its wonderfully metallic cans. In the end, authorities won out and MillerCoors chose to "reformulate" the beverage (removing the uppers) in an agreement reached on Thursday. In short, I'll lose my stimulant-filled Saturday evenings, and the corporation will pay $550,000 to the 13 states that challenged it, as well as the city of San Francisco.
So goodbye, Sparks. I'll miss side effects like orange tongue (which, I admit, was a low point) and I'll miss introducing you to people who aren't yet familiar with you, only to have them argue that you taste gross and made me look homeless. I'll miss staying up late and not needing naps. And I'll miss the convenience of buying just one beverage—sans mixers—at the convenience store. When it comes down to it, I'm sure that I have other options. I could hark back a few years, when Red Bull and vodka was all the rage. I'm less interested, though, because the reason I like you, Sparks, is that you're not hard liquor; you're hard beer. I guess this is the end. Goodbye, fun, and goodbye, laughter.
We have until Jan. 10 before the good old caffeinated Sparks disappears entirely from the shelves. So if you haven't tasted its succulent sweetness, or you've always wondered what you'd look like with orange teeth, go stock up. Though if you live in New York, you'll have to beat me there. Because just the thought of a weekend without Sparks puts me to sleep.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/176148 © 2008
Glossary:Prompt:estimular get(ting) rid of:livrar-se de frothy: espumoso muster:montar. Juntar woozy; ter tontura Belligerent: briguento rollercoaster ride: passeio na montanha russa injury-prone: inclinado a acidentes stick(stuck): ligado hark back; s
Initiative Takes Aim At Obesity In Children
Initiative Takes Aim At Obesity In Children
Friday, February 20, 2009; A07
A coalition of health groups and insurance companies yesterday unveiled an initiative, billed as the first of its kind, to help battle one of the nation's biggest health problems: childhood obesity.
Officials of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint effort of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, said the initiative is designed to give children better access to health care to fight obesity. Participating insurance companies would pay for at least four visits to a dietitian and four visits to a physician each year to provide guidance to children and their parents on how to eat better and take other steps to reduce and control their weight.
More than one-third of children in the United States are overweight or obese, raising fears that they could constitute the first generation in recent history to have shorter life spans than their parents. One of the biggest problems many families face in fighting obesity is getting insurance companies to pay for doctor visits and other care to help deal with the problem.
BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina and BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts have signed on to the initiative, along with two of the biggest insurers -- Aetna and WellPoint -- and organizers hope others will follow. Several companies, including PepsiCo, Owens Corning and Paychex have also joined, offering the benefit to children of their employees.
Organizers expect that the initiative will provide the new benefit to about 1 million children in the first year and more than 6 million within three years.
Several medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association, have signed up to help monitor the program and provide expertise.
-- Rob Stein
Friday, February 20, 2009; A07
A coalition of health groups and insurance companies yesterday unveiled an initiative, billed as the first of its kind, to help battle one of the nation's biggest health problems: childhood obesity.
Officials of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint effort of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, said the initiative is designed to give children better access to health care to fight obesity. Participating insurance companies would pay for at least four visits to a dietitian and four visits to a physician each year to provide guidance to children and their parents on how to eat better and take other steps to reduce and control their weight.
More than one-third of children in the United States are overweight or obese, raising fears that they could constitute the first generation in recent history to have shorter life spans than their parents. One of the biggest problems many families face in fighting obesity is getting insurance companies to pay for doctor visits and other care to help deal with the problem.
BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina and BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts have signed on to the initiative, along with two of the biggest insurers -- Aetna and WellPoint -- and organizers hope others will follow. Several companies, including PepsiCo, Owens Corning and Paychex have also joined, offering the benefit to children of their employees.
Organizers expect that the initiative will provide the new benefit to about 1 million children in the first year and more than 6 million within three years.
Several medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dietetic Association, have signed up to help monitor the program and provide expertise.
-- Rob Stein
The Popularity Gap
The Popularity Gap
A new study reveals that for teens, it's not whether you're really popular. It's whether you think you are.
Sarah Kliff
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb19,2009
Perhaps no period of life is more fraught(involvido,cheio) with obsessive worries about popularity, social hierarchies and reputations than that treacherous(traiçoeiro), three-year period known as middle school. The social anxieties(ansiedades) of adolescence have driven plotlines(enredos) from "The Wonder Years" to "Hannah Montana" where teens and pre-teens spend entire hours and episodes agonizing over what their peers(semelhantes) think. Figuring out whether you'll end up being a cool prom king or queen bee--or the kid who eats alone in the cafeteria--is an integral part of becoming a teenager.
Turns out, it doesn't necessarily matter. Whether or not your high class voted you "most popular," teenagers who perceive themselves as well liked are just as socially successful over time as the kids who actually are part of the in-crowd, according to a new study in the May-June issue of Child Development. In fact, the overlap between the kids who believe they're popular and those who are deemed(acreditar) popular by their peers is pretty small. "Certainly there's a subset(subgrupo) that feels good about themselves and is also popular, but that isn't the majority," says Kathleen Boykin McElhaney, a research associate in psychology at University of Virginia who conducted the study. Her findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that our perception of how we fit into the social world is just as important--if not more important--than our real-life position in the social world.
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão
A new study reveals that for teens, it's not whether you're really popular. It's whether you think you are.
Sarah Kliff
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb19,2009
Perhaps no period of life is more fraught(involvido,cheio) with obsessive worries about popularity, social hierarchies and reputations than that treacherous(traiçoeiro), three-year period known as middle school. The social anxieties(ansiedades) of adolescence have driven plotlines(enredos) from "The Wonder Years" to "Hannah Montana" where teens and pre-teens spend entire hours and episodes agonizing over what their peers(semelhantes) think. Figuring out whether you'll end up being a cool prom king or queen bee--or the kid who eats alone in the cafeteria--is an integral part of becoming a teenager.
Turns out, it doesn't necessarily matter. Whether or not your high class voted you "most popular," teenagers who perceive themselves as well liked are just as socially successful over time as the kids who actually are part of the in-crowd, according to a new study in the May-June issue of Child Development. In fact, the overlap between the kids who believe they're popular and those who are deemed(acreditar) popular by their peers is pretty small. "Certainly there's a subset(subgrupo) that feels good about themselves and is also popular, but that isn't the majority," says Kathleen Boykin McElhaney, a research associate in psychology at University of Virginia who conducted the study. Her findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that our perception of how we fit into the social world is just as important--if not more important--than our real-life position in the social world.
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão
Not Just Urban Legend
Not Just Urban Legend
Organ trafficking was long considered a myth. But now mounting evidence suggests it is a real and growing problem, even in America.
Jeneen Interlandi NEWSWEEKFrom the magazine issue dated Jan 19, 2009
By the time her work brought her back to the United States, Nancy Scheper-Hughes had spent more than a decade tracking the illegal sale of human organs across the globe. Posing as a medical doctor in some places and a would-be kidney buyer in others, she had linked gangsters, clergymen and surgeons in a trail that led from South Africa, Brazil and other developing nations all the way back to some of her own country's best medical facilities. So it was that on an icy February afternoon in 2003, the anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley, found herself sitting across from a group of transplant surgeons in a small conference room at a big Philadelphia hospital.
By accident or by design, she believed, surgeons in their unit had been transplanting black-market kidneys from residents of the world's most impoverished slums into the failing bodies of wealthy dialysis patients from Israel, Europe and the United States. According to Scheper-Hughes, the arrangements were being negotiated by an elaborate network of criminals who kept most of the money themselves. For about $150,000 per transplant, these organ brokers would reach across continents to connect buyers and sellers, whom they then guided to "broker-friendly" hospitals here in the United States (places where Scheper-Hughes says surgeons were either complicit in the scheme or willing to turn a blind eye). The brokers themselves often posed as or hired clergy to accompany their clients into the hospital and ensure that the process went smoothly. The organ sellers typically got a few thousand dollars for their troubles, plus the chance to see an American city
Glossar:y:mounting=crescente, tracking=seguindo, perseguindo, impoverished=paupérrimos,to turn a blind eye=fazer-se de surdo,cego, smoothly=sem dificuldades
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão
:
Organ trafficking was long considered a myth. But now mounting evidence suggests it is a real and growing problem, even in America.
Jeneen Interlandi NEWSWEEKFrom the magazine issue dated Jan 19, 2009
By the time her work brought her back to the United States, Nancy Scheper-Hughes had spent more than a decade tracking the illegal sale of human organs across the globe. Posing as a medical doctor in some places and a would-be kidney buyer in others, she had linked gangsters, clergymen and surgeons in a trail that led from South Africa, Brazil and other developing nations all the way back to some of her own country's best medical facilities. So it was that on an icy February afternoon in 2003, the anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley, found herself sitting across from a group of transplant surgeons in a small conference room at a big Philadelphia hospital.
By accident or by design, she believed, surgeons in their unit had been transplanting black-market kidneys from residents of the world's most impoverished slums into the failing bodies of wealthy dialysis patients from Israel, Europe and the United States. According to Scheper-Hughes, the arrangements were being negotiated by an elaborate network of criminals who kept most of the money themselves. For about $150,000 per transplant, these organ brokers would reach across continents to connect buyers and sellers, whom they then guided to "broker-friendly" hospitals here in the United States (places where Scheper-Hughes says surgeons were either complicit in the scheme or willing to turn a blind eye). The brokers themselves often posed as or hired clergy to accompany their clients into the hospital and ensure that the process went smoothly. The organ sellers typically got a few thousand dollars for their troubles, plus the chance to see an American city
Glossar:y:mounting=crescente, tracking=seguindo, perseguindo, impoverished=paupérrimos,to turn a blind eye=fazer-se de surdo,cego, smoothly=sem dificuldades
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'Anti-phobia pill' breaks link between memory and fear
'Anti-phobia pill' breaks link between memory and fear
18:00 15 February 2009 by Linda Geddes
Phobias and post-traumatic stress could be banished for good by taking a commonly prescribed drug for blood pressure.
Previous studies had suggested that people who experienced traumatic events such as rape and car crashes showed fewer signs of stress when recalling the event if they had first been injected with the beta blocker propranolol, but it was unclear whether the effect would be permanent or not. Fearful memories often return, even after people have been treated for them.
To investigate whether propranolol could stop fear returning in the longer term, Merel Kindt and her colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, conditioned 60 healthy students to associate a picture of a spider with an electric shock, so that they would eventually be startled by the picture even in the absence of a shock.
However, if the conditioned students were given oral propranolol before seeing the picture, their startle response was eliminated. What's more, it didn't return when the students were put through a second round of conditioning that should have reinstated their fear – suggesting that the association may have been permanently broken.
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18:00 15 February 2009 by Linda Geddes
Phobias and post-traumatic stress could be banished for good by taking a commonly prescribed drug for blood pressure.
Previous studies had suggested that people who experienced traumatic events such as rape and car crashes showed fewer signs of stress when recalling the event if they had first been injected with the beta blocker propranolol, but it was unclear whether the effect would be permanent or not. Fearful memories often return, even after people have been treated for them.
To investigate whether propranolol could stop fear returning in the longer term, Merel Kindt and her colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, conditioned 60 healthy students to associate a picture of a spider with an electric shock, so that they would eventually be startled by the picture even in the absence of a shock.
However, if the conditioned students were given oral propranolol before seeing the picture, their startle response was eliminated. What's more, it didn't return when the students were put through a second round of conditioning that should have reinstated their fear – suggesting that the association may have been permanently broken.
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Valentine's Day special: Together forever
Valentine's Day special: Together forever
14 February 2009 by Graham Lawton
OF ALL the pebbles on the beach, why does one of them end up being the one you want to keep? "Nobody really knows why we fall in love with one person and not another," says anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey, an expert on the biology and psychology of love. "But there is a thing called chemistry."
Nobody knows why we love one person and not another
So what is "chemistry"? Some of the factors are well known: we tend to go for people who are our equals in terms of intelligence and looks, with similar backgrounds and values. But Fisher believes these are not enough. "You could walk into a room of people who are all equally intelligent and attractive, but one of them would still be the one," she says.
"Factors like intelligence and shared values are only half of the puzzle," Fisher reckons. The other half, she says, is how your biology influences who you fall in love with.
A handful of biological traits have already been linked to mate choice. We know, for example, that people seem to be attracted to those with a dissimilar immune system (New Scientist, 20 December 2008, p 60).
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14 February 2009 by Graham Lawton
OF ALL the pebbles on the beach, why does one of them end up being the one you want to keep? "Nobody really knows why we fall in love with one person and not another," says anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey, an expert on the biology and psychology of love. "But there is a thing called chemistry."
Nobody knows why we love one person and not another
So what is "chemistry"? Some of the factors are well known: we tend to go for people who are our equals in terms of intelligence and looks, with similar backgrounds and values. But Fisher believes these are not enough. "You could walk into a room of people who are all equally intelligent and attractive, but one of them would still be the one," she says.
"Factors like intelligence and shared values are only half of the puzzle," Fisher reckons. The other half, she says, is how your biology influences who you fall in love with.
A handful of biological traits have already been linked to mate choice. We know, for example, that people seem to be attracted to those with a dissimilar immune system (New Scientist, 20 December 2008, p 60).
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Burgeoning bourgeoisie
Burgeoning bourgeoisie
Feb 12th 2009 From The Economist print edition
For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries.
THE crowd surges back and forth, hands above heads, mobile-phone cameras snapping one of Brazil’s best-known samba bands. It could be almost anywhere in Latin America’s largest city on a Saturday night. But this is Paraisopolis, one of São Paulo’s notorious crime-infested favelas (slums). Casas Bahia, the country’s largest retailer, is celebrating the opening there of its first ever store in a favela (pictured above). It is selling television sets and refrigerators in a place that, at first glance, has no running water or electricity.
Among the shacks, though, rise three-storey brick structures with satellite dishes on their tin roofs. In the new shop, Brazilians without bank accounts—plumbers, salesmen, maids—flock to buy on instalment credit. In a country with no credit histories, the system is cumbersome: the staff interview customers about their qualifications and get them to sign stacks of promissory notes, like post-dated cheques, before allowing them to take their purchases home. But it works, more or less. According to Maria, a cleaner, “Everything I have comes from Casas Bahia. Things are very expensive but the means of payment are better for people like us, without any money.” This is the emerging markets’ new middle class out shopping.
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Feb 12th 2009 From The Economist print edition
For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries.
THE crowd surges back and forth, hands above heads, mobile-phone cameras snapping one of Brazil’s best-known samba bands. It could be almost anywhere in Latin America’s largest city on a Saturday night. But this is Paraisopolis, one of São Paulo’s notorious crime-infested favelas (slums). Casas Bahia, the country’s largest retailer, is celebrating the opening there of its first ever store in a favela (pictured above). It is selling television sets and refrigerators in a place that, at first glance, has no running water or electricity.
