I Feel Your Pain, Unless You're From a Different Race

By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor

posted: 27 May 2010




Normally when you see or imagine someone else in pain, your brain experiences a twinge of pain as well. Not so when race and bias come into play, scientists now find.

Intriguingly, people respond with empathy when pain is inflicted on others who don't fit into any preconceived racial category, such as those who appear to have violet-colored skin.

"This is quite important because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play," said researcher Salvatore Maria Aglioti, a cognitive and social neuroscientist at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy.

Scientists asked volunteers in Italy of Italian and African descent to watch short films showing either needles penetrating a person's hand or a Q-tip gently touching the same spot. At the same time, they measured brain and nervous system activity.

When the volunteers saw the hands get poked, the brain and nervous system activity revealed the same spot on each volunteer's own hands reacted involuntarily when the person in the film was of the same race. Those of a different race did not provoke the same response.

However, when both white and black volunteers saw violet-colored hands get jabbed, they responded empathetically. This suggests that people normally automatically feel the pain of others, and the lack of empathy that volunteers showed for people of other races was learned and not innate.

"This default reactivity of human beings implies empathy with the pain of strangers," said researcher Alessio Avenanti of the University of Bologna in Italy. "However, racial bias may suppress this empathic reactivity, leading to a dehumanized perception of others' experience."

It could make evolutionary sense that we feel less empathy for people who are different than us. "In case of war or even a friendly competition like a football game, it could be adaptive to feel less empathy for people we consider our opponents," said social neuroscientist Joan Chiao at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who did not take part in this research.

Then again, "it also makes evolutionary sense for us to feel the pain of others, as it might cue that there is danger close by," Chiao noted. "Also, without feeling the pain of others, it could be harder to motivate altruistic behaviors, especially if such behaviors come at a cost."

Essentially, for the stranger in pain, in order to elicit help, he or she would need to actually get the stranger to feel empathy.

While the ability for culture to regulate empathy could be helpful, "when you feel prejudices that are not adaptive, that are not rooted in reality, that shows that there can be a darker side to empathy regulation," Chiao added.

These new findings could suggest one could help deal with racial prejudice with methods designed to restore empathy for others, the researchers said.

"One can reduce empathy, but one can also promote it, learning positive associations with another group," Chiao said.

The scientists detailed their findings online May 27 in the journal Current Biology.

original post site link;
http://www.livescience.com/culture/racial-bias-empathy-100527.html

New Breed of Specialist Steps In for Family
Doctor



Dr. Subha Airan-Javia
lowered the steroid dosage for Marilyn Lopp, 72, who has chronic
pulmonary disease.

By JANE GROSS

PHILADELPHIA — By the time Djigui Keita left the hospital for home, his follow-up appointment had been scheduled. Emergency health insurance was arranged until he could apply for public assistance. He knew about changes in his medication — his doctor had found less expensive brands at local pharmacy chains. And Mr. Keita, 35, who had passed out from dehydration, was cautioned to carry spare water bottles in the taxi he drove for a living.

The hour long briefing the home-bound patient received here at the
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was orchestrated by a hospitalist, a member of America’s fastest-growing medical specialty. Over a decade, this breed of physician-administrator has increasingly taken over the care of the hospitalized patient from overburdened family doctors with less and less time to make hospital rounds — or, as in Mr. Keita’s case, when there is no family doctor at all. Because hospitalists are on top of everything that happens to a patient — from entry through treatment and discharge — they are largely credited with reducing the length of hospital stays by anywhere from 17 to 30 percent, and reducing costs by 13 to 20 percent, according to studies in The Journal of the American Medical Association. As their numbers have grown, from 800 in the 1990s to 30,000 today, medical experts have come to see hospitalists as potential leaders in the transition to the Obama
administration’s health care reforms, to be phased in by 2014. Under the new legislation, hospitals will be penalized for read missions, medical errors and inefficient operating systems.

Avoidable read missions are the costliest mistakes for the government and the taxpayer, and they now occur for one in five patients, gobbling $17.4 billion of Medicare’s current $102.6 billion budget. Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, Mr. Keita’s hospitalist, splits her time between clinical care and designing computer programs to contain costs and manage staff work flow. The discharge process she walked Mr. Keita and his wife through can work well, or badly, with very different results. Do it safely and the patient gets better. Do it wrong, and he’s back on the hospital doorstep — with a second set of bills. “Where we were headed was not a mystery to anyone immersed in health care,” said P. J. Brennan, the chief medical officer for the University of Pennsylvania’s hospitals. “We were getting paid to have people in the hospital and the part of that which was waste was under the gun. These young doctors, coming into a highly dysfunctional environment, had an affinity for working on processes and redesigning systems.” But hospitalists are not a panacea. Some have made mistakes when they sent their short-term charges home, failing to pass along necessary information to the regular doctor and family.

Another concern is that patients will balk at an unfamiliar doctor at the scariest of times. Carol Levine, in charge of family care giving at the United Hospital Fund of New York, remains skeptical that hospitalists will completely smooth the process. “The patient,” she said, “is still expecting a doctor-doctor, when ‘Wait a minute I don’t know you’ is going to take care of them.” The hospitalist appeared in the early 1990s, before the primary care situation was the crisis it is now. Today’s private internist may carry a roster of more than 2,000 patients, older and sicker than ever before, and the workload is expected to increase 29 percent by 2025. To keep tabs on hospitalized patients, the doctor generally races in, white coat flying, at 7 a.m., when the patient is asleep and the family is not there. (Physicians also earn 40 percent less for time spent with a hospitalized patient than one in the office, according to a report in the journal Health Affairs. ) Mort Miller, 84, of Chicago, was hospitalized eight years ago for a broken hip. He already had congestive heart failure and diabetes and was on dialysis. He died after four weeks. His son, Joseph, said that he did not once communicate with the family doctor. “He rounded in the morning when I wasn’t there and never returned my phone calls,” Mr. Miller said. “I guess he didn’t have time.” Mr. Miller left his business to help run the hospitalists’ professional group, the Society of Hospital Medicine, a career change inspired by his father’s experience. The most compelling argument in favor of hospitalists, who are now in 5,000 institutions, from academic giants like the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania to small community hospitals to innovators like the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics — is that they are there all the time. Another is that they are more comfortable than their predecessors with technology and cost-cutting decision-making.

One day in April, Dr. Airan-Javia was in and out of the rooms of a dozen patients, toggling between clinical work and designing a computer system for the safe hand off of patients between residents whose hours are now limited by law. Bad discharges generally result from hurried instructions to patients and families and little thought to where they are headed. One such situation was the centerpiece of a class taught for doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. The patient, an elderly woman in the hospital for scoliosis, a spinal condition, was discharged by a hospitalist on a Friday night, with a prescription for an narcotic pain reliever that her pharmacy, as it turned out, did not stock. No one explained how her new medication differed from the old, or gave her a contact number for help. Without medication, by Tuesday, her ankles swollen and her breathing irregular, the woman was back in the hospital. In 2008, the hospitalists’ organization decided to invent better discharge systems rather than respond defensively to criticism, not unlike the simple operating room checklist, made famous by the physician and author Atul Gawande, which reduced accidents and deaths.

In 65 participating hospitals around the country, the Society of Hospital Medicine identifies patients at high risk for readmission, provides staff mentoring, and designs user-friendly discharge forms listing follow-up appointments, potential signs of trouble and phone numbers for the hospital team. Peer-reviewed research on the reforms in the system is expected in a year or two. Even experts who were initially skeptical agree that the hospitalists’ skill set is timely. They are young and thus not entrenched in the current order. They enjoy working in teams, when older doctors tend to be hierarchical. And, like Dr. Airan-Javia, who has a 16-month-old baby, they appreciate the regular hours and a paycheck of, say, $190,000 — higher by $30,000 than community-based peers. Dr. Airan-Javia says she made an inspired career choice. Forty percent of her time is spent on the floor, treating diseases and helping patients and families though complex life events, like deciding when it is time to suspend medical care and let life end. Sixty percent of the time she is designing systems to improve workflow and advising the hospital’s chief medical officer. At meetings with her fellow hospitalists, phrases seldom spoken by most doctors, like “cost-effective delivery of care,” and “preventable adverse events,” flow off everyone’s tongue: The language of health care reform. “The tools have never been better,” she said, “for finally getting all of this right."

original story here;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/us/27hosp.html?src=me&ref=general

Working with nature is healthier. What a concept !

Carmen my friend~ you were (quite) right~ all along~

Science News

'Balanced' Ecosystems Seen in Organic Agriculture Better at Controlling Pests, Research Finds

Science Daily (July 1, 2010) — There really is a balance of nature, but as accepted as that thought is, it has rarely been studied. Now Washington State University researchers writing in the journal Nature have found that more balanced animal and plant communities typical of organic farms work better at fighting pests and growing a better plant.

The researchers looked at insect pests and their natural enemies in potatoes and found organic crops had more balanced insect populations in which no one species of insect has a chance to dominate. And in test plots, the crops with the more balanced insect populations grew better.

"I think 'balance' is a good term," says David Crowder, a post-doctorate research associate in entomology at Washington State University. "When the species are balanced, at least in our experiments, they're able to fulfill their roles in a more harmonious fashion."

Crowder and colleagues here and at the University of Georgia use the term "evenness" to describe the relatively equal abundance of different species in an ecosystem. Conservation efforts more typically concentrate on species richness -- the number of individual species -- or the loss of individual species. Crowder's paper is one of only a few to address the issue. It is the first the first to look at animal and fungal communities and at multiple points in the food chain.

The researchers say their results strengthen the argument that both richness and evenness need to be considered in restoring an ecosystem. The paper also highlights insect predator and prey relationships at a time when the potato industry and large French fry customers like McDonald's and Wendy's are being pushed to consider the ecological sustainability of different pest-control practices.

Conventional pest-management on farms often leads to biological communities dominated by a few species. Looking at conventional and organic potato farms in central Washington State's Columbia Basin, Crowder found that the evenness of natural pests differed drastically between the two types of farms. In the conventional fields, one species might account for four out of five insects. In the organic fields, the most abundant species accounted for as little as 38 percent of a field's insect predators and enemies.

Using field enclosures on Washington State University's Pullman campus, Crowder recreated those conditions using potato plants, Colorado potato beetles, four insect species and three soil pathogens that attack the beetles. When the predators and pathogens had similar numbers, says Crowder, "we would get significantly less potato beetles at the end of the experiment."

