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Monday, January 30, 2012
LaCie Little Big Disk Lightning Review: The Future Is Shockingly Super Fast [Hard Drives]
Eating off the floor: How clean living is bad for you
Ten steps to a healthier life and more wealth through embracing the bacteria around you.
The Slightly Longer than Five Second Rule.
Book titles are difficult to choose. In theory, a perfect title is concise, compelling, enticing and, oh by the way, accurately conveys some aspect of the book?s contents. In practice, most titles involve more compromise than perfection. The working title of my first book was Unknown. The book was about the biological unknown and what remains to be discovered as told through the stories of the discoverers and would-be discoverers. I liked the title. It seemed to capture some essence of what I was up to and offered a good conversation starter. People would ask what I was doing and I would say ?oh, going to spend the afternoon in the Unknown.? The editors were not so sure. One day I received an email forwarded from someone within my publishing house that said, ?when is Dunn going to decide on a title?? At first I did not understand and then it became clear. The cover page of my book read, ?Title: Unknown.? I got the point. The book became Every Living Thing.
The working title of my new book was Clean Living is Bad for You. This title had the advantage of offering a simple thesis. It also seemed more family friendly than the alternative suggested by my neighbor, ?People Who Like it Dirty are More Healthy.? In six words, Clean Living is Bad for You set forth the thesis that living a life that was too clean and devoid of other species makes you sick. I imagined a cover with a kid licking cookies off of the floor beside a neat freak father holding antimicrobial wipes. The father would have a textbox over him that read, ?sick? and the kid would have her own textbox reading ?healthy.? Inside, you would find ten quick steps to immersing yourself in more kinds of bacteria and, in doing so, living a healthier life with more wealth through embracing the bacteria around you1.
But then I started to write the book and discovered the Clean Living title no longer captured what the book was about. I suppose in such a moment there are two options. Stick with the simple title, which might be easier to sell, albeit not representative of the book, or give in to the complexity. I gave in to the complexity, hundreds of millions of years of complexity. I wrote about the influence of our changing relationship with other species in general?including the bacteria on our bodies and in our houses, but also the predators in our gardens, pathogens everywhere and crops and cows in our fields?on our health and well being. The title became ?The Wild Life of Our Bodies, predators, parasites, and partners that shape who we are today,? which was not quite what the book was about either, but closer.
I changed the title because the book changed. But there was also another issue. I wasn?t sure if the idea that clean living is bad for you was true. We know less about bacteria and clean (or dirty) living than I expected, much less.
In a coarse way, dirty living is good for you and clean living is bad for. You are part bacteria, if you got rid of the life on your skin or in your gut, you would almost certainly die. But, what I had envisioned was an expansion of the slightly more complex idea called the hygiene hypothesis, whose argument goes something like this? Humans moved from rural lifestyles outdoors to hyper-clean lifestyles indoors in city apartments with central air, sealed windows and surfaces scrubbed clean, at every opportunity, with antimicrobial wipes. That transition led us to spend less time getting ?dirty? outside. It also ?cleaned up? many of the species we need around us indoors that would allow us to get dirty with life. This combination prevented many of our immune systems from developing normally2. As a consequence, our immune systems tend to get ?messed up? when we live in cities. They revolt against us in the form of asthma, allergies, Crohn?s disease, inflammatory bowel disease and, depending on who you ask, maybe even MS and autism. In other words, clean living of one sort or another may be at the root of the majority of modern, chronic, diseases.
The hygiene hypothesis is simultaneously elegant, sweeping, important, vague, and poorly tested. Very little is known about how a change in the bacteria you are exposed to might negatively affect your immune system (though that is rapidly changing as more and more scientists study the problem). Even less is known about how microbes vary with human lifestyles. When nothing is known, many things can seem plausible. The early days in any field like household microbiology are simultaneously delightful and frustrating, a kind of Wild West in which everyone is armed with ideas and ready to shoot.
Is that a Worm in My Colon??Some things have been tested. It has been shown that the presence or absence of worms in the gut of someone can influence their immune system. Taking worms away from someone with worms can make them more likely to suffer from autoimmune diseases. Conversely, adding them back can make them less likely to suffer from autoimmune diseases. Just how worms affect our immune systems is not yet clear, but that there have been negative consequences of getting rid of our worms, at least for some people, is becoming clear. That said, we lost our worms because we started using indoor plumbing and walking around in shoes. When people talk about getting back to nature and being less hyperclean they seldom mean pooping near other people?s feet and hands. The same public health systems that got rid of our worms also save lives, by preventing the transmission of other pathogens, such as Cholera, via that same route. But there is more than a worm at the bottom of this story.
If the hygiene hypothesis were right, we might expect the composition of bacteria and other microscopic species on individuals or in houses to vary as a function of our lifestyles and our health should vary, in turn, as a function of the composition of those microbes. The good news is, this prediction is very testable.
How would you do the study? One approach would be to sample the microbes in houses in rural and urban areas and then, from those same houses, ask individuals about their health and wellness, particularly as relates to immune disorders (I?m not quite there yet, but see footnote four when you get to it). The hygiene hypothesis doesn?t really specify whether it is the diversity (how many kinds), composition (which kinds) or abundance (how many in total) of tiny life forms that matters. You could measure all three. It would be relatively easy, albeit not cheap.
Personally, my guess is that whatever the result is, it is likely to be dependent on other factors. It seems unlikely that urban living in Rio de Janeiro means the same thing as urban living in, say, New York, in terms of exposures to different numbers and types of microbe species. The climate is different. The other species present (e.g., birds, bats, pets and insects) are different. It also seems as though even within an urban environment buildings are likely to differ as a function of their architecture, design, and building materials. Or at least one hopes that how you make a building influences who lives in it. Pigeons prefer to nest in vertical structures. Houses with attics are better for bats. But what we know tends to be about animals, and even then, mostly the animals with backbones. What about the microbes? Someone needs to study how they vary as a function of how and where we live. Fortunately, someone did, sort of.
In December of 2011, Steven Kembel, a research associate at the Biology and the Built Environment Center at the University of Oregon, and colleagues published a study in which they compared the microbial composition of hospital rooms that differed in how they were designed. Anyone who has stayed in one knows hospital rooms are not homes and yet the rules that apply to hospital rooms might also apply to homes. After all, the cleanest among us seem to want to make our homes ?hospital clean.? I?ve seen the advertisements, you are supposed to scrub and scrub until even the children shine.
The modern, ?sterile,? hospital room, with Kembel?s sampling devices and standardized ?open window,? installed.
If the hygiene hypothesis is right or even on the right path, what Kembel and crew would expect to see would be that those design elements that make the hospital rooms more like a rural house, more natural in some crude sense, should be more likely to favor a diversity of ?good? microbes. Conversely, they might expect that the features that make the rooms more sealed off and ?modern,? cleaner if you will, should favor pathogens and disfavor the full richness of other species, that wealth I mentioned earlier.
