view in one page and print
Caminho das Índias (Portuguese for Way to the Indias) is a popular Brazilian television soap opera, produced by Rede Globo and first broadcast on the network on January 19, 2009. It currently ranks within the top of the most watched shows in the Brazilian television. Caminho das Índias storylines examine beliefs and values that differentiate the Eastern and Western world, the telenovela brings to the screen a story of contrasts. In the central plot, a forbidden love between two Indians of very different origins, Maya and Bahuan.
The serial is based on the theme of the popular India soap opera, saas-bahu. All characters are Brazilians, but with Indian names, dress, and manners, and occasional Hindi words.
Setting is done in Rajasthan, India; in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Starring Juliana Paes as Maya, the main protagonist; Márcio Garcia and Rodrigo Lombardi as Bahuan and Raj respectively, the main male protagonists; and Letícia Sabatella as Yvone, the main antagonist.
The telenovela is originally screened as six one-hour chapters per week, from Monday to Saturday. It is one of the Brazil's highest-rated programmes, often appearing at the top of the daily's ratings released by the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics.
_____________________________________________________________________________
(http://www.clicrbs.com.br/blog/fotos/141986post_foto.jpg)
_____________________________________
Terça-feira, 24/02/2009
Quem é a sogra mais implicante?
Elenco escolhe entre Kochi, Indira e Laksmi
http://caminhodasindias.globo.com/Novela/Caminhodasindias/Bastidores/0,,AA1696631-16543,00.html
_____________________________
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indian-soap-sizzles-on-Brazilian-TV/articleshow/4206656.cms
Indian soap sizzles on Brazilian TV
1 Mar 2009, 0514 hrs IST, Saira Kurup, TNN
NEW DELHI: A television soap about saas-bahu rivalry and forbidden love between a Dalit boy and upper-caste girl is topping TV ratings - not in India, but in distant Brazil.
The success of ‘Caminho das Indias’, which roughly translates as ‘passage to India’, shows that it's not just 'Slumdog Millionaire' that is successfully showcasing an Indian story abroad.
The actors are all Brazilian, but the characters manifestly Indian, wearing saris, churidar-kurtas and ghagra-cholis . They speak Portuguese but use Hindi terms like namaste , firangi , chai and chalta hai . Saas-bahu tensions sizzle on Brazilian TV sets, as well as Indian customs such as touching the feet of elders.
Paulo Antonio Pinto, Brazil's consul-general in Mumbai, says, "We don't feel we are watching a very different culture because Brazil also has a multicultural society. I feel the soap shows what's common between Brazil and India, not what's different."
Television soaps are immensely popular in South America's biggest country and often spark lifestyle and fashion trends. 'Caminho das Indias' is now seen to be popularizing the idea of ‘how to be an Indian’ with Brazilians learning to wear saris, bindis and bangles and do the bhangra .
___________________________________________________________________________
Additional link:
Caminho das Índias in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caminho_das_%C3%8Dndias
Blog discussing the serial
http://backpackingninja.blogspot.com/2009/02/caminho-das-india.html
Official website
http://caminhodasindias.globo.com/
Caminho das Índias on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25jxOA9cAME&feature=related
_______________________________________________________________________
view in one page and print
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123487951033799545.html
FEBRUARY 18, 2009, 4:07 P.M. ET
Obama Signs Stimulus Into Law
By LAURA MECKLER
Getty Images
President Obama on Tuesday signed the economic-stimulus bill into law, saying it will put "Americans to work doing the work that
The signing culminated a full White House press to pass the legislation, one of the largest economic rescue programs since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. It was a remarkably speedy achievement, enacted into law less than a month after Mr. Obama took office.
He and the nearly 1,100-page bill traveled from
The president spoke to audience of 250 business people and community leaders involved in clean energy. The speech was largely upbeat, with less emphasis on the nation's economic troubles and more focus on the good things ahead. "We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time," he said.
Getting to $787 Billion
What's in the stimulus bill? Click below to see a sortable chart.
Mr. Obama touted the measure's investments in health care, infrastructure, energy, education and, most importantly, job creation, as well as a variety of tax cuts. And rather than dwell on the minimal Republican support it attracted in Congress, the president emphasized support from interest groups including business and labor, as well as from mayors and governors of both parties.
"I have every confidence that if we are willing to continue doing the critical work that must be done – by each of us, by all of us – then we will leave this struggling economy behind us, and come out on the other side, more prosperous as a people," the president said.
Congressional Republicans, who were largely united in their opposition to the bill, said they were disappointed by the final outcome. "The flawed bill the president will sign today is a missed opportunity, one for which our children and grandchildren will pay a hefty price," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) said in a statement.