Among the shacks, though, rise three-storey brick structures with satellite dishes on their tin roofs. In the new shop, Brazilians without bank accounts—plumbers, salesmen, maids—flock to buy on instalment credit. In a country with no credit histories, the system is cumbersome: the staff interview customers about their qualifications and get them to sign stacks of promissory notes, like post-dated cheques, before allowing them to take their purchases home. But it works, more or less. According to Maria, a cleaner, “Everything I have comes from Casas Bahia. Things are very expensive but the means of payment are better for people like us, without any money.” This is the emerging markets’ new middle class out shopping.
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The Spy and the Sex Scandal
The Spy and the Sex Scandal
Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 9, 2009
He seemed just the sort of spy the CIA is looking for to fight the war on terror. Andrew Warren is a 6-foot-4 African-American schooled in the martial arts. Steeped in Middle Eastern history, he is a convert to Islam who speaks six Arabic dialects. He was a natural to be the CIA's top man in Algiers, a North Africa listening post and frequent hotbed of terrorists. He told his friends that he entered the U.S. Foreign Service—his cover story—because he wanted to be "at the center of things."
Last week, he emerged at the center of a lurid scandal deeply embarrassing to the United States. According to an affidavit signed by a State Department security investigator, in the past two years Warren allegedly drugged and then raped two Algerian women. Though the CIA won't confirm it, numerous U.S. government officials acknowledged to NEWSWEEK the revelation, first reported by ABC News correspondent Brian Ross, that Warren was serving in Algiers as CIA station chief.
Warren, who has not publicly commented, has not been charged with any crime. But the affidavit is damning. Two women told investigators that while visiting Warren at his official U.S. government residence in Algiers, Warren plied them with cocktails, which eventually caused them to vomit and pass out. One woman woke up naked in a bedroom and found a used condom in a nearby trash can. The court affidavit describes in hard-core detail how the other victim remembers drifting in and out of consciousness as Warren sexually assaulted her. Warren was called back to Washington last October; during a subsequent search of his Algiers home, investigators found what appeared to be evidence of "tradecraft" more associated with stalkers than spies: multiple computer drives and data-storage devices, a handbook on the investigation of sexual assaults and quantities of Xanax and Valium—tranquilizers that government experts claim are commonly used in date-rape assaults.
Warren is an aspiring author as well as a spy. Eight years ago, he published a pulp thriller called "The People of the Veil." The hero of the book is a U.S. diplomat, based in Algiers, who battles terrorists trying to take over the U.S. Embassy. In a subplot, the hero, Nick Phillips, has an affair with Mariam, a beautiful Algerian woman who shunned Arab men ("because they were too controlling") but fell in love with Nick because he "respected her and treated her as an equal," and who "never pressured her and understood her culture." Speaking anonymously in order to be candid, one of Warren's former instructors at the "Farm," where spies are trained, told NEWSWEEK that Warren was "a loose cannon" whose confidence "bordered on narcissism." Still, he added, people at the agency "are crushed by this." A former academic mentor, Professor William Alexander of Norfolk State University, described Warren as "an incredible person" and said that he had been working on a second novel.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/182559
© 2009
Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 9, 2009
He seemed just the sort of spy the CIA is looking for to fight the war on terror. Andrew Warren is a 6-foot-4 African-American schooled in the martial arts. Steeped in Middle Eastern history, he is a convert to Islam who speaks six Arabic dialects. He was a natural to be the CIA's top man in Algiers, a North Africa listening post and frequent hotbed of terrorists. He told his friends that he entered the U.S. Foreign Service—his cover story—because he wanted to be "at the center of things."
Last week, he emerged at the center of a lurid scandal deeply embarrassing to the United States. According to an affidavit signed by a State Department security investigator, in the past two years Warren allegedly drugged and then raped two Algerian women. Though the CIA won't confirm it, numerous U.S. government officials acknowledged to NEWSWEEK the revelation, first reported by ABC News correspondent Brian Ross, that Warren was serving in Algiers as CIA station chief.
Warren, who has not publicly commented, has not been charged with any crime. But the affidavit is damning. Two women told investigators that while visiting Warren at his official U.S. government residence in Algiers, Warren plied them with cocktails, which eventually caused them to vomit and pass out. One woman woke up naked in a bedroom and found a used condom in a nearby trash can. The court affidavit describes in hard-core detail how the other victim remembers drifting in and out of consciousness as Warren sexually assaulted her. Warren was called back to Washington last October; during a subsequent search of his Algiers home, investigators found what appeared to be evidence of "tradecraft" more associated with stalkers than spies: multiple computer drives and data-storage devices, a handbook on the investigation of sexual assaults and quantities of Xanax and Valium—tranquilizers that government experts claim are commonly used in date-rape assaults.
Warren is an aspiring author as well as a spy. Eight years ago, he published a pulp thriller called "The People of the Veil." The hero of the book is a U.S. diplomat, based in Algiers, who battles terrorists trying to take over the U.S. Embassy. In a subplot, the hero, Nick Phillips, has an affair with Mariam, a beautiful Algerian woman who shunned Arab men ("because they were too controlling") but fell in love with Nick because he "respected her and treated her as an equal," and who "never pressured her and understood her culture." Speaking anonymously in order to be candid, one of Warren's former instructors at the "Farm," where spies are trained, told NEWSWEEK that Warren was "a loose cannon" whose confidence "bordered on narcissism." Still, he added, people at the agency "are crushed by this." A former academic mentor, Professor William Alexander of Norfolk State University, described Warren as "an incredible person" and said that he had been working on a second novel.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/182559
© 2009
Unfinished business
Unfinished business
Feb 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Charles Darwin’s ideas have spread widely, but his revolution is not yet complete
Bridgeman Art Library
Correction to this article
THE miracles of nature are everywhere: on landing, a beetle folds its wings like an origami master; a lotus leaf sheds muddy water as if it were quicksilver(mercúrio); a spider spins a web to entrap her prey, but somehow evades entrapment herself. Since the beginning of time, people who have thought about such things have seen these marvels as examples of the wisdom of God; even as evidence for his existence. But 200 years ago, on February 12th 1809, a man was born who would challenge all that. The book that issued the challenge, published half a century later, in 1859, offered a radical new view of the living world and, most radical of all, of humanity’s origins. The man was Charles Robert Darwin. The book was “On the Origin of Species”. And the challenge was the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Since Darwin’s birth, the natural world has changed beyond recognition. Then, the modern theory of atoms was scarcely six years old and the Earth was thought to be 6,000. There was no inkling(idéia) of the size of the universe beyond the Milky Way, and radioactivity, relativity and quantum theory were unimaginable. Yet of all the discoveries of 19th- and early 20th-century science—invisible atoms, infinite space, the inconstancy of time and the mutability of matter—only evolution has failed to find general acceptance outside the scientific world. Few laymen(leigos, lay=não professional)) would claim they did not believe Einstein. Yet many seem proud not to believe Darwin. Even for those who do accept his line of thought his ideas often seem as difficult today as they were 150 years ago.
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Feb 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Charles Darwin’s ideas have spread widely, but his revolution is not yet complete
Bridgeman Art Library
Correction to this article
THE miracles of nature are everywhere: on landing, a beetle folds its wings like an origami master; a lotus leaf sheds muddy water as if it were quicksilver(mercúrio); a spider spins a web to entrap her prey, but somehow evades entrapment herself. Since the beginning of time, people who have thought about such things have seen these marvels as examples of the wisdom of God; even as evidence for his existence. But 200 years ago, on February 12th 1809, a man was born who would challenge all that. The book that issued the challenge, published half a century later, in 1859, offered a radical new view of the living world and, most radical of all, of humanity’s origins. The man was Charles Robert Darwin. The book was “On the Origin of Species”. And the challenge was the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Since Darwin’s birth, the natural world has changed beyond recognition. Then, the modern theory of atoms was scarcely six years old and the Earth was thought to be 6,000. There was no inkling(idéia) of the size of the universe beyond the Milky Way, and radioactivity, relativity and quantum theory were unimaginable. Yet of all the discoveries of 19th- and early 20th-century science—invisible atoms, infinite space, the inconstancy of time and the mutability of matter—only evolution has failed to find general acceptance outside the scientific world. Few laymen(leigos, lay=não professional)) would claim they did not believe Einstein. Yet many seem proud not to believe Darwin. Even for those who do accept his line of thought his ideas often seem as difficult today as they were 150 years ago.
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Born believers: How your brain creates God
Born believers: How your brain creates God
04 February 2009 by Michael Brooks
WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.
This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.
Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress."
The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30)
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04 February 2009 by Michael Brooks
WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.
This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.
Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress."
The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30)
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Fixing a broken world
Fixing a broken world
Jan 29th 2009 From The Economist print edition
The planet’s most wretched places are not always the most dangerousIN ALMOST any discussion of world affairs, there is one thing on which doves and hawks invariably agree: much more needs to be done to shore up states that are failing, in a state of collapse, or so poor that they are heading in that direction.
For development-minded people, such benighted places are an obvious concern because of their desperate suffering; and for hard-nosed strategists, states that hardly work are places where terrorists could step into the vacuum. Indeed there is a certain convergence between these points of view: aid workers agree that security is essential to prosperity, and generals want economic development to boost security.
In America these days, defence planners say they worry more about weak states, even non-states, than about strong ones. “Ungoverned, undergoverned, misgoverned and contested areas” offer fertile grounds for terrorists and other nefarious groups, says the Pentagon’s National Defence Strategy, issued last year. To the chagrin of old-school sceptics, nation-building is now an integral part of American strategy.
Similarly, the European Union’s declared security strategy sees state failure as an “alarming” phenomenon. It opines that: “Neighbours who are engaged in violent conflict, weak states where organised crime flourishes, dysfunctional societies or exploding population growth on its borders all pose problems for Europe.”
Western intelligence agencies say that, with the recent improvement in security in Iraq (a totalitarian state that became a failed state only after the American-led invasion), the world’s jihadists now prefer to head for Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen.
Misrule, violence, corruption, forced migration, poverty, illiteracy and disease can all reinforce each other. Conflict may impoverish populations, increase the availability of weapons and debilitate rulers. Weak governments, in turn, are less able to stop corruption and the production and smuggling of arms and drugs, which may in turn help finance warlords, insurgents and terrorists.
Instability breeds instability. The chronic weaknesses of civil institutions in Sierra Leone and Liberia contributed to the outbreak of devastating civil wars in both countries, fuelled by the profits from the illegal smuggling of “blood diamonds”. Meanwhile war and genocide in Rwanda contributed to the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s. The chaos there, sustained in part by fighting over mineral resources, sucked in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Chad and Sudan support rebels in each other’s countries.
At the very least, there is evidence that economic growth in countries next to failing states can be badly damaged. And if a poorly functioning but important oil-producing state like Nigeria were to fall apart, the economic fallout would be global. Moreover, weak governments may lack the wherewithal to identify and contain a pandemic that could spread globally.
Jan 29th 2009 From The Economist print edition
The planet’s most wretched places are not always the most dangerousIN ALMOST any discussion of world affairs, there is one thing on which doves and hawks invariably agree: much more needs to be done to shore up states that are failing, in a state of collapse, or so poor that they are heading in that direction.
For development-minded people, such benighted places are an obvious concern because of their desperate suffering; and for hard-nosed strategists, states that hardly work are places where terrorists could step into the vacuum. Indeed there is a certain convergence between these points of view: aid workers agree that security is essential to prosperity, and generals want economic development to boost security.
In America these days, defence planners say they worry more about weak states, even non-states, than about strong ones. “Ungoverned, undergoverned, misgoverned and contested areas” offer fertile grounds for terrorists and other nefarious groups, says the Pentagon’s National Defence Strategy, issued last year. To the chagrin of old-school sceptics, nation-building is now an integral part of American strategy.
Similarly, the European Union’s declared security strategy sees state failure as an “alarming” phenomenon. It opines that: “Neighbours who are engaged in violent conflict, weak states where organised crime flourishes, dysfunctional societies or exploding population growth on its borders all pose problems for Europe.”
Western intelligence agencies say that, with the recent improvement in security in Iraq (a totalitarian state that became a failed state only after the American-led invasion), the world’s jihadists now prefer to head for Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen.
Misrule, violence, corruption, forced migration, poverty, illiteracy and disease can all reinforce each other. Conflict may impoverish populations, increase the availability of weapons and debilitate rulers. Weak governments, in turn, are less able to stop corruption and the production and smuggling of arms and drugs, which may in turn help finance warlords, insurgents and terrorists.
Instability breeds instability. The chronic weaknesses of civil institutions in Sierra Leone and Liberia contributed to the outbreak of devastating civil wars in both countries, fuelled by the profits from the illegal smuggling of “blood diamonds”. Meanwhile war and genocide in Rwanda contributed to the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s. The chaos there, sustained in part by fighting over mineral resources, sucked in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. Chad and Sudan support rebels in each other’s countries.
At the very least, there is evidence that economic growth in countries next to failing states can be badly damaged. And if a poorly functioning but important oil-producing state like Nigeria were to fall apart, the economic fallout would be global. Moreover, weak governments may lack the wherewithal to identify and contain a pandemic that could spread globally.
Thirsty work
Thirsty work
Feb 25th 2009From Economist.com
The water needed to produce everyday goods and beverages
WATER is a precious commodity, as any farmer in drought-besieged parts of China, America or Kenya knows only too well. Consumers may already be aware of the environmental impact of producing goods in terms of energy or pollution, but they might be surprised to learn how much water is needed to create some daily goods. A cup of coffee, for example, needs a great deal more water than that poured into the pot. According to a new book on the subject, 1,120 litres of water go into producing a single litre of the beverage, once growing the beans, packaging and so on are measured. Only 120 litres go into making the same amount of tea. As many as four litres of water are used to make a litre of the bottled stuff. Household items are even thirstier. Thousands of litres are needed to make shoes, hamburgers and microchips.
Glossary:drought=sêca, besiege=assediado stuff=papelada, mas comumente usado para designar qualquer coisa que não se sabe ou se quer dar o nome
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Feb 25th 2009From Economist.com
The water needed to produce everyday goods and beverages
WATER is a precious commodity, as any farmer in drought-besieged parts of China, America or Kenya knows only too well. Consumers may already be aware of the environmental impact of producing goods in terms of energy or pollution, but they might be surprised to learn how much water is needed to create some daily goods. A cup of coffee, for example, needs a great deal more water than that poured into the pot. According to a new book on the subject, 1,120 litres of water go into producing a single litre of the beverage, once growing the beans, packaging and so on are measured. Only 120 litres go into making the same amount of tea. As many as four litres of water are used to make a litre of the bottled stuff. Household items are even thirstier. Thousands of litres are needed to make shoes, hamburgers and microchips.
Glossary:drought=sêca, besiege=assediado stuff=papelada, mas comumente usado para designar qualquer coisa que não se sabe ou se quer dar o nome
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What's the score?
What's the score?