Is there Life in There??This is a good moment to point out what is obvious to microbiologists but not to the advertising agencies who tell us to kill the germs, namely that it is not possible to kill ?the germs.? The world is dense with other species. Every inch of every thing around you right now is covered in living cells, cells that make do with what you leave them. Your only choice in terms of how you affect these other species, this universal, shimmering, majority, is a choice of which of them to favor and which to disfavor. Microbes happen. There are even bacteria species capable of ?consuming? Triclosan, the active ingredient in antimicrobial soaps, wipes and underpants. We live among the microbes much as we live among the molecules (and microbes) in air. And so what Kembel chose to ask was not whether there are bacteria in hospital rooms. Yes, there are. They are on the patients, on the walls, on the children?s books in the waiting room and even on the doctors and nurses. What matters is not whether there is life in there, but which life is in there, which is precisely what Kembel sought to study2.
The experimental component of Kembel?s study focused on one aspect of the rooms, whether or not they were vented by standard AC/Heating systems or by windows. Half of the rooms were assigned to one of each of these categories. This was the only factor Kembel and crew varied, but they measured many other features of the rooms, much in the way you might measure additional variables when comparing old and young rain forests, variables like humidity, temperature and wind. When they did, Kembel and colleagues found that the diversity and abundance of bacteria varied as a function of the design of the rooms. BOOM. BIG RESULT. OK, well, wait, the overall result was not so surprising, but there is more, there is the issue of why they varied.
Clean living is Bad for Diversity?Kembel and friends3 found the composition of bacterial communities ?in window-ventilated patient rooms? to be ?intermediate between mechanically ventilated patient rooms and outdoor air.? Open the window, the lesson seems to be, and both air and microbes come inside. What was more, when rooms ventilated using windows were warmer and drier, they tended to be more like the mechanically ventilated rooms suggesting that it might be, in part, the warmth and dryness of the mechanically ventilated rooms that helps to keep them ?different.? These differences in composition were also associated with differences in diversity, the number of kinds of bacteria. The outdoor air was most diverse, followed by rooms with an open window and then, finally, rooms that were mechanically ventilated.
Put it together and it appears the more dry, warm and sealed off a room is the fewer kinds of bacteria it is likely to have. This is exactly what the hygiene hypothesis would predict, or really it is more like what the hypothesis assumes but tends to avoid testing, that the conditions in which we try to envelope ourselves, warm rooms with the windows closed and the central air turned on, lead to the lowest diversity of microorganisms in our surroundings. And what the hygiene hypothesis argues is that while we may tend to think of this as a hygiene success story, it represents failure. This lower diversity may lead our immune systems to develop in such a way as to be unable to make full sense of the world. This aspect of ?clean living? may well be bad for us. More needs to be tested and yet Kembel?s results are exciting, a suggestion that our air conditioned/heated, closed off apartments and offices all around the world may be devoid of diversity, a diversity we might need for our bodies to make sense.
- Staphylococcus aureus. It may be beautiful, but it is also one of the species Kembel et al. classified as bad news
Clean Living is Good for Pathogens?Somewhat buried in this paper is another revelation, one that is quieter but, if true, perhaps even more novel. In addition to considering the diversity of benign and/or even good bacteria associated with the environment in general, the paper also evaluated the abundance, or a measure of abundance anyway, of bacteria closely related to human pathogens. The abundance of these bacteria varied among rooms but not simply as a function of how they were ventilated. The best predictor of the number of these potentially bad species was the room?s diversity of bacteria. Rooms with a greater diversity of bacteria had fewer individuals of the bacteria species similar to human pathogens. The diversity of bacteria explained (accounted statistically for) more than half of all of the variation in the number of potential pathogens!
Could the diversity of good bacteria in some rooms actually be reducing the density of bad bacteria? There is precedent for such an idea, though it comes from grasslands rather than hospitals or bedrooms. In grasslands and other outdoor habitats (Grasslands are an appropriate example for Kembel, who started off studying grassland diversity before moving on to hospital rooms), an enormous body of literature considers whether more diverse grasslands are harder for an invading life form to take over. The answer?though I will admit to summarizing a literature that includes hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers in six words? is, yes diversity helps to resist invasion. In those fields, diverse grasses efficiently use the resources invaders need, preventing them from gaining a foothold. Could having a diversity of bacteria in your home or hospital room not only make your immune system more likely to develop normally but also help to outcompete the bad news bugs in the first place? YES, YES, YES, the answer is definitely maybe5.
A Better Title in 55 Words or Less?All of this brings me back to the issue of my book title. I think it is possible we will find that clean living leads us to live alongside fewer rather than more bacteria species and that this really is bad for you, for more than one reason. But for now the nuanced title, the title that captures the gist of what we do and don?t know is something like ?Scientists may have discovered that Clean Living is Bad for You. The idea is supported so far by the data, but key tests have not been done and it is important to point out that really dirty living is bad for you too. Really dirty living gives you Cholera. Scientists agree you don?t want that.?
Maybe if the publisher chose a small enough font, it would work. Or maybe not.
Table of evolutionary contents: Here you can skip ahead or backward to the other chapters in the story of how we came to depend on or ignore other species during our evolution, whether they be those about the cow, the chicken, the hamster, bacteria (on Lady Gaga, on feet, in bathrooms, as influenced by antimicrobial wipes, as probiotics, in the appendix), pigeons and urban gardens, house sparrows (to be published next week, stay tuned), predators, diseases, dust mites, basement dwellers, lice, field mice, viruses, yeast, the fungus that produces penicillin, bedbugs, houseflies, and more.
Or for the big picture of how I think these stories come together to make us who we are, check out The Wild Life of Our Bodies.
Footnotes
1?I would, of course, have pointed out early in the book that the wealth in question was not economic but rather the richness of microbial diversity, the living wealth of the sort that really does grow on trees and also on you. I swear, I would have pointed it out early.
2?S.W. Kembel, E. Jones, J. Kline, D. Northcutt, J. Stenson, A.W. Womack, B.J.M. Bohannan, G.Z. Brown, and J.L. Green.2012. Architectural design influences the diversity and structure of the built environment microbiome. The ISME Journal. doi:10.1038/ismej.2011.211
3?I don?t know if they are all friends. They might hate each other, but one can only say ?and colleagues? so many times and even ?colleagues? implies, rightly or wrongly, that they are collegial.
4?There are advantages and disadvantages to being a scientist who also writes rather than a full time science writer. The disadvantage is that if I have a really great story about a crazy scientist who does crazy things (and boy do I have some) you probably can?t tell it because it might be the person who ends up voting on your tenure or reviewing your papers. The advantage is that when you write about something that is really interesting, you can go back to your lab and announce to everyone, ?hey, guess what we are going to study.? So it was that I announced to my lab, earlier this year, ?hey, part of what we will be studying is whether or not clean living is bad for you?and we are going to do it by letting people do science in their own houses about their own lives!? The broad project is called your wild life, though I don?t mind saying that wasn?t the title we started with.