With this legislative achievement behind him, the task ahead for the young Obama administration is even tougher: making sure that this remarkable investment of tax dollars works to help turn around the economy and put Americans back to work.
Backers predict the package will save or create 3.5 million jobs. About $282 billion is devoted to tax cuts, including breaks for individuals and businesses. The spending includes, among other things, expanded unemployment benefits, food stamps, health care subsidies for those laid off and aid to states. And it includes spending for construction of highways and bridges, school renovations and incentives for health care facilities to replace paper records with electronic systems.
The president also promised that his administration would provide "unprecedented … transparency and accountability." The White House put up a new Web site, www.recovery.gov, aimed at letting people to track where the money is spent. The White House also distributed information showing projected job growth by state and congressional district.
The White House chose the
The president has made clear that the stimulus package is just the first step toward economic recovery. On Wednesday, he plans to announce a $50 billion housing plan aimed at curbing foreclosures. "We must stem the spread of foreclosures and falling home values for all Americans, and do everything we can to help responsible homeowners stay in their homes, something I'll talk more about tomorrow," Mr. Obama said.
The administration also is pushing for legislation to overhaul the financial regulatory system that many believe failed to prevent many of the problems underlying the economic collapse. And the Treasury Department has put forward an outline of its plan to rescue the financial sector, using $350 billion already approved by Congress.
In addition, the administration is not ruling out a second stimulus package, though there are no plans to request one now, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
"I think the president is going to do what's necessary to grow this economy. But there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package at the moment. I wouldn't foreclose it, but I wouldn't say… we're readily making plans to do so."
Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com
view in one page and print
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/02/02/mf.economic.crisis.history/index.html
Economy tanked over cows, horses and whales
By Greg Sabin
(MENTAL FLOSS) -- When we think of economic crises in America, two periods come to mind -- the Great Depression and whatever it is we're in the middle of right now. But the U.S. stock market has crashed more times than we'd like to admit. Historically, our economy has been brought to its knees by everything from greedy bankers to horse illnesses.
| So let's take a deep breath and remember that panics are just part of the American way of life. 1. The Panic of 1873: America stops horsing around During the late 19th century, the American economy relied on horses the way it depends on gas today. Horses unloaded cargo from ports, transported goods from city to city, worked the farms, supported the army, and served as the emergency vehicles of choice. Without them, the American workforce would have ground to a halt. And that's exactly what happened in 1872, when an estimated 99 percent of all horses in America contracted equine influenza. The highly contagious strain started in Canada and spread through New England to the South in a matter of months, leaving horses across the country too weak to stand and coughing uncontrollably. |
| Horses, cows, whales and a failed copper scheme caused economic panics earlier in U.S. history. | Street buggies stopped running, paralyzing commerce in the cities. Railroads were stymied because trains run on coal -- coal that was hauled out of mines by horses. And as the horse flu spread, U.S. military troops had to go into battle on foot (they were fighting Apache Indians at the time). |
More tragically, a fire in Boston raged for three days because there were no horses to carry water. The flames destroyed more than 700 buildings, causing an estimated $73.5 million in damages and killing at least 20 people.
The "Great Epizootic," as it was called, spiraled out of control in less than a year. At the height of the panic, as many as 20,000 businesses failed, a third of all railroads went bankrupt, and unemployment spiked to almost 15 percent. The economy took nearly a decade to recover. Ironically, nearly all of the horses recuperated by the following spring.
2. The Winter of 1886: When the cows don't come home
During the second half of the 19th century, cattle ranches in the American West were thriving. From the Montana grasslands to the Texas prairie, ranches were attracting investors back East and across the pond in Europe. But by 1886, things were getting dicey. Overgrazing, coupled with a hot and dry summer, had left the plains almost bare.
Then came the snow. Known as the "Winter of Death," the following season saw one of the worst cold spells in recorded history. More than half the cattle in the West froze to death, unable to move in the thick snow.
Ghoulish firsthand accounts describe the bodies of dead cows stretching for miles across the horizon. When the spring thaw and floods came, thousands of bloated corpses floated into the streams and rivers. Some ranchers quit the business entirely and didn't even bother to round up their surviving cattle. Mental Floss: Bold business scams that failed miserably
By the end of 1887, the disaster had wiped out more than half of the United States' western cattle and debilitated the national economy. Most cattle investors went bankrupt, and thousands of cowboys were left unemployed.
But more than anything, the winter of 1886 put an end to all those turn-of-the-century, idyllic fantasies of open-range ranching in the Wild West.
3. The Panic of 1907: Captains of industry to the rescue!
The Panic of 1907 started the way many panics do, with a greedy capitalist. Multimillionaire Augustus Heinze, who had made his fortune mining in Montana, believed he had enough control over the copper industry to corner the market.
