New, Colorful Monkey Species Discovered

New, Colorful Monkey Species Discovered - A shy, brightly colored monkey species has been found living in the lush rainforests at the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a find that utterly surprised the researchers who came upon it.

"When I first saw it, I immediately knew it was something new and different — I just didn't know how significant it was," said John Hart, a veteran Congo researcher who is scientific director for the Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation, based in Kinshasa.

An adult male lesula, a newly-identified monkey species native to a limited area of central Democratic Republic of Congo.

The picture that started it all: Georgette with her monkey friend.

In fact, the find was something of a happy accident. Hart first spied the suspect monkey in 2007 while sifting through photographs brought back from a recently concluded field expedition to a remote region of central DRC.

Yet the image that caught his eye hadn't been taken in the field. It was snapped in a village, and showed a young girl named Georgette with a tiny monkey that had taken a shine to the 13-year-old. 

What is that?

It was a gorgeous animal, Hart said, with a blond mane and upper chest, and a bright red patch on the lower back. "I'd never seen that on any animal in the area, so right away I said, 'Hmmm,'" he told OurAmazingPlanet.

Hart decided to get to the bottom of the mystery. Fast forward through five years of field work, genetic research and anatomical study, and today (Sept. 12) Hart and a list of collaborators formally introduced to the world a new primate species, dubbed Cercopithecus lomamiensis, and known locally as the lesula. Their work is announced in the online journal PLOS One.

It turned out that the little monkey that hung around Georgette's house had been brought to the area by the girl's uncle, who had found it on a hunting trip. It wasn't quite a pet, but it became known as Georgette's lesula. The young female primate passed its days running in the yard with the dogs, foraging around the village for food, and growing up into a monkey that belonged to a species nobody recognized. 

Further investigation revealed the full story of the strange monkey. It turned out that C. lomamiensis, a cryptic, skittish primate, roams a swath of dense rainforest some 6,500 square miles (17,000 square kilometers).

"For a big mammal to go unnoticed is pretty unusual," said Kate Detwiler, a primatologist and assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University, and an author on the paper. Yet one visit to the area that the lesula calls home reveals why the monkeys escaped scientific notice for so long, Detwiler told OurAmazingPlanet. This region of the DRC is remote and vast.

The trees tower overhead, blocking out the sun, and the forest floor — the chief domain of the lesula — is steeped in a permanent gloom. The forest is full of sounds. At first light, the lesulas raise a lilting chorus of booming calls, distinct from the cries of their monkey neighbors who pass their lives in the trees high above the forest floor; at dusk, the cries of African grey parrots echo through the canopy. The earth is wet and soft, and feet sink into the ground with each step. There is a gentle, steady thud as fruit falls from the trees.

One gets the feeling of being on a ship very far out to sea, Detwiler said ?only here, the ocean is the endless expanse of the trees. "I felt so privileged to be there," she said. "I wish everybody could have that experience."

Blue buttocks

The lesulas live in this isolated region in groups up to five strong, and feeds on fruit and leafy plants. The males weigh up to 15 pounds (7 kilograms), about twice the size of the females. They also have some rather arresting anatomical features.

"They have giant blue backsides," Hart said. "Bright aquamarine buttocks and testicles. What a signal! That aquamarine blue is really a bright color in forest understory."

"So in terms of monkey viewing, females can definitely find males," Detwiler said.

"We don't really know what this means because it's very uncommon for monkeys in this lineage," she added.

The only other monkey to share this feature is the lesula's closest cousin — the owl-faced monkey, a species that lives farther east. At first it was thought the monkeys were close kin, but genetic analysis suggests the two species split from a common ancestor about 2 million years ago.

Now that the new species has been formally identified, Hart said, the next task is to save it. Although the lesula is new to science, it is a well-established sight on the dinner table.

What's for dinner

There's a thriving market for bush meat, particularly in urban areas, Hart said, and the monkeys are just one of dozens of species, from snakes to elephants to apes, that are targeted.

"People have disposable income, and this is the cheapest meat," he said. "Bush meat is a go-to item because it's less expensive than chicken or beef. This is not a new problem, but it's a problem that doesn't have a solution yet."

Hart and his wife, Terese, are partnering with local people to try to set up a national park in the lesulas' territory, but it's still a work in progress. In the meantime, researchers have set up camera traps in the dense forest to try to better understand the habits of the shy animals.

Georgette, the girl whose lesula companion started it all, is now 18. "The animal was very attached to her," Hart said. But one day the monkey disappeared.

"It was suspected that somebody in town had taken it in," Hart said. "And it ended up in their cooking pot." ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - New, Colorful Monkey Species Discovered

Dino-Killing Asteroid Sparked Global Firestorm

Dino-Killing Asteroid Sparked Global Firestorm - The huge asteroid impact thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago may have painted the sky a blazing-hot red and sparked a cataclysmic global firestorm, researchers say.

Most scientists believe the mass die-off known as the K-T extinction — which saw up to 80 percent of all species vanish — was caused by an asteroid or comet that carved out the 112-mile-wide (180 kilometers) Chicxulub crater in what is today Mexico.

An asteroid believed to have smacked Earth some 65 million years ago likely caused a global firestorm that led to extensive plant and animal extinctions, a new study shows.

Researchers who created a new model of the disaster say the impact would have sent vaporized particles of rock high above the planet's atmosphere, where they would have condensed into sand-grain-sized bits. Falling back to Earth, the hot ejected rock material may have dumped enough heat in the upper atmosphere to cause it to bake at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,482 degrees Celsius), turning the sky red for several hours.