The folks in my lab and I, along with Holly Menninger and Steve Frank, both also at North Carolina State University, and a whole tribe of scientists from the Nature Research Center have now teamed up with Noah Fierer and his crew (friends) at the University of Colorado Boulder, to do a bunch of fun things none of us could have imagined doing on his or her own6. Among them is a big study to sample the life, including but not exclusive to the microscopic life, in thousands of houses across North America. All of this is possible because we are enlisting citizens?you, your cousin, that other cousin no one talks to with the house that doesn?t have running water and your mom?to sample their own houses and, for a subset of more ambitious folks, collect data on the climate, and other habitat characteristics of their houses, from fridge to toilet rim. We want you to help us go boldly where few have gone before, into your bedroom. Wait, that didn?t sound right, but you get the idea.
We already have thousands of people signed up, people to whom we are sending sampling kits, but we will keep sampling until the money runs out because the more houses we are able to sample the more we will be able to tease apart how different elements of how you live (your air conditioning, your pets, your houseplants and even the size of your house) influence what species you live with, so please sign up and hopefully we will be able to get to your house too and in the meantime you can read about our progress and fun, whether or not your house has been sampled and participate in our other related studies about the life in your house, be it bacteria, ants, or crickets. Our goal is to sample enough houses that we can figure out what makes some houses rich in good (or at least benign) bacteria, fungi, pollen and even insects and others abundant in fewer species, some of them pathogens and dangerous pests. In the process, we want to engage people in being able to study their own lives, where big mysteries lurk (albeit sometimes in small bodies). We think part of the story will be climate, part will be urbanization and part will be just how houses are designed (which would be great, because it then allows us to think about how to better design homes), but we could be wrong. We are wrong all the time. That is the thing about writing and science. The story, no matter what its title, doesn?t always lead quite where you think it might. With any luck, it goes somewhere far more fun.
I love my job. The truth is, this story has already taken a fun turn, even before we have gotten the first results back about bacteria, fungi, archaea or pollen. We have already been wrong, in a way. We began our wild life project by asking citizens to tell us about the species in their houses. In doing so, we discovered that a mysterious, hopping, lunging, insect species no one knew was widespread is thriving in basements throughout North America. Is it in your basement, let us know by filling out a survey here.
5?The big caveat in this part of the story has to do with the issue of what it means to be a bacterial species ?related to? a pathogen. Because Kembel and colleagues identified bacteria species based on relatively few of their genetic letters, it is easy to know who belongs in what clan, but any given clan is likely to have some wonderful folks and some outlaws. The genus Staphylococcus includes terrible, terrible, pathogens such as MRSA that can kill. It also includes the teddy bear of a species, Staphylococcus epidermidis, which lives all over your body and probably does you a fair number of favors, if you know what I mean. Well, what I mean is that it is a normal component of most human bodies and may even help to defend us against truly bad species, such as closely related pathogens. What all of this means is that the species Kembel calls similar to pathogens are similar, but might or might not be pathogens. What is needed as follow up is a study in which more of the nucleotides of the species present in the rooms are studied to conclusively separate outlaws and teddy bears. OK, that analogy has been taken too far, but the point is what Kembel offers here is not resolution but, instead, a clearly articulated version of a hypothesis with preliminary data, which is what I meant when I said, ?maybe.?
6?I know, technically this is a footnote to a footnote. Welcome to my brain. But I wanted to point out two more people are also now involved in helping to make this big project a reality. Holly Menninger was recently at a meeting where, to the sound of fiddle music, she may have convinced Jonathan Eisen to help make the kinds of projects the citizens working with us can do more sophisticated (imagine identifying the bacteria in your house yourself at home) and Jason Bobe to help make the answers we get related to human health more relevant.
Images: Eating Kix off the floor: Chris and Jenni on Flickr; Hospital room with vent to the out of doors (Photo by Steven Kembel); Staphylococcus aureus: Microbe World on Flickr.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=6da97c4bfe901d81f9dea5a33fe4e838
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Santorum's Hypocrisy Highlighted by Daughter's Illness (ContributorNetwork)
COMMENTARY | Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum suspended his bid for the GOP nod to run against Barack Obama when his daughter, Bella Santorum, was hospitalized, according to the Associated Press. Bella suffers from Trisomy 18, a rare genetic disorder in which a baby has some or all of an extra chromosome. While it is always tragic for a parent to face losing a child, the situation highlights a political issue: Santorum's hypocrisy on health care, abortion and embryonic stem cell research.
Santorum's campaign website discusses his views on these matters. He is emphatically against a woman's right to control her own body in reproductive matters and is adamantly opposed to embryonic stem cell research. He is against a single-payer national health care system provided to all citizens. He opposes the first two on religious grounds on the third for reasons of political dogma.
As to abortion, Santorum flip-flops on his opposition, according to a Care2.com report. It's easy for him to rail against abortion when such ranting might win him votes.
It's also easier for him to oppose it because he has the best health care in America available to him and his family -- provided at taxpayer expense, no less. He never had to consider whether care for a terminally ill child would destroy his family financially.
Unless the U.S. enacts a national health care plan most families will never be able to afford the care needed for a child with Trisomy 18. Santorum's family will never lack for health care or face crippling medical debt -- but as far as he's concerned it's fine for your family to have those problems.
Santorum's opposition to embryonic stem cell research is ludicrous for two reasons. First, such research involves the collection of cells from a blastocyst, a blob of about 150 cells so small the human eye cannot detect it, according to the National Institute for Health. Second, such research could save the lives of his daughter and countless others suffering from her condition. It's despicable for him to fight against the best possible hope for a cure to the very condition killing his child.
It makes me wonder how Santorum's opinion might change if he was an average American with a household income of less than $50,000 per year and no health insurance. I bet he'd sing a different tune.
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
Video: Navy doc?s wife to stand trial for murder
>> diego, where a 43-year-old navy doctor's wife faces a first degree murder trial. she's charged with brutally stabbing her husband, lieutenant commander fredrick trayers, two years ago. it marked the end of a tragic love triangle and may send his wife to prison. nbc's mike taibbi has the details.
>> reporter: jennifer trayers sometimes cried in court. emotional over the photos of her late husband, or of the crime scene. and over the testimony of the other woman, danielle rollins, who testified about her love of a married man.
>> he seemed to be eager to have a future with me.
>> reporter: on december 5th , 2010 , the chance with any future with lieutenant commander trade trayers ended. colleagues alerted plips he was missing. at his college jennifer trayers was bleeding and her husband dead. ten stab wounds in all. one early and fatal thrust directly into his heart. still, jennifer 's defense attorney said, she continued her frenzied attack, not thinking rationally.
>> i fully believe that you will vote not guilty on murder, but guilty on voluntary manslaughter .
>> reporter: but the prosecutor says it was murder, not manslaughter. and twice the maximum prison sentence , as much as 25 years, because the attack was planned.