Mar 12th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Science inspired the world wide web. Two decades on, the web has repaid the compliment by changing science
Rex Features A proud father
“INFORMATION Management: A Proposal”. That was the bland title of a document written in March 1989 by a then little-known computer scientist called Tim Berners-Lee who was working at CERN, Europe’s particle physics laboratory, near Geneva. Mr Berners-Lee (pictured) is now, of course, Sir Timothy, and his proposal, modestly dubbed the world wide web, has fulfilled the implications of its name beyond the wildest dreams of anyone involved at the time.
In fact, the web was invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s, CERN was planning one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. (This opened, and then shut down again because of a leak in its cooling system, in September last year.) As the first few lines of the original proposal put it, “Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question—‘Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?’ This proposal provides an answer to such questions.”
Sir Timothy is now based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he runs the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets standards for web technology. But on March 13th, he will, if all has gone well, have joined his old colleagues at CERN to celebrate the web’s 20th birthday.
The web of life The web, as everyone now knows, has found uses far beyond the original one of linking electronic documents about particle physics in laboratories around the world. But amid all the transformations it has wrought, from personal social networks to political campaigning to pornography, it has also transformed, as its inventor hoped it would, the business of doing science itself.
Mar 12th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Science inspired the world wide web. Two decades on, the web has repaid the compliment by changing science
Rex Features A proud father
“INFORMATION Management: A Proposal”. That was the bland title of a document written in March 1989 by a then little-known computer scientist called Tim Berners-Lee who was working at CERN, Europe’s particle physics laboratory, near Geneva. Mr Berners-Lee (pictured) is now, of course, Sir Timothy, and his proposal, modestly dubbed the world wide web, has fulfilled the implications of its name beyond the wildest dreams of anyone involved at the time.
In fact, the web was invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s, CERN was planning one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. (This opened, and then shut down again because of a leak in its cooling system, in September last year.) As the first few lines of the original proposal put it, “Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question—‘Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?’ This proposal provides an answer to such questions.”
Sir Timothy is now based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he runs the World Wide Web Consortium, which sets standards for web technology. But on March 13th, he will, if all has gone well, have joined his old colleagues at CERN to celebrate the web’s 20th birthday.
The web of life The web, as everyone now knows, has found uses far beyond the original one of linking electronic documents about particle physics in laboratories around the world. But amid all the transformations it has wrought, from personal social networks to political campaigning to pornography, it has also transformed, as its inventor hoped it would, the business of doing science itself.
The jobs crisis
The jobs crisis
Mar 12th 2009From The Economist print edition
It’s coming, whatever governments do; but they can make it better or worse
Illustration by Belle Mellor
NOTHING evokes the misery of mass unemployment more than the photographs of the Depression. You can see it in the drawn faces of the men, in their shabby clothes, in their eyes. Their despair spawned political extremism that left a stain on society; but it also taught subsequent generations that public policy has a vital part in alleviating the suffering of those who cannot get work. Thanks to welfare schemes and unemployment benefits, many of which have their origins in those dark days, joblessness no longer plunges people into destitution, at least in the developed world.
Not even the gloomiest predict that today’s slump will approach the severity of the Depression, which shrank America’s economy by more than a quarter, and put a quarter of the working-age population out of a job. But with the world in its deepest recession since the 1930s and global trade shrinking at its fastest pace in 80 years, the misery of mass unemployment looms nonetheless, and raises the big question posed in the Depression: what should governments do?
Mar 12th 2009From The Economist print edition
It’s coming, whatever governments do; but they can make it better or worse
Illustration by Belle Mellor
NOTHING evokes the misery of mass unemployment more than the photographs of the Depression. You can see it in the drawn faces of the men, in their shabby clothes, in their eyes. Their despair spawned political extremism that left a stain on society; but it also taught subsequent generations that public policy has a vital part in alleviating the suffering of those who cannot get work. Thanks to welfare schemes and unemployment benefits, many of which have their origins in those dark days, joblessness no longer plunges people into destitution, at least in the developed world.
Not even the gloomiest predict that today’s slump will approach the severity of the Depression, which shrank America’s economy by more than a quarter, and put a quarter of the working-age population out of a job. But with the world in its deepest recession since the 1930s and global trade shrinking at its fastest pace in 80 years, the misery of mass unemployment looms nonetheless, and raises the big question posed in the Depression: what should governments do?
Soaps, sex and sociolog
Soaps, sex and sociology
Mar 12th 2009 SÃO PAULO From The Economist print edition
Do women who watch telenovelas have fewer babies (but more men)
THE glamorised world portrayed on the nightly telenovelas (soap operas) on Brazilian television is, superficially at least, about as representative of the country as a whole as Marie Antoinette and her shepherdesses were of 1780s’ France. But they are all about aspiration. About 40m people watch the mid-evening novela from Globo, the leading network. The action often takes place in Rio de Janeiro, where Globo is based, among families which are smaller, whiter and richer than average. New research suggests that by selling this version of the country to itself, Globo has boosted two important social trends.
The soaps blossomed under Brazil’s military regime of 1964-85. The generals subsidised sales of television sets to build a sense of nationhood in a large and then largely illiterate country. National news was meant to do the job, but the soaps got the audience. Their scriptwriters and directors, many of whom were on the left, saw them as a tool with which to reach the masses. Their plots often tilt in a progressive direction: AIDS is discussed, condoms are promoted and social mobility exemplified.
How much impact do the soaps have on real life? As recounted in papers from the Inter-American Development Bank, researchers tracked Globo’s expansion across the country and compared this to data on fertility and divorce.*
The results are most striking for the total fertility rate, which dropped from 6.3 children per woman in 1960 to 2.3 in 2000, despite contraception being officially discouraged for some of that time. This was because women moved to cities and opted to have fewer babies. The papers argue that the small, happy families portrayed on television contributed to this trend. Controlling for other factors, the arrival of Globo was associated with a decline of 0.6 percentage points in the probability of a woman giving birth in a given year. That is equivalent to the drop in the birth rate associated with a woman having two extra years of schooling
The effect on divorce was smaller, but noticeable. The researchers found that between 1975, when divorce was first mooted, and 1984 about one in five of the main characters in Globo soaps were divorced or separated, a higher percentage than in the real Brazil. These break-ups were not just a result of machismo: from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s about 30% of female lead characters in novelas were unfaithful to their partners. The researchers find that the arrival of Globo in an area was associated with a rise of 0.1-0.2 percentage points in the share of women aged 15-49 who were divorced or separated. The authors reckon that watching “empowered” women having fun in Rio made other women (a few of them anyway) more independent.
Other research shows that divorce and lower fertility are linked to less domestic violence. So the influence of soaps may be far more positive than critics of their vapidity claim. If Globo could now come up with a seductive novela about tax reform its transformation of Brazil would be complete.
Mar 12th 2009 SÃO PAULO From The Economist print edition
Do women who watch telenovelas have fewer babies (but more men)
THE glamorised world portrayed on the nightly telenovelas (soap operas) on Brazilian television is, superficially at least, about as representative of the country as a whole as Marie Antoinette and her shepherdesses were of 1780s’ France. But they are all about aspiration. About 40m people watch the mid-evening novela from Globo, the leading network. The action often takes place in Rio de Janeiro, where Globo is based, among families which are smaller, whiter and richer than average. New research suggests that by selling this version of the country to itself, Globo has boosted two important social trends.
The soaps blossomed under Brazil’s military regime of 1964-85. The generals subsidised sales of television sets to build a sense of nationhood in a large and then largely illiterate country. National news was meant to do the job, but the soaps got the audience. Their scriptwriters and directors, many of whom were on the left, saw them as a tool with which to reach the masses. Their plots often tilt in a progressive direction: AIDS is discussed, condoms are promoted and social mobility exemplified.
How much impact do the soaps have on real life? As recounted in papers from the Inter-American Development Bank, researchers tracked Globo’s expansion across the country and compared this to data on fertility and divorce.*
The results are most striking for the total fertility rate, which dropped from 6.3 children per woman in 1960 to 2.3 in 2000, despite contraception being officially discouraged for some of that time. This was because women moved to cities and opted to have fewer babies. The papers argue that the small, happy families portrayed on television contributed to this trend. Controlling for other factors, the arrival of Globo was associated with a decline of 0.6 percentage points in the probability of a woman giving birth in a given year. That is equivalent to the drop in the birth rate associated with a woman having two extra years of schooling
The effect on divorce was smaller, but noticeable. The researchers found that between 1975, when divorce was first mooted, and 1984 about one in five of the main characters in Globo soaps were divorced or separated, a higher percentage than in the real Brazil. These break-ups were not just a result of machismo: from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s about 30% of female lead characters in novelas were unfaithful to their partners. The researchers find that the arrival of Globo in an area was associated with a rise of 0.1-0.2 percentage points in the share of women aged 15-49 who were divorced or separated. The authors reckon that watching “empowered” women having fun in Rio made other women (a few of them anyway) more independent.
Other research shows that divorce and lower fertility are linked to less domestic violence. So the influence of soaps may be far more positive than critics of their vapidity claim. If Globo could now come up with a seductive novela about tax reform its transformation of Brazil would be complete.
Saving lives and money
Saving lives and money
Mar 12th 2009 NEW YORK From The Economist print edition
States plagued by fiscal woes rethink their stance on the death penalty
AN EYE for an eye, or at any rate a death for a death, is the type of justice that most states still embrace. Only 14 of the 50 states have banned capital punishment. But that may change with the recession. As state governments confront huge budget deficits, eight more states have proposed an unusual measure to cut costs: eliminate the death penalty.
The states considering abolition, including Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and New Hampshire, have shifted the debate about capital punishment, at least in part, from morality to cost. Studies show that administering the death penalty is even more expensive than keeping someone in prison for life. The intensive jury selection, trials and appeals required in capital cases can take over a decade and run up a huge tab for the state. Death row, where prisoners facing execution are kept in separate cells under intense observation, is also immensely costly.
A recent study by the Urban Institute, a think-tank, estimates that the death penalty cost Maryland’s taxpayers $186m between 1978 and 1999. According to the report, a case resulting in a death sentence cost $3m, almost $2m more than when the death penalty was not sought.
In an age of austerity, every million dollars counts. Proponents of the abolition bills describe the death penalty as an expensive programme with few benefits. There is little evidence that the death penalty deters. In fact, some of the states that most avidly execute prisoners, such as Texas and Oklahoma, have higher crime rates than states that offer only life in prison without parole. There is also the danger that innocent people may be put to death. So far, more than 130 people who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated.
Colorado, one of the states that has introduced a bill to overturn the death penalty, intends to spend the money it will save each year by eliminating capital punishment on an investigations unit. Many other states, including Texas, which last year carried out almost half of all executions in America, have no plans to follow suit. But a prolonged recession may change a few Texan minds.
Mar 12th 2009 NEW YORK From The Economist print edition
States plagued by fiscal woes rethink their stance on the death penalty
AN EYE for an eye, or at any rate a death for a death, is the type of justice that most states still embrace. Only 14 of the 50 states have banned capital punishment. But that may change with the recession. As state governments confront huge budget deficits, eight more states have proposed an unusual measure to cut costs: eliminate the death penalty.
The states considering abolition, including Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and New Hampshire, have shifted the debate about capital punishment, at least in part, from morality to cost. Studies show that administering the death penalty is even more expensive than keeping someone in prison for life. The intensive jury selection, trials and appeals required in capital cases can take over a decade and run up a huge tab for the state. Death row, where prisoners facing execution are kept in separate cells under intense observation, is also immensely costly.
A recent study by the Urban Institute, a think-tank, estimates that the death penalty cost Maryland’s taxpayers $186m between 1978 and 1999. According to the report, a case resulting in a death sentence cost $3m, almost $2m more than when the death penalty was not sought.
In an age of austerity, every million dollars counts. Proponents of the abolition bills describe the death penalty as an expensive programme with few benefits. There is little evidence that the death penalty deters. In fact, some of the states that most avidly execute prisoners, such as Texas and Oklahoma, have higher crime rates than states that offer only life in prison without parole. There is also the danger that innocent people may be put to death. So far, more than 130 people who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated.
Colorado, one of the states that has introduced a bill to overturn the death penalty, intends to spend the money it will save each year by eliminating capital punishment on an investigations unit. Many other states, including Texas, which last year carried out almost half of all executions in America, have no plans to follow suit. But a prolonged recession may change a few Texan minds.
Noise could mask web searchers' IDs
Noise could mask web searchers' IDs
07 March 2009 by Paul Marks
ADDING noise to search-engine records could help keep surfers' identities private. A team from Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, says the technique is a major step towards "provable privacy".
Records of internet searches made on websites such as Google and AOL are hugely useful to software engineers trying to improve search technology. Such data also give social scientists a valuable window on our largely uninhibited digital search behaviours. The problem is that such information can easily identify individuals who have carried out the searches, breaching their privacy.
Until now, search engines' attempts to anonymise this data have proved somewhat inept. In one case, AOL replaced its customers' names with random numbers before making the data public. But some queries proved so specific - such as people searching their own names and social security numbers - that reporters from The New York Times were able to use them to track down one individual.
07 March 2009 by Paul Marks
ADDING noise to search-engine records could help keep surfers' identities private. A team from Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, says the technique is a major step towards "provable privacy".
Records of internet searches made on websites such as Google and AOL are hugely useful to software engineers trying to improve search technology. Such data also give social scientists a valuable window on our largely uninhibited digital search behaviours. The problem is that such information can easily identify individuals who have carried out the searches, breaching their privacy.
Until now, search engines' attempts to anonymise this data have proved somewhat inept. In one case, AOL replaced its customers' names with random numbers before making the data public. But some queries proved so specific - such as people searching their own names and social security numbers - that reporters from The New York Times were able to use them to track down one individual.
Fuelled by coffee
Fuelled by coffee
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Biofuels: A novel form of biodiesel is derived from an unusual feedstock that is more commonly used to fuel mental activities: coffee
RUNNING a diesel engine on a plant-based fuel is hardly a new idea. One of the early demonstrations carried out by Rudolph Diesel, the German engineer who invented the engines at the end of the 19th century, operated on pure peanut oil. Diesel fuel made from crude oil eventually won the day because it was easier to use and cheaper to produce. But new forms of biodiesel are now starting to change the picture again. One of them is derived from the remains of a drink enjoyed the world over: coffee.
Biodiesels are becoming increasingly popular. In America, Minnesota has decreed that all diesel sold in the state must contain 2% biodiesel (much of it from the crops grown by the state’s soya farmers). Biodiesel can also be found blended into the fuel used by public and commercial vehicles and by trains in a number of countries. Aircraft-engine makers are testing biofuel blends. As with other biofuels, the idea is that making fuel from plants, which absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, will produce fewer emissions than burning fossil fuels.
In the case of coffee, the biodiesel is made from the leftover grounds, which would otherwise be thrown away or used as compost. Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found that coffee grounds can yield 10-15% of biodiesel by weight relatively easily. And when burned in an engine the fuel does not have an offensive smell—just a whiff of coffee. (Some biodiesels made from used cooking-oil produce exhaust that smells like a fast-food joint.) And after the diesel has been extracted, the coffee grounds can still be used for compost.
