Notable News, Articles, and Postings
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Violence General
Each year, over 1.6 million people worldwide lose their lives to violence. Violence is among the leading causes of death for people aged 15-44 years worldwide, accounting for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females. For every person who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer from a range of physical, sexual, reproductive and mental health problems. Moreover, violence places a massive burden on national economies, costing countries billions of US dollars each year in health care, law enforcement and lost productivity (WHO 2010).
World military expenditure in 2009 is estimated to have reached $1.531 trillion in current dollars; This represents a 6 per cent increase in real terms since 2008 and a 49 per cent increase since 2000; This corresponds to 2.7 per cent of world gross domestic product (GDP), or approximately $225 for each person in the world; The USA with its massive spending budget, is the principal determinant of the current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for just under half of the world total, at 46.5% of the world total (SIPRI 2010)
More than 1.2 million people die in road traffic crashes every year. As many as 50 million people are injured or disabled by road traffic crashes every year. Half of all crash victims are vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Road traffic crashes cost countries up to 4% of their Gross National Product. Children, pedestrians, cyclists and the elderly are among the most vulnerable of road users (WHO 2005).
A happy heart just might be a healthier one as well, new research suggests. In a study of nearly 3,000 healthy British adults, lead by Dr. Andrew Steptoe of University College London, found that those who reported upbeat moods had lower levels of cortisol -- a "stress" hormone that, when chronically elevated, may contribute to high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and dampened immune function, among other problems. Researchers have long noted that happier people tend to be in better health than those who are persistently stressed, hostile or pessimistic (Norton 2008).
Scientists have identified a tiny genetic defect that appears to predispose some men toward aggression, impulsiveness and violence. Comparing the monamine oxidase-a genes in 5 afflicted and 12 nonafflicted males of the family, the scientists found a difference in only a single biochemical building block among the thousands that make up the gene, a type of defect called a point mutation. In each case, those who showed a predisposition to aggressive, impulsive behavior had the mutation. Biochemical analysis of the men's skin cells also showed a severe deficiency in the essential enzyme (Angier 1993).
Boys who carry a particular variation of the gene Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), sometimes called the warrior gene, are more likely not only to join gangs but also to be among the most violent members and to use weapons, according to a new study from The Florida State University that is the first to confirm an MAOA link specifically to gangs and guns. Findings apply only to males. Girls with the same variant of the MAOA gene seem resistant to its potentially violent effects on gang membership and weapon use. The MAOA gene affects levels of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin that are related to mood and behavior, and those variants that are related to violence are hereditary (FSU 2009).
Generally, posters presented at conferences seldom get due attention, but a poster authored by 11 scientists from the U.S. and two from U.K. at the 54th Annual meeting of the Society Of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) on June 4th 2007 received well deserved publicity when they named a brain PET (Positron Emission Tomography) images that showed the correlation between radiotracer uptake and aggressive behavior in men as the SNM 2007 Image of the Year. Monoamine oxidase A (MAO A) is a brain enzyme. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energys Brookhaven National Laboratory showed that healthy men with lower levels of this enzyme exhibited more aggressive personality traits (Parthasarathy 2007).
Scientists have found evidence that aggression rewards the brain in much the same way as sex, food and drugs. Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville found that the same "reward pathway" in the brain responds to aggression with the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, known to be produced in response to various stimuli. Craig Kennedy, a professor of special education at Vanderbilt said "In just about any species you look at, aggression is part of their behavioral repertoire." "Aggression has survived the long path of evolution, because it proved very useful along the way. But among humans, it has become a bit of a problem" Kennedy said (Dye 2008).
Brain scans of young, aggressive bullies suggest they may actually enjoy seeing others in pain, according to a new University of Chicago study. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of eight 16- to 18-year-old boys with aggressive conduct disorder and eight matched adolescents without conduct disorder led researchers to this new hypothesis. The study showed increased activity in an area of the brain associated with rewards when the aggressive boys watched a video clip of someone inflicting pain on another person. The control group did not have the same response (NSF 2008).
A study just published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry found that adults who were bullied as children were more likely than others to suffer from depression and anxiety, as well as a host of physical ills, including fatigue, pain and a greater susceptibility to colds (Carroll 2010).
Reasearch into brain patterns linked to violence behavior is important, but should be approached with caution, metal health authorities said on Friday. "Effort to try to identify people who are likely to be violent could result in labeling people" said Dr. Farris Tuma, chief of the traumatic stress program at the National Institute of Mental Health (CNN/Webmd.com 2000).
Overeating, and a Host of Other Detrimental Behaviors, Can All Be Traced to Our Evolutionary Past, Experts Say. Are Our Genes Out of Date? "Basically, we're living in a world that's not the world we evolved to function in," said anthropologist Dan Fessler, director of the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles (Dye 2007).
A new large study challenges the idea that mental illness alone is a leading cause of violence. Researchers instead blame a combination of factors, specifically substance abuse and a history of violent acts, that drives up the danger when combined with mental illness in what they call an "intricate link." People with serious mental illness, without other big risk factors, are no more violent than most people, according to the study (AP 2009).
The "defend your turf" area -- dorsal premammillary nucleus -- is larger in the male brain and contains special circuits to detect territorial challenges by other males. And his amygdala, the alarm system for threats, fear and danger is also larger in men. Meanwhile, the "I feel what you feel" part of the brain -- mirror-neuron system -- is larger and more active in the female brain. So women can naturally get in sync with others' emotions by reading facial expressions, interpreting tone of voice and other nonverbal emotional cues. (Brizendine 2010).