With the help of several major banks, he concocted a scheme to buy up all the shares of United Copper. But Heinze had overestimated his prowess, and the scheme failed, bringing down Heinze, United Copper, the banks, and many, many stockholders. Mental Floss: Who is Ponzi and what was his scheme?
The debacle sent ripples of anxiety throughout the market, and investors started pulling their money out of banks altogether. After one of New York City's biggest trusts went under, panic ensued, and the stock market collapsed.
At the time, there were no central banks in place, so the federal government had no means of bailing out businesses or injecting cash into the economy. It just stood by, idly waiting for a hero to save the day. Amazingly, one did.
James Pierpont Morgan, banker extraordinaire, rescued the American economy. He propped up many of the failing banks in New York by twisting the arms of other financiers, and he assuaged investors' fears by backing up the market with his own vast cash reserves. Before long, Wall Street was on the mend.
The government also learned its lesson. With the panic resolved, it created the Federal Reserve, ensuring that it could buttress the economy during hard times. Since then, the government has taken a more active role in financial matters and relied less on the kindness of robber barons.
4. Whale of a Crisis: The collapse of America's first oil industry
During the early 19th century, America was one of the top oil-producing countries in the world. But it wasn't petroleum the nation was exporting; it was whale oil. By the mid-1800s, the high-risk, high-profit business was the fifth-largest industry in the United States. Mental Floss: 6 things you probably don't know about oil
At its height, the American whaling industry produced more than 10 million gallons of oil a year and sold it for $1.77 a gallon (about $35 per gallon today). Better still, an American fleet of 1,000 ships had exclusive access to the North Atlantic territories, which ensured profits.
What could have stopped such a juggernaut of an industry? For one thing, other sources of oil. In 1846, Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner developed a technique for distilling kerosene from petroleum, and within a few decades, kerosene had replaced whale oil as the most popular fuel for lamps.
Another reason for the decline was that the whales were dying off. The enthusiastic slaughter throughout the 1800s drove some whale species to extinction and put others on the brink. With so few left to hunt, the cost of whaling became prohibitively expensive.
The final blow to whalers came during the harsh winter of 1871, when the North Atlantic ice trapped and crushed the bulk of the American fleet.
Although American consumers didn't suffer as the country switched from whale oil to petroleum, coastal towns in New England and the Mid-Atlantic languished, and shipbuilders and fishermen found themselves out of work. By the time of the Civil War, whaling ships had become so worthless that Union soldiers loaded a fleet of them with stones and sank them into Charleston harbor. The hope was to blockade the South from the port, but when the plan didn't work, the ships were no great loss. America's first oil industry had been tapped out.
For more mental_floss articles, visit mentalfloss.com
Entire contents of this article copyright, Mental Floss LLC. All rights reserved.
view in one page and print
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/worldbusiness/22japan.html?_r=1&em
Torin Boyd/Polaris, for The New York Times
Naoko Masaki worries about the future after her husband retires. “We must be ready to fend for ourselves,” she says
By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: February 21, 2009
TOKYO — As recession-wary Americans adapt to a new frugality, Japan offers a peek at how thrift can take lasting hold of a consumer society, to disastrous effect.
Multimedia
The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.
Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.
The Takigasaki family in the Tokyo suburb of Nakano goes further to save a yen or two. Although the family has a comfortable nest egg, Hiroko Takigasaki carefully rations her vegetables. When she goes through too many in a given week, she reverts to her cost-saving standby: cabbage stew.
“You can make almost anything with some cabbage, and perhaps some potato,” says Mrs. Takigasaki, 49, who works part time at a home for people with disabilities.
Her husband has a well-paying job with the electronics giant Fujitsu, but “I don’t know when the ax will drop,” she says. “Really, we need to save much, much more.”
Japan eventually pulled itself out of the Lost Decade of the 1990s, thanks in part to a boom in exports to the United States and China. But even as the economy expanded, shell-shocked consumers refused to spend. Between 2001 and 2007, per-capita consumer spending rose only 0.2 percent.
Now, as exports dry up amid a worldwide collapse in demand, Japan’s economy is in free-fall because it cannot rely on domestic consumption to pick up the slack.
In the last three months of 2008, Japan’s economy shrank at an annualized rate of 12.7 percent, the sharpest decline since the oil shocks of the 1970s.
“Japan is so dependent on exports that when overseas markets slow down, Japan’s economy teeters on collapse,” said Hideo Kumano, an economist at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. “On the surface, Japan looked like it had recovered from its Lost Decade of the 1990s. But Japan in fact entered a second Lost Decade — that of lost consumption.”
The Japanese have had some good reasons to scale back spending.
Perhaps most important, the average worker’s paycheck has shrunk in recent years, even after companies rebounded and bolstered their profits.