The researchers’ work began two years ago when Dr Misra, a heavy coffee drinker, left a cup unfinished and noticed the next day that the coffee was covered by a film of oil. Since he was investigating biofuels, he enlisted his colleagues to look at coffee’s potential. The nearby Starbucks was happy to oblige by supplying grounds. The researchers found that coffee biodiesel is comparable to the best biodiesels on the market. But unlike biodiesels based on soya or other plants, it does not divert crops or land from food production into fuel production
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Biofuels: A novel form of biodiesel is derived from an unusual feedstock that is more commonly used to fuel mental activities: coffee
RUNNING a diesel engine on a plant-based fuel is hardly a new idea. One of the early demonstrations carried out by Rudolph Diesel, the German engineer who invented the engines at the end of the 19th century, operated on pure peanut oil. Diesel fuel made from crude oil eventually won the day because it was easier to use and cheaper to produce. But new forms of biodiesel are now starting to change the picture again. One of them is derived from the remains of a drink enjoyed the world over: coffee.
Biodiesels are becoming increasingly popular. In America, Minnesota has decreed that all diesel sold in the state must contain 2% biodiesel (much of it from the crops grown by the state’s soya farmers). Biodiesel can also be found blended into the fuel used by public and commercial vehicles and by trains in a number of countries. Aircraft-engine makers are testing biofuel blends. As with other biofuels, the idea is that making fuel from plants, which absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, will produce fewer emissions than burning fossil fuels.
In the case of coffee, the biodiesel is made from the leftover grounds, which would otherwise be thrown away or used as compost. Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found that coffee grounds can yield 10-15% of biodiesel by weight relatively easily. And when burned in an engine the fuel does not have an offensive smell—just a whiff of coffee. (Some biodiesels made from used cooking-oil produce exhaust that smells like a fast-food joint.) And after the diesel has been extracted, the coffee grounds can still be used for compost.
The researchers’ work began two years ago when Dr Misra, a heavy coffee drinker, left a cup unfinished and noticed the next day that the coffee was covered by a film of oil. Since he was investigating biofuels, he enlisted his colleagues to look at coffee’s potential. The nearby Starbucks was happy to oblige by supplying grounds. The researchers found that coffee biodiesel is comparable to the best biodiesels on the market. But unlike biodiesels based on soya or other plants, it does not divert crops or land from food production into fuel production
Bone in a bottle
Bone in a bottle
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Tissue engineering: Attempts to grow artificial bone marrow in the laboratory have failed—but now a new approach is showing promise
GROWING human cells in a laboratory is easy. Making those cells arrange themselves into something that resembles human flesh is, alas, rather more difficult. So-called tissue engineers have mastered the arts of making artificial skin and bladders, and they recently managed to cook up a windpipe for a patient whose existing one was blocked. But more complicated organs elude them. Nor has anyone managed to grow bone marrow.
At first sight, that is surprising. The soft and squishy marrow inside bones does not look like a highly structured tissue, but apparently it is. This does not matter for transplants: if marrow cells are moved from one bone to another they quickly make themselves at home. But it matters for research. Bone marrow plays an important role in the immune system and in bodily rejuvenation. Stem cells that originate within the marrow generate various sorts of infection-fighting blood cells and help repair damaged organs. But many anticancer and antiviral drugs are toxic to marrow. That leaves patients taking them susceptible to disease and premature ageing. Experiments intended to investigate this toxicity using mice have proved unsatisfactory. Nicholas Kotov of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his colleagues have therefore been trying to grow human marrow artificially.
When they started their research, Dr Kotov and his team knew that the stem cells from which marrow is derived grow naturally in specialised pores within bone. These pores are lined by a mixture of connective-tissue cells, bone cells and fat cells, which collaborate to nurture the stem cells. The researchers also knew that the cells in this lining send chemical signals to one another and to the stem cells they touch. This suggests that a stem cell’s fate may depend on its surroundings in three dimensions, rather than the two dimensions of the bottom of a Petri dish—the type of vessel in which cell cultures are traditionally grown. If correct, this would explain why attempts to grow marrow in Petri dishes have failed.
Mar 5th 2009 From The Economist print edition
Tissue engineering: Attempts to grow artificial bone marrow in the laboratory have failed—but now a new approach is showing promise
GROWING human cells in a laboratory is easy. Making those cells arrange themselves into something that resembles human flesh is, alas, rather more difficult. So-called tissue engineers have mastered the arts of making artificial skin and bladders, and they recently managed to cook up a windpipe for a patient whose existing one was blocked. But more complicated organs elude them. Nor has anyone managed to grow bone marrow.
At first sight, that is surprising. The soft and squishy marrow inside bones does not look like a highly structured tissue, but apparently it is. This does not matter for transplants: if marrow cells are moved from one bone to another they quickly make themselves at home. But it matters for research. Bone marrow plays an important role in the immune system and in bodily rejuvenation. Stem cells that originate within the marrow generate various sorts of infection-fighting blood cells and help repair damaged organs. But many anticancer and antiviral drugs are toxic to marrow. That leaves patients taking them susceptible to disease and premature ageing. Experiments intended to investigate this toxicity using mice have proved unsatisfactory. Nicholas Kotov of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his colleagues have therefore been trying to grow human marrow artificially.
When they started their research, Dr Kotov and his team knew that the stem cells from which marrow is derived grow naturally in specialised pores within bone. These pores are lined by a mixture of connective-tissue cells, bone cells and fat cells, which collaborate to nurture the stem cells. The researchers also knew that the cells in this lining send chemical signals to one another and to the stem cells they touch. This suggests that a stem cell’s fate may depend on its surroundings in three dimensions, rather than the two dimensions of the bottom of a Petri dish—the type of vessel in which cell cultures are traditionally grown. If correct, this would explain why attempts to grow marrow in Petri dishes have failed.
Anatomy of a Scare
Anatomy of a Scare
When one study linked childhood vaccines to autism, it set off a panic.
Sharon Begley
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 2, 2009
Like many people in London on that bleak February day in 1998, biochemist Nicholas Chadwick was eager to hear what the scientists would say. The Royal Free Hospital, where he was a graduate student in the lab of gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, had called a press conference to unveil the results of a new study. With flashbulbs popping, Wakefield stepped up to the bank of microphones: he and his colleagues, he said, had discovered a new syndrome that they believed was triggered by the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. In eight of the 12 children in their study, being published that day in the respected journal The Lancet, they had found severe intestinal inflammation, with the symptoms striking six days, on average, after the children received the MMR. But hospitals don't hold elaborate press conferences for studies of gut problems. The reason for all the hoopla was that nine of the children in the study also had autism, and the tragic disease had seized them between one and 14 days after their MMR jab. The vaccine, Wakefield suggested, had damaged the intestine—in particular, the measles part had caused serious inflammation—allowing harmful proteins to leak from the gut into the bloodstream and from there to the brain, where they damaged neurons in a way that triggered autism. Although in their paper the scientists noted that "we did not prove an association" between the MMR and autism, Wakefield was adamant. "It's a moral issue for me," he said, "and I can't support the continued use of [the MMR] until this issue has been resolved."
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão
When one study linked childhood vaccines to autism, it set off a panic.
Sharon Begley
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Mar 2, 2009
Like many people in London on that bleak February day in 1998, biochemist Nicholas Chadwick was eager to hear what the scientists would say. The Royal Free Hospital, where he was a graduate student in the lab of gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, had called a press conference to unveil the results of a new study. With flashbulbs popping, Wakefield stepped up to the bank of microphones: he and his colleagues, he said, had discovered a new syndrome that they believed was triggered by the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. In eight of the 12 children in their study, being published that day in the respected journal The Lancet, they had found severe intestinal inflammation, with the symptoms striking six days, on average, after the children received the MMR. But hospitals don't hold elaborate press conferences for studies of gut problems. The reason for all the hoopla was that nine of the children in the study also had autism, and the tragic disease had seized them between one and 14 days after their MMR jab. The vaccine, Wakefield suggested, had damaged the intestine—in particular, the measles part had caused serious inflammation—allowing harmful proteins to leak from the gut into the bloodstream and from there to the brain, where they damaged neurons in a way that triggered autism. Although in their paper the scientists noted that "we did not prove an association" between the MMR and autism, Wakefield was adamant. "It's a moral issue for me," he said, "and I can't support the continued use of [the MMR] until this issue has been resolved."
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão
Did gung-ho policies cause an earthquake?
Did gung-ho policies cause an earthquake?
31 January 2009 by A. C. Grayling
Rescuers search for victims in the debris of collapsed buildings at the earthquake-affected Dujiangyan. 70,000 people were killed in the earthquake that hammered southwest China (Image: Sipa Press / Rex Features)
ON 12 May 2008 an earthquake of magnitude 7.9 hit the eastern region of Sichuan Province in China. It killed 70,000 people, made 5 million people homeless, blocked rivers, and put more than 300 dams at risk, threatening yet more death and damage from flooding.
The quake was felt as far away as India, Taiwan and Mongolia. It was caused by movement of the fault that lies between the high plateau of Tibet and the crust beneath the Sichuan basin and south-east China. Seismology tells us that earthquakes occur when the tectonic stresses that accumulate along faults reach a critical point and a sudden release occurs. There can always be speculation about what triggers an individual earthquake, however. Natural inevitability is one thing, but what if the trigger is pulled by mankind?
That question is now being asked about the Sichuan earthquake. A suggestion recently made by seismologists is that Sichuan's newest dam, completed in 2006, might be to blame. This is the Zipingku dam on the Min river near Dujiangyan. The increasing load of water in the reservoir behind the dam might have been the final straw that provoked the catastrophic release of the Longmenshan fault's local stresses. If so, the seismologists who warned of an earthquake risk before the dam was built have been vindicated.
Sichuan is a land of many dams, most of them built in recent decades. The mightiest of them is the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze river. It is the world's biggest dam, lying a mere 550 kilometres east of the Sichuan earthquake's epicentre. That fact had engineers rushing to check the safety of the Three Gorges dam in the quake's aftermath. The reverse procedure - checking the earthquake and other environmental implications for the region before this or any other large dams, such as Zipingku, were built - did not have nearly the same urgency for a country involved in a headlong and ruthless rush for economic development.
As it happens, one of the most tragic aspects of the Sichuan quake was the many deaths of schoolchildren, whose cheaply and hastily built schools collapsed on them. The poor construction of schools and the gung-ho production of dozens of dams in a tectonically active region are of a piece: they are both evidence of carelessness, skewed values and folly.
31 January 2009 by A. C. Grayling
Rescuers search for victims in the debris of collapsed buildings at the earthquake-affected Dujiangyan. 70,000 people were killed in the earthquake that hammered southwest China (Image: Sipa Press / Rex Features)
ON 12 May 2008 an earthquake of magnitude 7.9 hit the eastern region of Sichuan Province in China. It killed 70,000 people, made 5 million people homeless, blocked rivers, and put more than 300 dams at risk, threatening yet more death and damage from flooding.
The quake was felt as far away as India, Taiwan and Mongolia. It was caused by movement of the fault that lies between the high plateau of Tibet and the crust beneath the Sichuan basin and south-east China. Seismology tells us that earthquakes occur when the tectonic stresses that accumulate along faults reach a critical point and a sudden release occurs. There can always be speculation about what triggers an individual earthquake, however. Natural inevitability is one thing, but what if the trigger is pulled by mankind?
That question is now being asked about the Sichuan earthquake. A suggestion recently made by seismologists is that Sichuan's newest dam, completed in 2006, might be to blame. This is the Zipingku dam on the Min river near Dujiangyan. The increasing load of water in the reservoir behind the dam might have been the final straw that provoked the catastrophic release of the Longmenshan fault's local stresses. If so, the seismologists who warned of an earthquake risk before the dam was built have been vindicated.
Sichuan is a land of many dams, most of them built in recent decades. The mightiest of them is the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze river. It is the world's biggest dam, lying a mere 550 kilometres east of the Sichuan earthquake's epicentre. That fact had engineers rushing to check the safety of the Three Gorges dam in the quake's aftermath. The reverse procedure - checking the earthquake and other environmental implications for the region before this or any other large dams, such as Zipingku, were built - did not have nearly the same urgency for a country involved in a headlong and ruthless rush for economic development.
As it happens, one of the most tragic aspects of the Sichuan quake was the many deaths of schoolchildren, whose cheaply and hastily built schools collapsed on them. The poor construction of schools and the gung-ho production of dozens of dams in a tectonically active region are of a piece: they are both evidence of carelessness, skewed values and folly.
Eat a little less, remember more
Eat a little less, remember more
22:00 26 January 2009 by Phil McKenna
Eating less doesn't just boost physical health. In elderly people, it seems to improve memory too.
Restricting calorie intake has been shown to increase lifespan in mice, reduce the risk of heart disease in people and boost cognitive ability in elderly animals.
To see if the cognitive benefit held for people, Agnes Flöel and colleagues, at the University of Münster in Germany tested the short term memory of 50 people with an average age of 60, who were overweight, but not obese, and then got one-third to eat 30% fewer calories than normal each day.
After three months, the dieters scored 20% higher on the test than they had before the diet, recalling on average 12.5 words compared to 10.5.
"Two words may not seem like much, but it's more than the difference between people under 30 and above 50," says Flöel. Those who did not go on the diet showed no change.
The dieters had lower levels of glucose and insulin in their blood which previous studies have linked to greater neural function.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0808587106, in press
22:00 26 January 2009 by Phil McKenna
Eating less doesn't just boost physical health. In elderly people, it seems to improve memory too.
Restricting calorie intake has been shown to increase lifespan in mice, reduce the risk of heart disease in people and boost cognitive ability in elderly animals.
To see if the cognitive benefit held for people, Agnes Flöel and colleagues, at the University of Münster in Germany tested the short term memory of 50 people with an average age of 60, who were overweight, but not obese, and then got one-third to eat 30% fewer calories than normal each day.
After three months, the dieters scored 20% higher on the test than they had before the diet, recalling on average 12.5 words compared to 10.5.
"Two words may not seem like much, but it's more than the difference between people under 30 and above 50," says Flöel. Those who did not go on the diet showed no change.
The dieters had lower levels of glucose and insulin in their blood which previous studies have linked to greater neural function.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0808587106, in press
The Usual Suspect
The Usual Suspect
The link between stress and disease has been oversold. The truth about its effect on health.
Dr. Anthony L. Komaroff
NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 14, 2009 Updated: 2:12 p.m. ET Feb 14, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Feb 23, 2009
Walter Bradford Cannon did not strike people as someone interested in black magic. A world-famous physiologist, Cannon often wore three-piece suits in his laboratory at Harvard Medical School. He spent his life making very precise measurements of bodily functions and drawing cautious conclusions from those measurements. That's why his colleagues were surprised by the paper that Cannon published in the American Anthropologist in 1942. In it he described well-documented examples of healthy young adults in South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, various islands of the South Pacific and Haiti who had been hexed by witch doctors. Once the word of their hexing was out, the victims were often abandoned by their tribe and even by their families. Within a few days, they were dead. These "voodoo deaths" just happened, without any discernable violence having been done to the victims. Black magic, it would seem. Cannon had an alternative explanation, however: he believed the victims had been scared to death.