>> the evidence will show that she waited to catch him unprepared. that she armed herself with knives.
>> reporter: and she also left a long e-mail for her husband's mistress, addressed, dear mrs. wonderful, the conclusion paraphrased by the prosecutor.
>> that the woman who had been having a relationship with doctor trayers would not have the opportunity of any future relationship with him, and that the defendant, jennifer trayers, would be the last person that dr. trayers would ever be with.
>> reporter: legalese, for, if i can't have him, nobody can. for "today," mike taibbi , nbc news, los angeles .
Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/46180501/
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Google autoriza a Motorola a demandar a Apple
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Source: http://bitacoras.com/anotaciones/google-autoriza-a-motorola-a-demandar-a-apple/25681834
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Arquette to guest on 'Cougar Town' finale
Matt Sayles / AP
David Arquette will be joining Courteney Cox on "Cougar Town" for the season finale.
By Michael O'Connell, The Hollywood Reporter
David Arquette is taking a trip to "Cougar Town."
ABC confirms to The Hollywood Reporter that the 40-year-old actor will appear alongside wife Courteney Cox (with whom he's been separated from since 2010) on the comedy's season three finale.
More from THR: Ryan Murphy's NBC comedy lands pilot order
Arquette already serves as executive producer of the series alongside Cox under their Coquette Productions banner.
According to TVLine, he'll play a hotel concierge in the season's 15th and final episode, who goes out of his way to help the cul-de-sac crew with anything and everything.
More from THR: 'Spartacus: Vengeance' Preview: 17 things to expect on season 2
"Cougar Town" just received its Feb. 14 premiere date after months of delays. It replaces the short-lived "Work It" on Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m.
Most recently, Arquette competed on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," placing fifth with partner Kym Johnson. He's previously acted alongside Cox in the "Scream" franchise and a 1996 episode of "Friends."
Are you looking forward to seeing the former pair together again on the small screen? Tell us what you think of this casting news on our Facebook page!
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Gingrich unloads on Romney, ads, in Florida speech (AP)
MOUNT DORA, Fla. ? Newt Gingrich on Thursday dramatically ramped up his attacks on Mitt Romney, saying the former Massachusetts governor is guilty of lies, desperation and hypocrisy that should make "every American angry."
Gingrich, the former House speaker, said he was infuriated by a barrage of attack ads that are blistering him on Florida TV stations ahead of Tuesday's GOP presidential primary. Most are funded by an outside organization backing Romney, but some are from Romney's own campaign. Unable to match Romney's money machine, Gingrich implored Florida Republicans to punish his chief rival for what Gingrich called callously dishonest ads.
"This is the desperate last stand of the old order," Gingrich told an outdoor crowd of more than 1,000 northwest of Orlando. "This is the kind of gall they have to think we're so stupid and we're so timid."
The nature and volume of the attack ads are similar to those that badly damaged Gingrich in Iowa a month ago.
"I think all the weight of his negative advertising and all the weight of his dishonesty has hurt us some," Gingrich said. But "I am not going to allow the moneyed interests that are buying those ads to come in here and to come into other states to misinform people and then to think we are too dumb to fight back."
Romney steered clear of his rival during a subsequent campaign appearance.
Gingrich later told reporters he decided to sharpen his criticisms after Romney's tax returns showed investments held in Cayman Island accounts, the government-backed mortgage company Freddie Mac and other entities.
"Here's a guy who owns Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae stock," Gingrich said. "He owns a Goldman Sachs subsidiary, which is foreclosing on Floridians. And on that front he decides to lie about my career? There's something about the hypocrisy that should make every American angry."
Romney has been hammering Gingrich for consulting work he performed for Freddie Mac and telling Florida voters that Gingrich was paid by a company that contributed to the state's poor housing market.
The acerbic remarks came three days after Gingrich took a much more moderate tone in a televised debate in Tampa, when Romney sharpened his own attacks. Gingrich strongly hinted he will be more aggressive in a CNN debate scheduled for Thursday night in Jacksonville.
Romney, meanwhile, toured a Jacksonville factory that is closing because of the economy before he addressed several hundred people gathered outside. He acknowledged that the live audience at Thursday's debate may be fairly raucous, a dynamic that seems to favor Gingrich and his populist, us-against-the-media and us-against-the-establishment style.
"There may be some give and take," Romney said. "That's always fun and entertaining, I know. If you all could get there, we'd love to see you all there cheering."
In his remarks, Romney criticized President Barack Obama and steered clear of Gingrich. He called Obama's administration a "Groundhog Day" presidency in which nothing gets better.
Polls suggest the Florida primary is close, coming 10 days after Gingrich beat Romney by 12 percentage points in South Carolina. Asked if he felt Florida was slipping toward Romney, Gingrich said, "I feel that it's useful for people to look at the totality of his record and ask yourself, `How can a guy who literally owns stock in a Goldman Sachs investment fund that forecloses on Floridians run the ads he's been running?'"
Goldman Sachs employees and their families contributed $367,200 to Romney's campaign through Sept. 30, his largest source of campaign contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul also were participating in Thursday's debate, the final one before the GOP presidential primary in Florida on Tuesday. But both candidates have set their sights elsewhere and have largely stayed away from the Romney-Gingrich drama.
Whoever wins Florida will score something no one has yet claimed in a tumultuous primary season: a second victory. The first three contests have been won by three different candidates. Only Paul has yet to score a win.
The hits for Romney and Gingrich were coming from many directions.
The "super" political action committees backing them have spent more than $10 million combined on ads to date in Florida, far more than their respective campaigns. The Romney-leaning Restore Our Future has spent $8.8 million in ads as of late Tuesday, bringing to $14 million the total spent on ads supporting Romney in the state. That doesn't include money already spent on radio and Internet advertising.
As of late Tuesday, the Gingrich-backing Winning Our Future had booked $1.8 million in television ads in Florida, a check made possible by a new donation from Miriam Adelson. She and her husband, Sheldon, this month gave $5 million apiece to the group, which supports Gingrich but legally must remain independent.
Santorum, meanwhile, seemed to be recognizing that he stood almost no chance of winning Florida. He and his advisers planned no advertising in the state and instead were focused on raising money and calling potential supporters in upcoming states. He all but gave up trying to woo a network of pastors and was scaling back his schedule in Florida.
Chuck Laudner, an influential adviser who helped Santorum score an upset victory in the Iowa caucuses, was returning to the Midwest to start piecing together coalitions in Missouri and Minnesota. Both states have media markets that overlap with Iowa, where Santorum proved to be the big story.
Paul, virtually absent from Florida except for appearances built around the debates, was concentrating instead on caucus states where his loyal backers can carry a louder voice.
___
Associated Press writers Charles Babington, Philip Elliott, Kasie Hunt and David Espo in Florida contributed to this report. Jack Gillum contributed from Washington.