That discrepancy is the result of aggressive cost-cutting on the part of Japanese exporters like Toyota and Sony. They, like American companies now, have sought to fend off cutthroat competition from companies in emerging economies like South Korea and Taiwan, where labor costs are low.
To better compete, companies slashed jobs and wages, replacing much of their work force with temporary workers who had no job security and fewer benefits. Nontraditional workers now make up more than a third of Japan’s labor force.
Younger people are feeling the brunt of that shift. Some 48 percent of workers age 24 or younger are temps. These workers, who came of age during a tough job market, tend to shun conspicuous consumption.
They tend to be uninterested in cars; a survey last year by the business daily Nikkei found that only 25 percent of Japanese men in their 20s wanted a car, down from 48 percent in 2000, contributing to the slump in sales.
Young Japanese women even seem to be losing their once- insatiable thirst for foreign fashion. Louis Vuitton, for example, reported a 10 percent drop in its sales in Japan in 2008.
“I’m not interested in big spending,” says Risa Masaki, 20, a college student in Tokyo and a neighbor of the Takigasakis. “I just want a humble life.”
Japan’s aging population is not helping consumption. Businesses had hoped that baby boomers — the generation that reaped the benefits of Japan’s postwar breakneck economic growth — would splurge their lifetime savings upon retirement, which began en masse in 2007. But that has not happened at the scale that companies had hoped.
Economists blame this slow spending on widespread distrust of Japan’s pension system, which is buckling under the weight of one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies. That could serve as a warning for the United States, where workers’ 401(k)’s have been ravaged by declining stocks, pensions are disappearing, and the long-term solvency of the Social Security system is in question.
“My husband is retiring in five years, and I’m very concerned,” says Ms. Masaki’s mother, Naoko, 52. She says it is no relief that her husband, a public servant, can expect a hefty retirement package; pension payments could fall, and she has two unmarried children to worry about.
“I want him to find another job, and work as long as he’s able,” Mrs. Masaki says. “We must be ready to fend for ourselves.”
Economic stimulus programs like the one President Obama signed into law last week have been hampered in Japan by deflation, the downward spiral of prices and wages that occurs when consumers hold down spending — in part because they expect goods to be cheaper in the future.
Economists say deflation could interfere with the two trillion yen ($21 billion) in cash handouts that the Japanese government is planning, because consumers might save the extra money on the hunch that it will be more valuable in the future than it is now.
The same fear grips many economists and policymakers in the United States. “Deflation is a real risk facing the economy,” President Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, told reporters this month.
Hiromi Kobayashi, 38, a Tokyo homemaker, has taken to sewing children’s ballet clothes at home to supplement income from her husband’s job at a movie distribution company. The family has not gone on vacation in two years and still watches a cathode-ray tube TV. Mrs. Kobayashi has her eye on a flat-panel TV but is holding off.
“I’m going to find a bargain, then wait until it gets even cheaper,” she says.
____________________________________________________________________________
view in one page and print
| ScienceDaily (Feb. 21, 2009) — Civil engineers using a specialized laboratory at Purdue University have demonstrated the effectiveness of a simple, inexpensive method to strengthen buildings that have a flaw making them dangerously vulnerable to earthquakes. The flaw is widespread in China, Latin America, Turkey and other countries. The buildings have too many "partial-height" walls between structural columns and could be easily strengthened by replacing some windows with ordinary masonry bricks, said Santiago Pujol, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Purdue. Partial-height walls do not extend all the way to the ceiling, sometimes causing structural columns to fail during powerful quakes. The strengthening would not only be low-cost but also easy to install, Pujol said. |
| Researchers built an entire three-story building inside Purdue's Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research to test the effectiveness of a simple, inexpensive method to strengthen buildings and reduce their vulnerability to earthquakes. The reinforced-concrete structure was subjected to forces simulating the effects of a strong earthquake by pulling and pushing the building with six powerful hydraulic "actuators." (Credit: Purdue University School of Civil Engineering photo) | "There are countries where there is a huge gap between the building codes and what is actually being built," he said. "Sure, government enforcement is lax, but I would like to think that if we engineers made the standards easier to apply they would also be easier to enforce. That's where we have an obligation to find solutions that are simple, affordable and effective." |
The flaw is widespread in China, Latin America, Turkey and other countries. The buildings have too many "partial-height" walls between structural columns and could be easily strengthened by replacing some windows with ordinary masonry bricks, said Santiago Pujol, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Purdue.
Partial-height walls do not extend all the way to the ceiling, sometimes causing structural columns to fail during powerful quakes. The strengthening would not only be low-cost but also easy to install, Pujol said.