This infrared "heat pulse" would have acted like a broiler oven, igniting tinder below and cooking every twig, bush, tree and basically every living thing not shielded underground or underwater, the researchers say.

"It's likely that the total amount of infrared heat was equal to a 1 megaton bomb exploding every four miles over the entire Earth," study researcher Douglas Robertson, of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, said in a statement.

To give an idea of the staggering amount of energy unleashed by this heat pulse, the researchers note that a 1-megaton hydrogen bomb would be the equivalent of 80 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs, and the Chicxulub event is thought to have produced about 100 million megatons of energy.

The global firestorm theory has been put forth before, but some scientists have questioned it, claiming that much of this intense radiation would have been blocked from Earth by the falling rock material. Even after accounting for this shielding, however, the model created by Robertson and his team found the sky still would have heated up enough to set the world's forests ablaze.

Adding to the team's evidence is a layer of excess charcoal found in sediment at the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, boundary (dated to about 65 million years ago), which would be consistent with global fires. Other scientists had suggested the soot was debris from the impact itself. But there's too much charcoal in this layer to have been dumped on Earth by the asteroid crash alone, according to Robertson and his colleagues.

"Our data show the conditions back then are consistent with widespread fires across the planet," said Robertson. "Those conditions resulted in 100 percent extinction rates for about 80 percent of all life on Earth."

There is still some debate about whether the Chicxulub impact triggered the K-T extinction. Some researchers link the catastrophe to volcanic activity in modern-day India and others have pointed fingers at different impact sites, such as the Shiva crater in India.

CIRES is a joint institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The new research was detailed this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Dino-Killing Asteroid Sparked Global Firestorm

READ MORE - Dino-Killing Asteroid Sparked Global Firestorm

New World's Hottest Temperature Declared

New World's Hottest Temperature Declared - El Azizia, Libya, no longer holds the title for "world's hottest temperature." Today, that record passes to Death Valley, Calif.

No, a heat wave didn't pass through the notoriously baking area yesterday. The new record-setting temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius) was actually recorded in Death Valley on July 10, 1913.

The temperature is only now being recognized because the previous record high temperature of 136.4 F (58 C) in El Azizia has been overturned by the World Meteorological Organization after an in-depth investigation by a team of meteorologists. The record temperature had long been thought dubious, but this new study has finally made the persuading case to overturn it, 90 years to the day after it was made.

 

This is a drawing of the Six-Bellini thermometer, the antiquated type used to make the observation of the former world's hottest temperature in El Azizia, Libya.

A measurement in doubt

The Libyan temperature had been recorded on Sept. 13, 1922, at an Italian army base. It had long stood out as an oddity, even though Libya certainly sees hot temperatures: El Azizia is located about 35 miles southwest of Tripoli, which lies on the Mediterranean coast. The waters would have a tempering influence on temperatures in the area, all of which weren't nearly as high as the record temperature.

"When we compared his [the thermometer reader's] observations to surrounding areas and to other measurements made before and after the 1922 reading, they simply didn't match up," said team member Randy Cerveny, of Arizona State University, in a statement.

Cerveny and the other members of the international team dug through historical records to evaluate the plausibility of the temperature.

The team was able to find and locate the original log book in which the temperature was recorded. From it and other sources they were able to identify five major problems with the record temperature: it was made a new and untrained observer; it was measured with an instrument that was antiquated even at that time; the observation site wasn't representative of its surroundings; it didn't match other temperatures measured in the area; and it didn't match later temperatures taken at the site.

"We found systematic errors in the 1922 reading," said Cerveny, who also is the Rapporteur of Climate and Weather Extremes for the WMO, the person responsible for keeping worldwide weather records.

Essentially, the case likely boiled down to someone inexperienced incorrectly reading a thermometer that could easily be misread, the team concluded. The resulting reading was too high by 12.6 F (7 C), they found.

Not just for bragging

Officially, the "new" world record temperature extreme is 134 F (56.7 C), recorded on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, Calif. 

Of course, the record isn't just good for bragging rights. It also helps communities that experience extreme temperatures to properly plan and build for such extremes.

Accurate measurements of past temperatures also help scientists better understand the Earth's climate and weather.

"The end result is an even better set of data for analysis of important global and regional questions involving climate change," Cerveny said. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | New World's Hottest Temperature Declared

READ MORE - New World's Hottest Temperature Declared

Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch

Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch - What’s black and white, with a skunkish look to its cover, And from bark wrests such bite it makes lions fall over?

Meet the African crested rat, or Lophiomys imhausi, a creature so large, flamboyantly furred and thickly helmeted it hardly seems a member of the international rat consortium. Yet it is indeed a rat, a deadly dirty rat, its superspecialized pelt permeated with potent toxins harvested from trees.

As a recent report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B makes clear, the crested rat offers one of the most extreme cases of a survival strategy rare among mammals: deterring predators with chemical weapons.

Venoms and repellents are hardly rare in nature: Many insects, frogs, snakes, jellyfish and other phyletic characters use them with abandon. But mammals generally rely, for defense or offense, on teeth, claws, muscles, keen senses or quick wits.

ARMAMENTS Capuchin monkeys co-opt extracts gathered from millipedes and ants to ward off mosquitoes.

Every so often, however, a mammalian lineage discovers the wonders of chemistry, of nature’s burbling beakers and tubes. And somewhere in the distance a mad cackle sounds.

Skunks and zorilles mimic the sulfurous, anoxic stink of a swamp. The male duck-billed platypus infuses its heel spurs with a cobralike poison. The hedgehog declares: Don’t quite get the point of my spines? Allow me to sharpen their sting with a daub of venom I just chewed off the back of a Bufo toad.