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Sudan sells seized South Sudan crude at deep discount: sources (Reuters)
SINGAPORE (Reuters) ? Sudan has sold at least one cargo of crude seized from South Sudan at millions of dollars discount and is offering more, industry sources said, as Khartoum looks to recover oil revenue from its former civil war foe.
A bitter row has escalated between the two over the value of the transit fee landlocked South Sudan should pay for oil pumped north by pipeline through its northern neighbor and exported from Port Sudan.
South Sudan is shutting down production in protest after Khartoum blocked exports and seized some of the oil as compensation. South Sudan's President Salva Kiir accused Khartoum of having "looted" revenues amounting to roughly $815 million from crude cargoes.
The seized crude was loaded onto three tankers from January 13-20, South Sudan's justice ministry said.
Sudan sold one of those cargoes, a 600,000 barrel shipment loaded on the vessel Ratna Shradha, to a North Asian trader. The final price of the sale was unclear, but one trader said that the cargo was sold at a discount as steep as $14 a barrel. That would indicate an $8.4 million discount for the whole cargo versus the last official price charged by the South.
"This is crude from the South sold by the North at a $14 discount to the South's last selling price," a Middle East-based crude trader said.
The tanker is heading to Singapore, another source said.
The last time South Sudan sold Nile Blend cargoes, it did so at a premium of $2.50-$3.00 a barrel to the benchmark Indonesian Crude Price, traders said. This would indicate that Sudan has sold the cargo at a discount of around $11 a barrel to the Indonesian price.
Sudan has also loaded two other cargoes of seized Dar Blend crude, but it is not immediately clear if they have sold those. Khartoum had offered these cargoes last week at a discount to official South Sudan prices, traders said. One of them is headed to the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, they added.
The South last sold seven cargoes of Dar Blend at discounts between $5 and $11 a barrel to dated Brent. Sudan offered the cargoes at a discount of $15-$16, another source said.
OFFGUARD
Buyers of South Sudan oil were caught offguard when Khartoum started blocking exports in late December.
In addition to the three, at least seven tankers are still waiting at the port to lift December and January cargoes, raking up demurrage costs of $20,000-$22,000 per day, traders and shipbrokers said. Buyers include PetroChina, Glencore, Vitol, Trafigura and Arcadia, they said.
"There was no reason given. They just held back sailing," a second trader with a Western firm said, adding that demurrage costs and the uncertainty were a "nightmare."
South Sudan pledged to fully shut its output of 275,000 barrels per day (bpd) in two weeks, a move that could also cut off supplies to equity holders China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), Malaysia's Petronas and India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp.
A third trader said buyers could declare force majeure if they still cannot lift the oil 30 days from the date of loading.
"Force majeure is the last resort if the cargo has not been loaded 30 days after the scheduled loading date. As long as the ship has not loaded the oil," the trader said.
"It will be complicated to declare force majeure if the oil is already on board. How are you going to discharge the oil back into the shore tanks?"
South Sudan became independent in July under a 2005 peace agreement with Khartoum that ended decades of civil war but both sides have failed to agree how to untangle their oil industries.
(Additional reporting by Yaw Yan Chong and Osamu Tsukimori in TOKYO Editing by Manash Goswami and Simon Webb)
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Japan's first trade deficit since 1980 raises debt doubts (Reuters)
TOKYO (Reuters) ? Japan's first annual trade deficit in more than 30 years calls into question how much longer the country can rely on exports to help finance a huge public debt without having to turn to fickle foreign investors.
The aftermath of the March earthquake raised fuel import costs while slowing global growth and the yen's strength hit exports, data released on Wednesday showed, swinging the 2011 trade balance into deficit.
Few analysts expect Japan to immediately run a deficit in the current account, which includes trade and returns on the country's huge portfolio of investments abroad. A steady inflow of profits and capital gains from overseas still outweighs the trade deficit.
But the trade figures underscore a broader trend of Japan's declining global competitive edge and a rapidly ageing population, compounding the immediate problem of increased reliance on fuel imports due to the loss of nuclear power.
Only four of the country's 54 nuclear power reactors are running due to public safety fears following the March disaster.
"What it means is that the time when Japan runs out of savings -- 'Sayonara net creditor country' -- that point is coming closer," said Jesper Koll, head of equities research at JPMorgan in Japan.
"It means Japan becomes dependent on global savings to fund its deficit and either the currency weakens or interest rates rise."
That prospect could give added impetus to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's push to double Japan's 5 percent sales tax in two stages by October 2015 to fund the bulging social security costs of a fast-ageing society.
The biggest opposition party, although agreeing with the need for a higher levy, is threatening to block legislation in parliament's upper house in hopes of forcing a general election.
Japan logged a trade deficit of 2.49 trillion yen ($32 billion) for 2011, Ministry of Finance data showed, the first annual deficit since 1980, after the economy was hit by the shock of rising oil prices.
Were Japan to run a current account deficit, it would spell trouble because it would mean the country cannot finance its huge public debt -- already twice the size of its $5 trillion economy -- without overseas funds.
Japanese investors currently hold about 95 percent of Japan's government bonds, which lends some stability to an otherwise unsustainable debt burden.
Domestic buyers are less likely to dump debt at the first whiff of economic trouble, unlike foreign investors, as Europe's debt crisis has shown.
The trade data helped send the yen to a one-month low against the dollar and the euro on Wednesday.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Graphic on 2011 trade data http://link.reuters.com/mev26s
Dec trade balance http://link.reuters.com/vyq65s
Exports by destination http://link.reuters.com/far65s
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"HOLLOWING OUT," AGEING POPULATION
Total exports shrank 2.7 percent last year while imports surged 12.0 percent, reflecting reduced earnings from goods and services and higher spending on crude and fuel oil. Annual imports of liquefied natural gas hit a record high.
In a sign of the continuing pain from slowing global growth, exports fell 8.0 percent in December from a year earlier, roughly matching a median market forecast for a 7.9 percent drop, due partly to weak shipments of electronics parts.
Imports rose 8.1 percent in December from a year earlier, in line with a 8.0 percent annual gain expected, bringing the trade balance to a deficit of 205.1 billion yen, against 139.7 billion yen expected. It marked the third straight month of deficits.
Japan managed to sustain annual trade surpluses through the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the post-Lehman Brothers global recession that started in late 2008, which makes the 2011 dip into deficit all the more dramatic.
A generation ago, Japan was the world's export juggernaut, churning out a stream of innovative products from the likes of Sony and Toyota.
Much like China today, Japan's bulging trade surplus became a source of friction with the United States and other advanced economies, who pressed Tokyo to allow the yen to rise more rapidly in order to reduce the imbalance.
A 1985 agreement between Japan, the United States and Europe's big economies -- known as the Plaza Accord after the New York hotel where it was signed -- pushed the yen higher against the U.S. dollar.
Many economists argue that sowed the seeds of Japan's current debt woes. After the Plaza Accord, Japan's economy weakened and its central bank slashed interest rates, which contributed to a credit boom that eventually spawned a financial crisis and led to two decades of economic stagnation.
Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said on Tuesday he did not expect trade deficits to become a pattern, and did not foresee the country's current account balance tipping into the red in the near future.
But Japan's days of logging huge trade surpluses may be over as it relies more on fuel imports and manufacturers move production offshore to cope with rising costs and a strong yen, a trend that may weaken the Japanese currency longer term.
A fast-ageing population also means a growing number of elderly Japanese will be running down their savings.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the government wants to closely watch the trend of exports and imports.
"There are worries that the yen's strength is driving Japanese industry to go abroad," said Fujimura. "We have to create new industries ... implement comprehensive steps to boost growth. It is important to secure employment within the nation."
($1=77.71 yen)
(Additional writing by Leika Kihara; Editing by Linda Sieg and Emily Kaiser)
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Burn baby burn: HP pays out $425,000 to prevent a disco (laptop) inferno
Continue reading Burn baby burn: HP pays out $425,000 to prevent a disco (laptop) inferno
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Sacramento Lawyer Responsible for California Gaming Tribes ...
Sacramento lawyer Howard Dickstein, 67, earned his riches representing California Indian tribes?cutting deals with governors and paving the way for the state?s $7 billion-a-year Indian casino industry, reported the Sacramento Bee.
But recently the man?who helped defend about 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement against charges stemming from the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation?has come under the microscope for amassing great wealth at the expense of his clients.
Dickstein negotiated the compacts for three of the region?s top casinos: Jackson Rancheria Casino & Hotel, Cache Creek Casino Resort and Thunder Valley Casino Resort. Contract terms required the immensely successful Thunder Valley to give 2 percent of its share to Dickstein?s firm until 2009?funneling about $23 million Dickstein?s way. But the Sacramento Bee reports that legal experts and rival tribal lawyers say the arrangement is unusual. Dickstein defends every dollar. ?A tribe?s financial relationship with me is a phenomenal net benefit to the tribe,? he said.
Now two banned members of the United Auburn Indian Community, which owns Thunder Valley, are suing Dickstein for duping the tribe into paying $26 million in fees over six years.
Allegations against Dickstein are nothing new. The Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians (now known as the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation), owner of Cache Creek, sued Dickstein and his two business partners for effectively taking control of the tribe and profiting through suspicious land deals, meanwhile pulling in excessive fees and traveling on a jet funded by the tribe. The suit claims Dickstein?s firm netted $18 million (one-half of 1 percent of Cache Creek?s profits) from 1993 and 2006, when he was terminated.
Read more about the Villanova University School of Law-trained lawyer and former Malaysia-based law professor whose path to riches has garnered him criticism, backlash and lawsuits on the Sacramento?Bee.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Sen. Rand Paul stopped by Tenn. airport security
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks about being stopped by security at the airport in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. A scanner set off an alarm and targeted his knee, although the senator said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint. Paul told The Associated Press that he asked for another scan but refused to submit to a pat down by airport security. He said he was "detained" at a small cubicle and couldn't make his flight to Washington. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks about being stopped by security at the airport in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. A scanner set off an alarm and targeted his knee, although the senator said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint. Paul told The Associated Press that he asked for another scan but refused to submit to a pat down by airport security. He said he was "detained" at a small cubicle and couldn't make his flight to Washington. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., makes a call to book another flight after being stopped by security at the airport in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. A scanner set off an alarm and targeted his knee, although the senator said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint. Paul told The Associated Press that he asked for another scan but refused to submit to a pat down by airport security. He said he was "detained" at a small cubicle and couldn't make his flight to Washington. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)
FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2011 file photo, Sen. Rand Paul addresses a town hall meeting in Hartford, Ky. Paul says he was stopped briefly by security at the Nashville airport, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, when a scanner found an "anomaly" on his knee. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2012 file photo, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., son of Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, campaigns for his father at Windham High School in Windham, N.H. Paul says he was stopped briefly by security at the Nashville airport, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, when a scanner found an "anomaly" on his knee. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and a frequent critic of the Transportation Security Administration, was stopped by security at the Nashville airport Monday when a scanner set off an alarm and Paul declined to allow a security officer to subsequently pat him down. The White House said airport security acted appropriately.
Police escorted Paul away, but he was allowed to board a later flight. The security scanner identified an issue with the senator's knee, although Paul said he has no screws or medical hardware around the joint.
Paul, who frequently uses the airport about an hour from his home in Bowling Green, Ky., told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he asked for another scan but refused to submit to a pat down by airport security.
Paul said he was "detained" at a small cubicle and couldn't make his flight to Washington for a Senate vote scheduled later in the day.
White House spokesman Jay Carney did not confirm that the incident involved Paul, but said the passenger in question was never detained. He defended the TSA.
"Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures, are denied access to the secure gate area," Carney said. "I think it is absolutely essential that we take necessary actions to ensure that air travel is safe and I believe that is what TSA is tasked with doing."
Paul said the situation reflects his long-standing concern that the TSA shouldn't be "spending so much time with people who wouldn't attack us."
TSA spokesman Greg Soule confirmed there was an incident but didn't identify the passenger as Paul.
"When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport," Soule said in a written statement. "Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling."
Carney said an alarm was triggered during routine screening, but the passenger refused to continue with the screening process to resolve the issue. Local police escorted Paul out of the screening area, he said.
Paul went through a millimeter wave machine that uses a generic outline of a body for all passengers, according to a TSA official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss agency screening procedures. When an alarm goes off, TSA officers target the area of the body that triggered the alarm and pat down the passenger.
Paul's father, Ron Paul, used his son's experience to promote his "Plan to Restore America," which would cut $1 trillion of federal spending in a year and eliminate the TSA.
"The police state in this country is growing out of control. One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities," Ron Paul said in a statement issued by his presidential campaign. "The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe."
Rand Paul told reporters at the airport that he had no idea why his knee raised concerns with TSA. He said he showed his knee to the security agents and doesn't have any medical hardware or issues in the knee.
"There is no problem. It was just a problem with their machine. But this is getting more frequent, and because everybody has to have a pat down it's a problem," Paul said.
Paul said he was in Denver two days ago and allowed to walk through the screener again and avoided the pat down.
He said he didn't want special treatment from TSA because he's a senator. "I think we need to treat everybody with dignity."
The TSA said Paul was allowed to board another flight after a different screening.
In a November Senate hearing, Paul asked TSA Administrator John Pistole to change the policy so that adults could go through the machines a second time when an alarm is triggered on the first attempt.
"Let us go back through the machine rather than get a pat-down. You'll get rid of a lot of the anger and animosity towards the TSA and towards what you're doing, and give us a little more dignity when we travel," Paul said. "Just let us go back through the screener again ? you know, I mean, people don't want to have a pat-down."
Paul is a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The committee does not regulate TSA, but holds hearings about airport security.
___
Schelzig contributed to this story from Nashville. Writer Roger Alford contributed from Frankfort, Ky.
