Hearing Skills Of Barn Owls Could Map Way To Find Problems In Humans

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801091509.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 3, 2007) — The hearing precision that lets common barn owls find prey is helping researchers fine tune their quest to diagnose a variety of problems rooted in the human brain, not only with hearing but also with behavior and potentially damaged areas

University of Oregon researchers have found that barn owls (Tyto alba) are better able to track changes in the location of a noise, such as that made by a potential meal, when the sound source moves horizontally than when the sound changes direction vertically. The discovery was made using an infrared-monitoring procedure that measures pupil dilation responses that are influenced by changes in sound sources around an owl.
"When we are looking at problems of spatial localization, or how to locate sound in a space, the barn owl provides a great system," said Avinash D.S. Bala, a researcher in the University of Oregon's Institute of Neuroscience and lead author of a new study.
The findings -- published in Aug. 1 issue of PLoS One-- confirms and solidifies the results of an earlier study (Nature, Aug. 14, 2003), in which Bala and colleagues first documented the brain mapping of firing neurons to horizontal changes in the source of noises in the owl's brain.
Bala was the lead author on both projects, which were done in collaboration with former UO researcher Matthew W. Spitzer, who now is at Monash University in Australia, and principal investigator Terry T. Takahashi, a UO professor of biology and researcher in the Institute of Neuroscience.
"The barn owl has a portion of the midbrain which serves as a map," Bala said. "Neuron activity can be traced in the map as sound moves. Looking at this map, you can decipher which sounds are being received more actively."
The new study, in which conclusions were based on the recordings of 62 neurons that represent auditory space, also sheds light on how outside information is converted into electrical activity and transformed into behavior.
"The brain, in the case of spatial hearing, judges neuronal activity in a democratic manner," Bala said. "It listens to the responses of neurons, and it goes with an approximate average of responses. This has the advantage of reducing environmental noise that is inducing false positives, which would be more common if the owl was depending on only a few neurons. Overall sensitivity might go down, but the probability of an owl actually hitting its prey becomes much higher."
The monitoring procedure Bala and colleagues have devised, which is in the early stages of human application, has the potential to use the eyes, through changes in the size of the pupil, as a gateway to the human brain. The system would allow for measuring the response to different aspects of sound, such as volume, pitch and location, as well as diagnosing basic sensory deficits and identify areas of damage in the brain.
The National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders and the McKnight Foundation, a private Minnesota-based philanthropic organization, funded the work through grants to Takahashi. Spitzer was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Device Effective in Zapping the Pain Out of Migraines

http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/mediaroom/press/article.cfm?ID=2698

Posted 6/22/2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio – An electronic device designed to “zap” away migraine pain before it starts may be the next form of relief for millions of people who suffer from the debilitating disease.
Results of a study found that the experimental device appears to be effective in eliminating the headache when administered during the onset of the migraine.

The study, led by the Ohio State University Medical Center neurology investigators, was presented Thursday (6/22) at the annual American Headache Society meeting in Los Angeles.
A subsequent study will examine the device in a larger population.
The device, called TMS, interrupts the aura phase of the migraine, often described as electrical storms in the brain, before they lead to headaches. Auras are neural disturbances that signal the onset of migraine headaches. People who suffer from migraine headaches often describe “seeing” showers of shooting stars, zigzagging lines and flashing lights, and experiencing loss of vision, weakness, tingling or confusion. What typically follows these initial symptoms is intense throbbing head pain, nausea and vomiting.

Dr. Yousef Mohammad, a neurologist at OSU Medical Center who presented the results, says that the patients in this study reported a significant reduction in nausea, noise and light sensitivity post treatment.
“Perhaps the most significant effect of using the TMS device was on the two-hour symptom assessment, with 84 percent of the episodes in patients using the TMS occurring without noise sensitivity. Work functioning also improved, and there were no side effects reported,” Mohammad said.
The stimulator sends a strong electric current through a metal coil, which creates an intense magnetic field for about one millisecond. This magnetic pulse, when held against a person’s head, creates an electric current in the neurons of the brain, interrupting the aura before it results in a throbbing headache.
“The device’s pulses are painless. The patients have felt a little pressure, but that’s all,” said Mohammad, who is principal investigator of the study at Ohio State.
“In our study sample, 69 percent of the TMS-related headaches reported to have either no or mild pain at the two-hour post-treatment point compared to 48 percent of the placebo group. In addition, 42 percent of the TMS-treated patients graded their headache response, without symptoms, as very good or excellent compared to 26 percent for the placebo group. These are very encouraging results.”
It was previously believed that migraine headaches start with vascular constriction, which results in an aura, followed by vascular dilation that will lead to a throbbing headache. However, in the late 1990s it was instead suggested that neuronal electrical hyperexcitability resulted in a throbbing headache. This new understanding of the migraine mechanism has assisted with the development of the TMS device.
NeuraLieve, located in Sunnyvale, Ca., provided the funding and equipment for the study. Mohammad serves on the company’s board of directors.

Cervello: l'emicrania si spegne col ''telecomando''

http://it.notizie.yahoo.com/ansa/20080627/tts-cervello-l-emicrania-si-spegne-col-t-97cd5f9.html

Ansa - Ven 27 Giu - 17.02
ROMA - Attanaglia un lato della testa in una morsa di dolore, contro di lei spesso i farmaci nulla possono ma in un prossimo futuro l'emicrania potrebbe essere messa KO con un ''telecomando'', un dispositivo portatile per stimolare in modo indolore e non invasivo il cervello, utilizzabile all'occorrenza autonomamente dal paziente pure in casa propria. E' il dispositivo messo a punto e testato gia' su molti pazienti in America per prevenire l'emicrania, in particolare per ora quella con aura, ovvero l'emicrania preceduta da 'sintomi premonitori' come flash luminosi, stelline, abbassamenti visivi. Quando arrivano queste avvisaglie del mal di testa incipiente basta azionare il ''telecomando'' sperimentato con successo presso la Ohio State University, e il mal di testa si blocca sul nascere. Il dispositivo e' basato sulla Stimolazione Magnetica Transcranica (TMS) ed i risultati delle sperimentazioni sono stati presentati al meeting annuale della American Headache Society (societa' americana per lo studio delle cefalee) tenutosi a Boston.