"There are countries where there is a huge gap between the building codes and what is actually being built," he said. "Sure, government enforcement is lax, but I would like to think that if we engineers made the standards easier to apply they would also be easier to enforce. That's where we have an obligation to find solutions that are simple, affordable and effective."
The researchers built an entire three-story building inside Purdue's Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Laboratory for Large-Scale Civil Engineering Research in work led by former Purdue civil engineering doctoral student Damon Fick, who is now an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
The reinforced-concrete structure was subjected to forces simulating the effects of a strong earthquake by pulling and pushing the building with six powerful hydraulic "actuators." The six actuators could be likened to giant car jacks that exerted a total of about 300,000 pounds of force on the structure.
Findings were detailed in a paper presented in October during the 14th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Beijing, China. The paper was written by Pujol, civil engineer Amadeo Benavent-Climent from the Department of Structural Mechanics at the University of Granada, civil engineer Mario E. Rodriguez from the Instituto de Ingenieria in Mexico City, and civil engineer J. Paul Smith-Pardo from Berger/Abam Engineers Inc. in Federal Way, Wash.
"The most important result is that we showed that buildings with partial-height walls, which are very common throughout the world, especially in schools, can be improved very easily with not a lot of investment by simply rearranging the masonry walls," Pujol said. "Granted, this is not the best technology can offer, but this is cheap, and people can do it with their own hands."
Findings indicated the strengthened building was twice as strong and six times stiffer than the same structure having only reinforced-concrete columns but no walls. The building's roof displacement, or how much it moved at roof-level, was 1.5 percent of its total height, which is within what could be expected for a building of similar characteristics during a moderately strong earthquake, Pujol said.
The researchers also used computational simulations to show that the reinforced structure would likely have withstood the ground motion caused by strong earthquakes recorded in the past.
The engineers studied buildings damaged by earthquakes in Turkey in 1999 and 2000 and another earthquake in Peru in 2007. In the Peru quake, columns located between windows were destroyed in one building, whereas another building in the immediate vicinity was not seriously damaged.
"So I was very much intrigued," Pujol said. "Why were the columns in one building destroyed while a very similar building in the same area looked fine?"
Thirteen out of 20 columns were destroyed in the damaged building, and no columns failed in the other.
Pujol discovered that the building without serious damage had more full-height walls completely filling the spaces between columns than the other building.
He theorized that filling in some of the partial-height walls with masonry bricks might make vulnerable structures sturdy enough to prevent collapse during strong earthquakes and decided to test this hypothesis at the Purdue laboratory.
Fick took on the challenge of precisely controlling all six of the actuators during testing, which was critical to ensuring the researchers' safety as the building was pushed and pulled, Pujol said.
Features in the Bowen Laboratory, completed in 2004, include a testing area with a "strong floor" and 40-foot-high "reaction wall" containing numerous holes in which to anchor the hydraulic actuators that apply forces to large-scale structural models.
This work was partially funded by the U.S. Army and the National Science Foundation.
________________________________________
Adapted from materials provided by Purdue University.
view in one page and print
http://www.usaweekend.com/09_issues/090222/090222disasters-good-side.html
Issue Date: February 22, 2009
| Mother Nature can be devastating. But natural disasters serve valid purposes, scientists say. Without them, our Earth wouldn't resemble its current state, and we'd lose some of our most precious resources. By Dennis McCafferty Natural disasters leave an immediate impression defined only by loss -- that of precious lives and property. But, in time, can these disasters actually contribute something positive? Yes, they can -- and they do. The emotional impact of disasters aside, top researchers at one of the foremost agencies for these events -- the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS -- are constantly looking at disasters past and present. They point to a wide range of productive, even needed, contributions made possible by wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters. |
There's a lot of bad and ugly in any disaster. But there's a significant amount of good, too. You could argue that, without disasters, the Earth wouldn't "work right." To find out why, read on:
WILDFIRES
The bad and the ugly. In 2008, more than 80,000 wildfires burned through nearly 5.5 million acres in the United States, says the National Interagency Fire Center. Flames roared through about 500,000 acres in Southern California in October 2007, forcing an evacuation of more than 900,000 people -- the largest in state history.
The good. The truth is, without wildfires, our forests would have a difficult time existing. These fires remove much of the fuel on the surface: dead branches, needles and fallen leaves that, if left alone, would pile up, creating an even greater fire hazard. And the fires prevent the growth of what are called "ladder fuels," like the small white fir trees that grow under the larger ones. Combined with accumulated surface fuel, the ladder trees would represent a devastating hazard for the larger ones if an uncontrolled fire broke out. "Periodic fires keep the dead material from accumulating and remove the ladder fuels," says Jan van Wagtendonk, a USGS research forester in Yosemite, Calif.