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Groundbreaking jazz manager John Levy dies at 99 (AP)
ALTADENA, California ? John Levy, the first prominent African-American personal manager in the jazz or pop music field, whose clients included Nancy Wilson and Ramsey Lewis, has died at age 99.
Devra Hall Levy posted on his website that her husband died Friday in his sleep at his home in Altadena, California, less than three months before his 100th birthday.
An accomplished bassist, the New Orleans-born Levy performed with such jazz greats as Stuff Smith, Billie Holiday, Erroll Garner and Billy Taylor in the 1940s before joining pianist George Shearing's original quintet. In the early 1950s, he became Shearing's full-time manager and later went on to form his own management agency, John Levy Enterprises Inc.
Levy's client roster over the years included more than 85 artists, including Wilson, Lewis, Nat and Cannonball Adderley, Betty Carter, Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock, Shirley Horn, Freddie Hubbard, Ahmad Jamal and Abbey Lincoln as well as comedian Arsenio Hall.
In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts recognized Levy as a Jazz Master, the nation's highest jazz honor.
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Monday, January 23, 2012
Sudan seized oil worth $815 million, South Sudan says (Reuters)
JUBA (Reuters) ? South Sudan said Monday it started shutting down oil production and accused Sudan of seizing $815 million worth of crude, escalating an increasingly bitter row over oil revenues between the former civil war foes.
South Sudan seceded last July under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between north and south, but the two have remained locked in a dispute over how to untangle their oil industries.
The new landlocked nation needs to use a northern pipeline and the port of Port Sudan to export its crude but has failed to reach an agreement with Khartoum over a transit fee, prompting Sudan to start seizing oil as compensation.
South Sudan started shutting down oil output Sunday and expected to finish the process within two weeks, government spokesman Barnaba Marial Benjamin told Reuters by phone.
"The task force has been formed for the shutdown and they are already in the fields carrying out the instructions," he said, listing the Thar Jath field in Unity state as one field where the shutdown had begun.
Officials said in November South Sudan was producing about 350,000 barrels of oil per day.
China is the biggest buyer of oil from the two countries, some 12.99 million barrels last year. That amounted to five percent of last year's crude imports by China, which is also the top investor in South Sudan's oilfields.
South Sudan's President Salva Kiir accused Khartoum of having "looted" revenues amounting to roughly $815 million and building a tie-in pipeline to divert 120,000 barrels per day of southern production flowing through the north.
"Given our history with the administration of (Sudan's) President Bashir, we realize that, unfortunately, we must prepare for a disruption of revenue that could last many months," Kiir told parliament in Juba.
The justice ministry in South Sudan's capital Juba published a list of three vessels it said had been forced to load southern oil at Port Sudan on orders from Khartoum.
The MT Sea Sky loaded 605,784 barrels on January 13/14, the MT Al Nouf around 750,000 barrels on January 16/17 and the MT Ratna Shradha another 600,000 barrels on Jan 19/20, the ministry said.
Officials in Khartoum could not immediately be reached for comment. Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti told Reuters last week that Khartoum was entitled to seize oil to compensate for transit fees.
South Sudanese officials have said they are planning to build a new pipeline to export oil through East Africa, but analysts have expressed skepticism because of the difficulty of carrying out such a project.
"The financial, technical, and political obstacles to the construction of an alternative pipeline are enormous," Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, an analyst at Control Risks, said.
"I have no doubt both Sudanese governments are under a lot of international pressure to reach an agreement, because the risks of conflict are real at this stage," Gallopin said.
NO END TO ROW
The two countries are expected to resume oil talks soon, sponsored by the African Union in Addis Ababa, after negotiations were suspended last week.
Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said this month Khartoum would impose a fee since Juba had not paid anything for using northern export facilities since independence.
Khartoum is demanding $1 billion for fees since July and $36 a barrel as a transit fee, officials have said.
South Sudan's Kiir said his government was planning to reduce its dependence on oil revenues, which make up 98 percent of state income.
"We will need to find other sources of funding. In doing so I have instructed the ministry of finance to initiate contingency plans for revenue collection and allocation," he said.
Sudan's civil war devastated much of the south, leaving the new nation one of the least developed in the world.
The row with Sudan has stirred anger among some in South Sudan, where independence is often framed as the culmination of a long struggle against political and economic marginalization.
Underscoring those sentiments, around one thousand people marched to parliament Monday to support the government's decision to shut down oil production.
The crowd, mostly university students, cheered, waved their fists in the air and carried placards reading: "Looting our oil is a crime" and "We call on the international community to help the infant country."
(Reporting by Hereward Holland and Alexander Dziadosz; Writing by Ulf Laessing and Alexander Dziadosz, editing by Jane Baird and Jason Neely)
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Tecnalia is working in Ecuador to improve the recovery of the country's historical heritage
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 23-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Irati Kortabitarte
i.kortabitarte@elhuyar.com
34-943-363-040
Elhuyar Fundazioa
This release is available in Spanish.
Tecnalia is leading a project in the south of Ecuador on the conservation and enhancement of its cultural heritage as the backbone in the improvement in the living conditions of the local population, and in economic development.
This initiative sets out to increase the quality of life of the people who inhabit the historical centres of the southern towns of Loja and Zaruma that are subjected to the constant threat of floods and landslides. These natural risks pose an added danger to the integrity of their cultural heritage, which is hampering the economic impetus of this area through tourism and other economic activities related to the promotion of culture.
Loja and Zaruma are located in the provinces of Loja and El Oro. The main structural feature of the latter is the Pias-Portovelo fault system. So landslides in part of the city's topsoil are common. As far as Loja is concerned, 51% of its surface is regarded as being affected by risks, ranging from moderate to very high, which means that 35% of its buildings are in jeopardy. Faced with this situation, Tecnalia has embarked on a project designed to set up a tool for managing the risks in 22 heritage cities in Ecuador.
Today, Ecuador lacks sufficient capacity to undertake a plan to manage the risks faced by its historical heritage that would make it possible to mitigate the action that these natural and human-induced risks pose for the cultural heritage of its historical cities and for the people that inhabit them.
During the development of the project the necessary infrastructure is going to be built, adapted and equipped for the preparation and theoretical and technical training of the local personnel, thus ensuring the long-term viability and sustainability of the project.
The total investment in the project amounts to 500,000 euros, half of which is being provided by the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community (region) through Elankidetza, the Basque Agency for Co-operation and Development. The rest of the budget is being funded by local Ecuadorian partners, by the United Nations Programme for Development, and by Tecnalia itself.
The initiative, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year, is focussing on three lines of work: the strengthening of the national and municipal institutions for managing the risks facing the cultural heritage and the citizens in the historical centres; awareness building among the inhabitants of Loja and Zaruma about the care, respect and preservation of their historical and cultural heritage; and the reinforcing of the structural safety of the buildings in the two cities against the natural risks they have to contend with.
There are also plans to extend the project to the 22 municipalities that make up the Network of Historical Cities of Ecuador.
Technical personnel from Tecnalia, the INPC, and the Municipalities of Loja and Zaruma will be participating directly in the tasks of the project, together with the inhabitants of the buildings scheduled to be structurally reinforced and the population of the two cities. Four million people stand to benefit following the extending of the project to the 22 municipalities.
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 23-Jan-2012[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Irati Kortabitarte
i.kortabitarte@elhuyar.com
34-943-363-040
Elhuyar Fundazioa
This release is available in Spanish.
Tecnalia is leading a project in the south of Ecuador on the conservation and enhancement of its cultural heritage as the backbone in the improvement in the living conditions of the local population, and in economic development.
This initiative sets out to increase the quality of life of the people who inhabit the historical centres of the southern towns of Loja and Zaruma that are subjected to the constant threat of floods and landslides. These natural risks pose an added danger to the integrity of their cultural heritage, which is hampering the economic impetus of this area through tourism and other economic activities related to the promotion of culture.
Loja and Zaruma are located in the provinces of Loja and El Oro. The main structural feature of the latter is the Pias-Portovelo fault system. So landslides in part of the city's topsoil are common. As far as Loja is concerned, 51% of its surface is regarded as being affected by risks, ranging from moderate to very high, which means that 35% of its buildings are in jeopardy. Faced with this situation, Tecnalia has embarked on a project designed to set up a tool for managing the risks in 22 heritage cities in Ecuador.
Today, Ecuador lacks sufficient capacity to undertake a plan to manage the risks faced by its historical heritage that would make it possible to mitigate the action that these natural and human-induced risks pose for the cultural heritage of its historical cities and for the people that inhabit them.
During the development of the project the necessary infrastructure is going to be built, adapted and equipped for the preparation and theoretical and technical training of the local personnel, thus ensuring the long-term viability and sustainability of the project.
The total investment in the project amounts to 500,000 euros, half of which is being provided by the Government of the Basque Autonomous Community (region) through Elankidetza, the Basque Agency for Co-operation and Development. The rest of the budget is being funded by local Ecuadorian partners, by the United Nations Programme for Development, and by Tecnalia itself.
The initiative, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year, is focussing on three lines of work: the strengthening of the national and municipal institutions for managing the risks facing the cultural heritage and the citizens in the historical centres; awareness building among the inhabitants of Loja and Zaruma about the care, respect and preservation of their historical and cultural heritage; and the reinforcing of the structural safety of the buildings in the two cities against the natural risks they have to contend with.
There are also plans to extend the project to the 22 municipalities that make up the Network of Historical Cities of Ecuador.
Technical personnel from Tecnalia, the INPC, and the Municipalities of Loja and Zaruma will be participating directly in the tasks of the project, together with the inhabitants of the buildings scheduled to be structurally reinforced and the population of the two cities. Four million people stand to benefit following the extending of the project to the 22 municipalities.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/ef-tiw012312.php
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Damien Echols discusses life "West of Memphis" (Reuters)
PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) ? Damien Echols was just a teenager when he and his two friends were tried and convicted of the murder of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, a case that became known as the West Memphis Three.
Echols, along with fellow teens Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, are thought by some to be innocent of the crime and over the years, several documentaries have been made about them. Support from "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson and other celebrities has helped raise awareness of their case.
Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were released from prison last August in a legal maneuver known as an "Alford Plea," whereby the men plead guilty in their own best interest while asserting innocence.
Now their case is the subject of a documentary, "West of Memphis," produced by Jackson, his wife Fran Walsh, along with Echols and his wife, Lorri Davis. The movie looks at their case, interviews them in jail and tracks them after leaving prison.
Over the weekend at the Sundance Film Festival for the world premiere of the film, Echols, now 37-years-old, sat down with Reuters to talk about the documentary, his old life on death row and what his newfound freedom has been like.
Q: When Peter Jackson began officially funding your defense in 2006, did you secretly wish this big-time filmmaker would make a documentary to bring more attention to the case?
A: "I didn't really think of that. One, I was too busy just trying to survive day to day in the environment that I was in. Also we had a lot of high-profile supporters and friends that have helped us over the years who chose to publicly stay behind the scenes. I thought perhaps that would have been the same in this case, but Peter and Fran both were extremely hands on. It's not like they just threw money at it and walked off. They were involved in every single step of the process from forensic testing to hiring investigators to come in and talk to the witnesses. So that's really all I was thinking about at the time. The first priority for us, and for them, was always the case. The film is the icing on the cake."
Q: In the documentary, you say your case is nothing out of the ordinary. It happens all the time. Why do you think the media spotlight shined on you three?
A: "I think it was because of the outrageousness of the claims the prosecution made in the beginning. They brought a lot of attention on the case with all the claims of satanic cults and orgies and all this sort of thing. That made people want to see what was going on in the case. In that way, their own strategy sort of backfired on them in the end."
Q: You were on death row and in solitary confinement, with only one hour out per day. How did that impact the filming?
A: "Whenever (director) Amy (Berg) came in, they told her she had one hour to do her interview. And they stood there and timed her. And as soon as an hour was up, they ran her out."
Q: And only one hour out a day out of solitary confinement?
A: "Well they say you get one hour out, but basically I was in a super maximum security prison. So what that means is for the hour out, they take you out of your cell and put you in another cell. So I wasn't outside at all in somewhere between 8 to 10 years."
Q: Any health issues as a result of that ?
A: "I'm slowly recovering due to better nutrition now, being able to get proper exercise and fresh air and things like that. But one of the things that was really damaged was my eyesight due to the fact of not having any natural light and not being able to see anything at a distance. It caused tremendous damage to my eyes."
Q: Are you getting any care now?
A: "Since I've been out we've been seeing doctors and dentists and trying to get me back to semi-normal. I had a lot of nerve damage in my teeth just from being beaten by prison guards. There's almost no dental care in prison. They don't do crowns or root canals or anything like that. If you're in pain, either you live in pain or you let 'em pull your teeth out."
Q: How do you move on? Is it even possible?
A: "I would like to do things, accomplish things that stand on their own merits. I don't mind having to talk about this stuff now. But at the same time I don't always want to be known for the rest of my life, as when my name comes up it being synonymous with, 'oh yeah, that's that guy who used to be on death row.' I want to do things in the art world and in the literary world that stand on their own merits, that aren't there just because of the freak show appeal."
Q: You've been out of jail for four months, and you've already taken a trip to Australia to visit Peter and Fran. Now you're at a film festival surrounded by snow!
A: "I haven't had it in almost 20 years now. It's one of the things that I absolutely missed the most. When I was sitting in that prison cell, I would think about how great it would be to see snow again. And now it finally happened."
Q: What are your plans for the future as husband and wife?
A: "Just to keep living, moving forward. Try to continue to grow as people and as a couple. And try to do whatever we can to bring more magic into our lives."
(Reporting By Zorianna Kit; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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