Other mammals chemically gird themselves against smaller foes: Capuchin monkeys ward off mosquitoes and ticks with extracts gathered from millipedes and ants, while black-tailed deer rub themselves liberally with potent antimicrobial secretions produced by glands in their hooves. According to William Wood, a chemistry professor at Humboldt State University in California, these secretions have been shown to be effective against a broad array of micro-organisms, including acne bacteria and athlete’s-foot fungus, which could explain why teenage deer are especially diligent with the hoof-rubbing routine right before the annual deer prom.

For each newly identified instance of a chemical fix, researchers seek to identify its benefits, drawbacks and evolutionary back story, and to compare it with other known cases of chemical arms. Distinctive themes have emerged.

For example, whereas poisonous insects tend to advertise their unpalatability in bright colors like red, orange and yellow — the better to warn off their major predators, the diurnal, keen-eyed birds — most mammals and their mammalian predators are nocturnal or crepuscular, dawn and duskular. Color is wasted on them, but strong contrast between dark and light is not.

This is why skunks, zorilles (also known as polecats) and the African crested rat have independently converged on a similar pelage theme of black against white. The pattern is unmistakable in very low light, and its message is too: You’ve seen me. I’m noxious. Now buzz off.

In their fetchingly titled paper, “A Poisonous Surprise Under the Coat of the African Crested Rat,” Jonathan Kingdon and Fritz Vollrath of Oxford University and their colleagues described the complex of traits that give rise to the rodent’s rottenness.

The researchers determined that the rat spends many hours gnawing on the bark and roots of the Acokanthera tree, from which it extracts the same curare-type heart toxin that African hunters have traditionally used to kill elephants. The rat then slavers the toxic masticant onto tracts of specialized hairs running along its flank.

Those hairs, when observed under a scanning electron microscope, look very different from ordinary fur, Dr. Vollrath said. Each outer shaft is stiff and full of holes — like a dead cactus, he said — and inside are a series of long, fluffy microfibers. The researchers showed that the applied toxin seeps through the outer holes of the hairs and is wicked up and stored by the fibers, lending the rat twinned flank strips of doom.

One little nip is all it would take to sicken or even kill a predator, and the crested rat is well equipped to endure exploratory bites, Dr. Vollrath said: Its hide is unusually thick, and its head is helmeted like a turtle’s. Whether through trial and error or by following an enlightened elder’s example, Africa’s many carnivores give the rat a wide berth.

So, too, do Lophiomys researchers. “Jonathan is a highly enterprising researcher, and he normally eats every animal he studies,” Dr. Vollrath said of his colleague. “But he admitted he would rather not eat this one.”

The researchers don’t yet know why the rat is itself immune to the toxin, or how its fate came to be bound up with the Acokanthera tree. Dr. Vollrath looks to basic rat nature for ideas.

“The rat eats a lot of things that other animals won’t,” he said. “If it eats something disgusting, it tries to spit it out, clean it off, using its skin as a napkin.”

If an early crested rat, while sampling and gagging on a toxic tree, incidentally end up protected against predation, well, evolution has a way of turning a contingency into a necessity. The crested rat is now anatomically and behaviorally dependent on tree toxin for protection, and should Acokanthera go extinct, its little chiseler would soon follow.

In contrast to the crested rat, skunks synthesize their toxins from scratch, yet they, too, have taken chemical defense to a highly derived, almost mannered extreme. Skunks stand alone in mammaldom, and though they once were considered a kind of weasel, the world’s 10 or so species have recently been assigned a family plaque of their own, the Mephitidae, from the Latin for “bad odor.”

Through anal scent glands just inside the rectum at the base of the tail, skunks generate an extreme version of the familiar spray with which carnivores mark their territory, wildly accentuating the chemical components that we and most other mammals judge to be very bad news.

At the heart of skunk spray is a thiol, the signature of nasty environments high in lethal hydrogen sulfide and low in oxygen — places like mines, swamps, and oil and gas wells. “Our nose is able to detect thiols at extremely low levels, parts per billion,” Dr. Wood said. “We needed to stay away from areas with low oxygen, where we could die.”

Skunks, he added, “have come along and capitalized on this.”

Capitalized and canonized — or maybe cannonized. The skunk’s scent glands have evolved into structures that look like swollen nipples, each able to swivel independently of the other to take perfect aim, and to perfectly calibrated effect (as can be seen in spectacular video on the PBS program “Nature”).

To deter a predator chasing behind at an unknown distance, the skunk goes for the atomized mist effect; if the harasser is within view, the skunk may choose a straight stream to the face.

Skunks are confident in their repellent prowess, but nowadays their swagger can prove fatal. Researchers suggest that one reason skunks constitute a large proportion of roadkill is that they see cars as another predator in need of a lesson: Come ahead, pal, I’ll just stand here and spray.

A good defense means never taking offense. Researchers have been impressed by the ardor with which monkeys in the field prospect for novel forms of insect repellent, and their willingness to withstand extremely irritating chemicals for the sake of rebuffing the bloodsuckers that plague them.

“Capuchin monkeys are notoriously generalist and destructive in their sampling,” said Jessica Lynch Alfaro, the associate director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They break everything open, and you have to watch out or they’ll drop branches on your head.”

Every so often, they come upon a product that looks or smells promising, at which point they crack it open and start anointing themselves. They tear up chili peppers to release the capsaicin, rip apart millipedes to procure a few droplets of searing benzoquinones.

If they find a nest of carpenter ants, pay dirt! The monkeys plop down on top and roll every which way, to soak up the ants’ formidable formic acid supply.