Wildfires also pump nutrients into the forest soil. Here's how: Fire consumes wood and the carbon within, but not the phosphorous, potassium and other essentials in the tree. The burning tree crumbles to the ground, and nutrients are deposited to create healthier soil for tree and plant life. "Without these fires, these nutrients would stay bound within the tree for decades or even centuries," van Wagtendonk says, "and they're crucial for plant growth."
VOLCANOES
The bad and the ugly. Like water in a boiling pot left on a stove, magma erupts through the surface of the Earth, sometimes with devastating results. On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted less than 100 miles south of Seattle, shooting debris and smoke 12 miles high and killing 57 people.
The good. Volcanoes are responsible for the existence of places like the Hawaiian Islands, the Gal‡pagos and Iceland. More volcanic activity occurs underwater than on the Earth's surface, and eruptions can provide the foundation for eventual landmasses. And much of what these volcanoes transport is "good stuff" that helps civilizations to survive, with heat and gases from magma beneath volcanoes forming deposits of lead, zinc, silver and gold. As decades pass, volcanic ash falling on the surrounding ground creates fertile soil for crops. "It's difficult to imagine the Earth without volcanic activity," says John Eichelberger, coordinator of the USGS Volcano Hazards Program. "Volcanic activity was essential to the development of life and continues to play a role in determining the environment." Another benefit, he says, is the ability to generate power. In California, energy companies have developed geothermal power plants that capture volcanic steam and use it as a power resource. "It's simple and non-polluting," Eichelberger says.
LANDSLIDES
The bad and the ugly. One of the most significant U.S. disasters this decade was the Laguna Beach, Calif., landslide of June 1, 2005, in which about 1,000 evacuated.
The good. Like earthquakes, landslides serve an aesthetic purpose. Without them, gorgeous outcroppings such as those along the South's Blue Ridge Parkway wouldn't exist. Landslides also create habitats in streams, which allow fish to thrive. True, landslides sometimes choke aquatic life by piling sediment into the water. But, in time, such landslides also will break up stream flow, as rocks act like a railroad switch on a track. The boulders slow the flow of the stream, creating pools that allow trout and other species to build habitats.
"In the case of landslides, what doesn't kill the fish might make them stronger," says Lynn Highland, coordinator of the Denver-based National Landslide Information Center.
HURRICANES
The bad and the ugly. This decade has seen a slew of deadly hurricanes, most significantly Katrina in August 2005, which ripped through the Gulf Coast, breaching a levee system and destroying much of New Orleans and the surrounding region. About 1,000 people were killed in Louisiana alone.
The good. Wetlands can be destroyed by hurricanes, but they also can benefit from them because the storms import good dirt. Flooding from the sea brings sediment that can nourish the marsh vegetation, while adding a protective element by building the land higher. "That can be a shot in the arm," says Abby Sallenger, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based hurricane scientist for the USGS. "The living things there need these nutrients and minerals."
EARTHQUAKES
The bad and the ugly. Horrific images of the power of earthquakes are fresh in mind, given the Sichuan disaster last May, in which at least 69,000 died. The deadliest known quake also happened in China: the 1556 Shaanxi quake, which killed more than 830,000. In the United States, the most legendary quake is the San Francisco disaster of April 1906, in which more than 3,000 were killed.
The good. A great deal of our fuel resources are made possible by the same forces that cause quakes. Miles underground, hydrocarbons are making oil and gas trapped underground. Picture these underground areas as a large carpet. Without quakes, this carpet is relatively flat, its valuable oils and gasses spread far and wide. When tectonic plates collide, however, causing the earth to rumble, the carpet bends into folds, trapping those fuels in the tops of the folds and making the drilling process possible. "Earthquakes allow the economics of digging for resources to work better because the resources are more concentrated and accessible," says David Applegate, senior science adviser on earthquakes and geologic hazards for the USGS.
And earthquakes create much of the natural beauty we value. Over time, they move the earth and pave the way for mountains and other landscapes. "Extreme events are the price we pay for living on a dynamic planet," Applegate says. "Over time, they've split continents, formed great ocean basins and built mountains. Above Salt Lake City in Utah, we have the Wasatch Mountains, formed on a fault that's still active. So earthquakes are still a potential hazard for Salt Lake City, but its mountains are the reward."