Cannon was the first to describe the "fight or flight" reaction: when the brain perceives a serious threat, it sends chemical and electrical signals that prepare the heart, lungs, blood vessels and immune system for the battle or chase to come. Cannon pointed out that—in a world full of sudden physical threats—this stress reaction helped preserve the lives, and hence the reproductive capacity, of human beings; it thus had been fostered and preserved by evolution. In the case of the voodoo victims, however, Cannon argued that the stress reaction was harmful rather than protective. When the reaction remained activated for several days—sustained by fear and aggravated by a loss of social support—it led to a collapse of the circulation and death.
While there is much evidence linking stress to the heart and blood vessels, the relationship is not nearly as simple as a recounting of Cannon's voodoo paper might suggest. And despite some widely held and popular ideas, the link between stress and other diseases is even less clear. Surely, experiencing stress may worsen the symptoms of almost any condition. But there is little evidence that stress is the exclusive or even the principal cause of any disease.
The link between stress and disease has been oversold. The truth about its effect on health.
Dr. Anthony L. Komaroff
NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 14, 2009 Updated: 2:12 p.m. ET Feb 14, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Feb 23, 2009
Walter Bradford Cannon did not strike people as someone interested in black magic. A world-famous physiologist, Cannon often wore three-piece suits in his laboratory at Harvard Medical School. He spent his life making very precise measurements of bodily functions and drawing cautious conclusions from those measurements. That's why his colleagues were surprised by the paper that Cannon published in the American Anthropologist in 1942. In it he described well-documented examples of healthy young adults in South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, various islands of the South Pacific and Haiti who had been hexed by witch doctors. Once the word of their hexing was out, the victims were often abandoned by their tribe and even by their families. Within a few days, they were dead. These "voodoo deaths" just happened, without any discernable violence having been done to the victims. Black magic, it would seem. Cannon had an alternative explanation, however: he believed the victims had been scared to death.
Cannon was the first to describe the "fight or flight" reaction: when the brain perceives a serious threat, it sends chemical and electrical signals that prepare the heart, lungs, blood vessels and immune system for the battle or chase to come. Cannon pointed out that—in a world full of sudden physical threats—this stress reaction helped preserve the lives, and hence the reproductive capacity, of human beings; it thus had been fostered and preserved by evolution. In the case of the voodoo victims, however, Cannon argued that the stress reaction was harmful rather than protective. When the reaction remained activated for several days—sustained by fear and aggravated by a loss of social support—it led to a collapse of the circulation and death.
While there is much evidence linking stress to the heart and blood vessels, the relationship is not nearly as simple as a recounting of Cannon's voodoo paper might suggest. And despite some widely held and popular ideas, the link between stress and other diseases is even less clear. Surely, experiencing stress may worsen the symptoms of almost any condition. But there is little evidence that stress is the exclusive or even the principal cause of any disease.
All-American Rejects
All-American Rejects
Whether it's a dating mishap or just being left out of an e-mail chain, why it's so hard to brush off even the slightest slight.
By Sarah Kliff Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 13, 2009
Sponsored by
placeAd2('printthis','88x31',false,'');
Why do we care whether he's into us even when we're not into him? And why do we get so upset if we're not included in a group lunch, even when we know it's probably just an oversight(falha,deixar de notar)? And what about those people who hate the whole idea of Valentine's Day, yet still feel bad if they aren't asked out at all? Turns out, there are good evolutionary reasons for our inability to brush off(rejeitar) even the slightest slight(desrespeito). To survive, it was better for our ancestors be part of a group than left out in the cold to forage(ser alimento) on their own.
But in a modern world, our hypersensitivity to rejection can have surprisingly destructive consequences. When we're socially or romantically excluded, even in seemingly insignificant ways, it can lead to a host of negative psychological and physical side effects. In one study, psychologists Roy Baumeister at Florida State University and Jean Twenge at San Diego State University gave a group of college students 15 minutes to socialize. Afterward, participants were asked, individually, who else they would like to work with on a future project. Those answers were never used; participants were instead randomly assigned to be "accepted" or "rejected" by the group. The accepted participants were told that they're the most desirable of the group, where the rejected participants are informed that, unfortunately, the group just isn't that into them. The "rejected" participants knew, at least rationally, that this didn't really matter; it was a 15-minute experiment in a laboratory that had no bearing on their future. But those who were rejected by their peers were significantly more aggressive toward an innocent target in follow-up exercises.
The socially excluded students also lost a fair amount of self-restraint(auto controle) after being rejected. In a follow-up experiment, participants were given the news of their rejection with a big plate of chocolate-chip cookies on the table. And if you've ever been home alone with a broken heart and a pint of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, you can probably guess how that ended. The most memorable participant, says Twenge, was a young man who was assigned to the "rejected" category. "He kept saying, 'I'm eating all these cookies and don't know why'," she says. "The 'why' is that social rejection. It causes you to lose self-control."
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão que você tirou do texto?
Whether it's a dating mishap or just being left out of an e-mail chain, why it's so hard to brush off even the slightest slight.
By Sarah Kliff Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 13, 2009
Sponsored by
placeAd2('printthis','88x31',false,'');
Why do we care whether he's into us even when we're not into him? And why do we get so upset if we're not included in a group lunch, even when we know it's probably just an oversight(falha,deixar de notar)? And what about those people who hate the whole idea of Valentine's Day, yet still feel bad if they aren't asked out at all? Turns out, there are good evolutionary reasons for our inability to brush off(rejeitar) even the slightest slight(desrespeito). To survive, it was better for our ancestors be part of a group than left out in the cold to forage(ser alimento) on their own.
But in a modern world, our hypersensitivity to rejection can have surprisingly destructive consequences. When we're socially or romantically excluded, even in seemingly insignificant ways, it can lead to a host of negative psychological and physical side effects. In one study, psychologists Roy Baumeister at Florida State University and Jean Twenge at San Diego State University gave a group of college students 15 minutes to socialize. Afterward, participants were asked, individually, who else they would like to work with on a future project. Those answers were never used; participants were instead randomly assigned to be "accepted" or "rejected" by the group. The accepted participants were told that they're the most desirable of the group, where the rejected participants are informed that, unfortunately, the group just isn't that into them. The "rejected" participants knew, at least rationally, that this didn't really matter; it was a 15-minute experiment in a laboratory that had no bearing on their future. But those who were rejected by their peers were significantly more aggressive toward an innocent target in follow-up exercises.
The socially excluded students also lost a fair amount of self-restraint(auto controle) after being rejected. In a follow-up experiment, participants were given the news of their rejection with a big plate of chocolate-chip cookies on the table. And if you've ever been home alone with a broken heart and a pint of mint-chocolate-chip ice cream, you can probably guess how that ended. The most memorable participant, says Twenge, was a young man who was assigned to the "rejected" category. "He kept saying, 'I'm eating all these cookies and don't know why'," she says. "The 'why' is that social rejection. It causes you to lose self-control."
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?
Gerúndio?
Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão que você tirou do texto?
Drought warning as the tropics expand
Drought warning as the tropics expand
19:05 01 February 2009 by Catherine Brahic
California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, warned on Thursday that his state "is headed toward one of the worst water crises in its history".
Now new research suggests that the three-year drought in the Golden State may be a consequence of the expanding tropics, which are gradually growing as human emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet.
Climate scientists have documented a slow progression of low-latitude weather systems towards the poles, and this has been matched by rising temperatures in many temperate regions. Deciding whether this broadening of the tropical belt is linked to the greenhouse effect has been difficult, however.
Part of the reason, explains Thomas Reichler of the University of Utah, is that there are many ways of defining the tropics. Geographically, the tropical belt is contained between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. It is also the region on either side of the equator where temperatures tend to be hot and humid all year.
19:05 01 February 2009 by Catherine Brahic
California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, warned on Thursday that his state "is headed toward one of the worst water crises in its history".
Now new research suggests that the three-year drought in the Golden State may be a consequence of the expanding tropics, which are gradually growing as human emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet.
Climate scientists have documented a slow progression of low-latitude weather systems towards the poles, and this has been matched by rising temperatures in many temperate regions. Deciding whether this broadening of the tropical belt is linked to the greenhouse effect has been difficult, however.
Part of the reason, explains Thomas Reichler of the University of Utah, is that there are many ways of defining the tropics. Geographically, the tropical belt is contained between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. It is also the region on either side of the equator where temperatures tend to be hot and humid all year.
Drugs unlock the body's own stem cell cabinet
Drugs unlock the body's own stem cell cabinet
15:56 08 January 2009 by Andy Coghlan New Scientist
Drugs to stimulate production of a patient's own stem cells could lead to simple new treatments to accelerate repair of broken bones and ligaments, or damaged cardiac tissue following heart attacks (Image:Andrew Leonard/SPL)
The scope(opportunity) for patients to be treated with their own stem cells has been boosted(ampliado) by discovery of drug regimes that liberate specific types of stem cells from the bone marrow.
The discovery could lead to simple new treatments to accelerate repair of broken bones and ligaments, or damaged cardiac tissue following heart attacks.
Instead of injecting patients with stem cells from donors, embryos or stem cell banks, doctors could simply inject the drugs and the patients would produce the cells themselves. This would avoid complications of tissue rejection and sidestep ethical objections to using stem cells originating from embryos.
"It's promoting self-healing," says Sara Rankin of Imperial College London, and a member of the team that discovered the stem-cell liberating effects. "We're simply boosting what's going on naturally."
It has been previously possible to promote the release of stem cells that develop into blood cells. Now, for the first time, stem cells have been liberated that regenerate other tissues, such as bone and blood vessels, widening options for treatment.
15:56 08 January 2009 by Andy Coghlan New Scientist
Drugs to stimulate production of a patient's own stem cells could lead to simple new treatments to accelerate repair of broken bones and ligaments, or damaged cardiac tissue following heart attacks (Image:Andrew Leonard/SPL)
The scope(opportunity) for patients to be treated with their own stem cells has been boosted(ampliado) by discovery of drug regimes that liberate specific types of stem cells from the bone marrow.
The discovery could lead to simple new treatments to accelerate repair of broken bones and ligaments, or damaged cardiac tissue following heart attacks.
Instead of injecting patients with stem cells from donors, embryos or stem cell banks, doctors could simply inject the drugs and the patients would produce the cells themselves. This would avoid complications of tissue rejection and sidestep ethical objections to using stem cells originating from embryos.
"It's promoting self-healing," says Sara Rankin of Imperial College London, and a member of the team that discovered the stem-cell liberating effects. "We're simply boosting what's going on naturally."
It has been previously possible to promote the release of stem cells that develop into blood cells. Now, for the first time, stem cells have been liberated that regenerate other tissues, such as bone and blood vessels, widening options for treatment.
Can I serve you now?
Can I serve you now?
Jan 29th 2009 From The Economist print edition
American attitudes to stem-cell therapies are changing fast
Illustration by Stephen Jeffrey
FOR the past eight years, America’s government has declined to fund new research into one of the world’s most promising medical technologies: the use of human embryonic stem cells to repair or replace damaged tissue in the diseased and injured. Embryonic stem cells are special for two reasons, one scientific and one ethical. The scientific reason is that they are able to turn into any of the body’s myriad cell types, which is why they might be used in this way. The ethical reason is that, at the moment, harvesting them usually involves killing human embryos. The embryos in question have no future anyway (they are usually “spares” from in vitro fertilisation procedures). But it was this destruction of potential human life that disturbed George Bush and his supporters.
Barack Obama has promised to reverse the ban. When that happens, American academics will no longer have to watch enviously from the sidelines as their colleagues in Australia, Britain, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore and South Korea push ahead. But though the legislative wheels have yet to start turning, the mood has already shifted.
One sign of this shift came on January 23rd when the country’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted permission for the first clinical trial of a therapy based on human embryonic stem cells to Geron, a firm based in Menlo Park, California. Geron was able to ask for permission, and the FDA was able to grant it, because the ban does not apply to privately financed research. America, it seems, is back in the stem-cell business
Jan 29th 2009 From The Economist print edition
American attitudes to stem-cell therapies are changing fast
Illustration by Stephen Jeffrey
FOR the past eight years, America’s government has declined to fund new research into one of the world’s most promising medical technologies: the use of human embryonic stem cells to repair or replace damaged tissue in the diseased and injured. Embryonic stem cells are special for two reasons, one scientific and one ethical. The scientific reason is that they are able to turn into any of the body’s myriad cell types, which is why they might be used in this way. The ethical reason is that, at the moment, harvesting them usually involves killing human embryos. The embryos in question have no future anyway (they are usually “spares” from in vitro fertilisation procedures). But it was this destruction of potential human life that disturbed George Bush and his supporters.
Barack Obama has promised to reverse the ban. When that happens, American academics will no longer have to watch enviously from the sidelines as their colleagues in Australia, Britain, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore and South Korea push ahead. But though the legislative wheels have yet to start turning, the mood has already shifted.
One sign of this shift came on January 23rd when the country’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted permission for the first clinical trial of a therapy based on human embryonic stem cells to Geron, a firm based in Menlo Park, California. Geron was able to ask for permission, and the FDA was able to grant it, because the ban does not apply to privately financed research. America, it seems, is back in the stem-cell business
The Case for Walking Away
The Case for Walking Away
Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your debt. But not if you're going broke.
Jane Bryant Quinn NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009
In January, we're supposed to sit down and organize our personal finances. This year I'll risk my good-girl reputation with a subversive idea: go bankrupt in 2009. If you're reaching the end of your rope, don't try to hold on. Save what you can.
It's painful and humiliating even to consider bankruptcy, let alone join that crowd in the courthouse corridor, waiting for your name to be called. Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your consumer debt. But that's not always possible, especially with an economic tsunami rolling over your home, job and health insurance.
Most families, honorable to the end, struggle longer than they should, says Katie Porter, a law professor at the University of Iowa. By the time they give in, they've lost assets they could have used to start over again. That defeats the point of bankruptcy—to stop the self-blame and hopelessness that goes with bad luck and bad bills, and give yourself a second chance.
The right time to go bankrupt is when you're financially stuck but still have assets to protect. You can use Chapter 7, the most popular type, only once in eight years, so draw upa "no kidding" plan for living on your income when you're finally clear. "If you're out of work, try not to go bankrupt until you have a new job and can see what's ahead of you," says Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren.
It's a mistake to tap your retirement accounts to make minimum payments on monstrous bills. IRAs and 401(k)s are largely protected in bankruptcy, as is most of your child's 529 college-savings account. This money is your future. Leave it alone and use credit cards for your necessities. Card issuers know that some of their customers will fail. That's why they charge elephant fees.
Your health is your future, too. You're doing your family no favors by forgoing medical treatment because you can't pay. Bankruptcy eliminates medical as well as consumer debt.
Bankruptcy can even help you save your home, especially with home values down and so many mortgages underwater. You're allowed to keep a limited amount of home equity in most states. If the house is worth less than the mortgage plus your home-equity exemption, you can file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, wipe out your consumer debts and still keep your home, provided that your mortgage payments are up to date, says Stephen Elias, a California bankruptcy attorney and coauthor of Nolo Press's do-it-yourself bankruptcy books. If your house is worth more, however, or you're behind on your payments, it will likely be sold.
When you're behind on the mortgage but have a new job with money coming in, choose a Chapter 13 workout. Your lawyer will negotiate a three- to five-year plan for paying your debts, including the mortgage arrears. Some people stay in the plan just long enough to get current on their mortgage and then resume their normal lives, Porter says. The next Congress may sweeten Chapter 13 by allowing a judge to reduce (or "cram down") your mortgage principal if the debt amounts to more than the house is worth. That would save a lot of homes.
Don't try to preserve your house if you're going broke. Stop making payments, stay there while foreclosure is underway, then move out and rent. If the mortgage is underwater, "you're already functionally renting because you have no equity," says Adam Levitin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. In theory, many states allow lenders to chase you for the sum still owed after the house is sold. But that's rare, Warren says. Lenders know that you probably can't pay.
Foreclosures stay on your record for seven years and bankruptcies for 10. If you re-establish good bill-paying habits, you may get decent credit even sooner. And you'll start fresh, which is what a new year ought to bring.
Reporter Associate: Temma Ehrenfeld
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/177749
© 2009
Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your debt. But not if you're going broke.
Jane Bryant Quinn NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009
In January, we're supposed to sit down and organize our personal finances. This year I'll risk my good-girl reputation with a subversive idea: go bankrupt in 2009. If you're reaching the end of your rope, don't try to hold on. Save what you can.
It's painful and humiliating even to consider bankruptcy, let alone join that crowd in the courthouse corridor, waiting for your name to be called. Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your consumer debt. But that's not always possible, especially with an economic tsunami rolling over your home, job and health insurance.
Most families, honorable to the end, struggle longer than they should, says Katie Porter, a law professor at the University of Iowa. By the time they give in, they've lost assets they could have used to start over again. That defeats the point of bankruptcy—to stop the self-blame and hopelessness that goes with bad luck and bad bills, and give yourself a second chance.
The right time to go bankrupt is when you're financially stuck but still have assets to protect. You can use Chapter 7, the most popular type, only once in eight years, so draw upa "no kidding" plan for living on your income when you're finally clear. "If you're out of work, try not to go bankrupt until you have a new job and can see what's ahead of you," says Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren.
It's a mistake to tap your retirement accounts to make minimum payments on monstrous bills. IRAs and 401(k)s are largely protected in bankruptcy, as is most of your child's 529 college-savings account. This money is your future. Leave it alone and use credit cards for your necessities. Card issuers know that some of their customers will fail. That's why they charge elephant fees.
Your health is your future, too. You're doing your family no favors by forgoing medical treatment because you can't pay. Bankruptcy eliminates medical as well as consumer debt.
Bankruptcy can even help you save your home, especially with home values down and so many mortgages underwater. You're allowed to keep a limited amount of home equity in most states. If the house is worth less than the mortgage plus your home-equity exemption, you can file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, wipe out your consumer debts and still keep your home, provided that your mortgage payments are up to date, says Stephen Elias, a California bankruptcy attorney and coauthor of Nolo Press's do-it-yourself bankruptcy books. If your house is worth more, however, or you're behind on your payments, it will likely be sold.
When you're behind on the mortgage but have a new job with money coming in, choose a Chapter 13 workout. Your lawyer will negotiate a three- to five-year plan for paying your debts, including the mortgage arrears. Some people stay in the plan just long enough to get current on their mortgage and then resume their normal lives, Porter says. The next Congress may sweeten Chapter 13 by allowing a judge to reduce (or "cram down") your mortgage principal if the debt amounts to more than the house is worth. That would save a lot of homes.
Don't try to preserve your house if you're going broke. Stop making payments, stay there while foreclosure is underway, then move out and rent. If the mortgage is underwater, "you're already functionally renting because you have no equity," says Adam Levitin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. In theory, many states allow lenders to chase you for the sum still owed after the house is sold. But that's rare, Warren says. Lenders know that you probably can't pay.
Foreclosures stay on your record for seven years and bankruptcies for 10. If you re-establish good bill-paying habits, you may get decent credit even sooner. And you'll start fresh, which is what a new year ought to bring.
Reporter Associate: Temma Ehrenfeld
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/177749
© 2009
Beyond the Diploma Mills
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Beyond the Diploma Mills
The only hope of closing the literacy gap in developing countries lies in extending the reach of online education.
Sarah Garland
NEWSWEEK
January 25,2009
Many kids play hooky all day, every day. More than 40 percent of children old enough to attend secondary school are not in the classroom, many because of violent conflict in their home countries. Another 800 million adults are illiterate. Efforts to reach these people have stumbled because of a lack of teachers, poor governance and declining foreign aid. Educators are coming to believe that the only hope of closing the literacy gap in developing countries lies in extending the reach of online education.
Once disparaged as the jurisdiction of "diploma mills" and profiteers, the Internet is reforming this image: there's an explosion of new Web-based teaching tools made available to struggling school systems, from free open-source curriculums to online networks for refugee children trying to keep up with their classwork.
UNICEF is working with Roundbox Global, a U.S. software company, to refashion a program originally created to help an Ohio charter school work with teenage mothers and other at-risk students.. India's Open Schools, one of the largest and oldest distance-learning programs in the world, is now distributing course materials online, adding flexibility and lowering costs, says Sir John Daniel, director of Commonwealth of Learning, an international education-technology group
Distance learning via the Internet has also become a tool for training millions of new teachers needed to fill schools in underserved areas. This is especially important in primary schools, where lack of teachers is a big reason why 75 million children who should be in the classroom aren't attending. In Africa, international agencies and local universities use distance learning through the Internet and mobile phones as a primary way of preparing the nearly 4 million teachers needed in sub-Saharan Africa to fulfill the agency's universal education goals.
There are limits to how much technology can contribute to the efforts to close the education divide. Distance learning is proving not to be a useful model in primary education; for kids this young, interacting with a real, live teacher is irreplaceable. And "no one's going to want to read 'War and Peace' off their mobile phone," says Daniel. Computers, online wikis and open-source software and curricula are also not much use if teachers don't know how to use them. Sheldon Shaeffer, the UNESCO director for Asia, says several countries have fallen into the trap of investing in new gadgetry without thinking ahead about the costs and logistics of training educators to use it.
Nor has the problem of diploma mills that dupe students into paying for useless online degrees gone away completely, even as online education acquires a more benevolent image.. Online education "is not a panacea," says Shaeffer, "but it has huge potential." Despite the hiccups, international education experts believe the use of the Internet and other sorts of communication technology for education is likely to become the primary vehicle for education aid in a few years..
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/174539
© 2008
Beyond the Diploma Mills
The only hope of closing the literacy gap in developing countries lies in extending the reach of online education.
Sarah Garland
NEWSWEEK
January 25,2009
Many kids play hooky all day, every day. More than 40 percent of children old enough to attend secondary school are not in the classroom, many because of violent conflict in their home countries. Another 800 million adults are illiterate. Efforts to reach these people have stumbled because of a lack of teachers, poor governance and declining foreign aid. Educators are coming to believe that the only hope of closing the literacy gap in developing countries lies in extending the reach of online education.
Once disparaged as the jurisdiction of "diploma mills" and profiteers, the Internet is reforming this image: there's an explosion of new Web-based teaching tools made available to struggling school systems, from free open-source curriculums to online networks for refugee children trying to keep up with their classwork.
UNICEF is working with Roundbox Global, a U.S. software company, to refashion a program originally created to help an Ohio charter school work with teenage mothers and other at-risk students.. India's Open Schools, one of the largest and oldest distance-learning programs in the world, is now distributing course materials online, adding flexibility and lowering costs, says Sir John Daniel, director of Commonwealth of Learning, an international education-technology group
Distance learning via the Internet has also become a tool for training millions of new teachers needed to fill schools in underserved areas. This is especially important in primary schools, where lack of teachers is a big reason why 75 million children who should be in the classroom aren't attending. In Africa, international agencies and local universities use distance learning through the Internet and mobile phones as a primary way of preparing the nearly 4 million teachers needed in sub-Saharan Africa to fulfill the agency's universal education goals.
There are limits to how much technology can contribute to the efforts to close the education divide. Distance learning is proving not to be a useful model in primary education; for kids this young, interacting with a real, live teacher is irreplaceable. And "no one's going to want to read 'War and Peace' off their mobile phone," says Daniel. Computers, online wikis and open-source software and curricula are also not much use if teachers don't know how to use them. Sheldon Shaeffer, the UNESCO director for Asia, says several countries have fallen into the trap of investing in new gadgetry without thinking ahead about the costs and logistics of training educators to use it.
Nor has the problem of diploma mills that dupe students into paying for useless online degrees gone away completely, even as online education acquires a more benevolent image.. Online education "is not a panacea," says Shaeffer, "but it has huge potential." Despite the hiccups, international education experts believe the use of the Internet and other sorts of communication technology for education is likely to become the primary vehicle for education aid in a few years..
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/174539
© 2008
Bend me, shape me, anyway you want me
Bend me, shape me, anyway you want me
Jan 22nd 2009 From The Economist print edition
Electronic screens as thin as paper are coming soon
OVER the years, the screens on laptops, televisions, mobile phones and so on have got sharper, wider and thinner. They are about to get thinner still, but with a new twist(giro, tarefa,curva,torção). By using flexible components, these screens will also become bendy. Some could even be rolled up and slipped into your pocket like a piece of electronic paper. These thin sheets of plastic will be able to display words and images; a book, perhaps, or a newspaper or a magazine. And now it looks as if they might be mass produced in much the same way as the printed paper they are emulating.
The crucial technological development happened recently at the Flexible Display Centre at Arizona State University. Using a novel(estranho, novidade) lithographic process invented by HP Labs, the research arm of Hewlett-Packard, and an electronic ink produced by E Ink, a company spun out(to spin out=surgir, sair de) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the centre’s researchers succeeded in printing flexible displays onto long rolls of a special plastic film made by DuPont. To make individual screens, the printed film is sliced up into sections rather as folios for magazines or newspapers would be cut from a printed web of paper.
The resulting “electrophoretic” screens are lightweight and consume only a fraction of the power of a typical liquid-crystal display (LCD). Their first use is likely to be by the American army, which helped pay for the project. It hopes its soldiers will be able to use the screens as electronic maps and to receive information. The idea is that the flexible screens will replace some of the bulky devices that soldiers now have to lug around(arrastar,carregar com dificuldade). If that works, the retail market beckon(acenar). The first trials of consumer versions could begin within a few years.
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?Gerúndio?Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão?
Jan 22nd 2009 From The Economist print edition
Electronic screens as thin as paper are coming soon
OVER the years, the screens on laptops, televisions, mobile phones and so on have got sharper, wider and thinner. They are about to get thinner still, but with a new twist(giro, tarefa,curva,torção). By using flexible components, these screens will also become bendy. Some could even be rolled up and slipped into your pocket like a piece of electronic paper. These thin sheets of plastic will be able to display words and images; a book, perhaps, or a newspaper or a magazine. And now it looks as if they might be mass produced in much the same way as the printed paper they are emulating.
The crucial technological development happened recently at the Flexible Display Centre at Arizona State University. Using a novel(estranho, novidade) lithographic process invented by HP Labs, the research arm of Hewlett-Packard, and an electronic ink produced by E Ink, a company spun out(to spin out=surgir, sair de) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the centre’s researchers succeeded in printing flexible displays onto long rolls of a special plastic film made by DuPont. To make individual screens, the printed film is sliced up into sections rather as folios for magazines or newspapers would be cut from a printed web of paper.
The resulting “electrophoretic” screens are lightweight and consume only a fraction of the power of a typical liquid-crystal display (LCD). Their first use is likely to be by the American army, which helped pay for the project. It hopes its soldiers will be able to use the screens as electronic maps and to receive information. The idea is that the flexible screens will replace some of the bulky devices that soldiers now have to lug around(arrastar,carregar com dificuldade). If that works, the retail market beckon(acenar). The first trials of consumer versions could begin within a few years.
O QUE VOCE ENTENDEU DO TEXTO?
1º. Parágrafo::
No desenvolvimento do tema:
Você achou algum infinitivo?Gerúndio?Pontuação de evidência?
Qual foi a conclusão?
CAPITAL GAINS
CAPITAL GAINS
The Case for Walking Away
Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your debt. But not if you're going broke.
Published Jan 3, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009 Jane Bryant Quinn
Sponsored by
In January, we're supposed to sit down and organize our personal finances. This year I'll risk my good-girl reputation with a subversive idea: go bankrupt in 2009. If you're reaching the end of your rope, don't try to hold on. Save what you can.
It's painful and humiliating even to consider bankruptcy, let alone join that crowd in the courthouse corridor, waiting for your name to be called. Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your consumer debt. But that's not always possible, especially with an economic tsunami rolling over your home, job and health insurance.
Most families, honorable to the end, struggle longer than they should, says Katie Porter, a law professor at the University of Iowa. By the time they give in, they've lost assets they could have used to start over again. That defeats the point of bankruptcy—to stop the self-blame and hopelessness that goes with bad luck and bad bills, and give yourself a second chance.
The right time to go bankrupt is when you're financially stuck but still have assets to protect. You can use Chapter 7, the most popular type, only once in eight years, so draw upa "no kidding" plan for living on your income when you're finally clear. "If you're out of work, try not to go bankrupt until you have a new job and can see what's ahead of you," says Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren.
It's a mistake to tap your retirement accounts to make minimum payments on monstrous bills. IRAs and 401(k)s are largely protected in bankruptcy, as is most of your child's 529 college-savings account. This money is your future. Leave it alone and use credit cards for your necessities. Card issuers know that some of their customers will fail. That's why they charge elephant fees.
Your health is your future, too. You're doing your family no favors by forgoing medical treatment because you can't pay. Bankruptcy eliminates medical as well as consumer debt.
The Case for Walking Away
Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your debt. But not if you're going broke.
Published Jan 3, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 12, 2009 Jane Bryant Quinn
Sponsored by
In January, we're supposed to sit down and organize our personal finances. This year I'll risk my good-girl reputation with a subversive idea: go bankrupt in 2009. If you're reaching the end of your rope, don't try to hold on. Save what you can.
It's painful and humiliating even to consider bankruptcy, let alone join that crowd in the courthouse corridor, waiting for your name to be called. Normally I'd say suck it up, cut spending and repay your consumer debt. But that's not always possible, especially with an economic tsunami rolling over your home, job and health insurance.
Most families, honorable to the end, struggle longer than they should, says Katie Porter, a law professor at the University of Iowa. By the time they give in, they've lost assets they could have used to start over again. That defeats the point of bankruptcy—to stop the self-blame and hopelessness that goes with bad luck and bad bills, and give yourself a second chance.
The right time to go bankrupt is when you're financially stuck but still have assets to protect. You can use Chapter 7, the most popular type, only once in eight years, so draw upa "no kidding" plan for living on your income when you're finally clear. "If you're out of work, try not to go bankrupt until you have a new job and can see what's ahead of you," says Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren.
It's a mistake to tap your retirement accounts to make minimum payments on monstrous bills. IRAs and 401(k)s are largely protected in bankruptcy, as is most of your child's 529 college-savings account. This money is your future. Leave it alone and use credit cards for your necessities. Card issuers know that some of their customers will fail. That's why they charge elephant fees.
Your health is your future, too. You're doing your family no favors by forgoing medical treatment because you can't pay. Bankruptcy eliminates medical as well as consumer debt.
Is There A Brain Tumor Virus?
Is There A Brain Tumor Virus?
Thanks to the efforts of a relentless neurosurgeon, we may be closer to understanding what causes one of the most deadly cancers.
Jeneen Interlandi
Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan 9, 2009
In 2002, UCSF neurosurgeon Charles Cobbs published a novel finding in a prominent cancer journal: nearly all of the two-dozen brain tumors he had analyzed were teeming with a common herpes virus called cytomegalovirus, or CMV. Normally, CMV is harmless—it lies dormant in roughly 80 percent of the population—but in Cobbs's tumor samples, the virus appeared to be actively replicating, even as it remained dormant in nearby healthy tissue. "When I first saw the data, I couldn't sleep for a week," says Cobbs. "I kept asking myself, 'can this be?'" If his findings were correct, they might shed light on the causes of brain cancer, or better yet, provide a new target for battling—maybe even preventing—the disease.
But by 2004, at least two labs had tried and failed to replicate Cobbs's results. That might have been the end of the story, were it not for the young neurosurgeon's audacity. Convinced that his methodology was better than his colleagues, he offered to show both research teams his technique. One group, led by Duke University neuro-oncologist Duane Mitchell, accepted. Last year they published the first peer-reviewed confirmation of Cobbs's work. "We have enough evidence now to say that this merits serious attention," says Mitchell. As the journal Science wrote last week, a flurry of papers exploring a possible link between CMV and brain cancer have caught the attention of at least some experts, spurring the first conference on the subject last October and touching off a handful of clinical trials.
The findings have opened a new avenue of inquiry for one of the most intractable cancers—Glioblastoma Multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor, diagnosed in 10,000 new patients every year and fatal in virtually all cases. (Sen. Ted Kennedy was stricken with the disease last year). The alleged link between CMV and brain cancer may also represent the latest reversal of a decades-old consensus that generally speaking, viruses don't cause cancer.
Thanks to the efforts of a relentless neurosurgeon, we may be closer to understanding what causes one of the most deadly cancers.
Jeneen Interlandi
Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan 9, 2009
In 2002, UCSF neurosurgeon Charles Cobbs published a novel finding in a prominent cancer journal: nearly all of the two-dozen brain tumors he had analyzed were teeming with a common herpes virus called cytomegalovirus, or CMV. Normally, CMV is harmless—it lies dormant in roughly 80 percent of the population—but in Cobbs's tumor samples, the virus appeared to be actively replicating, even as it remained dormant in nearby healthy tissue. "When I first saw the data, I couldn't sleep for a week," says Cobbs. "I kept asking myself, 'can this be?'" If his findings were correct, they might shed light on the causes of brain cancer, or better yet, provide a new target for battling—maybe even preventing—the disease.
But by 2004, at least two labs had tried and failed to replicate Cobbs's results. That might have been the end of the story, were it not for the young neurosurgeon's audacity. Convinced that his methodology was better than his colleagues, he offered to show both research teams his technique. One group, led by Duke University neuro-oncologist Duane Mitchell, accepted. Last year they published the first peer-reviewed confirmation of Cobbs's work. "We have enough evidence now to say that this merits serious attention," says Mitchell. As the journal Science wrote last week, a flurry of papers exploring a possible link between CMV and brain cancer have caught the attention of at least some experts, spurring the first conference on the subject last October and touching off a handful of clinical trials.
The findings have opened a new avenue of inquiry for one of the most intractable cancers—Glioblastoma Multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor, diagnosed in 10,000 new patients every year and fatal in virtually all cases. (Sen. Ted Kennedy was stricken with the disease last year). The alleged link between CMV and brain cancer may also represent the latest reversal of a decades-old consensus that generally speaking, viruses don't cause cancer.
The bonds of time
The bonds of time
Jan 8th 2009 SAN FRANCISCO From The Economist print edition
Financial decisions are heavily influenced by early experiences
MANY economists are unsettled by the idea of a generation of “Depression babies”—people who grew up during the Depression and, scarred by the poor stockmarket returns of their formative years, were unusually risk-averse in their investments throughout their lives. Standard models assume that individuals use all available information about the present and past to make financial decisions, not that choices are disproportionately affected by their personal economic experience.
Yet new research from Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California at Berkeley and Stefan Nagel of Stanford University seems to confirm that people born at different times make very different financial choices, even in similar economic environments.
Ms Malmendier and Mr Nagel examined detailed survey data about American households’ finances between 1964 and 2004. Because they knew when the people in the sample were born, they could calculate the average stockmarket returns and inflation that individuals had experienced over the course of their lives. And because the data tracked financial choices over time, they could also control for factors like age, which matters because the composition of people’s portfolios is likely to change as they grow older.
Their work confirmed the Depression babies idea. Under identical market conditions, and controlling for age, people who had experienced lower stockmarket returns over the course of their lives put a smaller fraction of their money into stocks than people who had lived, on average, in times when stocks had done better.
Jan 8th 2009 SAN FRANCISCO From The Economist print edition
Financial decisions are heavily influenced by early experiences
MANY economists are unsettled by the idea of a generation of “Depression babies”—people who grew up during the Depression and, scarred by the poor stockmarket returns of their formative years, were unusually risk-averse in their investments throughout their lives. Standard models assume that individuals use all available information about the present and past to make financial decisions, not that choices are disproportionately affected by their personal economic experience.
Yet new research from Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California at Berkeley and Stefan Nagel of Stanford University seems to confirm that people born at different times make very different financial choices, even in similar economic environments.
Ms Malmendier and Mr Nagel examined detailed survey data about American households’ finances between 1964 and 2004. Because they knew when the people in the sample were born, they could calculate the average stockmarket returns and inflation that individuals had experienced over the course of their lives. And because the data tracked financial choices over time, they could also control for factors like age, which matters because the composition of people’s portfolios is likely to change as they grow older.
Their work confirmed the Depression babies idea. Under identical market conditions, and controlling for age, people who had experienced lower stockmarket returns over the course of their lives put a smaller fraction of their money into stocks than people who had lived, on average, in times when stocks had done better.
We have the technology to rebuild ourselves
We have the technology to rebuild ourselves
07 January 2009 by Julian Smith
Double arm amputee Christian Kandlbauer shows how realistic prostheses can be (Image: Waltraud Grubitzsch/epa/Corbis)
FIVE years after he lost a leg to a landmine in Afghanistan, American war veteran Mike McNaughton can run well enough to coach his 11-year-old son's soccer team. This amazing comeback comes partly from his determination to get back on two feet, but also from a piece of high-tech hardware: a computerised, hydraulic knee that monitors and adjusts every step, with a response time in milliseconds. "Now I can run with the kids full blast and kick the ball around with them," he says.
After decades of amputees having to make do with designs that had changed little since the second world war, artificial limbs that predict their user's every movement and look like the real thing are finally breaking out of the lab. Yet convincing and comfortable synthetic limbs like McNaughton's are only the beginning of the bionic age.
Emerging prosthetic technologies promise not only greater power and flexibility but also pressure-sensitive artificial skin, and even limbs that are bonded to the body and controlled by the mind - and much of this within five years. Rebuilding amputees to be faster and stronger than before is rapidly becoming a realistic possibility. With experimental prosthetics increasingly able to integrate with flesh, bone and the nervous system, the very idea of "losing a limb" may one day become obsolete.
"This is perhaps the most exciting time ever to be involved in advanced prosthetics," says John Bigelow of the applied physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who works on brain-controlled robotic arms.
There are many reasons for this bionic gold rush, says Bigelow. Smaller, better components have made it possible to pack more hardware into a limb than ever before. There are also more and more amputees in the US because of soaring rates of diabetes - which can cause nerve and vascular damage - and injuries suffered by soldiers in the Middle East. These factors have encouraged more investment in bionic technologies than ever before.
The early results of this boom are now reaching the open market. For up to $30,000, a person who has lost a leg to illness or injury can obtain a prosthetic like McNaughton's, complete with "intelligent" software that learns a user's gait and can adapt to changing terrain. Examples include the C-Leg from German orthopaedic company Otto Block and the Rheo Knee, which McNaughton uses, from the Icelandic company Össur. These use a combination of hydraulics and motors to make carrying the leg less tiring, plus carbon fibre to mimic the elastic properties of bones and tendons.
Prosthetic feet have always been particularly tricky to design. The muscles in natural feet and ankles constantly add or damp forces as necessary, and the elasticity of our tendons lets us walk using relatively little energy. Lower-limb amputees, though, "walk slower, use more metabolic energy and are less stable - even on flat ground", says Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and himself a double lower-limb amputee. To tackle this problem Herr's group has designed a prosthetic foot, the iWalk PowerFoot One, which uses an electric motor and tendon-like springs to propel the user forward or slow them down, controlled by two microprocessors and six sensors that measure the ankle's position and the forces it is experiencing.
07 January 2009 by Julian Smith
Double arm amputee Christian Kandlbauer shows how realistic prostheses can be (Image: Waltraud Grubitzsch/epa/Corbis)
FIVE years after he lost a leg to a landmine in Afghanistan, American war veteran Mike McNaughton can run well enough to coach his 11-year-old son's soccer team. This amazing comeback comes partly from his determination to get back on two feet, but also from a piece of high-tech hardware: a computerised, hydraulic knee that monitors and adjusts every step, with a response time in milliseconds. "Now I can run with the kids full blast and kick the ball around with them," he says.
After decades of amputees having to make do with designs that had changed little since the second world war, artificial limbs that predict their user's every movement and look like the real thing are finally breaking out of the lab. Yet convincing and comfortable synthetic limbs like McNaughton's are only the beginning of the bionic age.
Emerging prosthetic technologies promise not only greater power and flexibility but also pressure-sensitive artificial skin, and even limbs that are bonded to the body and controlled by the mind - and much of this within five years. Rebuilding amputees to be faster and stronger than before is rapidly becoming a realistic possibility. With experimental prosthetics increasingly able to integrate with flesh, bone and the nervous system, the very idea of "losing a limb" may one day become obsolete.
"This is perhaps the most exciting time ever to be involved in advanced prosthetics," says John Bigelow of the applied physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who works on brain-controlled robotic arms.
There are many reasons for this bionic gold rush, says Bigelow. Smaller, better components have made it possible to pack more hardware into a limb than ever before. There are also more and more amputees in the US because of soaring rates of diabetes - which can cause nerve and vascular damage - and injuries suffered by soldiers in the Middle East. These factors have encouraged more investment in bionic technologies than ever before.
The early results of this boom are now reaching the open market. For up to $30,000, a person who has lost a leg to illness or injury can obtain a prosthetic like McNaughton's, complete with "intelligent" software that learns a user's gait and can adapt to changing terrain. Examples include the C-Leg from German orthopaedic company Otto Block and the Rheo Knee, which McNaughton uses, from the Icelandic company Össur. These use a combination of hydraulics and motors to make carrying the leg less tiring, plus carbon fibre to mimic the elastic properties of bones and tendons.
Prosthetic feet have always been particularly tricky to design. The muscles in natural feet and ankles constantly add or damp forces as necessary, and the elasticity of our tendons lets us walk using relatively little energy. Lower-limb amputees, though, "walk slower, use more metabolic energy and are less stable - even on flat ground", says Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and himself a double lower-limb amputee. To tackle this problem Herr's group has designed a prosthetic foot, the iWalk PowerFoot One, which uses an electric motor and tendon-like springs to propel the user forward or slow them down, controlled by two microprocessors and six sensors that measure the ankle's position and the forces it is experiencing.
Sizing Up Sunscreen
Sizing Up Sunscreen
A new study finds that most sunscreens don't offer sufficient protection. How to find the right one.
Sarah Kliff
Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan02,2009
Sunscreens were seriously burned this month, when a new ranking of more than 700 sunscreen products found that 84 percent did not provide adequate sun protection. The study, conducted by Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington-based nonprofit, looked at over 400 peer-reviewed articles on sunscreen ingredients. It found that many of the most popular sunscreens break down quickly in the sun or are not blocking many harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays.
Rankings in the July 2007 issue of Consumer Reports revealed a similar problem: not all sunscreens are created equal. Rather, they found that sunscreens with the same sun protection factor (SPF) ran the gamut from "excellent" to "poor" in their overall ability to block ultraviolet rays.
While many people rely solely on SPF when selecting a sunscreen, these rankings show that the single number only tells half the story. SPF measures a sunscreen's ability to block UVB rays. But it says nothing about its strength against UVA rays, an equally damaging form of radiation that causes wrinkles and, more seriously, skin cancer. And unlike UVB rays that cause sunburns, UVA rays do not leave an immediate mark.
"We don't have a physical, visible way to know if we're protected against UVA radiation," says Jane Houlihan, vice president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG). "Your skin looks fine, you're not burnt, and you could have a massive dose of UV radiation."
The issue is largely in the labeling—the Food and Drug Administration does not have any regulations on how sunscreens can accurately indicate their level of UVA protection, no quick and easy number like SPF. The agency began developing guidelines in 1978 but they have largely been at a standstill since 1999, when today's requirements were finalized.
In a statement this month, the FDA reports that a new regulation addressing UVA protection is "currently in its final clearance" and will likely be released by the end of the summer. Until those guidelines take effect, the FDA stands by its previous assertion that "approved sunscreens are safe and effective when used as directed."
Dermatologists, however, are not buying it. "Currently, there are no truly effective ways to measure the strength of UVA protection in sunscreens," says Hensin Tsao, an assistant professor of dermatology at Harvard University. While sunscreens have begun using labels like "broadspectrum" to indicate comprehensive UVA/UVB protection, no federal guidelines regulate how sunscreens can use the term and what level of protection it indicates. Says Darrell Rigel, a clinical professor of dermatology at New York University, "Anyone can put the words broadspectrum on a bottle so there's no easy way for the consumer to understand the labeling."
Overexposure to either UVA or UVB rays can lead to serious consequences—8,000 Americans die of melanoma each year, a form of skin cancer often caused by too much UV-exposure. "There are all these reasons to use sunscreen but this labeling is making it hard to do so correctly," says Rigel.
Looking for particular characteristics that aren't on the label, he says, can help make sunscreen decisions easier and smarter. Here are tips for navigating the sunscreen aisle:
SPF still matters: While SPF does not say everything about a sunscreen, it should still be an important factor in selection. Rigel suggests never going lower than 30.
Be ingredient savvy: Unlike SPF, there is no quick and easy number to indicate a sunscreen's strength in blocking UVA rays. The best way to tell whether you are getting adequate UVA protection is to take a look at the ingredients. There are two ingredients that Rigel says are a good indication that you're UVA-safe: aveobenzone or parsol 1789.
Stay stable: While UVA-blocking ingredients are important, they also tend to cause the sunscreen to break down faster in the sun. This is why a third element is also necessary: ingredients to stabilize the sunscreen. Neutrogena with Helioplex Technology or anything with Mexoryl are Rigel's top choices for stable sunscreens.
Check the rankings: The new EWG database allows consumers to compare sunscreens on different characteristics—without scanning labels for complex chemicals. Overall, Badger SPF 30, Peter Thomas Roth Titanium SPF 30, and Lavera Sunscreen Neutral SPF 40, received top marks. This does not that mean they are perfect, cautions Houlihan, but that they will do the best in keeping you sun safe.
Apply early and often: If you apply sunscreen when you start feeling the heat, you're already too late. "Some people only think about sunscreen when they start feeling warm," says Martin A. Weinstock, professor of dermatology at Brown University. "Meanwhile, they've gotten a dangerous dose of UV long before then." He recommends putting on sunscreen a half hour before heading outdoors and reapplying every few hours.
Want a tan? Fake it: "It's best not to bathe yourself in carcinogens to make a fashion statement," says Weinstock. A change in skin color is always an indication of heavy exposure to UV rays. The safest and best color, Weinstock says, is the one you were born with.
Listen to your mother: No matter how well a sunscreen ranks, Houlihan cautions that there "isn't a perfect product or ingredient and there isn't perfect knowledge that sunscreen can do enough to completely protect us from skin cancer. It's important to not only use sunscreen but also follow the safety tips we've been told again and again." Those safety tips—make sure to cover all areas liberally, stay out of the sun at peak hours, and, most importantly, keep skin covered with hats and light clothing—combined with a safe sunscreen should give you one less thing to worry about when enjoying that day at the beach.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/33384
A new study finds that most sunscreens don't offer sufficient protection. How to find the right one.
Sarah Kliff
Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan02,2009
Sunscreens were seriously burned this month, when a new ranking of more than 700 sunscreen products found that 84 percent did not provide adequate sun protection. The study, conducted by Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington-based nonprofit, looked at over 400 peer-reviewed articles on sunscreen ingredients. It found that many of the most popular sunscreens break down quickly in the sun or are not blocking many harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays.
Rankings in the July 2007 issue of Consumer Reports revealed a similar problem: not all sunscreens are created equal. Rather, they found that sunscreens with the same sun protection factor (SPF) ran the gamut from "excellent" to "poor" in their overall ability to block ultraviolet rays.
While many people rely solely on SPF when selecting a sunscreen, these rankings show that the single number only tells half the story. SPF measures a sunscreen's ability to block UVB rays. But it says nothing about its strength against UVA rays, an equally damaging form of radiation that causes wrinkles and, more seriously, skin cancer. And unlike UVB rays that cause sunburns, UVA rays do not leave an immediate mark.
"We don't have a physical, visible way to know if we're protected against UVA radiation," says Jane Houlihan, vice president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG). "Your skin looks fine, you're not burnt, and you could have a massive dose of UV radiation."
The issue is largely in the labeling—the Food and Drug Administration does not have any regulations on how sunscreens can accurately indicate their level of UVA protection, no quick and easy number like SPF. The agency began developing guidelines in 1978 but they have largely been at a standstill since 1999, when today's requirements were finalized.
In a statement this month, the FDA reports that a new regulation addressing UVA protection is "currently in its final clearance" and will likely be released by the end of the summer. Until those guidelines take effect, the FDA stands by its previous assertion that "approved sunscreens are safe and effective when used as directed."
Dermatologists, however, are not buying it. "Currently, there are no truly effective ways to measure the strength of UVA protection in sunscreens," says Hensin Tsao, an assistant professor of dermatology at Harvard University. While sunscreens have begun using labels like "broadspectrum" to indicate comprehensive UVA/UVB protection, no federal guidelines regulate how sunscreens can use the term and what level of protection it indicates. Says Darrell Rigel, a clinical professor of dermatology at New York University, "Anyone can put the words broadspectrum on a bottle so there's no easy way for the consumer to understand the labeling."
Overexposure to either UVA or UVB rays can lead to serious consequences—8,000 Americans die of melanoma each year, a form of skin cancer often caused by too much UV-exposure. "There are all these reasons to use sunscreen but this labeling is making it hard to do so correctly," says Rigel.
Looking for particular characteristics that aren't on the label, he says, can help make sunscreen decisions easier and smarter. Here are tips for navigating the sunscreen aisle:
SPF still matters: While SPF does not say everything about a sunscreen, it should still be an important factor in selection. Rigel suggests never going lower than 30.
Be ingredient savvy: Unlike SPF, there is no quick and easy number to indicate a sunscreen's strength in blocking UVA rays. The best way to tell whether you are getting adequate UVA protection is to take a look at the ingredients. There are two ingredients that Rigel says are a good indication that you're UVA-safe: aveobenzone or parsol 1789.
Stay stable: While UVA-blocking ingredients are important, they also tend to cause the sunscreen to break down faster in the sun. This is why a third element is also necessary: ingredients to stabilize the sunscreen. Neutrogena with Helioplex Technology or anything with Mexoryl are Rigel's top choices for stable sunscreens.
Check the rankings: The new EWG database allows consumers to compare sunscreens on different characteristics—without scanning labels for complex chemicals. Overall, Badger SPF 30, Peter Thomas Roth Titanium SPF 30, and Lavera Sunscreen Neutral SPF 40, received top marks. This does not that mean they are perfect, cautions Houlihan, but that they will do the best in keeping you sun safe.
Apply early and often: If you apply sunscreen when you start feeling the heat, you're already too late. "Some people only think about sunscreen when they start feeling warm," says Martin A. Weinstock, professor of dermatology at Brown University. "Meanwhile, they've gotten a dangerous dose of UV long before then." He recommends putting on sunscreen a half hour before heading outdoors and reapplying every few hours.
Want a tan? Fake it: "It's best not to bathe yourself in carcinogens to make a fashion statement," says Weinstock. A change in skin color is always an indication of heavy exposure to UV rays. The safest and best color, Weinstock says, is the one you were born with.
Listen to your mother: No matter how well a sunscreen ranks, Houlihan cautions that there "isn't a perfect product or ingredient and there isn't perfect knowledge that sunscreen can do enough to completely protect us from skin cancer. It's important to not only use sunscreen but also follow the safety tips we've been told again and again." Those safety tips—make sure to cover all areas liberally, stay out of the sun at peak hours, and, most importantly, keep skin covered with hats and light clothing—combined with a safe sunscreen should give you one less thing to worry about when enjoying that day at the beach.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/33384
Does Exercise Really Make You Healthier?
Does Exercise Really Make You Healthier?
We examine five claims about the benefits of weightlifting and aerobics to see which carry the most . . . weight
By Coco Ballantyne January 2, 2009
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) late this year released its new Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, calling for adults between the ages of 18 and 64 to exercise moderately (such as brisk walking or water aerobics) for at least two hours and 30 minutes or vigorously (running, swimming, or cycling 10 mph or faster) for at least an hour and 15 minutes weekly. The longer, harder and more often you exercise, the greater the health benefits, including reducing the risk of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, according to the recommendations, which were based on a decade of scientific research. Studies have shown that people who engage in the amount of exercise recommended by the feds live an average of three to seven years longer than couch potatoes, according to William Haskell, a medical professor at Stanford University who chaired the HHS advisory committee. But how exactly does exercise accomplish this? And what about claims by naysayers that exercise not only isn't healthy but may actually be bad for you? Is there any truth to them? In the past decade or so, various studies involving thousands of participants have shown that workouts lower the risk of heart disease. "Exercise has a favorable effect on virtually all risk factors of cardiovascular disease," says Jonathan Meyers, a health research scientist at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health System in California. The reason, he says: when a person exercises, the heart muscle contracts forcefully and frequently, increasing blood flow through the arteries. This leads to subtle changes in the autonomic nervous system, which controls the contraction and relaxation of these vessels. This fine-tuning leads to a lower resting heart rate (fewer beats to pump blood through the body), lower blood pressure and a more variable heart rate, all factors that lower the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, he says.
We examine five claims about the benefits of weightlifting and aerobics to see which carry the most . . . weight
By Coco Ballantyne January 2, 2009
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) late this year released its new Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, calling for adults between the ages of 18 and 64 to exercise moderately (such as brisk walking or water aerobics) for at least two hours and 30 minutes or vigorously (running, swimming, or cycling 10 mph or faster) for at least an hour and 15 minutes weekly. The longer, harder and more often you exercise, the greater the health benefits, including reducing the risk of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, according to the recommendations, which were based on a decade of scientific research. Studies have shown that people who engage in the amount of exercise recommended by the feds live an average of three to seven years longer than couch potatoes, according to William Haskell, a medical professor at Stanford University who chaired the HHS advisory committee. But how exactly does exercise accomplish this? And what about claims by naysayers that exercise not only isn't healthy but may actually be bad for you? Is there any truth to them? In the past decade or so, various studies involving thousands of participants have shown that workouts lower the risk of heart disease. "Exercise has a favorable effect on virtually all risk factors of cardiovascular disease," says Jonathan Meyers, a health research scientist at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health System in California. The reason, he says: when a person exercises, the heart muscle contracts forcefully and frequently, increasing blood flow through the arteries. This leads to subtle changes in the autonomic nervous system, which controls the contraction and relaxation of these vessels. This fine-tuning leads to a lower resting heart rate (fewer beats to pump blood through the body), lower blood pressure and a more variable heart rate, all factors that lower the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, he says.
Review: Why evolution is true
Review: Why evolution is true
12:00 02 January 2009 by Rowan Hooper
The first "why" that struck me on seeing Why Evolution is True was why do we need yet another book on evolution? There are lots of good ones out there already and nothing less than a mountain of evidence to support the reality of evolution by natural selection.
But we do need another, insists Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago, because creationism is spreading.
And he's right – creationism is all over the place, not just in the US, where it often gains huge amounts of publicity. In December, a UK poll found that 29% of science teachers thought that creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution; a state of affairs that Richard Dawkins called "a national disgrace". It is also on the rise in Islamic countries.
Careful persuasion
Creationism, Coyne tells us in this wide-ranging, beautifully written account, is like a roly-poly clown that pops back up when you punch it. But he resists the temptation to punch. He seeks to persuade, by carefully leading the reader through the overwhelming evidence, that evolution is a fact.
The audience is those who are uncertain about explanations of life's diversity. The book is not aimed at people who hold faith-based positions – Coyne considers them to be lost causes – but you have to wonder how many people who are "uncertain" will be won over.
Coyne describes, for example, giving a talk on evolution versus intelligent design/creationism to a group of rich Chicago businessmen. You would think that people in the business world might think that evidence for something is worth taking into account, but this was the response Coyne got from one audience member after his lecture: "I found your evidence for evolution very convincing – but I still don't believe it".
Wedding present
It is unfortunate that there are large numbers of people for whom no amount of evidence and elegant argument will do. For those of us comfortable with the fact of evolution, even those already familiar with many of the arguments and the examples demonstrating evolution, there is much in his book that is new and stimulating, even refreshing.
I loved reading of how Raymond Dart was literally handed the greatest fossil find of the twentieth century – the "missing link" between apes and modern man – while dressing for a wedding. Other highlights include a section on the remnant signs of evolution, such as the vestigial tail at the end of our spines, and a fascinating account of how evolution and even speciation can be seen occurring before our very eyes in the lab.
Coyne ends by asking where evolution leaves us, and shows that it ennobles us, that human civilisation has improved despite our animal nature. That's why, when creationism is spreading to the extent that there is even a creationist church in the main town in the Galapagos, of all places, that we need another book on evolution. This is a marvellous one.
Glossary:
Roly-poly clown: João bobo overwhelming: chocante, surpreendente tak(ing) into account:levar em consideração highlights :pontos importantes, evidências to ennoble:enobrecer improv(ed):melhorar
12:00 02 January 2009 by Rowan Hooper
The first "why" that struck me on seeing Why Evolution is True was why do we need yet another book on evolution? There are lots of good ones out there already and nothing less than a mountain of evidence to support the reality of evolution by natural selection.
But we do need another, insists Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago, because creationism is spreading.
And he's right – creationism is all over the place, not just in the US, where it often gains huge amounts of publicity. In December, a UK poll found that 29% of science teachers thought that creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution; a state of affairs that Richard Dawkins called "a national disgrace". It is also on the rise in Islamic countries.
Careful persuasion
Creationism, Coyne tells us in this wide-ranging, beautifully written account, is like a roly-poly clown that pops back up when you punch it. But he resists the temptation to punch. He seeks to persuade, by carefully leading the reader through the overwhelming evidence, that evolution is a fact.
The audience is those who are uncertain about explanations of life's diversity. The book is not aimed at people who hold faith-based positions – Coyne considers them to be lost causes – but you have to wonder how many people who are "uncertain" will be won over.
Coyne describes, for example, giving a talk on evolution versus intelligent design/creationism to a group of rich Chicago businessmen. You would think that people in the business world might think that evidence for something is worth taking into account, but this was the response Coyne got from one audience member after his lecture: "I found your evidence for evolution very convincing – but I still don't believe it".
Wedding present
It is unfortunate that there are large numbers of people for whom no amount of evidence and elegant argument will do. For those of us comfortable with the fact of evolution, even those already familiar with many of the arguments and the examples demonstrating evolution, there is much in his book that is new and stimulating, even refreshing.
I loved reading of how Raymond Dart was literally handed the greatest fossil find of the twentieth century – the "missing link" between apes and modern man – while dressing for a wedding. Other highlights include a section on the remnant signs of evolution, such as the vestigial tail at the end of our spines, and a fascinating account of how evolution and even speciation can be seen occurring before our very eyes in the lab.
Coyne ends by asking where evolution leaves us, and shows that it ennobles us, that human civilisation has improved despite our animal nature. That's why, when creationism is spreading to the extent that there is even a creationist church in the main town in the Galapagos, of all places, that we need another book on evolution. This is a marvellous one.
Glossary:
Roly-poly clown: João bobo overwhelming: chocante, surpreendente tak(ing) into account:levar em consideração highlights :pontos importantes, evidências to ennoble:enobrecer improv(ed):melhorar
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