Such treatments are clearly painful. “Capuchin monkeys get very agitated when they’re anointing themselves,” said Dr. Lynch Alfaro, who with colleagues recently reviewed capuchin anointing behavior for The American Journal of Primatology. “But they’re keeping off parasites, and they seem to have a high threshold for pain.”

Besides, it’s not all pain and suffering. Anointing is a supremely social affair, and one rubbing monkey soon attracts others.

“They get into such a frenzy that the social order breaks down; everyone is anointing with everyone else,” Dr. Lynch Alfaro said. “It’s like a big, wild party.” They may be black and blue, but the magic potion is spread all over. ( nytimes.com )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Warm and Furry, but They Pack a Toxic Punch

Mummified princess had coronary heart disease

Mummified princess had coronary heart disease – The diagnosis is more than 3,500 years late, but no less stunning for all of that. An Egyptian princess who lived between 1580 and 1550 BC has become the earliest person in human history to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease, according to computer scans presented at a medical conference this week.

"We can't be sure what she died of, but we can see what illnesses she had," Gregory Thomas, director of Nuclear Cardiology Education at the University of California at Irvine, said by phone.

Researchers delved into the mummy of Princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon using a computerised tomography (CT) scanner, a non-invasive technique that gives highly detailed cross-sectional images of the body.

Handout photo provided - Handout photo provided by the European Society of Cardiology shows the mummy of Princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon, in May 2010. The diagnosis is more than 3,500 years late, but no less stunning for all of that. An Egyptian princess who lived between 1580 and 1550 BC has become the earliest person in human history to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease

The princess, who died in her 40s, had atherosclerosis, or a buildup of fatty material, in two of her three main coronary arteries, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) said in a press release.

"Today she would have needed by-pass surgery," said Thomas, who led the analysis.

The work was to be presented this week at an annual conference of non-invasive cardiovascular imaging, taking place in Amsterdam, the ESC said.

The May 15-18 event showcases advances in diagnostic tools for heart doctors.

Thomas said he was struck by how much atherosclerosis was found in the remains of the princess, who lived in Thebes, as modern-day Luxor is known.

The princess -- daughter of Seqenenre Tao II, the last pharaoh of the 17th dynasty -- is among 52 mummies that were scanned under a study called Horus.

Arterial clogging is typecast as a curse of today's high-fat diets, yet the contemporary diet was rich in vegetables and fruit, limited in meat and tobacco was unknown.

It could be that the princess could have been showered in more meat, butter and cheese, or with rare foods that were preserved in salt.

Alternatively, she could have been more susceptible to parasitic infections or genetic susceptibility to coronary disease.

Half of the mummies in the Horus study had calcification markers in their arteries that pointed to atherosclerosis. Most of these died at around 45 years on average.

"Our findings certainly call into question the perception of atherosclerosis as a modern disease," said Thomas. ( Agence France Presse )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Mummified princess had coronary heart disease | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Mummified princess had coronary heart disease

Egyptian princess was first to have heart disease

Egyptian princess was first to have heart disease – An Egyptian princess who lived more than 3,500 years ago is the oldest known person to have had clogged arteries, dispelling the myth that heart disease is a product of modern society, a new study says.

To determine how common heart disease was in ancient Egypt, scientists performed computer scans on 52 mummies in Cairo and the United States. Among those that still had heart tissue, 44 had chunks of calcium stuck to their arteries — indicating clogging.

"Atherosclerosis clearly existed more than 3,000 years ago," said Adel Allam, a cardiology professor at Al Azhar University in Cairo, who led the study with Gregory Thomas, director of nuclear cardiology education at the University of California in Irvine. "We cannot blame this disease on modern civilization."

The research was presented Tuesday at a conference on heart imaging in Amsterdam.

Allam and colleagues found the Egyptian princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon, who lived in Thebes (now Luxor) between 1540 and 1550 B.C., had calcium deposits in two main coronary arteries, making her the oldest mummy found with heart disease. The princess' father and brother were both pharaohs. The mummy had pierced ears and a large incision in her left side made by embalmers to remove her internal organs.

Mummy of Maiherpri, is prepared - In this image made available by the Mission Internal Medical Group on Tuesday May, 17, 2011, the mummy of Maiherpri (New Kingdom,18th Dynasty,1550-1295 BC),is prepared for CT scanning in the Egyptian Museum Cairo May 10, 2010. An Egyptian princess who lived more than 3,500 years ago is the oldest known person to have had clogged arteries, dispelling the myth that heart disease is a symptom of modern society, a new study says. To determine how widespread heart disease was in ancient Egypt, international scientists performed computer scans on 52 mummies in Cairo and the U.S. About half of the mummies were those of people who held elite positions in the pharaoh's court. Among the mummies who still had heart tissue, 44 had chunks of calcium stuck to their arteries.

Allam doubted she would have received much treatment beyond maybe taking special herbs or honey. "If she were my patient today, she would get open heart surgery," he said. He added the princess' clogged arteries looked remarkably similar to heart disease in contemporary Egyptians. The 43 younger mummies with calcium deposits showed a range of heart and artery problems.

Experts say that during the princess' lifetime, beef, pork, mutton, antelope, duck and other meats were readily available in the royal courts. Egyptians didn't eat much fish but ate many different kinds of fruits and vegetables. Salt was also likely used to preserve their food.

Joep Perk, a professor of health sciences at Linnaeus University in Sweden and a spokesman for the European Society of Cardiology, said the heart disease discovered in the mummies was probably due to the rich diet and lack of exercise among the Egyptian elite. He was not linked to the mummy research.