Cover photograph by Art Wolfe, Getty Images
view in one page and print
17 companies adopt micro USB phone charger standard
Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:13PM EST
 | Well, that was quick. This morning at the GSMA Mobile World Congress conference taking place in Barcelona, a mammoth pile of cell phone manufacturers have agreed to a universal cell phone charger standard. That format? Micro USB (pictured). The big savings for manufacturers and buyers will come in the sheer number of chargers that will no longer have to be bundled with handsets: The use of a standard format is predicted to result in a 50 percent reduction in the number of chargers that have to be produced and sold each year. That's significant. The list of companies immediately signing on to the initiative reads like a who's who in the GSM cell phone space -- LG, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, AT&T, T-Mobile, Motorola -- but lacks a few key players, notably Apple, which is holding on to the legacy iPod connector with a veritable death grip. RIM and Palm are also both missing from the initial list of supporters. Whether the holdouts join on the alliance is anybody's guess. |
view in one page and print
Researchers target cancer with gold nanoparticles
By STEPHANIE PAPPAS
Posted: 02/08/2009 01:30:31 AM PST
SANTA CRUZ -- Cancer researchers have made a breakthrough in tumor treatment with the help of gold nanospheres developed by a UC Santa Cruz scientist.
Scientists led by Li Chun, a chemist in the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, have shown that tiny, hollow shells made of pure gold can cling to cancer cells and "cook" them when heated. Although the technique is not yet ready for human use, the study is the first successful treatment of its kind in animal models.
The nanospheres, developed by UCSC chemist Jin Zhang, are 40-50 nanometers in diameter, or just barely wider around than a row of 50 atoms. Zhang didn't expect the spheres to have medical value. But after seeing Chun speak about using nanoparticles to treat cancer at a conference in 2005, Zhang realized that his nanospheres were exactly what Chun was looking for.
"This is the ideal structure for this purpose," Zhang said.
To turn these specks into cancer-fighters, the researchers attached a short chain of molecules designed to bind to tumor cells. Then, they injected the nanospheres into cancerous mice. The molecule on the spheres snapped into receptors on the tumor cells like a key in a lock. The researchers then shone infrared light on the tumor, heating the gold and frying the cancer cells.
Because the hollow nanospheres absorb infrared light so efficiently, the targeted treatment helps keep healthy tissue safe, the researchers said. Tumors treated with targeted nanospheres were 66 percent destroyed as compared to 7.9 percent of tumors injected with untargeted particles. Greg Hartland, a chemist at the University of Notre Dame who was not involved in the research, called the study "an important example of using nanotechnology for the good of society." More research is needed to make sure nanospheres are safe, Chun said. But targeted cancer therapy could help reduce side effects of cancer treatments in the future, he said. "You can really reduce the thermal dose or the metal exposure dose."
view in one page and print
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/health/research/13cold.html?ref=health
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: February 12, 2009
Curing the common cold, one of medicine’s most elusive goals, may now be in the realm of the possible.
now be in the realm of the possible.
 J.Y. Sgro/Uw-Madison The structure of the human rhinovirus’s surface. | Health Guide: ColdsResearchers said Thursday that they had decoded the genomes of the 99 strains of common cold virus and developed a catalog of its vulnerabilities. “We are now quite certain that we see the Achilles’ heel, and that a very effective treatment for the common cold is at hand,” said Stephen B. Liggett, an asthma expert at the University of Maryland and co-author of the finding. Besides alleviating the achy, sniffly misery familiar to everyone, a true cold-fighting drug could be a godsend for the 20 million people who suffer from asthma and the millions of others with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The common cold virus, a rhinovirus, is thought to set off half of all asthma attacks. Even so, it might be difficult to kindle the interest of pharmaceutical companies. While the new findings are “an interesting piece of science,” said Dr. Glenn Tillotson, an expert on antiviral drugs at Viropharma in Exton, Pa., he noted that the typical cost of developing a new drug was now $700 million, “with interminable fights with financiers and regulators.” Because colds are mostly a minor nuisance, drug developers say, people would not be likely to pay for expensive drugs. And it would be hard to get the Food and Drug Administration to approve a drug with any serious downside for so mild a disease. |
Carl Seiden, president of Seiden Pharmaceutical Strategies and a longtime industry analyst and consultant, said industry might be loath to wade in because Relenza and Tamiflu — two drugs that ameliorated flu but did not cure it — were huge commercial disappointments.
The industry has also learned in recent years that turning a genetic discovery into a marketable drug is far harder than once thought.
Still, if the discovery could lead to an effective drug to treat the common cold, “that’s a big deal,” Mr. Seiden said.
Industry hurdles aside, perhaps the biggest reason the common cold has long defied treatment is that the rhinovirus has so many strains and presents a moving target for any drug or vaccine.
This scientific link in this chain of problems may now have been broken by a research team headed by Dr. Liggett and Dr. Ann C. Palmenberg, a cold virologist at the University of Wisconsin.
The researchers, who conducted the genetic decoding with the aid of Dr. Claire Fraser-Liggett at the University of Maryland, published their insights into the rhinovirus on Thursday in the online edition of Science.
Dr. Fernando Martinez, an asthma expert at the University of Arizona, said the new rhinovirus family tree should make it possible for the first time to identify which particular branch of the tree held the viruses most provocative to asthma patients.