"In turn," he adds, "we'd get bigger plants."

Crowder says he is unsure why species evenness was lower in conventional crops. It could be from different types of fertilization or from insecticides killing some natural enemies more than others.


Journal Reference: David W. Crowder, Tobin D. Northfield, Michael R. Strand, William E. Snyder. Organic agriculture promotes evenness and natural pest control. Nature, 2010; 466 (7302): 109 DOI: 10.1038/nature09183

original story link;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630132752.htm

Giovonni!
Nice to see you here!

As you can see in this German article, I am not alone in seeing the destruction of the American middle class as a powerful trend in the U.S. It can be reversed, consider what Germany looked like 60 years ago, but not if the current trends continue. This is yet another screaming alarm bell telling us how important the November election is going to be.If the Republicans take power and attempt to reassert their policies, a full bore depression would not surprise me.

On the Way Down
The Erosion of America's Middle Class

By Thomas Schulz

The end of the American dream?

view photo-gallery here > http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-58334.html

While America's super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever. Long-term unemployment is rising and millions of Americans are struggling to survive. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the middle class is disappearing.

Ventura is a small city on the Pacific coast, about an hour's drive north of Los Angeles. Luxury homes with a view of the ocean dot the hillsides, and the beaches are popular with surfers. Ventura is storybook California. "It's a well-off place," says Captain William Finley. "But about 20 percent of the city is what we call at risk of homelessness." Finley heads the local branch of the Salvation Army.

Last summer Ventura launched a pilot program, managed by Finley, that allows people to sleep in their cars within city limits. This is normally illegal, both in Ventura and in the rest of the country, where local officials and residents are worried about seeing run-down vans full of Mexican migrant workers parked on residential streets.

But sometime at the beginning of last year, people in Ventura realized that the cars parked in front of their driveways at night weren't old wrecks, but well-tended station wagons and hatchbacks. And the people sleeping in them weren't fruit pickers or the homeless, but their former neighbors.

Finley also noticed a change. Suddenly twice as many people were taking advantage of his social service organization's free meals program, and some were even driving up in BMWs -- apparently reluctant to give up the expensive cars that reminded them of better times.

Finley calls them "the new poor." "That is a different category of people that I think we're seeing," he says. "They are people who never in their wildest imaginations thought they would be homeless." They're people who had enough money -- a lot of money, in some cases -- until recently.

"The image of what is a poor person in today's day and age doesn't fly. When I was growing up a poor person, and we grew up fairly poor, you drove a 10-year-old car that probably had some dents in it. You know, there was one car for the family and you lived out of the food bank," says Finley. "In the past, you got yourself out of poverty and were on your way up."

American Way Heads in Opposite Direction

It was the American way, a path taken by millions. "Today the image is you're getting newer late model cars that at one point cost somebody 40, 50 grand, and they're at wits end, now they're living out of the food banks. And for many of them it takes a lot to swallow their pride," says Finley.

Today the American way is often headed in the opposite direction: downward.

For a while, America seemed to have emerged relatively unscathed from the worst economic crisis in decades -- with renewed vigor and energy -- just as it had done in the wake of past crises.

The government was announcing new economic growth figures by as early as last fall, much earlier than expected. The banks, moribund until recently, were back to earning billions. Companies nationwide are reporting strong growth, and the stock market has almost returned to it pre-crisis levels. Even the number of billionaires grew by a healthy 17 percent in 2009.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and 40 other billionaires pledged to donate at least half of their fortunes to philanthropy, either while still alive or after death. Is America a country so blessed with affluence that it can afford to give away billions, just like that?

Growing Resentment

Gates' move could also be interpreted as a PR campaign, in a country where the super-rich sense that although they are profiting from the crisis, as was to be expected, the number of people adversely affected has grown enormously. They also sense that there is growing resentment in American society against those at the top.

For people in the lower income brackets, the recovery already seems to be falling apart. Experts fear that the US economy could remain weak for many years to come. And despite the many government assistance programs, the small amount of hope they engender has yet to be felt by the general public. On the contrary, for many people things are still headed dramatically downward.

According to a recent opinion poll, 70 percent of Americans believe that the recession is still in full swing. And this time it isn't just the poor who are especially hard-hit, as they usually are during recessions.

This time the recession is also affecting well-educated people who had been earning a good living until now. These people, who see themselves as solidly middle-class, now feel more threatened than ever before in the country's history. Four out of 10 Americans who consider themselves part of this class believe that they will be unable to maintain their social status.

Unemployment Persists

In a recent cover story titled "So long, middle class," the New York Post presented its readers with "25 statistics that prove that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America." Last week, the leading online columnist Arianna Huffington issued the almost apocalyptic warning that "America is in danger of becoming a Third World country."

In fact, the United States, in the wake of a real estate, financial economic and now debt crisis, which it still hasn't overcome, is threatened by a social Ice Age more severe than anything the country has seen since the Great Depression.

The United States is experiencing the problem of long-term unemployment for the first time since World War II. The number of the long-term unemployed is already three times as high as it was during any crisis in the past, and it is still rising.

More than a year after the official end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate remains consistently above 9.5 percent. But this is just the official figure. When adjusted to include the people who have already given up looking for work or are barely surviving on the few hundred dollars they earn with a part-time job and are using up their savings, the real unemployment figure jumps to more than 17 percent.

In its current annual report, the US Department of Agriculture notes that "food insecurity" is on the rise, and that 50 million Americans couldn't afford to buy enough food to stay healthy at some point last year. One in eight American adults and one in four children now survive on government food stamps. These are unbelievable numbers for the world's richest nation.

Even more unsettling is the fact that America, which has always been characterized by its unshakable belief in the American Dream, and in the conviction that anyone, even those at the very bottom, can rise to the top, is beginning to lose its famous optimism. According to recent figures, a significant minority of US citizens now believe that their children will be worse off than they are.

Many Americans are beginning to realize that for them, the American Dream has been more of a nightmare of late. They face a bitter reality of fewer and fewer jobs, decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality. Only in recent months, as the economy has grown but jobs have not returned, as profits have returned but poverty figures have risen by the week, the country seems to have recognized that it is struggling with a deep-seated, structural crisis that has been building for years. As the Washington Post writes, the financial crisis was merely the final turning -- for the worse.

Where Did All the Money Go?

The boom in stocks and real estate, the country's wild borrowing spree and its excessive consumer spending have long masked the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans derived almost no benefit from 30 years of economic growth. In 1978, the average per capita income for men in the United States was $45,879 (about €35,570). The same figure for 2007, adjusted for inflation, was $45,113 (€35,051).

Where did all the money go? All the enormous market gains and corporate earnings, the profits from the boom in the financial markets and the 110-percent increase in the gross national product in the last 30 years? It went to those who had always had more than enough already.

While 90 percent of Americans have seen only modest gains in their incomes since 1973, incomes have almost tripled for people at the upper end of the scale. In 1979, one third of the profits the country produced went to the richest 1 percent of American society. Today it's almost 60 percent. In 1950, the average corporate CEO earned 30 times as much as an ordinary worker. Today it's 300 times as much. And today 1 percent of Americans own 37 percent of the total national wealth.

Income inequality in the United States is greater today than it has been since the 1920s, except that hardly anyone has minded until now.

Little Chance of the American Dream

In America, the free market is king, and people with low incomes are seen as having only themselves to blame. Those who make a lot of money are applauded -- and emulated. The only problem is that Americans have long overlooked the fact that the American Dream was becoming a reality for fewer and fewer people.

Statistically, less affluent Americans stand a 4-percent chance of becoming part of the upper middle class -- a number that is lower than in almost every other industrialized nation.

So far, politicians have failed to come up with solutions for the growing social crisis. Washington is still waiting for jobs that aren't coming. President Barack Obama and his administration seem to be pinning their hopes on the notion that Americans will eventually pull themselves up by their bootstraps -- preferably by doing the same thing they've always done: spending money. Domestic consumer spending is responsible for two-thirds of American economic output.

But even though Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke continues to pump money into the market, and even though the government deficit has now reached the dizzying level of $1.4 trillion, such efforts have remained unsuccessful.

"The lights are going out all over America," Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman wrote last week, and described communities that couldn't even afford to maintain their streets anymore.

The problem is that many Americans can no longer spend money on consumer products, because they have no savings. In some cases, their houses have lost half of their value. They no longer qualify for low-interest loans. They are making less money than before or they're unemployed. This in turn reduces or eliminates their ability to pay taxes.

Turning Out the Lights

As a result, many state and local governments are faced with enormous budget deficits. In Hawaii, for example, schools are closed on some Fridays to save the state money. A county in Georgia has eliminated all public bus services. Colorado Springs, a city of 380,000 people, has shut off a third of its streetlights to save electricity.

There are many discrepancies in America in the wake of the financial crisis. On the one hand, the Fed is constantly printing fresh money, and the government spent $182 billion to bail out a single company, the insurance giant AIG. On the other hand, the lights are in fact going out in some areas, because Washington, citing the need to reduce spending, is unwilling to provide local governments with financial assistance. "America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere," economist Krugman warns.

Chanelle Sabedra is already on that road. She and her husband have been sleeping in their car for almost three weeks now. "We never saw this coming, never ever," says Sabedra. She starts to cry. "I'm an adult, I can take care of myself one way or another, and same with my husband, but (my kids are) too little to go through these things." She has three children; they are nine, five and three years old.

"We had a house further south, in San Bernardino," says Sabedra. Her husband lost his job building prefab houses in July 2009. The utility company turned off the gas. "We were boiling water on the barbeque to bathe our kids," she says. No longer able to pay the rent, the Sabedras were evicted from their house in August.

Friends and relatives had few resources to help them. Now they live in a room at the Salvation Army homeless shelter in downtown Ventura, which is run by Captain Finley.

The sudden plunge into homelessness is a reality that's difficult to understand, given the images of America we are accustomed to seeing in television series and films. They always depict homes with well-kept yards and two-car garages with basketball hoops attached to them. This America still exists, but it's shrinking. And often those who are managing to keep the illusion alive can hardly afford to do so.

Americans have been struggling with a rising cost of living for the past 20 years. At the beginning of the decade, families were already paying twice as much for health insurance and their mortgages than the previous generation did.

"To cope, millions of families put a second parent into the workforce," says Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, who President Obama appointed to chair the congressional panel to oversee the government's bank bailout program. According to Warren, the average family has spent all of its income and used up its savings "just to stay afloat a little while longer."

Spiraling Debt

Because they lacked savings, Americans began borrowing money to cover all of their other expenses, including education, healthcare and consumption. American consumer debt now totals about $13.5 trillion.

Many people threaten to suffocate under the burden of their debt. Some 61 percent of Americans have no financial reserves and are living from paycheck to paycheck. As little as a single hospital bill can spell potential financial ruin.

Chanelle Sabedra's husband has found another job, this time as a warehouse worker for a company that makes aircraft turbines. But he doesn't earn enough to get the family out of the homeless shelter. "I haven't got a new job yet," says Sabedra. Her husband's job doesn't pay enough, and the couple has now joined the growing ranks of the working poor, for whom even two low-wage jobs are insufficient to feed their families. "We need the second income," says Sabedra. "Just the baby alone is $600 a month for half-day care."

In pre-recession America, she and her husband would have had two jobs each to make ends meet. They would have worked at the cash register at Wal-Mart during the day, flipped burgers at McDonald's in the early evening and perhaps spent half the night working as a security guard or cleaning buildings. These are all low-paying jobs, hardly careers, but the combined income is usually enough to keep a family afloat. In pre-recession America, life wasn't luxurious for Chanelle Sabedra, but it was doable if they were willing to work hard enough and sacrifice enough of their lives to stay afloat.

What kind of a job is she looking for now? "Anything right now. Mostly I'm looking for retail, or just anything to get me started, but there's just nothing out there," says Sabedra.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

original
URL: below
* http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,712496,00.html

This is a pretty good overview of what those of us who are studying the nature of consciousness -- what your faithful editor does when not doing SR -- are exploring. This is all part of an important emerging trend, which is pushing the old reductionist materialist paradigm into crisis.


Does the Past Exist Yet? Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn't Set in Stone

by Robert Lanza, M.D


from~ The Huffington Post
August 22, 2010





Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of history. "The histories of the universe," said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking "depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history."

Is it possible we live and die in a world of illusions? Physics tells us that objects exist in a suspended state until observed, when they collapse in to just one outcome. Paradoxically, whether events happened in the past may not be determined until sometime in your future -- and may even depend on actions that you haven't taken yet.

In 2002, scientists carried out an amazing experiment, which showed that particles of light "photons" knew -- in advance −- what their distant twins would do in the future. They tested the communication between pairs of photons -- whether to be either a wave or a particle. Researchers stretched the distance one of the photons had to take to reach its detector, so that the other photon would hit its own detector first. The photons taking this path already finished their journeys -− they either collapse into a particle or don't before their twin encounters a scrambling device. Somehow, the particles acted on this information before it happened, and across distances instantaneously as if there was no space or time between them. They decided not to become particles before their twin ever encountered the scrambler. It doesn't matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge is the only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects.

More recently (Science 315, 966, 2007), scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus, and showed that what they did could retroactively change something that had already happened. As the photons passed a fork in the apparatus, they had to decide whether to behave like particles or waves when they hit a beam splitter. Later on - well after the photons passed the fork - the experimenter could randomly switch a second beam splitter on and off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle actually did at the fork in the past. At that moment, the experimenter chose his history.

Of course, we live in the same world. Particles have a range of possible states, and it's not until observed that they take on properties. So until the present is determined, how can there be a past? According to visionary physicist John Wheeler (who coined the word "black hole"), "The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what an observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past." Part of the past is locked in when you observe things and the "probability waves collapse." But there's still uncertainty, for instance, as to what's underneath your feet. If you dig a hole, there's a probability you'll find a boulder. Say you hit a boulder, the glacial movements of the past that account for the rock being in exactly that spot will change as described in the Science experiment.

But what about dinosaur fossils? Fossils are really no different than anything else in nature. For instance, the carbon atoms in your body are "fossils" created in the heart of exploding supernova stars. Bottom line: reality begins and ends with the observer. "We are participators," Wheeler said "in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past." Before his death, he stated that when observing light from a quasar, we set up a quantum observation on an enormously large scale. It means, he said, the measurements made on the light now, determines the path it took billions of years ago.

Like the light from Wheeler's quasar, historical events such as who killed JFK, might also depend on events that haven't occurred yet. There's enough uncertainty that it could be one person in one set of circumstances, or another person in another. Although JFK was assassinated, you only possess fragments of information about the event. But as you investigate, you collapse more and more reality. According to biocentrism, space and time are relative to the individual observer - we each carry them around like turtles with shells.

History is a biological phenomenon − it's the logic of what you, the animal observer experiences. You have multiple possible futures, each with a different history like in the Science experiment. Consider the JFK example: say two gunmen shot at JFK, and there was an equal chance one or the other killed him. This would be a situation much like the famous Schrödinger's cat experiment, in which the cat is both alive and dead − both possibilities exist until you open the box and investigate.

"We must re-think all that we have ever learned about the past, human evolution and the nature of reality, if we are ever to find our true place in the cosmos," says Constance Hilliard, a historian of science at UNT. Choices you haven't made yet might determine which of your childhood friends are still alive, or whether your dog got hit by a car yesterday. In fact, you might even collapse realities that determine whether Noah's Ark sank. "The universe," said John Haldane, "is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

original story link;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-the-past-exist-yet-e_b_683103.html

This is the second major piece in a popular magazine in less than a week addressing quantum mechanics and consciousness. When a subject like this begins appearing frequently in the popular press it is because it is reaching consensus in the scientific community.

Back From the Future

08.26.2010
A series of quantum experiments shows that measurements performed in the future can influence the present. Does that mean the universe has a destiny—and the laws of physics pull us inexorably toward our prewritten fate?
by Zeeya Merali; photography by Adam Magyar



Jeff Tollaksen may well believe he was destined to be here at this point in time. We’re on a boat in the Atlantic, and it’s not a pleasant trip. The torrential rain obscures the otherwise majestic backdrop of the volcanic Azorean islands, and the choppy waters are causing the boat to lurch. The rough sea has little effect on Tollaksen, barely bringing color to his Nordic complexion. This is second nature to him; he grew up around boats. Everyone would agree that events in his past have prepared him for today’s excursion. But Tollaksen and his colleagues are investigating a far stranger possibility: It may be not only his past that has led him here today, but his future as well.

Tollaksen’s group is looking into the notion that time might flow backward, allowing the future to influence the past. By extension, the universe might have a destiny that reaches back and conspires with the past to bring the present into view. On a cosmic scale, this idea could help explain how life arose in the universe against tremendous odds. On a personal scale, it may make us question whether fate is pulling us forward and whether we have free will.

The boat trip has been organized as part of a conference sponsored by the Foundational Questions Institute to highlight some of the most controversial areas in physics. Tollaksen’s idea certainly meets that criterion. And yet, as crazy as it sounds, this notion of reverse causality is gaining ground. A succession of quantum experiments confirm its predictions—showing, bafflingly, that measurements performed in the future can influence results that happened before those measurements were ever made.

As the waves pound, it’s tough to decide what is more unsettling: the boat’s incessant rocking or the mounting evidence that the arrow of time—the flow that defines the essential narrative of our lives—may be not just an illusion but a lie.

Tollaksen, currently at Chapman University in Orange County, California, developed an early taste for quantum mechanics, the theory that governs the motion of particles in the subatomic world. He skipped his final year of high school, instead attending physics lectures by the charismatic Nobel laureate Richard Feynman at Caltech in Pasadena and learning of the paradoxes that still fascinate and frustrate physicists today.

Primary among those oddities was the famous uncertainty principle, which states that you can never know all the properties of a particle at the same time. For instance, it is impossible to measure both where the particle is and how fast it is moving; the more accurately you determine one aspect, the less precisely you can measure the other. At the quantum scale, particles also have curiously split personalities that allow them to exist in more than one place at the same time—until you take a look and check up on them. This fragile state, in which the particle can possess multiple contradictory attributes, is called a superposition. According to the standard view of quantum mechanics, measuring a particle’s properties is a violent process that instantly snaps the particle out of superposition and collapses it into a single identity. Why and how this happens is one of the central mysteries of quantum mechanics.

“The textbook view of measurements in quantum mechanics is inspired by biology,” Tollaksen tells me on the boat. “It’s similar to the idea that you can’t observe a system of animals without affecting them.” The rain is clearing, and the captain receives radio notification that some dolphins have been spotted a few minutes away; soon we’re heading toward them. Our attempts to spy on these animals serve as the zoological equivalent of what Tollaksen terms “strong measurements”—the standard type in quantum mechanics —because they are anything but unobtrusive. The boat is loud; it churns up water as it speeds to the location. When the dolphins finally show themselves, they swim close to the boat, arcing through the air and playing to their audience. According to conventional quantum mechanics, it is similarly impossible to observe a quantum system without interacting with the particles and destroying the fragile quantum behavior that existed before you looked.

Most physicists accept these peculiar restrictions as part and parcel of the theory. Tollaksen was not so easily appeased. “I was smitten, and I knew there was no chance I was ever going to do anything else with my life,” he recalls. On Feynman’s advice, the teenager moved to Boston to study physics at MIT. But he missed the ocean. “For the first time in my life, I lost the background sound of surf,” he says. “That was actually traumatic.”

Mindful that a job in esoteric physics might not be the best way to put food on his family’s table, Tollaksen worked on a computing start-up company while pursuing his Ph.D. But if the young man wasn’t sure of his calling, fate quickly gave him a nudge when a physicist named Yakir Aharonov visited the neighboring Boston University. Aharonov, now at Chapman with Tollaksen, was renowned for having codiscovered a bizarre quantum mechanical effect in which particles can be affected by electric and magnetic fields, even in regions where those fields should have no reach. But Tollaksen was most taken by another area of Aharonov’s research: a time-twisting interpretation of quantum mechanics.

“Aharonov was one of the first to take seriously the idea that if you want to understand what is happening at any point in time, it’s not just the past that is relevant. It’s also the future,” Tollaksen says. In particular, Aharonov reanalyzed the indeterminism that forms the backbone of quantum mechanics. Before quantum mechanics arrived on the scene, physicists believed that the laws of physics could be used to determine the future of the universe and every object within it. By this thinking, if we knew the properties of every particle on the planet we could, in principle, calculate any person’s fate; we could even calculate all the thoughts in his or her head.
+++

That belief crumbled when experiments began to reveal the indeterministic effects of quantum mechanics—for instance, in the radioactive decay of atoms. The problem goes like this, Tollaksen says: Take two radioactive atoms, so identical that “even God couldn’t see the difference between them.” Then wait. The first atom might decay a minute later, but the second might go another hour before decaying. This is not just a thought experiment; it can really be seen in the laboratory. There is nothing to explain the different behaviors of the two atoms, no way to predict when they will decay by looking at their history, and—seemingly—no definitive cause that produces these effects. This indeterminism, along with the ambiguity inherent in the uncertainty principle, famously rankled Einstein, who fumed that God doesn’t play dice with the universe.



It bothered Aharonov as well. “I asked, what does God gain by playing dice?” he says. Aharonov accepted that a particle’s past does not contain enough information to fully predict its fate, but he wondered, if the information is not in its past, where could it be? After all, something must regulate the particle’s behavior. His answer—which seems inspired and insane in equal measure—was that we cannot perceive the information that controls the particle’s present behavior because it does not yet exist.

“Nature is trying to tell us that there is a difference between two seemingly identical particles with different fates, but that difference can only be found in the future,” he says. If we’re willing to unshackle our minds from our preconceived view that time moves in only one direction, he argues, then it is entirely possible to set up a deterministic theory of quantum mechanics.

In 1964 Aharonov and his colleagues Peter Bergmann and Joel Lebowitz, all then at Yeshiva University in New York, proposed a new framework called time-symmetric quantum mechanics. It could produce all the same treats as the standard form of quantum mechanics that everyone knew and loved, with the added benefit of explaining how information from the future could fill in the indeterministic gaps in the present. But while many of Aharonov’s colleagues conceded that the idea was built on elegant mathematics, its philosophical implications were hard to swallow. “Each time I came up with a new idea about time, people thought that something must be wrong,” he says.

Perhaps because of the cognitive dissonance the idea engendered, time-symmetric quantum mechanics did not catch on. “For a long time, it was nothing more than a curiosity for a few philosophers to discuss,” says Sandu Popescu at the University of Bristol, in England, who works on the time-symmetric approach with Aharonov. Clearly Aharonov needed concrete experiments to demonstrate that actions carried out in the future could have repercussions in the here and now.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Tollaksen teamed up with Aharonov to design such upside-down experiments, in which outcome was determined by events occurring after the experiment was done. Generally the protocol included three steps: a “preselection” measurement carried out on a group of particles; an intermediate measurement; and a final, “postselection” step in which researchers picked out a subset of those particles on which to perform a third, related measurement. To find evidence of backward causality—information flowing from the future to the past—the experiment would have to demonstrate that the effects measured at the intermediate step were linked to actions carried out on the subset of particles at a later time.

Tollaksen and Aharonov proposed analyzing changes in a quantum property called spin, roughly analogous to the spin of a ball but with some important differences. In the quantum world, a particle can spin only two ways, up or down, with each direction assigned a fixed value (for instance, 1 or –1). First the physicists would measure spin in a set of particles at 2 p.m. and again at 2:30 p.m. Then on another day they would repeat the two tests, but also measure a subset of the particles a third time, at 3 p.m. If the predictions of backward causality were correct, then for this last subset, the spin measurement conducted at 2:30 p.m. (the intermediate time) would be dramatically amplified. In other words, the spin measurements carried out at 2 p.m. and those carried out at 3 p.m. together would appear to cause an unexpected increase in the intensity of spins measured in between, at 2:30 p.m. The predictions seemed absurd, as ridiculous as claiming that you could measure the position of a dolphin off the Atlantic coast at 2 p.m. and again at 3 p.m., but that if you checked on its position at 2:30 p.m., you would find it in the middle of the Mediterranean.

And the amplification would not be restricted to spin; other quantum properties would be dramatically increased to bizarrely high levels too. The idea was that ripples of the measurements carried out in the future could beat back to the present and combine with effects from the past, like waves combining and peaking below a boat, setting it rocking on the rough sea. The smaller the subsample chosen for the last measurement, the more dramatic the effects at intermediate times should be, according to Aharonov’s math. It would be hard to account for such huge amplifications in conventional physics.

For years this prediction was more philosophical than physical because it did not seem possible to perform the suggested experiments. All the team’s proposed tests hinged on being able to make measurements of the quantum system at some intermediate time; but the physics books said that doing so would destroy the quantum properties of the system before the final, postselection step could be carried out. Any attempt to measure the system would collapse its delicate quantum state, just as chasing dolphins in a boat would affect their behavior. Use this kind of invasive, or strong, measurement to check on your system at an intermediate time, and you might as well take a hammer to your apparatus.

By the late 1980s, Aharonov had seen a way out: He could study the system using so-called weak measurements. (Weak measurements involve the same equipment and techniques as traditional ones, but the “knob” controlling the power of the observer’s apparatus is turned way down so as not to disturb the quantum properties in play.) In quantum physics, the weaker the measurement, the less precise it can be. Perform just one weak measurement on one particle and your results are next to useless. You may think that you have seen the required amplification, but you could just as easily dismiss it as noise or an error in your apparatus.

The way to get credible results, Tollaksen realized, was with persistence, not intensity. By 2002 physicists attuned to the potential of weak measurements were repeating their experiments thousands of times, hoping to build up a bank of data persuasively showing evidence of backward causality through the amplification effect.

Just last year, physicist John Howell and his team from the University of Rochester reported success. In the Rochester setup, laser light was measured and then shunted through a beam splitter. Part of the beam passed right through the mechanism, and part bounced off a mirror that moved ever so slightly, due to a motor to which it was attached. The team used weak measurements to detect the deflection of the reflected laser light and thus to determine how much the motorized mirror had moved.

That is the straightforward part. Searching for backward causality required looking at the impact of the final measurement and adding the time twist. In the Rochester experiment, after the laser beams left the mirrors, they passed through one of two gates, where they could be measured again—or not. If the experimenters chose not to carry out that final measurement, then the deflected angles measured in the intermediate phase were boringly tiny. But if they performed the final, postselection step, the results were dramatically different. When the physicists chose to record the laser light emerging from one of the gates, then the light traversing that route, alone, ended up with deflection angles amplified by a factor of more than 100 in the intermediate measurement step. Somehow the later decision appeared to affect the outcome of the weak, intermediate measurements, even though they were made at an earlier time.

This amazing result confirmed a similar finding reported a year earlier by physicists Onur Hosten and Paul Kwiat at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They had achieved an even larger laser amplification, by a factor of 10,000, when using weak measurements to detect a shift in a beam of polarized light moving between air and glass.

For Aharonov, who has been pushing the idea of backward causality for four decades, the experimental vindication might seem like a time to pop champagne corks, but that is not his style. “I wasn’t surprised; it was what I expected,” he says.
+++

Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, admires the fact that Aharonov’s team has always striven to verify its claims experimentally. “This isn’t airy-fairy philosophy—these are real experiments,” he says. Davies has now joined forces with the group to investigate the framework’s implications for the origin of the cosmos (See “Does the Universe Have a Destiny?” below).

Vlatko Vedral, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford, agrees that the experiments confirm the existence and power of weak measurements. But while the mathematics of the team’s framework offers a valid explanation for the experimental results, Vedral believes these results alone will not be enough to persuade most physicists to buy into the full time-twisting logic behind it.

For Tollaksen, though, the results are awe-inspiring and a bit scary. “It is upsetting philosophically,” he concedes. “All these experiments change the way that I relate to time, the way I experience myself.” The results have led him to wrestle with the idea that the future is set. If the universe has a destiny that is already written, do we really have a free choice in our actions? Or are all our choices predetermined to fit the universe’s script, giving us only the illusion of free will?

Tollaksen ponders the philosophical dilemma. Was he always destined to become a physicist? If so, are his scientific achievements less impressive because he never had any choice other than to succeed in this career? If I time-traveled back from the 21st century to the shores of Lake Michigan where Tollaksen’s 13-year-old self was reading the works of Feynman and told him that in the future I met him in the Azores and his fate was set, could his teenage self—just to spite me—choose to run off and join the circus or become a sailor instead?

The free will issue is something that Tollaksen has been tackling mathematically with Popescu. The framework does not actually suggest that people could time-travel to the past, but it does allow a concrete test of whether it is possible to rewrite history. The Rochester experiments seem to demonstrate that actions carried out in the future—in the final, postselection step—ripple back in time to influence and amplify the results measured in the earlier, intermediate step. Does this mean that when the intermediate step is carried out, the future is set and the experimenter has no choice but to perform the later, postselection measurement? It seems not. Even in instances where the final step is abandoned, Tollaksen has found, the intermediate weak measurement remains amplified, though now with no future cause to explain its magnitude at all.

I put it to Tollaksen straight: This finding seems to make a mockery of everything we have discussed so far.

Tollaksen is smiling; this is clearly an argument he has been through many times. The result of that single experiment may be the same, he explains, but remember, the power of weak measurements lies in their repetition. No single measurement can ever be taken alone to convey any meaning about the state of reality. Their inherent error is too large. “Your pointer will still read an amplified result, but now you cannot interpret it as having been caused by anything other than noise or a blip in the apparatus,” he says.

In other words, you can see the effects of the future on the past only after carrying out millions of repeat experiments and tallying up the results to produce a meaningful pattern. Focus on any single one of them and try to cheat it, and you are left with a very strange-looking result—an amplification with no cause—but its meaning vanishes. You simply have to put it down to a random error in your apparatus. You win back your free will in the sense that if you actually attempt to defy the future, you will find that it can never force you to carry out postselection experiments against your wishes. The math, Tollaksen says, backs him on this interpretation: The error range in single intermediate weak measurements that are not followed up by the required post*selection will always be just enough to dismiss the bizarre result as a mistake.

physics mainstream isdestined to finally notice his time-twisting ideas, then so it will be.

Tollaksen sums up this confounding argument with one of his favorite quotes, from the ancient Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva: “All is foreseen; but freedom of choice is given.” Or as Tollaksen puts it, “I can have my cake and eat it too.” He laughs.

Here, finally, is the answer to Aharonov’s opening question: What does God gain by playing dice with the universe? Why must the quantum world always retain a degree of fuzziness when we try to look at it through the time slice of the present? That loophole is needed so that the future can exert an overall pull on the present, without ever being caught in the act of doing it in any particular instance.

“The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake,” Aharonov says.

Whether this realization is a masterstroke of genius that explains the mechanism for backward causality or an admission that the future’s influence on the past can never fully be proven is open to debate. Andrew Jordan, who designed the Rochester laser amplification experiment with Howell, notes that there is even fundamental controversy over whether his results support Aharonov’s version of backward causality. No one disputes his team’s straightforward experimental results, but “there is much philosophical thought about what weak values really mean, what they physically correspond to—if they even really physically correspond to anything at all,” Jordan says. “My view is that we don’t have to interpret them as a consequence of the future’s influencing the present, but rather they show us that there is a lot about quantum mechanics that we still have to understand.” Nonetheless, he is open to being convinced otherwise: “A year from now, I may well change my mind.”

Popescu argues that the Rochester findings are hugely important because they open the door to a completely new range of laboratory explorations based on weak measurements. In starting from the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics, physicists had not realized such measurements were possible. “With his work on weak measurements, Aharonov began to pose questions about what is possible in quantum mechanics that nobody had ever even thought could be articulated,” Popescu says.

Aharonov remains circumspect. He has spent most of his adult life waiting for recognition of the merit of his theory. If it is destined that mainstream physics should finally take serious notice of his time-twisting ideas, then so it will be.

And Tollaksen? He too is at one with his destiny. A few months ago he moved to Laguna Beach, California. “I’m in a house where I can hear the surf again—what a relief,” he says. He feels that he is finally back to where he was always meant to be.

DOES THE UNIVERSE HAVE A DESTINY?

Is feedback from the future guiding the development of life, the universe, and, well, everything? Paul Davies at Arizona State University in Tempe and his colleagues are investigating whether the universe has a destiny—and if so, whether there is a way to detect its eerie influence.

Cosmologists have long been puzzled about why the conditions of our universe—for example, its rate of expansion—provide the ideal breeding ground for galaxies, stars, and planets. If you rolled the dice to create a universe, odds are that you would not get one as handily conducive to life as ours is. Even if you could take life for granted, it’s not clear that 14 billion years is enough time for it to evolve by chance. But if the final state of the universe is set and is reaching back in time to influence the early universe, it could amplify the chances of life’s emergence.

With Alonso Botero at the University of the Andes in Colombia, Davies has used mathematical modeling to show that bookending the universe with particular initial and final states affects the types of particles created in between. “We’ve done this for a simplified, one-dimensional universe, and now we plan to move up to three dimensions,” Davies says. He and Botero are also searching for signatures that the final state of the universe could retroactively leave on the relic radiation of the Big Bang, which could be picked up by the Planck satellite launched last year.

Ideally, Davies and Botero hope to find a single cosmic destiny that can explain three major cosmological enigmas. The first mystery is why the expansion of the universe is currently speeding up; the second is why some cosmic rays appear to have energies higher than the bounds of normal physics allow; and the third is how galaxies acquired their magnetic fields. “The goal is to find out whether Mother Nature has been doing her own postselections, causing these unexpected effects to appear,” Davies says.

Bill Unruh of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a leading physicist, is intrigued by Davies’s idea. “This could have real implications for whatever the universe was like in its early history,” he says.

Also see the other articles in this issue's special Beyond Einstein section: Is the Search for Immutable Laws of Nature a Wild-Goose Chase and The Mystery of the Rocketing Particles That Shouldn't Exist.
here;
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/10-is-search-for-immutable-laws-of-nature-wild-goose-chase

and here;
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/26-mystery-of-particles-that-shouldn.t-exist

original story source;
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/01-back-from-the-future/#[i]

Here's two closely related story (items) to note

Arctic sea ice shrinks to third lowest area on record
and
Canada to become global power thanks to climate change


*********************************


Arctic sea ice shrinks to third lowest area on record

By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) – Setember 15, 2010



WASHINGTON — Arctic sea ice melted over the summer to cover the third smallest area on record, US researchers said Wednesday, warning global warming could leave the region ice free in the month of September 2030.

Last week, at the end of the spring and summer "melt season" in the Arctic, sea ice covered 4.76 million square kilometers (1.84 million square miles), the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center said in an annual report.

"This is only the third time in the satellite record that ice extent has fallen below five million square kilometers (1.93 million square miles), and all those occurrences have been within the past four years," the report said.

A separate report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that in August, too, Arctic sea ice coverage was down sharply, covering an average of six million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles), or 22 percent below the average extent from 1979 to 2000.

The August coverage was the second lowest for Arctic sea ice since records began in 1979. Only 2007 saw a smaller area of the northern sea covered in ice in August, NOAA said.

The record low for Arctic sea ice cover at the end of the spring and summer "melt season" in September, was also in 2007, when ice covered just 4.13 million square kilometers (1.595 million square miles).

Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC, said climate-change skeptics might seize the fact that Arctic sea ice did not hit a record-low extent this year, but said they would be barking up the wrong tree if they claimed the shrinkage had been stopped.

"Only the third lowest? It didn't set a new record? Well, right. It didn't set a new record but we're still headed down. We're not looking at any kind of recovery here," he told AFP.

In fact, Serreze said, Arctic sea ice cover is shrinking year-round, with more ice melting in the spring and summer months and less ice forming in the fall and winter.

"The Arctic, like the globe as a whole, is warming up and warming up quickly, and we're starting to see the sea ice respond to that. Really, in all months, the sea ice cover is shrinking -- there's an overall downward trend," Serreze told AFP.

"The extent of Arctic ice is dropping at something like 11 percent per decade -- very quickly, in other words.

"Our thinking is that by 2030 or so, if you went out to the Arctic on the first of September, you probably won't see any ice at all. It will look like a blue ocean, we're losing it that quickly," he said.

Losing sea ice cover in the Arctic would affect everything from the obvious, such as people who live in the far north and polar bears, to global weather patterns, said Serreze.

"The Arctic acts as a sort of refrigerator of the northern hemisphere. As we lose the ice cover, we start to change the nature of that refrigerator, and what happens up there affects what happens down here in the middle latitudes," he said.

"We might have less cold outbreaks, which you might say is a good thing, but it's not such a good thing in regions that depend on snowfall for their water supply."

NOAA noted in its report that the first eight months of 2010 were in equal first place with the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperatures on record worldwide, and the summer months were the second warmest on record globally, after 1998.

source;
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jy7uN4TzemYC9hiobHAtkXzWi7ng

and rolling onward

Canada to become global power thanks to climate change

By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News September 15, 2010



Photograph by: Darren Francey, Calgary Herald, and MCT, Postmedia News

A top U.S. geographer says Canada will emerge as a major world power within 40 years as part of a climate-driven transformation of global trade, agriculture and geopolitics highlighted by the rise of the "Northern Rim" nations.

UCLA scientist Laurence Smith, whose previous studies have documented the toll that climate change is taking on Arctic ecosystems and communities, examines the full range of effects of global warming -- many of them positive for places such as Canada -- in his new book The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future, to be released next week.

Along with climate change, Smith identifies population growth, looming resource scarcity and global economic integration as the key forces shaping the planet's immediate future.

"In many ways, the New North is well positioned for the coming century even as its unique ecosystem is threatened by the linked forces of hydrocarbon development and amplifi ed climate change," states Smith, who describes in a UCLA-issued summary of his book how climate field research in Arctic communities exposed him to both the costs and benefits of a rapidly changing northern environment.

The book, to be released Sept. 23, suggests Canada and the other "NORCs" -- Northern Rim Countries -- are poised to become polar tigers similar to how several smaller Asian countries emerged in recent decades as powerhouse Pacific Rim economies.

Arctic oil and gas deposits are seen as key to catapulting Canada into a higher income bracket in the global community.

Projected population growth is also seen as central to the rise of his "New North" on the world stage.

"As worldwide population increases by 40 per cent over the next 40 years, sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets," states the UCLA summary of Smith's vision.

"While wreaking havoc on the environment, global warming will liberate a treasure trove of oil, gas, water and other natural resources previously locked in the frozen North, enriching residents and attracting newcomers."

Those resources will become available "precisely at a time when natural resources elsewhere are becoming critically depleted, making them all the more valuable."

Smith, a professor of geography and earth sciences, gained recognition in 2005 when he led a scientific study documenting the late-20th-century depletion or disappearance of hundreds of Arctic and sub-Arctic lakes around the world, a result of warming global temperatures and rapidly changing hydrological conditions in northern countries.

But Smith contends that countries in southern climes will have to contend with far greater pressures on scarce water resources and will face a host of other wrenching, climate-driven social changes that northern nations will largely escape.

"In many ways, the stresses that will be very apparent in other parts of the world by 2050 -- like coastal inundation, water scarcity, heat waves and violent cities -- will be easing or unapparent in northern places," Smith states. "The cities that are rising in these NORC countries are amazingly globalized, livable and peaceful."

Source;
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Canada+become+global+power+thanks+climate+change+Author/3527188/story.html [i]

Solar Doubling, Gas Glut Drive Down German Power Prices: Energy Markets



Rows of solar panels are seen at the Solarworld AG plant in Freiberg, Germany.



Germany is installing 10 times as much solar power capacity this year as the U.S.


By Lars Paulsson - Sep 22, 2010

Solar power may almost double in Germany this year just as a natural gas glut sends electricity prices to near five-month lows.

Capacity at plants converting sunlight to electricity in Europe’s biggest energy market will rise to 18,000 megawatts from 9,786 megawatts, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts. No other power source will grow as fast, increasing the glut that emerged after last year’s recession, UBS AG said.

“What’s new and special in Germany this year is the devilish growth in solar,” Sigurd Lie, a senior analyst at Imarex ASA’s Nena unit, an Oslo-based energy markets research company, said in a Sept. 16 phone interview. “This has kept a lid on prices even as you’ve seen an increase in demand.”

German prices probably won’t gain this year even with power consumption forecast to rise 4 percent, according to Lie, 44, who has tracked electricity markets for 12 years at Nena. Per Lekander, UBS’s head of global utilities research, said in a Sept. 16 e-mail that profits at coal-fired plants, such as those run by E.ON AG and RWE AG, the country’s two biggest utilities, may drop by more than 50 percent to as low as 2 euros ($2.66) a megawatt hour in the next 12 months.

German power for next year, the European benchmark contract, fell to its lowest since July 27 today, trading at 49.25 euros a megawatt hour, according to broker prices on Bloomberg, down 11 percent from this year’s peak of 55.10 euros on June 21. E.ON spokesman Georg Oppermann declined to comment on the UBS forecast while RWE spokeswoman Annett Urbaczka declined to comment on trading matters.

Gas Glut

The contract exceeded 90 euros in July 2008, as a six-year rally in energy prices was coming to an end. Now, natural gas, used to produce about 15 percent of Germany’s electricity, is also damping gains, said Sebastien Terryn, a risk manager at Summit Energy Inc. in Waregem, Belgium.

“German power won’t rise to anywhere near the record levels of 2008 for at least another two years because of the price link with natural gas, which remains a market with ample supplies,” Terryn said by e-mail on Sept. 17. Summit manages about $20 billion of energy purchases annually for clients including Healthcare Trust of America Inc.

U.K. natural gas for this winter is down 18 percent since July 5 to 47.50 pence a therm today. A therm is 100,000 British thermal units. The U.K. gas market, Europe’s biggest, influences prices elsewhere in the region.

Solar Surge

Producers will bring 7,000 to 9,000 megawatts of new solar capacity online in Germany this year, said Francesco d’Avack, a London-based analyst at New Energy Finance. That’s in addition to the 9,786 megawatts in use at the end of last year, which is equivalent to the capacity of about 11 new coal-fired plants.

Germany is installing 10 times as much solar power capacity this year as the U.S. Investors are racing to lock in above- market rates for 20 years while they can. Germany’s parliament decided July 8 on a 16 percent reduction in solar subsidies, and another reduction in the so-called feed-in tariffs is scheduled for January.

Mikio Katayama, president of Sharp Corp., Japan’s biggest solar-panel maker, said last week the Osaka-based company may boost sales by 50 percent this year, faster than it earlier forecast, on increased demand in Europe. Sharp today agreed to buy California’s Recurrent Energy for as much as $305 million. The all-cash deal will be completed by the end of the year, the companies said.

Solar Sales

Global 2010 sales for photovoltaic panels may more than double to as much as 18,000 megawatts and then flatten next year as countries including Germany, Italy and France cut solar energy subsidies, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimated.

Germany meets as much as 10 percent of its power demand from the sun on some days, Andreas Haenel, chief executive officer of German solar-plant developer Phoenix Solar AG, said in an interview last month. In the southernmost state of Bavaria, solar power contributes as much as 25 percent of total electricity when the sun shines and demand is low, he said.

Solar power’s share may rise to as much as 7.5 percent of Germany’s total power generation by 2013, according to Deutsche Energy Agentur GmbH, from about 1 percent last year, as measured by industry group Bundesverband Solarwitschaft.

As solar capacity jumps, traders will increasingly depend on data for projecting availability and prices. The European Energy Exchange AG in Leipzig started publishing daily data on expected solar capacity on July 19, in addition to estimates on other German power sources. Solar output was expected to peak today at as much as 7,963 megawatts at 1 p.m. Berlin time, according to a forecast published yesterday.

Surplus Power

The German government also plans to extend the lifespan of aging nuclear power plants. On Sept. 28, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet is set to approve a plan to allow reactors to operate for an average of 12 years beyond a legally mandated closure of 2022, to help the nation of 82 million people transition to renewable power.

Germany’s surplus power is weighing on coal-fired generators. The so-called clean-dark spread, a calculation of forward prices for fuel, power and carbon allowances, was at 5.36 euros a megawatt hour yesterday, according to Bloomberg calculations. That’s down from 11.93 euros at the start of this year and almost 18 euros in December 2008.

Lekander at UBS expects as much as 10,000 megawatts of solar capacity and 2,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity plants to be added in Germany this year. Neither renewable power source is available 24 hours a day, unlike coal or nuclear. Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are collectively adding about 7,000 megawatts of gas-fired capacity a year.

“The spreads have collapsed and won’t recover in a long time because there will be even more overcapacity next year,” Lekander, 48, said.
Source;
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-21/solar-doubling-gas-glut-drive-down-german-power-prices-energy-markets.html#

Out of the hysteria of 9/11 has grown a whole movement designed to compromise civil liberties. It had been my hope -- obviously a vain one -- that the Democrats would stop this erosion of privacy. Clearly both parties find fear too politically useful to honor the Constitution.

Feds: Privacy Does Not Exist in ‘Public Places’

by David Kravets



The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects’ vehicles to track their every move.

The Justice Department is demanding a federal appeals court rehear a case in which it reversed the conviction and life sentence of a cocaine dealer whose vehicle was tracked via GPS for a month, without a court warrant. The authorities then obtained warrants to search and find drugs in the locations where defendant Antoine Jones had travelled.

The administration, in urging the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a three-judge panel’s August ruling from the same court, said Monday that Americans should expect no privacy while in public.

“The panel’s conclusion that Jones had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the public movements of his Jeep rested on the premise that an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the totality of his or her movements in public places, ” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Smith wrote the court in a petition for rehearing.

The case is an important test of privacy rights as GPS devices have become a common tool in crime fighting, and can be affixed to moving vehicles by an officer shooting a dart. Three other circuit courts have already said the authorities do not need a warrant for GPS vehicle tracking, Smith pointed out.

The circuit’s ruling means that, in the District of Columbia area, the authorities need a warrant to install a GPS-tracking device on a vehicle. But in much of the United States, including the West, a warrant is not required. Unless the circuit changes it mind, only the Supreme Court can mandate a uniform rule.

The government said the appellate panel’s August decision is “vague and unworkable” and undermines a law enforcement practice used “with great frequency.”

The legal dispute centers on a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning a tracking beacon affixed to a container, without a court warrant, to follow a motorist to a secluded cabin. The appeals court said that decision did not apply to today’s GPS monitoring of a suspect, which lasted a month.

The beacon tracked a person, “from one place to another,” whereas the GPS device monitored Jones’ “movements 24 hours a day for 28 days.”

The government argued Monday that the appellate court’s decision “offers no guidance as to when monitoring becomes so efficient or ‘prolonged’ as to constitute a search triggering the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.”

The appeals court ruled the case “illustrates how the sequence of a person’s movements may reveal more than the individual movements of which it is composed.”

The court said that a person “who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts."

Source:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/public-privacy/#ixzz10GwocAiu

These revelations about the Roman Catholic Church just get weirder and sadder. These women are obviously psychologically frail and so passionately in search of God that manipulating them through these mind trips seems particularly awful. And this scandal, like the pedophile one, has the same strange psycho-sexual religious S&M quality to it that seems to haunt so much of the Church's relationship with the larger society.
Stephan A. Schwartz


Vatican probes group tied to scandal






This June 10, 2010 picture shows Silvia Vernudez, 37, of Venezuela, left, and Marcela De Maria y Campos, 38, of Mexico, during an interview in Rome. The life of those known as "consecrated women" is regimented down to the way they eat an orange, with silence the norm, e-mail screened and close friendships discouraged. But these women are not nuns _ they are lay members of the now-disgraced Legionaries of Christ order who dedicate their lives to the Catholic Church. Their situation has so alarmed Pope Benedict XVI that in May he ordered an extremely rare full Vatican investigation. Vernudez runs a house for consecrated women in the Philippines and was visiting the mother house in Rome, and Campos is a member of the Legionaries of Christ Regnum Christi. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)


By NICOLE WINFIELD
updated 9/25/2010 8:50:09 PM ET

VATICAN CITY — It's a life regimented in excruciating detail, down to the way they eat an orange. Silence is the norm, information is limited, e-mail is screened, close friendships are discouraged and family members are kept at bay — all in the name of God's will.

Known as consecrated women, they are lay Catholics affiliated with a conservative religious order who dedicate their lives to the church, making promises of chastity, poverty and obedience similar to the vows taken by nuns.

But the cult-like conditions they endure so alarmed Pope Benedict XVI that in May he ordered an extremely rare full Vatican investigation of the obscure group, which operates in the U.S., Mexico, Spain, the Philippines and a dozen other countries. The inquiry is expected to begin in the coming weeks.

The alleged abuses came to light during an eight-month Vatican investigation into the Legionaries of Christ, a secretive religious order beloved by Pope John Paul II but now discredited because of revelations that its charismatic founder sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children.

The women belong to the order's lay wing, Regnum Christi, a global community of some 70,000 Catholics in more than 30 countries who have families and regular jobs yet participate in the mission of bringing people closer to Christ.

Only about 900 are consecrated — nearly all women, but also a handful of men. They give up possessions and ties to their former lives much in the way nuns or priests do. They adhere to Vatican-approved statutes that require them to "voluntarily renounce the use of their capacity for decision-making" — pledging unswerving obedience to their superiors.

In interviews with The Associated Press, eight former members from the U.S. and Mexico told of enduring emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse at the hands of superiors who told them they would be violating God's will if they broke any rules. They said their experiences left them, at least temporarily, unable to cope with real life once they got out.

"I feel like I was brainwashed," said J., an American who joined the movement shortly after graduation from a Catholic university in the late 1990s and asked that only her middle initial be used. Like most of the women who spoke to the AP, she did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation from the Legion.

"I really thought it was a mortal sin to break any one of the little rules that were laid out by the statutes or the directress," she said.

Four current members denied the movement was a cult, saying the rules were aimed at creating uniformity while fostering spirituality. Still, they acknowledged problems with the way women were recruited, saying that 18-year-olds shouldn't make lifelong promises after a six-week candidacy program.

"I think that what is happening to us, even if it's painful, to be very honest I think it was necessary," said Silvia Vernudez, a 37-year-old teacher from Venezuela who directs a house for consecrated women in the Philippines and was visiting the mother house in Rome.

"This is a crisis," she said. "There's no way we cannot say that. But it's a moment of growth."

The Vatican investigation of the consecrated women is the latest step in its crackdown on the Legionaries of Christ, founded by the Rev. Marcial Maciel in Mexico in 1941. Dogged for decades by allegations he sexually abused seminarians, no action was taken until 2006, when the Vatican sanctioned Maciel and ordered him to a lifetime of penance and prayer — though it did not say for what.

Only after his death in 2008 did the order admit publicly that he had fathered children and that the abuse allegations were true, spurring the Vatican investigation. In a May 1 announcement, the Vatican said it was taking over the order and would rewrite its constitutions. A little-noticed line of that directive also announced an investigation into Regnum Christi's consecrated members.

Such inquiries have been carried out only rarely, including the probe of U.S. seminaries after the sex abuse scandal exploded in 2002. While there have been no sex abuse allegations within Regnum Christi, the problems uncovered in the Legion — abuse of authority, suppression of dissent and a power structure built on unswerving obedience — are also rampant in consecrated life.

Former consecrated members told of having their lives manipulated by strict rules that occupied nearly every waking minute of their day and by an endless search for new recruits.

Nine years after she left the movement, J. can still rattle off the time stamps that dictated her day, starting with morning wakeup in which a woman would run into the dorm room at 5:20 a.m. and shout "Christ our King!" and the others would shout back "Thy kingdom come!"

"5:20 a.m. to 5:50 a.m., get ready," J. continued. "Morning prayer from 5:50 to 6 a.m. Six to 6:30, morning meditation. Six-thirty to 7:05 Mass. Seven-ten to 7:30 breakfast, 7:30-7:35 free time, then 7:35 chores."

Malise Lagarde, who left in August 2009 after 13 years, said she was reprimanded by her superiors when she asked questions about Maciel's double life, and was told that if she persisted, she would be putting her vocation at risk and abandoning God's will.

"Members are not allowed to question or think outside group-think," she said. "I know that members totally dismiss any discussion of the Legion and Regnum Christi as a cult — I did when I was still part of it — but it sure looks like one once you get out."

Mary, a 36-year-old American who was consecrated in 1996 and left eight years later, still shudders at the silence required of the women. Conversation was allowed only during certain times of the day and there was no talking at meals, except on certain feast days.

"Inside, the life we lived was a religious life that was even stricter than a lot of the convents in the world," said Mary, who is now a married mother in the Washington D.C., area. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared legal action.

Other former members recalled how close bonding with other women was frowned upon, so they grew emotionally dependent on their spiritual directors. Parents could call only once a month and visit once or twice a year. Women who lived overseas were allowed to return home every seven years.

Some of the more granular rules, obeyed by members but not approved by the Vatican's central authority, extended into every facet of life.

Members were told how to eat a piece of bread (tear off small pieces; never bite into it) and an orange (with a knife and fork). They were told how many movies they could see a year (six, selected for content); what television programs they could watch (news, debates, some sporting events, no drama or music shows); and to refrain from reading in the bathroom. Mail and e-mail were screened. Women who made mistakes were often publicly humiliated.

While a highly regimented life and isolation from friends and family are common for cloistered nuns and monks, such extreme rules are highly unusual for a lay Catholic movement, according to canonists and experts in religious law.

"There is not one community I'm aware of that has similar rules," said the Rev. Francis Morrisey, a canon lawyer at Ottawa's University of Saint Paul, who has written about warning signs in new religious movements.

The Rev. Andreas Schoeggl, a Legion spokesman in Rome, stressed the dining etiquette was designed to create uniform standards in an international movement where some members might feel uncomfortable with the table manners of others.

He claimed the obedience rules were modeled after the statutes of the Jesuits, with whom Maciel studied, and said they by no means implied a renunciation of decision-making or free will.

However, a Jesuit canon law professor, the Rev. Ladislas Orsy of Georgetown Law School, said sections of the Regnum Christi statutes, which were approved by the Vatican in 2004, could lead to potential abuse.

"No one can give away a basic component of his or her humanity and renounce totally his or her 'decision-making capacity' — unless (they) want to become a zombie," Orsy said in an e-mail. "It opens the way for an ignorant and unwise superior to mislead and to harm — seriously, permanently — his subjects."

Former superiors now say there was something terribly wrong with the way they exercised authority. Denisse, who ran a house for consecrated women in Mexico, said she left last year after more than a decade when she realized the psychological harm the movement was causing.

"If you had a fragile personality, people who wanted to be perfect, they broke you psychologically," the 40-year-old Mexican woman said.

The Catholic Church distinguishes between three "states" of life in the faith: clergy, lay people and consecrated people, which includes nuns and sisters, as well as hermits and monks. Being consecrated implies a definitive separation or setting apart from society.

When the women of Regnum Christi become consecrated, they pledge poverty, chastity and obedience before a Legion priest in a ceremony during which they receive a Bible and a crucifix. After two years, they get a ring signifying their "marriage" to Christ.

Among other things, what makes them different from being a nun is that they are making private promises to a person, not public vows made to God and approved by church authorities.

The consecrated women also lack certain canonical protections. For example, it's extremely difficult to kick out women who join religious orders like the Carmelites or Dominicans — an important provision given they have no income.

But former Regnum Christi women said when their superiors no longer wanted them, they were made to believe they didn't have a vocation and should leave.

"In a traditional structure, yes, you dedicate your whole life to the order, but the order also looks after you," particularly as you grow old and need medical care, said Pete Vere, a canon lawyer who has studied the Legion and Regnum Christi.

"It's like marriage — for better or worse. ... But here, it seems, they're benefiting from the youth and the zeal and they're telling these people: 'You have this vocation ... but we can cut you off at any time.'"

Schoeggl acknowledged there were no specific protections for lay consecrated members, but he stressed that canon law allows for interpretations that cover them.

The movement says it is proposing changes to some rules, such as the screening of e-mails and how often women can visit their parents. It also wants to see that women are more sure of their vocations before joining.

J. said she was totally unprepared for life on the outside.

"I didn't have a checking account. I had to find a car," she said.

"You come face to face with the world. You're not folding laundry for the salvation of souls anymore, you're selling perfume because you need to pay the rent."


Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39354533/ns/world_news-europe/# [i]

There is a very significant trend taking place in the world: more and more women are entering politics and attaining real power (see the bottom of this report). As in the case of Dilma Rousseff, a number of them have experienced pain and persecution from earlier American backed authoritarian regimes, and we must anticipate reaping the bitter fruit arising from those experiences, as they formulate their policies. The same will be true in the Islamic nations where young politicians bear significant grudges against the U.S. for its ill-conceived wars and policies.


The former guerrilla set to be the world's most powerful woman

Brazil looks likely to elect an extraordinary leader next weekend



Dilma Rousseff in her 1970 police mugshot, when she led a revolutionary group

then and now




By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

Sunday, 26 September 2010

The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil.

As head of state, president Dilma Rousseff would outrank Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, and Hillary Clinton
, the US Secretary of State: her enormous country of 200 million people is revelling in its new oil wealth. Brazil's growth rate, rivalling China's, is one that Europe and Washington can only envy.

Her widely predicted victory in next Sunday's presidential poll will be greeted with delight by millions. It marks the final demolition of the "national security state", an arrangement that conservative governments in the US and Europe once regarded as their best artifice for limiting democracy and reform. It maintained a rotten status quo that kept a vast majority in poverty in Latin America while favouring their rich friends.

Ms Rousseff, the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant to Brazil and his schoolteacher wife, has benefited from being, in effect, the prime minister of the immensely popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former union leader. But, with a record of determination and success (which includes appearing to have conquered lymphatic cancer), this wife, mother and grandmother will be her own woman. The polls say she has built up an unassailable lead – of more than 50 per cent compared with less than 30 per cent – over her nearest rival, an uninspiring man of the centre called Jose Serra. Few doubt that she will be installed in the Alvorada presidential palace in Brasilia in January.

Like President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, Brazil's neighbour, Ms Rousseff is unashamed of a past as an urban guerrilla which included battling the generals and spending time in jail as a political prisoner. As a little girl growing up in the provincial city of Belo Horizonte, she says she dreamed successively of becoming a ballerina, a firefighter and a trapeze artist. The nuns at her school took her class to the city's poor area to show them the vast gaps between the middle-class minority and the vast majority of the poor. She remembers that when a young beggar with sad eyes came to her family's door she tore a currency note in half to share with him, not knowing that half a banknote had no value.

Her father, Pedro, died when she was 14, but by then he had introduced her to the novels of Zola and Dostoevski. After that, she and her siblings had to work hard with their mother to make ends meet. By 16 she was in POLOP (Workers' Politics), a group outside the traditional Brazilian Communist Party that sought to bring socialism to those who knew little about it.

The generals seized power in 1964 and decreed a reign of terror to defend what they called "national security". She joined secretive radical groups that saw nothing wrong with taking up arms against an illegitimate military regime. Besides cosseting the rich and crushing trade unions and the underclass, the generals censored the press, forbidding editors from leaving gaps in newspapers to show where news had been suppressed.

Ms Rousseff ended up in the clandestine VAR-Palmares (Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard). In the 1960s and 1970s, members of such organisations seized foreign diplomats for ransom: a US ambassador was swapped for a dozen political prisoners; a German ambassador was exchanged for 40 militants; a Swiss envoy swapped for 70. They also shot foreign torture experts sent to train the generals' death squads. Though she says she never used weapons, she was eventually rounded up and tortured by the secret police in Brazil's equivalent to Abu Ghraib, the Tiradentes prison in Sao Paulo. She was given a 25-month sentence for "subversion" and freed after three years. Today she openly confesses to having "wanted to change the world".

In 1973 she moved to the prosperous southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where her second husband, Carlos Araujo, a lawyer, was finishing a four-year term as a political prisoner (her first marriage with a young left-winger, Claudio Galeno, had not survived the strains of two people being on the run in different cities). She went back to university, started working for the state government in 1975, and had a daughter, Paula.

In 1986, she was named finance chief of Porto Alegre, the state capital, where her political talents began to blossom. Yet the 1990s were bitter-sweet years for her. In 1993 she was named secretary of energy for the state, and pulled off the coup of vastly increasing power production, ensuring the state was spared the power cuts that plagued the rest of the country.

She had 1,000km of new electric power lines, new dams and thermal power stations built while persuading citizens to switch off the lights whenever they could. Her political star started shining brightly. But in 1994, after 24 years together, she separated from Mr Araujo, though apparently on good terms. At the same time she was torn between academic life and politics, but her attempt to gain a doctorate in social sciences failed in 1998.

In 2000 she threw her lot in with Lula and his Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers' Party which set its sights successfully on combining economic growth with an attack on poverty. The two immediately hit it off and she became his first energy minister in 2003. Two years later he made her his chief of staff and has since backed her as his successor. She has been by his side as Brazil has found vast new offshore oil deposits, aiding a leader whom many in the European and US media were denouncing a decade ago as a extreme left-wing wrecker to pull 24 million Brazilians out of poverty. Lula stood by her in April last year as she was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, a condition that was declared under control a year ago. Recent reports of financial irregularities among her staff do not seem to have damaged her popularity.

Ms Rousseff is likely to invite President Mujica of Uruguay to her inauguration in the New Year. President Evo Morales of Bolivia, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay – other successful South American leaders who have, like her, weathered merciless campaigns of denigration in the Western media – are also sure to be there. It will be a celebration of political decency – and feminism.

Female representation: A woman's place... is in the government

In recent years, female political representation has undergone significant growth, with dramatic changes occurring in unexpected corners of the globe. In some countries women are dominating cabinets and even parliamentary chambers. By comparison, the UK falls far behind, with only 22 per cent of seats in the Commons currently held by women.

Bolivia In the Bolivian cabinet, 10 men are now matched by 10 women. In 2009, women won 25 per cent of seats in the lower chamber, and 47 per cent in the upper chamber.

Costa Rica In 2010, women won 39 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Argentina In 2009, women won 39 per cent of seats in the lower chamber and 47 per cent in the upper chamber.

Cuba In 2009, women won 41 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Rwanda In 2009, women won 56 per cent of seats in the lower chamber and 35 per cent in the upper chamber.

Mozambique In 2009, women won 39 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Angola In 2009, women won 38 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Switzerland Has a female-dominated cabinet for the first time. In 2007, women won 29 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Germany In 2009, the cabinet had six women and 10 men. That year, women won 33 per cent of lower chamber seats.

Spain Nine women compared with eight men in cabinet. In 2008, women won 37 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Norway Equal numbers of men and women in the cabinet. Women won 40 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Denmark Nine women and 10 men in cabinet. In 2007, women won 23 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Netherlands Three women and nine men in cabinet. In 2010, women won 41 per cent of seats in the lower chamber.

Source;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-former-guerrilla-set-to-be-the-worlds-most-powerful-woman-2089916.html[i]

Longtime SR readers know of my view that water is destiny (See the archives for two of my essays on this subject, or go to explorejournal.com/content/schwartz. Here is further evidence of this trend. It isn't hard to understand the implications of this story on life in Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Tucson.

Water Use in Southwest Heads for a Day of Reckoning


The Southern Nevada Water Authority is tunneling under Lake Mead to install an intake valve that could continue operating until water levels dropped below 1,000 feet.



Water Use in Southwest Heads for a Day of Reckoning
By FELICITY BARRINGER

LAKE MEAD NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Nev. — A once-unthinkable day is looming on the Colorado River.

Barring a sudden end to the Southwest’s 11-year drought, the distribution of the river’s dwindling bounty is likely to be reordered as early as next year because the flow of water cannot keep pace with the region’s demands.

For the first time, federal estimates issued in August indicate that Lake Mead, the heart of the lower Colorado basin’s water system — irrigating lettuce, onions and wheat in reclaimed corners of the Sonoran Desert, and lawns and golf courses from Las Vegas to Los Angeles — could drop below a crucial demarcation line of 1,075 feet.

If it does, that will set in motion a temporary distribution plan approved in 2007 by the seven states with claims to the river and by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, and water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada would be reduced.

This could mean more dry lawns, shorter showers and fallow fields in those states, although conservation efforts might help them adjust to the cutbacks. California, which has first call on the Colorado River flows in the lower basin, would not be affected.

But the operating plan also lays out a proposal to prevent Lake Mead from dropping below the trigger point. It allows water managers to send 40 percent more water than usual downstream to Lake Mead from Lake Powell in Utah, the river’s other big reservoir, which now contains about 50 percent more water than Lake Mead.

In that case, the shortage declaration would be avoided and Lake Mead’s levels restored to 1,100 feet or so.

Lake Powell, fed by rain and snowmelt that create the Colorado and tributaries, has risen more than 60 feet from a 2004 low because the upper basin states, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Utah, do not use their full allocations. The upper basin provides a minimum annual flow of 8.23 million acre feet to Arizona, Nevada and California. (An acre-foot of water is generally considered the amount two families of four use annually.)

In its August report the Bureau of Reclamation said the extra replenishment from Lake Powell was the likeliest outcome. Nonetheless, said Terry Fulp, the bureau’s deputy regional director for the Lower Colorado Region, it is the first time ever that the bureau has judged a critical shortage to be remotely possible in the near future.

“We’re approaching the magical line that would trigger shortage,” Mr. Fulp said. “We have the lowest 11-year average in the 100-year-plus recorded history of flows on the basin.”

The reservoir is now less than 15 inches above the all-time low of 1,083.2 feet set in 1956.

But back then, while the demand from California farmland was similar, if not greater, the population was far smaller. Perhaps 9.5 million people in the three states in the lower Colorado River basin depended on the supply in the late 1950s; today more than 28 million people do.

The impact of the declining water level is visible in the alkaline bathtub rings on the reservoir’s walls and the warning lights for mariners high on its rocky outcroppings. National Park Service employees have repeatedly moved marinas, chasing the receding waterline.

Adding to water managers’ unease, scientists predict that prolonged droughts will be more frequent in decades to come as the Southwest’s climate warms. As Lake Mead’s level drops, Hoover Dam’s capacity to generate electricity, which, like the Colorado River water, is sent around the Southwest, diminishes with it. If Lake Mead levels fall to 1,050 feet, it may be impossible to use the dam’s turbines, and the flow of electricity could cease.

The fretting that dominates today’s discussions about the river contrasts with the old-style optimism about the Colorado’s plenitude that has usually prevailed since Hoover Dam — then called Boulder Dam — was completed 75 years ago, impounding the water from Lake Mead.

The worries have provoked action: cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas have undertaken extensive conservation programs. Between 2000 and 2009, Phoenix’s average per-capita daily household use has dropped almost 20 percent; Las Vegas’s has dropped 21.3 percent.

Nonetheless, “if the river flow continues downward and we can’t build back up supply, Las Vegas is in big trouble,” Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said in an interview.

While Las Vegas is one of the Colorado River’s smaller clients — it consumes 2 percent of the river’s allocated deliveries— the city relies on Lake Mead for 90 percent of its water supply. From 2002 to 2009, the metropolitan area’s population mushroomed by nearly 40 percent, to 1.9 million from 1.37 million.

In response to the population boom and the drought, which began in 1999, the authority began an aggressive effort to encourage water conservation in 2002.

Now it is expanding its options: it is tunneling under the bottom of Lake Mead to install a third intake valve that could continue operating until lake levels dropped below 1,000 feet.

Saddle Island, the construction staging site on the reservoir, looks like an abstract painting, its dusty russet ground covered with interlacing segments of the 2,500 concrete rings that will make up the three-mile-long pipe.

Ms. Mulroy has also pushed aggressively for pipelines to carry distant groundwater to the Las Vegas area; most contentious is a planned 285-mile pipeline that would cross the state diagonally and take groundwater from the Snake Valley, on the Nevada-Utah border, to Las Vegas.

The authority has also spent about $147 million on a program to encourage homeowners and businesses to eliminate their lawns in favor of the rock, grass and cactus landscaping known as xeriscaping. More than 70 percent of household water usage is attributed to outdoor use, Ms. Mulroy said.

Residents can now water their yards only three days a week, before 11 a.m. and after 7 p.m., and the restrictions are to tighten this winter.

Dolores Cormier, 82, who lives on Monterrey Avenue on the southern side of Las Vegas, reconfigured her front and side lawns, installing a rocky cover and drip irrigation. Under a water authority program known as Water Smart Landscapes (colloquially, Cash for Grass), she has received $2,689 in utility subsidies that will offset the $5,600 or so she said the xeriscaping cost her.

She is pleased with the new look but said her average monthly water bill of $45 or so has yet to decline, perhaps because she still tends grass in her small backyard. “I need some lawn,” she confessed.

If the 1,075 level is broken at Lake Mead next year, more drastic conservation measures will be needed, officials warn.

“We have a very finite resource and demand which increases and enlarges every day,” said John A. Zebre, a Wyoming lawyer and the president of the Colorado River Water Users Association.

“The problem is always going to be there,” he said. “Everything is driven by that problem.”

Source;
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28mead.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1285801201-qKFJ5jMJhdNy2ILBdgbLlw#[i]

Hope you don't mind me posting this here Gio.
I found this article interesting in the sense that it shows us that if we want to have a viable future we need to turn to a way of looking at the problems we face with a holistic approach that includes the well being of mother Earth as a whole as part of the equation .

Rivers threatened around the world
29 September 2010
Environment
Science In Society

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/09/rivers-threatened-around-the-w.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

The water supplying 80 per cent of the world's population is exposed to "high levels of threat". That's the conclusion of a study that surveys the status of rivers throughout the world, and looks at their effects on both humans and the ecosystem at large.

Writing in this week's Nature (vol 467, p 555), Charles Vorosmarty of the City College of New York and colleagues pull together a swathe of data on factors affecting water security, from dams that reduce river flow to the pollution and destruction of wetlands.

They produce two maps showing the levels of threat to humans and to ecosystems that rely on rivers. The maps are virtually identical, with the continental US, Europe and south-east Asia facing the greatest threats, to both humans and the wider ecosystem.



The map above shows the level of threat to humans: blue means low threat, and red means high threat. The grey areas are deserts with little or no water flow.

Readers in the UK and US may be wondering when such threats will materialise, given that these regions rarely experience anything much worse than a hosepipe ban. In fact, the human threat map is not the whole story: most developed countries have technology in place to combat water shortages, like reservoirs and distribution pipelines.

When the team plugged these factors into their model, the threats to humans look a little different:



Once investment in technology is factored in, it turns out that the people most at risk from water shortages live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - which is about what you'd expect.

Technology, it seems, can insulate humans from the effects of water shortages if you can afford it. But so far it hasn't made a dent in the accompanying threat to wildlife, the researchers write.

They also point out that many of the technologies that stabilise water supplies for humans, such as irrigation systems and reservoirs, are to blame for the threats to ecosystems. That's neatly captured in this last map, which contrasts the two types of threat.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/assets_c/2010/09/100928_water_security_fig4-thumb-600x250-92662.jpg

There are virtually no places on Earth where the threat to humans is high, but the threat to wildlife is low.

The message of this last map is stark: that wildlife is threatened by water shortages everywhere humans live in large numbers, and that human security is threatened only where people are too poor to afford the technology that could protect them.

(Images: Nature)

Love Always
mudra

Thank you my Dear Mudra~
for your very keen insight into this problematic issue...

to quote your post-

"The message of this last map is stark: that wildlife is threatened by water shortages everywhere humans live in large numbers, and that human security is threatened only where people are too poor to afford the technology that could protect them."

How true

But for how much longer


Gio