"The pharaohs and other royalty probably had more fat in their diet than the average Egyptian," he said. "The sculptures and hieroglyphs may show people who were very thin and beautiful, but the reality may have been different."

He added there may have been other factors, like the stress of holding onto power and genetic factors that could have made the Egyptian ruling class more susceptible to heart disease.

He said Egyptian royals were more likely to be killed by heart problems after surviving other infections that would have killed poorer Egyptians. "They simply had the good luck to live long enough to develop heart disease." ( Associated Press )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Egyptian princess was first to have heart disease | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Egyptian princess was first to have heart disease

Five myths about nuclear energy

Five myths about nuclear energy - Explosions. Radiation. Evacuations. More than 30 years after Three Mile Island, the unfolding crisis in Japan has brought back some of the worst nightmares surrounding nuclear power — and restarted a major debate about the merits and the drawbacks of this energy source. Does nuclear energy offer a path away from carbon-based fuels? Or are nuclear power plants too big a threat? It’s time to separate myth from reality.

1. The biggest problem with nuclear energy is safety.

Safety is certainly a critical issue, as the tragedy in Japan is making clear. But for years, the the biggest challenge to sustainable nuclear energy hasn’t been safety, but cost.

In the United States, new nuclear construction was already slowing down even before the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979; the disaster merely sealed its fate. The last nuclear power plant to come online started delivering power in 1996 — but its construction began in 1972. Today, nuclear power remains considerably more expensive than coal- or gas-fired electricity, mainly because nuclear plants are so expensive to build. Estimates are slippery, but a plant can cost well north of $5 billion. A 2009 MIT study estimated that the cost of producing nuclear energy (including construction, maintenance and fuel) was about 30 percent higher than that of coal or gas.

Smoke billows from fires raging at the port in Tagajo, Miyagi prefecture on March 13, 2011 following a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11

Of course, cost and safety aren’t unrelated. Concerns about safety lead to extensive regulatory approval processes and add uncertainty to plant developers’ calculations — both of which boost the price of financing new nuclear plants. It’s not clear how much these construction costs would fall if safety fears subsided and the financing became cheaper — and after the Fukushima catastrophe, we’re unlikely to find out.

2. Nuclear power plants are sitting ducks for terrorists.

It’s easy to get scared about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, a cottage industry sprung up around the threat, with analysts imagining ever-more horrific and creative ways that terrorists could strike nuclear facilities and unleash massive consequences.

There are certainly real risks: Nuclear expert Matthew Bunn of Harvard University has pointed out that well-planned terrorist attacks probably would produce the sort of simultaneous failures in multiple backup systems that Japan’s reactors are experiencing. But it’s much harder to target a nuclear power plant than one might think, and terrorists would have great difficulty replicating the physical impact that the March 11 earthquake had on the Japanese plants. It also would be tough for them to breach the concrete domes and other barriers that surround U.S. reactors. And although attacks have been attempted in the past — most notoriously by Basque separatists in Spain in 1977 — none has resulted in widespread damage.

Certainly, the water pools in which reactors store used fuel, which reside outside the containment domes, are more vulnerable than the reactors and could cause real damage if attacked; there is a debate between analysts and industry about whether terrorists could effectively target them.

3. Democrats oppose nuclear energy; Republicans favor it.

Yes, the GOP base is enthusiastic about nuclear energy, while the Democratic base is skeptical. Moreover, many Republican politicians support assistance to the industry such as loan guarantees for nuclear developers, while many Democrats oppose them. But the politics of nuclear power have changed in recent years, mainly because of climate change.

Democrats, including many supporters in the environmental movement, have become more open to nuclear power as a large-scale zero-emissions energy option. Steven Chu, President Obama’s energy secretary, has been enthusiastic about the nuclear option. When asked to compare coal and nuclear energy in 2009, Chu responded: “I’d rather be living near a nuclear power plant.”

The biggest prospective boost for nuclear power in the past two years was an initiative championed by Democrats and scorned by Republicans: cap-and-trade legislation. Cap-and-trade would have penalized polluting power sources such as coal and gas emitters, thus tilting the playing field toward nuclear power. Department of Energy simulations of the ill-fated Waxman-Markey climate bill projected that it would have increased nuclear power generation by 74 percent in 2030.

Yet although Democrats may have become more accepting of nuclear power, few became fully enthusiastic. Japan’s tragedy may make many reconsider their stance.

4. Nuclear power is the key to energy independence.

When people talk about energy independence, they’re thinking about oil, which we mostly use in vehicles and industrial production. When they talk about nuclear, though, they’re thinking about electricity. More nuclear power means less coal, less natural gas, less hydroelectric power and less wind energy. But unless we start putting nuclear power plants in our cars and semis, more nuclear won’t mean less oil.

This wasn’t always the case: During the the heyday of nuclear power, the early 1970s (45 plants broke ground between 1970 and 1975), oil was a big electricity source, and boosting nuclear power was a real way to squeeze petroleum out of the economy. Alas, we’ve already replaced pretty much all the petroleum in the power sector; the opportunity to substitute oil with nuclear power is gone.

5. Better technology can make nuclear power safe.

Technology can increase safety, but there will always be risks with nuclear power. The Japanese reactors at the center of the current crisis use old technology that increased their vulnerability. Next-generation reactors will be “passively cooled,” which means that if backup power fails like it has in Japan, meltdowns will be avoided more easily. (Passive-cooling systems vary, but their common feature is a lack of dependence on external power.) Other lower-tech improvements, such as stronger containment structures, have also mitigated risk.

But what happened in Japan reminds us that unanticipated vulnerabilities are inevitable in any highly complex system. Careful engineering can minimize the chance of disasters, but it can’t eliminate them. Operators and authorities will need to make sure that they’re prepared to deal with unanticipated failures even as they work to prevent them.

Most energy sources entail risks. In the past year, we’ve seen an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fatal explosions at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia and now the crisis in Japan. The American public will need to decide whether the risks of nuclear power — compared with those of other energy sources — are too high. ( washingtonpost.com )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Five myths about nuclear energy | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Five myths about nuclear energy

Red-light cameras save lives

Red-light cameras save lives - Red-light cameras are saving lives even as they make millions in revenue, according to the first definitive study of the subject.

Use of cameras to catch speeders and those who run red lights has proliferated in the past decade, greatly increasing the prospect that drivers in too much of a hurry will get caught. The flash of a camera has become common at District intersections, more than 50 of which are equipped to catch red-light offenders.

A study to be released Tuesday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds that traffic fatalities at those intersections dropped by 26 percent over a five-year period, slightly more than the average decline in 13 other camera-equipped cities.

A mobile speed camera vehicle sits on New York Avenue NE just before the red light at Bladensburg Road in the District. (Mark Gail/the Washington Post)

"We're hopeful this will stop some of the backlash against cameras," said Adrian Lund, president of the insurance foundation. "Much of the attention to victims of the camera has been paid to people who received tickets. Hopefully, this will return the focus to the people who have been killed or injured by red-light running."

Drivers often denounce use of the cameras as a naked money-making scheme - and the District made almost $7.2 million on 85,678 red-light tickets from June 2009 through May.

At the same time, almost anyone who regularly drives District streets will attest to the fact that drivers slow in places where they know speed cameras are located and are more likely to stop on yellow at intersections with red-light cameras.

"Our traffic fatalities have been cut in half in four years," said D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier. "We see less high-speed crashes, we see less crashes at what used to be the worst intersections. Because of speed enforcement, when people do crash, it's at a slower speed, so there are less likely to be fatalities."

Lanier also said the cameras conserve police resources. "Those automated enforcement programs can take the place of 100 officers. In order to have the same effect with police officers, I'd have to divert them from crime-fighting."

The institute study said there were five fewer deaths at the District's camera-equipped lights over five years. During that same period across the country, 159 fewer people died in the cities that use cameras, the study found. If cameras had been in use in all cities with populations above 200,000, the institute projected that 815 lives would be saved.

The report looked at 14 cities that had camera programs from 2004 to 2008 and compared their accident rates with those of 48 cities that did not have cameras during the same period. The report acknowledged that earlier studies found an increase in rear-end collisions when red-light cameras were installed. But it said that because right-angle crashes cause more severe injuries and damage than rear-end ones, the net effect was positive.

The institute used police reports gathered by the federal government to analyze intersection mayhem. The 2.2 million intersection crashes recorded in 2009 made up about 41 percent of all accidents. They resulted in 81,112 serious injuries and 7,358 deaths.

Police established red-light running as the cause of 676 deaths and 113,000 injuries. The vast majority of the people who died - 64 percent - were not driving the vehicle that ran the light. They were passengers, other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.

"This is a solid report," said John B. Townsend II of AAA Mid-Atlantic. "It offers evidence that the program is changing behavior. Of all the forms of automated enforcement, this one's going to stay because the one thing people fear is a T-bone crash."

A survey of D.C. drivers in December by AAA found 8 percent opposed red-light cameras.

"There simply are not enough resources to put a police officer at every intersection, and enforcement at intersections is often dangerous," said Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "We have known for years that when the public sees a law being enforced, they will respect it and drive more safely. That has been true with drunk driving and seat-belt laws, and it is also true with red-light cameras."

However, traffic cameras still enliven constituent hotlines as angry drivers who have gotten tickets in the mail berate people who pick up the phones for legislators and council members.

"A lot of people accuse us of tricking them," Lanier said, "but we publish the location of all the cameras on our Web site. We're not trying to hide where they're located from anyone."

Two legislators have introduced bills in Richmond to restrict use of the cameras. One would restrict local jurisdictions from deploying new red-light cameras; the other would require that their use be overseen by the Virginia Department of Transportation.

"We're opposed to the first bill," Townsend said, "and we think the second one would put an onerous burden on the process." ( washingtonpost.com )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Red-light cameras save lives | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Red-light cameras save lives

New education bill will give protection for teachers falsely accused by pupils

New education bill will give protection for teachers falsely accused by pupils - Teachers are to be granted anonymity when pupils make allegations against them, which will only be lifted if a charge is made.

The proposals are set out in Michael Gove’s Education Bill, which also gives teachers new powers to search pupils.

It will also be made easier for teachers to hand out detentions. They will no longer have to give parents 24 hours’ notice.

Teachers accused by pupils of allegations will be protected under new proposals in the Education bill (posed by model)

And heads will have the final say on expulsions – stopping independent appeals panels from forcing children back into school.

The Education Secretary said the moves are necessary to reverse the ‘out of control’ behaviour which has driven teachers from the profession.

Every school day nearly 1,000 children are suspended from school for abuse and assault. Major assaults on staff have reached a five-year high. Last year, 44 teachers were taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Unions praised the moves to protect teachers from false allegations but expressed concerns about extended search rights.

Dr Mary Bousted, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: ‘Teachers are worried that encouraging them to search pupils and confiscate items such as mobiles, weapons, drugs and cigarettes will damage their relationship with their pupils.