If antiviral agents could be developed against this group of viruses, Dr. Martinez said, “it would be an extraordinary advance.”
Another asthma expert, Dr. E. Kathryn Miller at the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, said the new finding was “a groundbreaking study of major significance.”
People at high risk from rhinoviruses, like children with asthma or adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, would benefit greatly from new drugs, Dr. Miller said, and should therefore be populations of interest to the drug industry.
Dr. Liggett said the new data might even provide an opportunity to consider new vaccine approaches.
Dr. Palmenberg is less optimistic. “There’s not going to be a vaccine for the common cold,” she said, given that vaccines do not protect the linings of the nose where the virus attacks.
The rhinovirus has a genome of about 7,000 chemical units, which encode the information to make the 10 proteins that do everything the virus needs to infect cells and make more viruses.
By comparing the 99 genomes with one another, the researchers were able to arrange them in a family tree based on similarities in their genomes.
That family tree shows that some regions of the rhinovirus genome are changing all the time but that others never change.
The fact that the unchanging regions are so conserved over the course of evolutionary time means that they perform vital roles and that the virus cannot let them change without perishing. They are therefore ideal targets for drugs because, in principle, any of the 99 strains would succumb to the same drug.
Dr. Liggett said he believed that one such target lies at the very beginning of the rhinovirus genome, where its genetic material is folded into a clover-leaf shape. The sequence of units in the clover leaf is designed to be read quickly by the infected cell’s protein-making machinery. All strains of rhinovirus have much the same sequence of units at this region and all could be vulnerable to the same drug.
The data will also help analyze a new family of rhinoviruses that is causing concern. Instead of attacking the cells lining the nose, these attack those lining the deep lungs, causing viral pneumonia.
This family of virus cannot at present be grown for study in the laboratory, Dr. Palmenberg said, but can now be researched genetically through the common elements they share with other rhinoviruses.
Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute, where the rhinovirus genomes were decoded, say another important feature of the viruses lies in a highly variable region at one of the genomes.
The equivalent region in polio virus determines pathogenicity, and the same may be true with rhinoviruses.
There are at present no effective treatments for the common cold. Frequent hand-washing is the best preventive, Dr. Miller said. Once a cold has started, she recommended washing out the nasal passages, warm drinks and rest.
Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Washington.
view in one page and print
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/02/volcanoes_in_the_genome.html
A burst of genetic changes occurred around 10 million years ago in one of the ancestors we share with chimpanzees, with consequences that are being felt today. A new analysis of the genomes of macaques, orang-utans, chimpanzees and humans shows that DNA segments in this ancestor began to make duplicate copies at a very high rate around ten million years ago, even though other mutation processes such as single letter changes were slowing. “There’s a big burst of activity that happens where genomes are suddenly rearranged and changed,” says Evan Eichler, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He adds, “Because of the architecture of the human genome, genetic material is constantly being added and deleted in certain regions. These are really like volcanoes in the genome, blowing out pieces of DNA.” In Nature the team reports that this duplication spree occurred before humans and chimpanzees diverged, around 6 million years ago, but after the divergence from orang-utans 12-16 million years ago and the divergence from macaques prior to that. (See also this week’s news feature on human evolution: The other strand.) |  |
“In light of the importance of segmental duplications in contributing to copy-number changes associated with neurocognitive disease and disease susceptibility, we predict that this apparent acceleration has had a profound impact on the reproductive success, adaptability and evolution of ancestral hominid populations,” they write.
But although this rash of duplications may be associated with autism and other medical conditions they also appear to be under positive selection. “I believe that the negative selection of these duplications is being outweighed by the selective advantage of having these newly minted genes, but that’s still unproven,” says Eichler.
In another press release, paper authors Tomas Marques-Bonet and Jeffrey Kidd highlight just how much this paper poses as many questions as it answers:
"It is unclear why, but the common ancestor of humans, chimps and gorillas had an unusual activity of duplication," Kidd added. "Moreover, we don't yet know the functions of most of the genes that were affected by these duplications."
…
"There is still no final answer as to why chimps and humans are different," Marques-Bonet and Kidd said. "Maybe segmental duplications that are specific to humans are another layer to explore, or maybe the distinction between human and chimps is not found in these genetic differences."What is certain is that genetic differences contribute significantly to what makes a human and chimp different, and we know that these regions of our genetic code are changing much more rapidly than most others. The next challenge will be making sense of all these differences and the genes that are affected by them."
Coverage
Gene copies played key role in human-ape split: study – AFP
'DNA eruptions hold evolution key' – PA
Gene explosion set humans, great apes apart – Reuters
Image:stockxpert.com/Tomas Marques-Bonet.
Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP