Category: Uncategorized

A study in The Journal of Neuroscience finds that people with a particular version of a gene called Period 3 are better able to handle sleep deprivation because more of their brains get involved in counteracting the lack of zzz’s.

Cynthia Graber reports

Numerous studies have shown that lack of sleep hurts—it can lead to weight gain, diseases, and of course weakened cognitive functioning. But a bad night’s sleep doesn’t hurt everyone equally. Unlike me, some people can think clearly no matter what. A study published June 24th in The Journal of Neuroscience helps explain why.

Scientists looked for a genetic marker called Period 3 known to predict the effects of sleep deprivation. People with short versions of the gene do okay when they lose sleep. But the longer gene leads to suffering with lack of sleep.

Researchers tested attention and cognition before and after both good and bad nights’ sleeps.

Scientific American for more

TED talks

Address at the high-level dialogue on maximizing positive synergies between health systems and global health initiatives.
Venice, Italy
22 June 2009

Dr Margaret Chan

Director-General of the World Health Organization
Honourable Mayor of Venice, honourable President of the Veneto Region, honourable ministers, colleagues from the United Nations system, representatives of global health initiatives, researchers and academics, civil society, ladies and gentlemen,

First, let me thank the city of Venice for hosting this event, and thank the government of Italy for its support .Let me thank the many contributors from around the world who have so generously given their time, their findings, and their thoughtful insights.
I think we can now let a long-standing and divisive debate die down. This is the debate that pits single-disease initiatives against the agenda for strengthening health systems.

As I have stated since taking office, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. They are not in conflict. They do not represent a set of either-or options. It is the opposite. They can and should be mutually reinforcing. We need both.

This is one of the jobs, I believe, of this high-level dialogue: to craft policies and best practice that help the two approaches work together, in harmony, in ways that reduce waste and duplication, and improve efficiency.

We need them to work together to facilitate what I believe we all agree is the most important goal: to save lives and improve health outcomes. The Positive Synergies report has its limitations, which the co-authors readily admit. But it does give us the most solid ground yet for taking stock of where we stand today and establishing informed policies for the future.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Global health initiatives were established with a strong sense of purpose and great ambition. They set out to save lives, on an emergency basis, even though not everything was known at the start about everything that needed to be done, or the best way to do it.

World Health Organization for more

by the National Labor Committee

The military coup d’état in Honduras is a dangerous step backward for Honduras and threatens democracy across Central America.

Democracies thrive only when democratic institutions operate peacefully and under the rule of law. The military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya brings back terrible memories of the 1980s when the Honduran military killed, disappeared, and tortured thousands of its people during “Reagan’s war.”

When New York City mayor Michael Blumberg and the New York City Council recently took steps to extend their two-term limit so that they could run for office again, citizens who opposed this went to court to have the term extension overturned. The case is still in the courts. There was no coup by the New York City police or the U.S. military. And New York City’s population of 8.3 million is far larger than that of Honduras.

The NLC strongly urges the following steps:
1. All U.S. military aid to Honduras should be immediately suspended.
2. Honduras, a member of CAFTA, is among the largest exporters in the world of garments to the U.S., with U.S. companies importing $2.6 billion worth of apparel in 2008. The NLC calls on Wal-Mart, Fruit of the Loom, Russell, and the dozens of other major U.S. retailers and apparel firms sourcing production to Honduras to go on record publicly opposing the military coup and insisting on a return to peaceful functioning of the country’s democratic institutions.

President Manuel Zelaya has supported the rights of trade unions in Honduras, which is one of the reasons the wealthy businessmen and oligarchs are so anxious to remove him from office.

MR Zine for more

By Samwel Kumba Posted Thursday, July 2 2009 at 13:01

Kenya has been ranked as the country with the highest bribery index in East Africa.

In a survey carried out between April and May 2009, Transparency International established that the bribery index in Kenya stands at 45 per cent.

Uganda’s bribery index is 35 per cent while Tanzania has the lowest at 17 per cent.

The survey shows that the police are the most corrupt officials in East Africa.

Releasing the report on Thursday, Transparency International Chief Executive Job Ogonda, revealed that Kenya Police topped the index in the region.

Their Tanzanian counterparts came in second while Kenya’s ministry of Defence closed the top three institutions with the highest bribery index.

Among the top ten, Kenya Police scored 66.5 per cent, Tanzania Police 62.56 per cent, Ministry of defence 61.9 per cent and Tanzania’s Judiciary and Courts came in fourth at 61.48 per cent.
Uganda Police had an index of 58.93 per cent, Immigration department in Tanzania 55.66 per cent, Kenya’s Judiciary Kenya 54.4 per cent, Uganda Public Service 49.5 per cent and the Ministry of defence Uganda 46.4 per cent.

In the survey 3500 households were interviewed in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Nation for more

Claim that hundreds were convicted through flawed credit card evidence

One of Britain’s biggest online paedophile inquiries is to be challenged in the court of appeal amid allegations from campaigners that hundreds of men have been wrongly convicted in a mass miscarriage of justice.

For more than two years a small group of experts have claimed that Operation Ore, the police inquiry into thousands of British men, was tainted because the database at the centre of the investigation contained evidence of widespread credit card fraud. Their allegations will be tested for the first time in the appeal court within weeks, when a judge examines a test case that could expose a huge miscarriage of justice, lawyers say.

The single judge will decide whether the case should go to a full appeal.

Chris Saltrese, the solicitor representing the convicted man, Anthony O’Shea, said: “If his appeal is successful the convictions of others for the same offence will fall too. We are talking in the hundreds and we say this is a huge miscarriage of justice.”
An estimated 39 men have killed themselves as a result of being arrested and prosecuted during the Ore inquiry, and the details of every individual who was convicted or cautioned have been placed on the sex offenders register.

Guardian for more

By Dahr Jamail

(Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.)

On May 1, at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive United States Army memo:

There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect.

Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling statement. On that one he wrote, “I will not
obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal.” Shortly thereafter, he told a reporter, “I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong. It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with.”

Agosto had already served in Iraq for 13 months with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. Currently on active duty at Fort Hood, he admits, “It was in Iraq that I turned against the occupations. I started to feel very guilty. I watched contractors making obscene amounts of money. I found no evidence that the occupation was in any way helping the people of Iraq. I know I contributed to death and human suffering. It’s hard to quantify how much I caused, but I know I contributed to it.”

Asia Times for more

Try to imagine, if you can, what modern civilization would be like without music. There would be no Miles Davis or Charlie Mingus, no Mozart or Mahler, no Black Eyed Peas or Beyonce, Chinese opera or gamelan, no movie scores, no folk festivals, no Billboard charts, no iPod, no Rolling Stone concerts, no ringtones. And, on a far more modest scale, there would be no blog in this space each week, as I always plunk a headset on as I begin composing my thoughts. The soundtrack for this blog is Hans Zimmer’s The Last Samurai.

Without music, our world would be a sad, impoverished place, a truism that crossed my mind this week as I read of the latest discovery at Hohle Fels Cave in Germany. There, in one of the lower layers, University of Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard and his colleagues unearthed a bone flute securely dated to at least 35,000 years ago, and perhaps as much as 40,000 years ago. The 8-inch-long instrument, carved from the bone of a griffon vulture, lay in a thin archaeological layer less than three feet away from a Venus figurine that made headlines around the world last month.

Archaeology for more

There’s A Place In Your Heart
And I Know That It Is Love
and this place could be Much
Brighter Than Tomorrow

And If You Really Try
You’ll Find There’s No Need
To Cry
In This Place You’ll Feel
That There’s No Hurt Or Sorrow

There Are Ways To Get There
If You Care Enough For The Living
Make A Little Space Make A Better Place…

Heal The World – Make It A Better Place
For You And For Me – And The Entire Human Race
There Are People Dying – If You Care Enough
For The Living – Make A Better Place
For You And For Me

If You Want To Know Why
There’s A Love That Cannot Lie
Love Is Strong It Only Cares For
Joyful Giving

If We Try We Shall See
In This Bliss We Cannot Feel
Fear Or Dread
We Stop Existing And
Start Living

Then It Feels That Always
Love’s Enough For
Us Growing
Make A Better World
Make A Better World…

Heal The World
…

And The Dream We Were
Conceived In
Will Reveal A Joyful Face
And The World We
Once Believed In
Will Shine Again In Grace
Then Why Do We Keep
Strangling Life

Wound This Earth
Crucify Its Soul
Though It’s Plain To See
This World Is Heavenly
Be God’s Glow

We Could Fly So High
Let Our Spirits Never Die
In My Heart
I Feel You Are All
My Brothers

Create A World With
No Fear
Together We’ll Cry
Happy Tears
See The Nations Turn
Their Swords
Into Plowshares

We Could Really Get There
If You Cared Enough
For The Living
Make A Little Space
To Make A Better Place…

Heal The World
…

Michael Jackson – Earth Song – World Environment Day