The Bill also sets down measures to free schools of bureaucracy by axing quangos and abolishing unnecessary form filling. Mr Gove said: ‘We’re taking action to restore discipline and reduce bureaucracy.

Teachers will be free to impose the penalties they need to keep order – and free from the red tape which swallows up teaching time. So they can get on with their first duty – raising standards.’

Today’s Bill also includes a clause that could see the middle classes bearing the brunt of the rise in tuition fees to £9,000 a year. ( dalymail.co.uk )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | New education bill will give protection for teachers falsely accused by pupils | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - New education bill will give protection for teachers falsely accused by pupils

Parents pass on 'irrational fear' of spiders and snakes to their children

Parents pass on 'irrational fear' of spiders and snakes to their children - If you're terrified of spiders, or fearful of snakes, then blame your parents.

A study challenges the widely held view that we are hard-wired to fear creepy crawlies and instead suggests we learn to be scared of them in the first years of life.

Fear of snakes is one of the most common - and in Britain - irrational phobias. Half the population is thought to suffer even though most have never actually seen a snake.

Irrational phobia: People are not born with an innate fear of creepy crawlies - but we learn how to be scared of them in the first years of life, scientists believe

Experts at Rutgers University in Newark showed seven-month-old babies two videos side by side – one of a snake and another of a non-threatening animal.

At the same time, the babies were played a recording of either a fearful human voice or a happy one.

The infants spent more time looking at the snake videos when listening to the fearful voices, but showed no signs of fear themselves, the researchers report in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Past studies have shown that people can be taught to fear almost anything. In one Swedish study, scientists showed volunteers images of snakes, spiders, flowers and mushrooms while giving them a small electric shock.

Unsurprisingly, the volunteers learnt to associate all the images with fear.

In Britain half of women and a fifth of men are thought to be frightened of spiders, irrespective of whether they are dangerous or not.

Many scientists argue that the phobias, exploited by Hollywood movies such as Arachnophobia and Snakes on a Plane, evolved millions of years ago when our ancestors lived alongside a host of deadly reptiles and insects in Africa.

Natural selection is likely to favour people who stay away from potentially dangerous animals, they say.

But the latest study challenges the theory that snake and spider phobias are innate.

In a second experiment, three-year-olds were shown a screen of nine photographs and told to pick out a named object.

They identified snakes more quickly than flowers, and more quickly than other animals that looked similar to snakes such as caterpillars and frogs.

The children who were afraid of snakes were just as fast at picking them out than children who had not developed a snake phobia.

'What we’re suggesting is that we have these biases to detect things like snakes and spiders really quickly, and to associate them with things that are yucky or bad, like a fearful voice,' said Dr Vanessa LoBue of Rutgers University, an author of the paper.

Babies detect snakes quickly - and then learn to be afraid of them really quickly, she said.

In one Swedish study, scientists showed volunteers images of snakes, spiders, flowers and mushrooms while giving them a small electric shock.

The volunteers learnt to associate an electric shock with all the images - but the effect lasted a lot longer with snakes and spiders.

Another U.S. study found that monkeys raised in a laboratory are not afraid of snakes, but will learn to fear snakes more quickly than they learn to fear rabbits or flowers. ( dailymail.co.uk )

Babies recognise potentially dangerous animals, but are not yet scared of them

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Parents pass on 'irrational fear' of spiders and snakes to their children | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Parents pass on 'irrational fear' of spiders and snakes to their children

Judge rules inmate 'bitten on penis by rodent' may sue

Judge rules inmate 'bitten on penis by rodent' may sue - A New York man who says a rat bit his penis during a jail stay may sue county officials, a judge has ruled.

Peter Solomon, who said he later had to endure a course of rabies jabs, says jailers knew the ward in which they placed him was infested with rodents.

He says the jail was negligent and mistreated him because he is black.

Lawyers for Nassau County sought to have the suit dismissed. Among other arguments, its experts said they saw no evidence of serious injury.

Mr Solomon and county officials disputed whether the culprit was a rat or mouse

Rodent problem disputed

In February 2007, Mr Solomon, a Vietnam veteran who says he has been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, was jailed in the Nassau County Correctional Center near New York City, pending trial on charges he had menaced his wife.

He was transferred to a medical observation unit amid worries he was mentally ill. He claims at night a rat "or similar rodent" emerged from a hole in his mattress and bit him on the penis and hand, drawing blood.

Mr Solomon, who is in his 50s, claimed the county was indifferent to his treatment and failed to protect him from the vermin, and sued for damages.

County officials said they were shielded from lawsuits because they had acted in an official capacity, they were unaware of substantial risks, and they disputed the notion that a rodent problem existed in the jail.

They also noted the wound did not require stitching and that his injuries were merely psychological.

"The parties dispute whether the rodent was a mouse or a rat, whether Solomon was bitten or scratched, and the nature and extent of his injuries," Judge Arthur Spatt wrote.

He ruled on Thursday the suit may proceed. ( bbc.co.uk )

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | Judge rules inmate 'bitten on penis by rodent' may sue | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - Judge rules inmate 'bitten on penis by rodent' may sue

010 predictions from 1989: The Duchess of York never made it to the Moon

2010 predictions from 1989: The Duchess of York never made it to the Moon - Roland Gribben reports on how the Telegraph of 1989 envisaged the world today.

I don't know whether anyone else has ever prayed that the Duchess of York could be exiled to the Moon – but I'm fairly sure I'm the only person who's done so for purely professional reasons.