A differenza del comune mal di testa, l'emicrania, che si ritiene causata da ipereccitabilita' neurale, si caratterizza per attacchi di dolore intenso e pulsante e colpisce solitamente una parte della testa, per poi diffondersi alla fronte, agli occhi, al viso e alla mascella. Il dolore si accompagna a nausea, vomito, fotofobia, intolleranza al rumore, difficolta' nel linguaggio. La durata degli attacchi varia da due ore fino a tre giorni. In Italia ne sono colpiti sei milioni di persone. Cio' nondimeno sono ancora pochi gli emicranici consapevoli di avere una vera e propria malattia, mentre sono parecchi coloro che, piuttosto che rivolgersi a un centro specializzato per le cefalee, si affidano a cure 'fai-da-te' che possono ingenerare dipendenza e peggiorare il problema. Inoltre va detto che alcuni pazienti emicranici non rispondono bene ai farmaci oggi disponibili per prevenire il disturbo e che queste medicine possono avere effetti collaterali. E' chiaro quindi che avere a disposizione un congegno che previene gli attacchi, in piu' senza effetti collaterali, puo' essere risolutivo in molti casi. Gli esperti avevano inizialmente visto che contro l'emicrania e' efficace la TMS, una procedura indolore e non invasiva da anni usata per studiare e modificare l'attivita' del cervello, che trova gia' impiego in numerose patologie come la depressione. In pratica la TMS manda al cervello campi elettromagnetici che ne modificano l'attivita' spegnendo o attivando determinate aree neurali.

Tuttavia lo strumento per la TMS presente negli ospedali e' enorme e per i pazienti sarebbe quindi inservibile per prevenire attacchi che possono manifestarsi in ogni momento. Serve un congegno da poter usare all'occorrenza anche a casa non appena il paziente avverte che un attacco e' in dirittura d'arrivo. Cosi' la ditta californiana NeuraLieve ha realizzato il dispositivo portatile e il neurologo Yousef Mohammad dell'ateneo Usa l'ha sperimentato con successo su 164 pazienti confrontando l'efficacia della stimolazione con una finta stimolazione (placebo). L'idea e' quindi che un giorno il paziente, riconoscendo i 'sintomi premonitori' dell'emicrania, si 'autosomministri' la stimolazione con lo strumento portatile e in questo modo sia in grado di prevenire l'attacco il tutto senza alcun bisogno di assumere medicine.

La coalición de los vivos

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/coalicion/vivos/elpepiopi/20080628elpepiopi_4/Tes

DANIEL INNERARITY

Todo el debate acerca de la llamada justicia intergeneracional se resume en las siguientes preguntas: ¿quiénes tienen más derechos, nosotros o nuestros hijos? ¿Es justo formular una "preferencia temporal por los actualmente vivos"? ¿No sería esto una versión temporal del privilegio que algunos quieren realizar en el espacio, una especie de colonialismo temporal? En ambos casos se establece una complicidad del nosotros a costa de un tercero: si en el exclusivismo de los espacios era el de fuera, en el imperialismo temporal es el después quien corre con los gastos de nuestra preferencia. Y esto es precisamente lo que ocurre cuando el horizonte temporal se estrecha: que tiende a configurarse una especie de "coalición de los vivos" que constituye una verdadera dominación de la generación actual sobre las futuras. Se ha invertido aquel asombro del que hablaba Kant cuando observaba lo curioso que era que las generaciones anteriores hubieran trabajado penosamente por las ulteriores. Hoy parece más bien lo contrario: que con nuestra absolutización del tiempo presente hacemos que las generaciones futuras trabajen involuntariamente a nuestro favor.Puede estar ocurriendo que los actualmente vivos estemos ejerciendo una influencia sobre el futuro que cabe entender como una rapiña del futuro. Hay una especie de impunidad en el ámbito temporal del futuro, un consumo irresponsable del tiempo o expropiación del futuro de otros. Somos okupas del futuro. Cuando los contextos de acción se extienden en el espacio hasta afectar a personas del otro punto del mundo y en el tiempo condicionando el futuro de otros cercanos y distantes, entonces hay muchos conceptos y prácticas que requieren una profunda revisión.
Este entrelazamiento, espacial pero también temporal, debe ser tomado en consideración reflexivamente, lo que significa hacer transparentes los condicionamientos implícitos y convertirlos en objeto de procesos democráticos. Una de las exigencias éticas y políticas fundamentales consiste precisamente en ampliar el horizonte temporal. Dicho sumariamente: dejar de considerar al futuro como el basurero del presente, como un lugar donde se desplazan los problemas no resueltos y se alivia así al presente.
Este tipo de evidencias ha puesto en marcha todo un conjunto de nuevas reflexiones acerca de la justicia intergeneracional. Las discriminaciones que están vinculadas a la edad o condición generacional (que una generación se imponga sobre otra o viva a costa de ella) plantean unos desafíos particulares al ejercicio de la justicia. La mayor parte de las decisio
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nes políticas que adoptamos tiene un impacto sobre las generaciones futuras. Por ejemplo, los problemas de la seguridad social (salud, pensiones, desequilibrios demográficos, seguros de desempleo) necesitan un marco temporal amplio y un enfoque cognitivo que considere los posibles escenarios futuros. ¿Es moralmente aceptable transmitir a las generaciones futuras los residuos nucleares o un medio ambiente degradado o una deuda pública considerable o un sistema de pensiones insostenible? Se trata de examinar con criterios de justicia las transferencias que se realizan de una generación a otra, la herencia y la memoria, pero también las expectativas y posibilidades que se entregan a las generaciones futuras, en términos de capital físico, ambiental, humano, tecnológico e institucional. Habría que pasar de una propiedad "privada", generacional, sobre el tiempo a una colectivización intergeneracional del tiempo, y especialmente del tiempo futuro.
La interdependencia de las generaciones exige un nuevo modelo de contrato social. El modelo del contrato social que regula únicamente las obligaciones entre los contemporáneos ha de ampliarse hacia los sujetos futuros respecto de los cuales nos encontramos en una completa asimetría. Hay una desigualdad básica entre el presente y el futuro que no existe entre los contemporáneos. Si únicamente tenemos en cuenta el significado de nuestras acciones para nuestros intereses presentes, no seremos capaces de comprender de qué modo incidimos en el futuro y hasta qué punto esta repercusión nos apela en un sentido ético y político.
La cuestión de la responsabilidad frente a las generaciones futuras debería estar en el centro de lo que podría denominarse una "ética del futuro". Y la primera reflexión que esta nueva textura del mundo nos impone es preguntarnos a quién hemos de considerar como "prójimo": en definitiva, pasar de una responsabilidad de las "relaciones cortas" (Paul Ricoeur) a otra cuya regla sean "las cosas más lejanas" (Nietzsche), que el prójimo no sean simplemente los más cercanos en el espacio o en el tiempo. El principio de responsabilidad está orientado precisamente al futuro lejano. Y parte de la conciencia de que nos ha sido confiado algo que es frágil: la vida, el planeta o la polis.
Los revolucionarios franceses y americanos formularon un principio que podría denominarse de autodeterminación generacional y que exigía el respeto ante las voluntades futuras. La historia es escenario de la libertad para todas las naciones y para todas las generaciones; por eso, nuestras decisiones deben estar abiertas a la ratificación y la revocación. No podemos asegurar qué querrán los que vengan después, y por eso hemos de arbitrar procedimientos para dejar el futuro a su libre disposición. En ese contexto, Jefferson llega a plantear la cuestión de si todas las leyes deben ser aprobadas de nuevo, según el ritmo de las generaciones. Afirmaba incluso que podemos considerar a cada generación como una nación diferente con un derecho a tomar decisiones vinculantes, pero sin el poder de obligar a las siguientes, de la misma manera que no pueden obligar a los habitantes de otro país. Los contratos mueren con quienes los han firmado. Una posición similar parece defender actualmente el filósofo moral Peter Singer cuando se pregunta, por ejemplo, si nuestros descendientes valorarán la vida en la naturaleza o se sentirán mejor en centros comerciales climatizados, frente a juegos de ordenador incomprensibles para nosotros.
Ambos son, a mi juicio, planteamientos abstractos, ya que no toman en suficiente consideración el solapamiento y la interacción entre las generaciones, como tampoco la imposibilidad de delimitarlas estrictamente. Aunque está claro que debe haber cláusulas y procedimientos de revisión, cualquier interrogación sobre la justicia entre las generaciones ha de tomar en cuenta también su interacción, el hecho de que la historia no es una sucesión de discontinuidades, sino que hay vínculos entre ellas sin los cuales la idea misma de una sociedad sería incomprensible, como los deberes de memoria o la legitimidad de configurar el futuro colectivo.
El tema no es tanto dejar libertad a las generaciones siguientes como la necesidad de legitimar nuestro inevitable condicionamiento del futuro y configurarlo de acuerdo con criterios de justicia que vayan más allá de los intereses actuales. No podemos abandonarnos a la comodidad de manejar como único criterio de actuación el respeto a las decisiones futuras de la posteridad, porque incluso esa libertad de elección de las generaciones venideras exige de nosotros la adopción de muchas decisiones. La paradoja del respeto intergeneracional podría formularse así: hemos de tomar ahora determinadas decisiones para que ellos tengan después la libertad de elegir.

Daniel Innerarity es profesor de Filosofía en la Universidad de Zaragoza y autor de El nuevo espacio público

L.A.W.u.N the Invisible University

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/sabe/page-1136

Run by Professor David Greene and by EXP research Fellow Samantha Hardingham, the Invisible University is a live research project – as part of Professor Greene’s wider ongoing L.A.W.u.N. investigations – that seeks to gain knowledge and understanding of an architecture that is evolving from a culture whose dominant raw materials exist outside the visible spectrum, i.e. mobile and wire-free technology. The project thus investigates changes in architecture driven by changes in technology and the influence of cultural drifts (what most people are doing most of the time), another significant factor in affecting change in architecture. L.A.W.u.N. rethinks the role of the university in the age of the text message, and asks whether there is a correlation between the way that technology has influenced banks and the way that we do our banking, and the way that technology is influencing our use of a university, and specifically a school of architecture? Hence this live project hence the interactivity between the accepted definition of ‘university’ as a fixed place for the practice of knowledge transfer and conversation and the potential for mobile wire-free technology to deliver teaching and learning in a truly extra-mural context.
The project (or, rather, a series of interlinked projects) is being developed in collaboration with a number of practising architects, designers and students chosen by Professor Greene for their specific approaches to the research problem. The projects are shaped to produce a range of immediate outcomes, such as exhibitions, lectures, workshops etc, often solicited by outside agencies, and often cross-disciplinary. These events, usually seen as a by-product or outcome of the research model, therefore become a working tool, and part of the project's methodology, and the partially ad-hoc nature of such collaborations is seen as an essential part of the evolving model of a flexible university. The projects, events, talks, etc, are recorded in various forms, the material then re-worked into the evolving design project, as in the current folio edition, book and exhibition. L.A.W.u.N project will be developed and published as a book co-edited by Professor Greene and Samantha Hardingham.
Collaborators in the Invisible University project include:

Jana Bradley, library expert at the University of Syracuse
Jason Bruges, interactive designer
Mike Davies, ex-partner in the Richard Rogers Partnership
Chris Dawson, ex-partner in the Richard Rogers Partnership
Susannah Handley, textile specialist at the RCA
Usman Haque, interactive designer,
Will McLean, technical tutor at the University of Westminster
Orange
Michael Paris, Hawkins Brown
Matty Pye, artist at muf art and architecture
Leon van Schaik, Innovation Professor at RMIT, Melbourne

Public showings of the Invisible University project include:Architecture Foundation: invitation to exhibit in Selfridges window alongside
Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid et al, 2004
London Architecture Biennale: invitation to create major urban installation, 2005
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, invitation to hold workshop for
senior engineers and mathematicians, 2005
Architectural Association, London: invitation to put on solo exhibition and
accompanying publication, in progress
Columbia University: Invitation to exhibit, in development
Madrid University: Invitation to exhibit, in development
DotDotDot magazine, Netherlands: publication in three issues, 2006-07.
‘Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design’, curated by Zak Kyes
& Mark Owens, Architectural Association, October 2007.
Greene, D. & Hardingham, S., The Disreputable Projects of David Greene, London:Architectural Association, forthcoming for 2008

Debt Collection Done From India Appeals to U.S. Agencies

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/business/worldbusiness/24debt.html?hp

GURGAON, India — In a glass tower on the outskirts of New Delhi, dozens of young Indians are on the telephone, calling America’s out of work, forgetful and debt-stricken and asking for cash.

“Are you sure that’s all you can afford?” one operator in a row of cubicles asks politely. “Well, how do you take care of your everyday expenses?” presses another.
Americans are used to receiving calls from India for insurance claims and credit card sales. But debt collection represents a growing business for outsourcing companies, especially as the American economy slows and its consumers struggle to pay for their purchases.
Armed with a sophisticated automated system that dials tens of thousands of Americans every hour, and puts confidential information like Social Security numbers, addresses and credit history at operators’ fingertips, this new breed of collectors is chasing down late car payments, overdue credit card debt and lapsed installment loans. Debt collectors in India often cost about one-quarter the price of their American counterparts, and are often better at the job, debt collection company executives say.
“India will be the only place we grow this year,” said J. Brandon Black, the chief executive of the Encore Capital Group, a debt collection company based in San Diego. India is the company’s largest operating area, with about half the company’s collection force of more than 300.
Although the stereotype of a collector may be “some guy with chains and a cut-off shirt,” Mr. Black said, collectors in India are “very polite, very respectful, and they don’t raise their voice.” He added, “People respond to that.”
Companies like Encore buy bad loans from banks and credit card issuers for pennies on the dollar and pocket the cash they collect. The delinquent borrowers often owe at least a thousand dollars.
So far just a tiny fraction, maybe 5 percent, of American debt collection is done outside the country, industry executives estimate. But new business is in the pipeline.
Financial services clients are saying, “We want you to collect my debt, to analyze it and change the way that we sell” the loans, said Tiger Tyagarajan, executive vice president at Genpact, the business processing company spun off from General Electric that has roots in India. Genpact, which works with lenders to get customers to pay, rather than buying loans directly like Encore, employs thousands of debt collectors in India, Romania, Mexico and the Philippines, and is hiring in all those locations.
In the past, the prevailing wisdom about wringing money from late payers has been “if you’re calling the Midwest, you want someone from the Midwest to twist their arm,” said Mark Hughes, an analyst with Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey who covers the industry. That theory is changing as the pool of trained phone professionals in India and other locations deepens, and companies look outside the United States for lower costs.
Telephone debt collection represents new, more aggressive territory for India. “This is really a sales job,” Mr. Hughes said. “It is commission-intensive, and you’re paid on your ability to collect.”
Like many sales teams, Encore’s collectors in India gather for a daily pep talk before their shift. In one recent session, they were schooled on the intricacies of American tax policy.
“One hundred thirty million U.S. families will get a tax rebate this season” as part of the new economic stimulus package, Manu Sharma, the team leader, explained to a roomful of top-earning collection agents, most in their 20s. Those who qualify for the rebates will get as much $600 a person or $1,200 a household, he said, and “the I.R.S. is going to start paying this money in May.”
Start bringing up the rebate during calls, he told them. “This gives you an advantage so you can increase your wallet share,” he went on. “Get them set up on minimum balance arrangements” based around their tax rebates.
Once the calls start flowing, Encore’s Gurgaon office resembles nothing less than the headquarters for an enthusiastic fund-raising telethon. Just minutes after collectors have put on their headsets, a supervisor yells out “Rajesh, for $35 a month for three months.” All employees enthusiastically respond by clapping three times, and Rajesh is the first on the day’s sales board.
Companies like Encore often schedule dozens of payments and make dozens of calls before the loan is paid off.

Encore — which also operates as Midland Capital Management — also files sheaves of lawsuits against customers who do not respond. Sometimes the debt is so old that the statute of limitations for filing a suit has passed, and it may already have vanished from a person’s credit report. If the debtor makes a new payment, though, the statute of limitations starts all over again.
Credit counselors in the United States say more and more of their clients are being contacted by debt collectors based in India. Sometimes, it can cause problems. When clients “run into someone who doesn’t speak English well or there is a communication gap, it can add to the frustration of the customer,” said Bill Druliner, manager and financial counselor for GreenPath Debt Solutions in Milwaukee.
Debt collection, no matter who does it, can have “a devastating impact on people’s lives,” Mr. Druliner said, because calls can stress family relationships and sometimes debtors are pressed into paying late bills instead of buying necessities like prescriptions. Still, he said, he had not run into any specific problems with overseas debt collectors. “What they may lack in authority or ability to handle slang, they do handle the process very well and are very well spoken,” he said.
Mortgage loans, which involve complex state and national laws, are nearly always handled by collectors in the United States. But credit card, auto and other debt are prime candidates for collection overseas.
Just over 4.5 percent of all bank credit card accounts were delinquent in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the Federal Reserve, up from 3.5 percent two years before. Businesses in the United States put $141 billion in delinquent consumer debt up for collection in 2005, according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey commissioned by an industry group, and debt collection agencies collected $51 billion that year. They kept nearly a quarter of that in profits.
Collection veterans are seeing an unusual phenomena in this economic downturn. “People are walking away from their homes and hanging on to their credit cards, because that is their lifeline,” said Rajinder Singh, the head of global analytic services for Genpact.
Encore hires people with call center experience in India, and then trains them in unexpected skills like sympathy. Clients “get very abusive, very emotional, very sad,” said Manu Rikhye, vice president at the Encore unit in Gurgaon. The collector’s job is to “try to empathize with the consumer,” he said and try to figure out, if they’re angry, why. “Maybe it’s us, maybe it’s someone else,” he said. “You have to hear what they have to say.”
Collectors are taught to handle abuse by telling debtors: “This attitude is not going to get you anywhere. We can either work with you or refer you for further action,” implying a lawsuit. Collectors who raise their voices or try “tough” tactics are warned, Mr. Rikhye said, and those who misrepresent facts can be fired.
Manju Muddanna, 27, who uses the name Michelle Green when she is on the phone, is one of Encore’s best collectors. With laced-up stiletto sandals, wood bangles and a wad of chewing gum, she wheedles work and cellphone numbers out of debtors’ relatives to track them down. Like most Encore collectors, Ms. Muddanna handles several hundred calls a day, but actually makes contact with only a handful of borrowers.
Ms. Muddanna’s telephone voice veers to the school-marmish, her learned American accent into Blanche DuBois territory . When people on the other end of the phone mumble, she upbraids them, politely, “Ahhh just can’t understand you, ma’am.”
Encore pays its collectors in India an average base salary of 17,000 rupees ($425) a month, and they earn bonuses — sometimes more than $1,000 a month — for getting customers to pay. In contrast, collectors in the United States, make about $6,500 a month. Thanks to the income, a windfall in India, where the average monthly income is $63, collectors are amassing some of the status symbols that probably got their clients into trouble in the first place — new scooters, iPods, Swatch watches and exotic vacations.

2/2 - \\\\\\\ -Travestito da ippopotamo cade nel fango: è salvo

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/12/gallerie/ambiente/ippopotamo-umano/8.html

2/2

Travestito da ippopotamo cade nel fango: è salvo

http://www.repubblica.it/2006/12/gallerie/ambiente/ippopotamo-umano/1.html

Travestito da ippopotamo, intrappolato in un improbabile e pesantissimo scafandro per avvicinarsi all'animale vero e prenderne un campione di sudore da studiare in laboratorio: l'idea era sembrata brillante al naturalista Brady Barr, che però, non aveva messo in conto l'incognita fango. E così l'armatura animalesca in cui si era nascosto ha iniziato rapidamente a sprofondare lasciandolo intrappolato proprio mentre un ippopotamo vero si avvicinava curioso in un parco naturale dello Zambia. Missione abortita, sos lanciato via radio e tanta paura per il dottor Brady che alla fine è stato soccorso da un ranger. Ma solo quando l'ippopotamo vero ha deciso di allontanarsi dalla zona. Eppure il dottore è recidivo: aveva già tentato una simile avventura travestendosi da coccodrillo, sempre per scopi scientifici, questa volta con maggiore successo. l'episodio dell'incontro ravvicinato tra Brady Barr e l'ippopotamo sarà in onda ad aprile sul canale Nat Geo Wild (canale 405 di SKY). Brady Barr è il protagonista su Nat Geo Wild della serie di documentari Incontri Pericolosi, dove l'esploratore di National Geographic riesce ad avvicinare e studiare gli esemplari più affascinanti e rari del mondo animale

gossip biografici

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sennett

Richard Sennett (born Chicago, 1 January 1943) is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, the Bemis Adjunct Professor of Sociology at MIT and Professor of the Humanities at New York University. Sennett is probably best known for his studies of social ties in cities, and the effects of urban living on individuals in the modern world. Sennett is married to sociologist and economist Saskia Sassen.

The Landmine-Sniffing Rats of Mozambique

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1811203,00.html

Three-year-old Samo scurries across a grassy field, his nose twitching furiously. Hooked up to a harness, he darts back and forth across the roped-off minefield — then, suddenly, he freezes in his tracks, sniffing the air. After a concentrated pause, he scratches vigorously at the ground, a signal to his handler, Shirima Vendeline Emmanuel, who stands in a safe zone a few yards away that he has found a landmine. "Good boy, Samo," shouts Emmanuel, as he scampers over to receive his reward — a banana. Samo is not some exploited child-soldier, however; he is a bristly giant Gambian pouched rat.

Mozambique's brutal 16-year civil war may have ended in 1992, but the country's villages, farming land and transport system remain covered by thousands of minefields. Some were planted decades ago by the Portuguese colonial army, others, later, by the forces of the Frelimo government and their South African-backed rebel opponents. The wars may be over, but their ordnance continues to kill and maim Mozambicans and prevent them from farming their land.
Once in the ground, landmines are devilishly hard to get rid of, and efforts to remove the estimated 100 million buried around the world have prompted many an outlandish innovation. A Cambodian newspaper once proposed bringing over British cattle suffering from mad cow disease to roam the countryside setting off an estimated 11 million mines buried there. More conventional approaches to demining all have their flaws. Armored mine-clearance vehicles only operate on flat terrain; metal detectors are terribly inefficient because they pick up all the non-lethal bits of metal in the ground; dogs can smell the explosive in a land mine, but tend to get bored and run the risk of getting themselves blown up.
So when researchers from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania, began training rats — known for their keen sense of smell — for the job, the Mozambicans were willing to give it a try. "Rats are intelligent, and they like to learn new things," says Jared Mkumbo, a Tanzanian who supervises the training of the rats and their handlers. "You can train them to do exactly what you want them to do." The project, run by an organization called Apopo, which is funded by the Flemish government in Belgium, is proving so effective that a new batch of mine-sniffing rats is scheduled to be deployed in Angola later this year.
Samo is already a veteran: Last month, he was part of a crew of 10 rodents that successfully sniffed out all the mines in fields totaling 130,000 square feet around the village of Macia in southern Mozambique. But today's exercise is only a practice run. A grassy field on the edge of town has been set up to resemble a real minefield ready to be cleared. Dozens of 100-square meter (1,076 square feet) plots are demarcated by markers and strings, red perimeters signify areas of dangers, while green marks the safe zones where the handlers stand, connected to their rats by a rope pulley system. The mines buried here are dummies, already detonated but still containing the traces of TNT that the rats have been trained to sniff out.
Rats are almost perfectly suited for this type of work, argues Mkumbo. They are easy to train and transport to clearance sites, cheap to feed, and resistant to many of the tropical diseases to which dogs succumb. In the field, they are quick and methodical. Thirty-six rats trained in Tanzania are working on the project so far, and have already cleared thousands of mines across the country. "Two rats can clear a 200-square-meter area in one hour," says Mkumbo. "It takes one [human] de-miner two weeks to do the same area." And all that the rats ask in return is tasty food. When Samo signals the presence of a mine by scratching the ground, Emmanuel, his handler, presses a clicker which makes a noise that Samo has been trained to associate with food. He scampers over and snatches his banana from Emmanuel, devouring it in a couple of quick bites. To maintain their conditioning, the rats require regular training when they're not in the field — and on training days, from Monday to Friday, they only eat what they earn. Later, when a rat named Grigory fails to adequately signal the presence of one of the dummy mines, Emmanuel withholds his reward. "Tomorrow he will know that he needs to better," he says.
Unlike dogs, which grow attached to individual handlers, the rats are happy to work with anyone, so long as they are fed. Instead, it is the handlers who have grown attached to the rats. "Our economy used to be poor because of landmines, but now the rats are making a difference," says Alberto Jorge Zacarias, a handler who previously worked with mine-detecting dogs for eight years. "They are heroes. One day I will see my country free of landmines."

Creata in laboratorio un'erba antigas

http://www.corriere.it/scienze_e_tecnologie/08_maggio_09/erba_antigas_mucche_c6c903b4-1df2-11dd-a82d-00144f486ba6.shtml

Le mucche producono 80 milioni di tonnellate all'anno

Secondo i ricercatori australiani che l'hanno realizzata è in grado di ridurre il metano prodotto dai bovini

Il metano prodotto dalla decomposizione di sostanze organiche nello stomaco dei bovini potrà essere abbattuto della metà. Le emissioni gassose, è ben noto, accompagnano il metabolismo di qualunque essere vivente. Ma pare che le mucche e gli altri sempre più numerosi animali da allevamento stiano esagerando: attraverso rutti e flatulenze sono arrivati a scaraventare nell’atmosfera qualcosa come 80 milioni di tonnellate all’anno di metano. Sarebbe solo una divertente curiosità se il metano non fosse un potente gas a effetto serra, in grado di accrescere il riscaldamento del nostro pianeta e di alterare il clima. Insomma: più popolazione, più allevamenti, più metano, più caldo, più disastri climatici.
LA NUOVA ERBA CREATA IN LABORATORIO - Per spezzare questo cerchio, i ricercatori della Gramina, un’industria biotecnologica australiana, hanno annunciato di avere creato in laboratorio un nuovo tipo di erba che ridurrebbe fino al 50% i pericolosi effluvi. Il meccanismo di produzione dell’erba antigas è, ovviamente, coperto da segreto industriale; tuttavia si sa che, una volta nello stomaco del bovino, essa riduce l’attività batterica che causa la decomposizione delle sostanze organiche e l’abbondante formazione del gas. «A contatto con un allevamento di bovini, anche se non sentite i classici ruttini, è possibile rendersi conto che l’emissione di metano è continua. Questa erba, agendo sugli enzimi, la limita», assicura David Beever, un ricercatore esperto in nutrizione del bestiame. Poiché in alcuni Paesi si progetta di tassare gli allevamenti metano-emittenti, se l’erba si dovesse rivelare efficace, avrebbe un mercato assicurato.

I DANNI DEL METANO - Fra tutti i gas serra messi al bando dal Protocollo di Kyoto, il metano occupa il secondo posto, per abbondanza, dopo l’anidride carbonica. Tuttavia esso ha un potere riscaldante una ventina di volte più alto e quindi il suo ulteriore aumento è temuto perché farebbe accrescere sostanzialmente l’effetto serra. Le fonti di emissione del metano create dalle attività umane, oltre agli allevamenti, sono le discariche, le risaie e l'estrazione di idrocarburi. Gli esperti in calcolo dell’impatto climatico fanno anche notare che solitamente gli ambientalisti prendono di mira l’energia, le industrie e i trasporti come maggiori responsabili dell’effetto serra. Ma, anche la zootecnia ha pesanti responsabilità: a parte la nocività dei gas delle mucche, bisogna sapere che mangiare una bistecca equivale a percorrere una cinquantina di km con un’automobile di media cilindrata!

Vaccino per i "gas" dei bovini, producono metano

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Scienze_e_Tecnologie/2004/09_Settembre/24/flatulenza.shtml

Le emissioni del bestiame contribuirebbero all'effetto serra. In Nuova Zelanda una tassa contro le emissioni degli animali

SYDNEY - I gas emessi da bovini e ovini, per flatulenza ed eruttazione, contribuiscono in modo consistente all'aumento dell'effetto serra. Questo è quanto sostiene un gruppo di scienziati australiani e, per contrastare tali emissioni nell'atmosfera, gli studiosi hanno elaborato un apposito vaccino. Bovini e ovini, che ammontano nel mondo rispettivamente a 1 miliardo e 57 milioni di capi e 1 miliardo e 300 milioni di capi, "producono", anche se sembra strano, un quinto di tutte le emissioni globali di metano, sostanza che insieme ai gas di combustione (in particolare l'anidride carbonica) costituisce la più seria minaccia al clima del nostro pianeta.
VACCINO - Per questo, come riportato dalla rivista britannica New Scientist, gli studiosi dell'ente federale di ricerca Csiro ritengono fondamentale l'importanza del loro vaccino allo scopo di proteggere la Terra dal progressivo innalzamento della temperatura. Il vaccino agirebbe contro tre specie di microbi che producono metano nello stomaco delle pecore e delle mucche e, nelle sperimentazioni condotte, avrebbe ridotto la produzione del gas dell'8%. Per ora il vaccino sarebbe in grado di agire soltanto contro questi tre specifici microbi, ma gli studiosi australiani contano di estenderne l'azione ad una buona parte degli altri microbi, che insieme sono responsabili dell'80% delle emissioni di metano dagli ovini.
EFFETTO SERRA - Il gas metano è 23 volte più potente del CO2 (anidride carbonica), in termini di volume, nella capacità di intrappolare il calore del sole, ed è responsabile di un quinto dell'incremento dell'effetto serra negli ultimi 200 anni. Oltre che dal bestiame, il gas viene disperso nell'atmosfera dall'agricoltura, dai movimenti di terra, dalle miniere e terre umide naturali. La riduzione di emissioni di metano rientra nelle clausole del Protocollo di Kyoto, fortemente voluto, tra gli altri da Australia e Nuova Zelanda.
TASSA ANOMALA - La Nuova Zelanda, in particolare, è particolarmente attiva nella battaglia alle emissioni di metano in campo agricolo. Data la consistenza presenza di bestiame, il paese conta ben 9 milioni di bovini e 46 milioni di ovini, quest'anno il governo ha introdotto una tassa sugli allevatori, prontamente soprannominata 'tassa sui rutti". La tassa prevede il pagamento di 60 centesimi di euro l'anno per ogni bovino posseduto ed 8 per pecora. Gli introiti, che un rapido calcolo permette di prevedere intorno ai 5 milioni di euro, serviranno a finanziare la ricerca necessaria perché la Nuova Zelanda possa conseguire gli obiettivi del protocollo di Kyoto sulla riduzione delle emissioni di gas-serra.

Le mosche «stupide» vivono più a lungo

http://www.corriere.it/scienze_e_tecnologie/08_giugno_05/mosche_stipide_longeve_0e8f4022-32df-11dd-83ed-00144f02aabc.shtml

L'energia per sviluppare un cervello più attivo sottrarrebbe energia al resto dell'organismo

LOSANNA (Svizzera) - Non spremerti le meningi e vivrai fino a cent'anni: questo è quanto, in un certo senso, suggerisce un gruppo di ricercatori dell'Università di Losanna, che ha studiato il comportamento di uno dei parassiti più molesti e pericolosi in circolazione - le mosche. «Quanto più è assente l'attività cerebrale in questi insetti, tanto più è lunga la loro aspettativa di vita." In altre parole: le mosche "stupide" vivono più di quelle "intelligenti"».
RICERCA - Sono furbe, sono veloci, ma pure molto fastidiose. Se abbiano anche un minimo di raziocinio è stato osservato ora da un team di ricercatori svizzeri. Gli scienziati di biologia e evoluzione Tadeusz Kawecki e Joep Burger dell'ateneo vodese hanno accertato «la correlazione negativa fra il miglioramento delle capacità di apprendimento e di memorizzazione della mosca e la sua longevità". In pratica, "un cervello attivo fa invecchiare più velocemente le mosche", scrivono gli studiosi elvetici sulla rivista scientifica "Evolution"».
DUE GRUPPI DI MOSCHE - Questo può essere spiegato con l'energia che il cervello consuma, dice la ricerca. Per l'esperimento sono stati osservati nel terrotorio di Basilea due gruppi distinti di questa specie. Il primo gruppo non è stato sottoposto ad alcuna sollecitazione, ed ha quindi continuato a vivere normalmente. Agli insetti del secondo gruppo i ricercatori hanno insegnato ad associare un odore di cibo ad un sapore - piacevole o meno -, come pure a collegare uno shock o delle sollecitazioni in laboratorio ad una fragranza precisa. Ebbene, i ricercatori hanno ottenuto - dopo 30-40 generazioni - mosche in grado di «apprendere» e con una memoria migliore dei loro antenati. Vivono però meno delle colleghe "normali". Quest'ultime sono sopravvissute in media 80 giorni, senza aver fatto granchè. Quelle «intelligenti», invece, sono arrivate in media soltanto a 50 fino a 60 giorni di vita. Lo studio «Learning Ability and Longevity: A Symmetrical Evolutionary Trade-off in Drosophila» è stato effettuato sulle mosche drosofile, appartenenti all'Ordine dei Ditteri.
«ENERGIA CELEBRALE» - «Un'attività più intensa del cervello di questi insetti - rilevano infine gli scienziati - è pagata in termini di energia vitale». Questo fattore spiegherebbe perché le mosche e la maggior parte degli altri animali non siano cioè tentati di sviluppare le loro facoltà neuronali. Un suggerimento: non cercate di imitare le mosche, con gli umani non è detto che vada allo stesso modo. Meglio cercare di essere intelligenti, visto che molti studi indicano che un cervello attivo e ben irrorato aumenta la probabilità di stare meglio in età avanzata.

¿Calor o nueva edad de hielo?

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/Calor/nueva/edad/hielo/elpepisoc/20080615elpepisoc_1/Tes

Algunos científicos temen por la corriente del Golfo que atempera Europa - Su última reducción marcó la "pequeña edad de hielo" de los siglos XVI a XIX

"Hay que fastidiarse con el calentamiento". Es la frase de moda en el ascensor. España ya se preparaba para un secarral histórico con gran aparato de refriegas autonómicas y trasvases por decreto, cuando de pronto llegó mayo y aquí no ha parado de llover desde entonces, las presas se desbordan, los decretos se derogan y las sandalias se pudren en el armario con el resto de la ropa de verano. Hay que fastidiarse con el calentamiento.
El enfriamiento de Europa, sin embargo, es una predicción de los modelos de calentamiento global que maneja un pequeño grupo de científicos díscolos, discrepantes en este punto concreto de la corriente principal del Panel Intergubernamental para el Cambio Climático, o IPCC. La discrepancia tiene que ver con la corriente del Golfo, el flujo de templadas aguas superficiales que arranca en el Golfo de México, cruza el Atlántico y recorre de sur a norte la costa occidental europea, templándola a su paso. Es como un río dentro del mar, sólo que tiene 1.000 kilómetros de ancho y 100 veces el caudal del Amazonas.
La corriente del Golfo es la responsable de que Europa occidental tenga un clima mucho más benigno que cualquier otra región planetaria de latitud equivalente. Y también de que los vascos carezcan de un marisco presentable: la corriente calienta las aguas de la bahía de Vizcaya y logra así espantar a todo el marisco hacia las gélidas costas gallegas, más del gusto de estos artrópodos y cefalópodos.
La corriente del Golfo es la cara visible de un colosal ciclo oceánico que también circula por el fondo, en sentido opuesto. A medida que calienta la costa europea en su trayectoria ascendente, el agua superficial de origen tropical se va enfriando, más fría cuanto más se acerca al Ártico. Como es agua salada, el frío aumenta su densidad hasta hacerla hundirse. Y el agua superficial del trópico se desplaza hacia allí para cubrir el hueco dejado por el hundimiento (ésta es la corriente del Golfo propiamente dicha). El ciclo completo se suele llamar "circulación termohalina", porque su motor son los cambios de temperatura (termo) y concentración de sal (halina).
Según los científicos discrepantes, la corriente del Golfo (o la circulación termohalina) será una de las primeras y más notorias víctimas del calentamiento global. La razón es el deshielo de los casquetes polares y de los glaciares de Groenlandia, que está vertiendo crecientes caudales de agua dulce en el salado Atlántico Norte. Si el agua superficial ya no está tan salada, el frío puede verse incapaz de hundirla, y el motor de la corriente del Golfo se colapsaría de raíz. De esta forma, el calentamiento global provocaría el enfriamiento de Europa. ¿Explica esto el mes y pico de mal tiempo que llevamos?
"El comportamiento futuro de la corriente del Golfo dependerá en gran parte del ritmo de fusión de la hoja de hielo de Groenlandia", dice a EL PAÍS el científico atmosférico Michael Schlesinger, director del Climate Research Group de la Universidad de Illinois. Schlesinger, miembro del IPCC, alcanzó los titulares hace tres años al anunciar: "El cierre de la corriente del Golfo se ha considerado hasta ahora como un suceso de grandes consecuencias pero escasa probabilidad. Nuestro análisis, incluso descontando las incertidumbres, indica que se trata de un suceso de grandes consecuencias y alta probabilidad".
"De modo que la cuestión", explica ahora Schlesinger, "es cuánto puede durar esa hoja de hielo. Según nuestros resultados más recientes, que estamos a punto de publicar, si la pregunta es '¿sobrevivirá la hoja de hielo de Groenlandia al tercer milenio?', la respuesta es no, o no mucho, según el futuro escenario de control de emisiones que uno elija".
Nadie discute que la fusión total del hielo groenlandés sería suficiente para clausurar sin fecha la corriente del Golfo. Si los modelos de Schlesinger son correctos, la corriente será cosa del pasado dentro de mil años. Pero ¿no puede su flujo haberse aminorado como consecuencia del deshielo que ya ha ocurrido?
La NASA publicó en 2004 unas mediciones por satélite que apoyaban esa tesis: "El sistema de circulación oceánica del Atlántico Norte se ha debilitado notablemente en los últimos años noventa respecto a las dos décadas anteriores", concluía en Science el equipo de Sirpa Hakkinen, investigadora del Centro de Vuelos Espaciales Goddard de la NASA. "Ignoramos si esta tendencia forma parte del ciclo natural o se debe a factores relacionados con el calentamiento global".
Pero los datos de la NASA han sido muy discutidos por otros científicos del clima. La posición del IPCC en su último informe es que no cabe hablar del "cierre" de la corriente del Golfo en un plazo previsible. Si acaso podría darse un "debilitamiento" de su flujo, pero "incluso en los modelos en que la corriente del Golfo se debilita, la predicción sigue siendo que Europa se calentará".
Esta posición cautelosa del IPCC le trajo el año pasado al ex candidato demócrata y campeón climático Al Gore un engorro judicial en la corte londinense. La supuesta clausura de la corriente del Golfo es una de las "nueve afirmaciones contradictorias o sin confirmar científicamente" contenidas en su famoso documental Una verdad incómoda, según el implacable repaso que le dio a la cinta el juez británico sir Michael Burton. En su auto, Burton precisaba que "es muy improbable" que desaparezca la corriente del Golfo, "aunque puede ser que se atenúe". Se había leído el cuarto informe del IPCC.
El deshielo de Groenlandia no es la única amenaza para el gran ciclo termohalino del Atlántico Norte. Todos los flujos marinos están interconectados, y hasta el calentamiento de la Antártida puede afectar de forma bastante directa al clima de la costa occidental europea. "La corriente del Golfo depende del bombeo de agua que procede de otros flujos que comienzan en la Antártida", ha dicho recientemente a este diario Michael Stoddart, coordinador del programa antártico Census of Marine Life. "Si hay menos hielo, la circulación se hará más lenta y los puertos de Europa se helarán en invierno. Esto ya ocurrió en el pasado".
En efecto, varios estudios paleoclimatológicos de los últimos años han demostrado que las pasadas atenuaciones de la corriente del Golfo, examinables por sus rastros geológicos, guardan una excelente correlación con las glaciaciones y otros periodos de enfriamiento en Europa. El último bajón de la corriente, por ejemplo, coincide con la "pequeña edad de hielo", el moderado enfriamiento (de 1 grado de promedio) que experimentó el continente entre los siglos XVI y XIX.
La pequeña edad de hielo, por cierto, demuestra que España no está en absoluto a resguardo de las fluctuaciones de la corriente del Golfo: el Ebro se congeló al menos siete veces en ese periodo, y en la Península se llegaron a catalogar siete fases catastróficas -clusters de tormentas y lluvias desaforadas- que se alternaban con largas épocas de pertinaz sequía.
La industria hielera -ahora sector criogénico- medró en zonas de España donde no ha vuelto a nevar desde 1850, cuando la pequeña edad de hielo dio paso a la actual etapa de calentamiento. Si las primeras emisiones de gases de la revolución industrial ayudaron a impulsar ese cambio es una cuestión confusa por el momento.
La influencia de la corriente del Golfo en el clima europeo y planetario es probablemente más profunda de lo que se venía pensando. Un equipo de climatólogos dirigido por Shoshiro Minobe, de la Universidad de Hokkaido en Sapporo, acaba de demostrar que la corriente del Golfo determina el estado local de la troposfera, la capa atmosférica de 10 o 20 kilómetros de espesor donde ocurren todos los fenómenos meteorológicos y climáticos (Nature, 13 de marzo).
"Esto tiene implicaciones para nuestra comprensión del cambio climático", escribe Minobe en Nature, "porque la circulación termohalina del Atlántico ha variado de magnitud en el pasado, y la predicción es que se debilite en el futuro en respuesta al calentamiento global causado por el ser humano". ¿Qué pasará, entonces?
"La circulación termohalina puede bloquearse en el futuro lejano, pero no en el cercano", responde Minobe a EL PAÍS. "El último informe del IPCC examinó esa posibilidad, y ninguno de los modelos climáticos utilizados para el informe predijo ese bloqueo para los próximos 100 años. Pero el debilitamiento de la corriente ocurrirá con certeza".
El científico japonés prosigue: "La principal componente de la corriente del Golfo está impulsada por el viento, y sólo la componente menor se debe a la circulación termohalina. Por tanto, incluso si se diera un bloqueo termohalino, la corriente del Golfo no se bloquearía por completo. El debilitamiento parcial de la circulación termohalina, sin embargo, puede reducir la corriente del Golfo y alterar su curso".
Ahí queríamos llegar: ¿puede entonces que cierto debilitamiento parcial de la corriente del Golfo sea el responsable del mal tiempo que nos aflige desde primeros de mayo? "Ésa es una cuestión importante", responde Minobe. "Siento no conocer la respuesta".
Nunca hable del tiempo con un climatólogo.

intercontinental panel on climate change

http://www.ipcc.ch/

Cinders, la prima maialina con gli stivali

http://www.corriere.it/cronache/08_giugno_11/cinders_maialino_stivali_ba8c75ae-37ba-11dd-a7f3-00144f02aabc.shtml

Vive nella fattoria di Debbie e Andrew Keeble, a Thirsk, nel North Yorkshire

Ha sempre mostrato una vera e propria avversione peril fango e così i suoi 'genitori' umani sono corsi ai ripari

LONDRA - Dopo il Gatto con gli stivali, è la volta del «maialino con gli stivali». Anzi, maialina, perché la protagonista della storia, che non è una fiaba ma lo sembra tutta, si chiama Cinders (proprio come Cenerentola) e al posto delle scarpette di vetro calza, in realtà, quattro mini-stivaletti di gomma che un tempo fungevano da portapenne sulla scrivania dei suoi proprietari (una coppia di allevatori di maiali di Thirsk, nel North Yorkshire) e che oggi le permettono di sguazzare nel fango come fanno gli altri sei fratelli e sorelle.
La maialina con gli stivali NIENTE SALSICCE - A differenza dei propri simili, infatti, fin dal suo arrivo nella fattoria di Debbie e Andrew Keeble la piccola Cinders ha sempre mostrato una vera e propria avversione per il fango e l’idea di sporcarsi le zampine non l’affascinava minimamente, tanto che, mentre i fratelli si inzaccheravano alla più non posso, lei restava a guardarli con un misto di agitazione e disgusto. È probabile che la maialina soffra di misofobia (ovvero, la paura patologia del contatto con la sporcizia), per battere la quale si è pensato di ricorrere allo stratagemma dei mini-stivali verdi di gomma, che Cinders indossa con gioia ogni mattina, prima di fiondarsi in mezzo al fango insieme con i fratelli. Fortunatamente per lei, come racconta il «Daily Mail», la maialina non diventerà una delle salsicce per le quali i Keeble hanno vinto numerosi premi in passato, visto che oggi si limitano all’allevamento e basta. Anzi, sarà addirittura la testimonial di una campagna a sostegno delle difficoltà degli allevatori di suini.

I PORTAMATITE - «Cinque settimane fa, quando Cinders è nata – ha raccontato la signora Debbie – il suo comportamento ci aveva lasciato sconcertati, perché sembrava che non volesse allontanarsi dalla madre, mentre gli altri fratelli erano già in giro a esplorare. Poi, però, ci siamo accorti che se la mettevamo in una zona pulita, lei camminava tranquillamente». Il problema era, dunque, il fango. «A quel punto – ha proseguito il marito Andrew – ci siamo detti: "ok, perché non metterle ai piedi un paio di stivali?". Così, ci siamo ricordati dei quattro portamatite che avevamo in ufficio, fatti a stivaletti di gomma, e glieli abbiamo infilati. Non ho idea di quello che succederà quando Cinders diventerà più grande. L’unica speranza è che superi la sua fobia prima di aver bisogno di un nuovo paio di stivali».
Simona Marchetti

China uses 'panda porn to sexercise' zoo population into mating

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-545649/China-uses-panda-porn-sexercise-zoo-population-mating.html

They have been forced to endure pornographic DVDs, invasive IVF and even a mock wedding to encourage them to breed.
But now sex-shy pandas are to be subjected to a new tactic to spur them on to have more babies - 'sexercise'.
Zoo keepers at the Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Centre in the Sichuan province, South West China, are putting their charges through a rigorous exercise scheme - mainly involving apples - with the aim of improving their mating skills.
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'Sexercising': Zoo keepers claim making pandas dance for an apple improves their stamina and pelvic floor muscles
The fruit is dangled from a string above the panda, luring it to stand on two legs.
Keepers claim the technique teaches the creatures to perform a dance-like routine that strengthens the pelvic and hip area, boosting the animal's stamina.
Yang Kuxing, keeper of ten pandas in the centre's maternity ward, said that sexercise should aid the males when mating.
'After pandas succeed in taking the standing-up exercise, we feed them apples to reward them,' he added.
Such quirky measures are designed to ensure the survival of one of the world's most endangered animals.
Last November, China had 239 pandas living in captivity with another 27 overseas. Just 1,569 are believed to live in the wild and remote corners of the South West of China.
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Watch and learn: Captive pandas, who normally learn how to mate from other creatures, are having to be taught by videos, dubbed 'panda porn'
And to combat any female indifference, male pandas with a bit more experience are also being called in to help their more innocent companions.
One official said: 'We arrange lovemaking between two excellent pandas in front of inexperienced pandas which have never had sex. It does work.'
More than 30 per cent of the 68 pandas at the base are capable of having sex naturally compared with just 10 per cent a decade ago.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

What the Internet is doing to our brains
by Nicholas Carr

"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial » brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.” I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle. I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.) For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski. I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?” Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.” Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the study report: It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense. Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged. Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works. Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page. But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.” “You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.” The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the fly, altering the way it functions.” As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”—the tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of those technologies. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.” The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock. The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level. The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV. When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration. The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts, its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules. Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure. About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man named Frederick Winslow Taylor carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the efficiency of the plant’s machinists. With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an “algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared. More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it—was embraced by manufacturers throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed, maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific Management, was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout the mechanic arts.” Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. “In the past the man has been first,” he declared; “in the future the system must be first.” Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.” Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review, and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of the mind. The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers. Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.” Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to use technology, in Eric Schmidt’s words, “to solve problems that have never been solved before,” and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn’t Brin and Page want to be the ones to crack it? Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive. The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction. Maybe I’m just a worrywart. Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom). The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver. So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake: I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.” As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.

Nicholas Carr’s most recent book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, was published earlier this year.