In 1989, The Daily Telegraph asked a group of futurologists to predict what the unimaginably distant year of 2010 would look like, and asked me to write up the findings. This year, as the months ticked by, I waited for validation of one of the prophecies: namely, that lunar landings would become so commonplace that the Duchess would become the first member of the Royal family to visit outer space. Alas, it was not to be. Still, the experts did claim that America would have a black president – so thank you, Barack Obama, for sparing their blushes in the nick of time.

On a different planet: the Duchess didn't go to the Moon, but some other forecasts were remarkably accurate. Photo: POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

Aside from the forecast that Britain would be back in the space race, courtesy of Russia giving us a piggyback ride to Mars, most of the predictions by Applied Futures, a consultancy specialising in long-term strategic planning, were rather more serious than whimsical: there were some big misses, some near misses and a fair sprinkling of accurate forecasts. But they all offer food for thought, not to mention casting an intriguing light on the late-Eighties mentality.

One of the project's worst excesses was its optimistic view of the world of work. The British worker in 2010, the experts confidently predicted, would be able to qualify for sabbaticals of up to a year, in a newly liberalised nation. Society would be more geared to leisure than work: indeed, Britain would be driving a fundamental change from a world based on materialism to a "general consciousness" that people mattered. Our standard of living, measured in material terms, would no longer be regarded as a measure of wellbeing – a sentiment David Cameron would doubtless agree with.

The team, led by Christine McNulty, had few reservations in predicting a greater focus on shopping, partly because the signposts were already well illuminated. Shopping by TV, with the help of cash-dispenser-type ordering terminals and delivery within 24 hours from automated warehouses controlled by robots, would take the drudgery out of proceedings. People would be healthier and live longer, through advances in medicine and science – although predictions that Aids would be a thing of the past were premature. The team also suggested that many homes would be equipped with medical equipment for regular check-ups through the development of DIY doctoring (which is now, finally, starting to happen).

The experts made a modest attempt to predict changes in social behaviour. By now, marriage should be almost old-fashioned and there should be fewer divorces. Why? The evolution of the "seven-year itch" – a partnership or marriage contract renewable or abandoned every seven years. Economically speaking, the North-South divide would disappear as the "vibrancy and dynamism" of the South East were exported to the rest of the country, and technology would turn the computer into the nerve centre of households. The team also forecast fewer traffic jams, thanks to automated systems maintaining distance between vehicles and goods vehicles that were able to run on road or rail. Driverless mini-trains (as seen on the Docklands Light Railway), smaller, quieter aircraft and "single-person heli-systems" were also envisaged to help the mobile executive get around faster.

In politics, there was no expectation that Britain would be governed by a coalition – although the prime minister would, we said, be able to speak three languages (in fact, David Cameron goes one better with four, while his deputy, Nick Clegg, can boast five). Proportional representation and voting via television would be part and parcel of the democratic set-up, rather than the subject of an imminent referendum and a staple of Saturday-night television respectively.

Overall, McNulty acknowledges that the team were perhaps too optimistic. "We thought we were doing pretty well for the first 15 years. There were things we missed – the financial crisis, the internet and wars – that have had a huge effect on the economy and budgets. We also missed global warming, but we still got many things rights. I think that on a score basis we did better than 50 per cent." And the trips to the Moon? "Nasa had to cut its budgets."

Yet even though the report failed to predict the internet – a rather significant omission – there was a general understanding of the ways in which communications technology would shape our lives. The study visualised our communication centres becoming part of expanded leisure centres, with children using their home computers to play chess or Space Invaders with friends in other countries. Books and magazines would be produced on a collaborative basis, while those with particular interests would sign up for clubs that communicated via electronic mail.

One failed prediction was that the intelligent use of computers would transform homework for youngsters, allowing them to experiment with body sensors and activate real images. Viewers should have had the ability to adapt films to enable them to superimpose their own image on screen, or recreate Dickens's London or a trip along the seabed, complete with sights, sounds and smells. Heady stuff, but all relatively practical – the basis for the technology is still kicking around, as are the screens that would give runners or rowers the sense that they are jogging along the Great Wall of China or sculling along the River Cam.

So what would happen if you took another 21-year look through the crystal ball? McNulty sees the struggle for dominance between generations as being one of the most interesting areas to explore. "Young people – the 'digital natives' who were born 'cable ready' – communicate quickly and effectively by text messaging and social media. They recognise and reject what they consider to be hypocrisy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the kids that get kicked out of school today for being disruptive could well be among the best and brightest, but the school environment is anathema to them. How can we harness that intelligence and creativity and get them to participate in society instead of against it?"

In the technological field, Ian Pearson, a futurologist formerly with BT, says that artificial intelligence will play a key role, as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science converge to transform our lives, leading to "the mastery of materials, synthetic biology and consciousness and the technology of life itself ".

"As well as redesigning nature to include superior synthetic biology and repairing our environment," he says, "we will bring about the forging of ever closer links between man and machine, ultimately leading to a full direct brain link, the extension of our minds into the machine world and hence electronic immortality." In the meantime, "it's not silly to think that an artificial intelligence could be elected to Parliament. There is a question about the date, but people will get emotional about machines and become friends with them and care for them. "We are witnessing the start of the age of augmented reality, electronically enhancing our view of the world. Ultimately we will see augmented reality as the platform that converges the real and virtual worlds and the consequences of that, once fully developed, will dwarf the impact of the World Wide Web." ( telegraph.co.uk )

Is he right? Check back here in a couple of decades for the answer…

Blog : Concentrate On One Man | 010 predictions from 1989: The Duchess of York never made it to the Moon | Concentrate On One Man

READ MORE - 010 predictions from 1989: The Duchess of York never made it to the Moon