The U.S. government has touted hundreds of federal "terrorism-related" prosecutions brought since the September 11 al Qaeda skyjacking attacks on America, but how many are the real deal? That's a question the Center on Law and Security at the New York University Law School has been studying. The center shared its updated figures with CBS News today. The center finds that of 550 so-called "terrorism" cases since 9/11, only 163 actually resulted in real terrorism charges (Hirschkorn 2007).
West must be alert, not alarmist: experts. "Terrorism is as much as anything an act of theater," wrote Nigel Inkster, a former British intelligence officer, and Alexander Nicoll in Survival, a journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "Presumably an important part of his al-Qaeda-inspired mission: To contribute to the unnerving of America." (Maclean 2010).
As military interrogators, each of us has questioned hundreds of prisoners of war, terrorists and insurgents in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia "during both Iraq wars. To try to overcome a person's resistance, is actually counterproductive in establishing the kind of relationship that is almost always necessary to win a detainee's cooperation. The most effective strategies are the kind used during World War II. Interrogators who were familiar with the detainees' language and culture, and who studied each prisoner's case, used charisma and empathy to patiently elicit vital intelligence (Kleinman and Alexander 2009).
The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information." "The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (Finn and Warrick 2009).
Civilian Casualties Create New Enemies, Study Confirms. Yes, we needed economists to tell us this. A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds "strong evidence for a revenge effect" when examining the relationship between civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan and radicalization after such incidents occur. The paper even estimates of how many insurgent attacks to expect after each civilian death. A team of four economists' Stanford's Luke N. Condra and Joseph H. Felter, the London School of Economics' Radha K. Iyengar, and Princeton's Jacob N. Shapiro' used the International Security Assistance Force's own civilian-casualty data to reach their conclusions (Ackerman 2010).
When Heads Roll: Accessing the effectiveness of leadership decapitation. The data presented in this paper show that decapitation is not and effective counter terrorism strategy. While decapitation is effective in 17% of all cases, when compared to the overall rate of organizational decline, decapitated groups have a lower rate of decline then group how have not have their leaders removed. The find show that decapitation is more likely to have counterproductive effects in larger, older, religious and separatist organizations (Jordan 2009).
A smarter weapon. Why two retired military officers believe it's essential that the next president use outreach, good deeds and a strong military to make the United States safer. The reality is that many of the threats we face today illegal immigration, radical jihadism and terrorism, public health and environmental problems' originate from complicated circumstances beyond our borders. We must match our military might with a new commitment to investing in improving people's lives overseas. By Anthony C. Zinni and Leighton W. Smith Jr. retired from the Marine Corps and the Navy, respectively (Zinni and Smith 2010).
Since 2001, al-Qaida is believed to have dispatched three men to blow up American airliners. Two of them tried but failed to set off explosions, and the third backed out of his assignment. What made him different? A new study suggests family ties may have played an important role. Families can play either a positive or negative role in a terrorist's plans, something al-Qaida recognizes. Lead Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta instructed his compatriots to cut off ties to their families. However, the two Sept. 11 conspirators who dropped out were both in touch with their families (Hess 2010).
Preventing violence: a guide to implementing the recommendations of the World report on violence and health. The document focuses upon the first six recommendations, namely: 1. Increasing the capacity for collecting data on violence. 2. Researching violence' its causes, consequences and prevention. 3. Promoting the primary prevention of violence. 4. Promoting gender and social equality and equity to prevent violence. 5. Strengthening care and support services for victims. 6. Bringing it all together' developing a national action plan of action (WHO 2004).
Scientists who study criminal violence now believe that its roots are equally planted in the biology of an individual, the psychology that reflects the interaction of innate traits and experiences, and the larger culture. No single cause is sufficient, none is deterministic. "It's like a kid piling up a tower of blocks," says Loyola University, Chicago, psychologist James Garbarino, who has studied school shooters. "Eventually, it falls over. You could point to the final block and say, that one's the cause. But it's an accumulation of risk factors." (Begley 2007).
Polishing Tools for Your Fuse Box of Emotions. Research in the past few years has found that people develop a variety of psychological tools to manage what they express in social situations, and those techniques often become subconscious, affecting interactions in unintended ways. The better that people understand their own patterns, the more likely they are to see why some emotionally charged interactions go awry. Psychologists divide regulation strategies into two broad categories: pre-emptive, occurring before an emotion is fully felt; and responsive, coming afterward (Carey 2010).
With each new torrent of killings the idea of spreading heartache and horror is not only acceptable, but attractive. The learned language of violence seems to contain a concession, on the part of those who absorb it, that their acts may very well conclude with their own dying -- and that the price, in their minds, is acceptable, even, perhaps, sought. Which may be the most chilling lesson of all. The killers, by dying on the day they kill, deny us the chance for even that scant solace. It's the ultimate taunt; it is as if they are saying: You want to know why? You'll never know (Greene 2009).
Experts have profile of fathers who kill family. Experts say men who do this tend to be in their mid-30s to middle-aged, and to have been depressed or frustrated for a long time. "For many family annihilators, the act of murder is a way of re-establishing control over the family," said Jack Levin, professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston. "Typically, it's the spouse who's blamed for all of the killer's personal miseries" "He kills the children in order to get, a sweet revenge against his wife. He wants to kill everything associated with her - everything that she loved" (Tu 2009).
There are half a dozen small wars going on right now - some of them in places most of us have never been to or even never heard of before. Wars have been fought through time and we may think we're more civilized now than people were 100 or 500 years ago but there's no sign that fighting wars is a thing of the past. Why not establish and work on what we could call a "No War Day". The name doesn't have much of a ring to it but a day like that would be worth celebrating (Rooney 2009).
Jerrold Post, a George Washington University political psychology professor who spent 21 years with the CIA, said that in nations where free speech is snuffed, such as Yemen and Pakistan, domestic terrorism is more prevalent. Post said he is concerned, however, about messages coming from the conservative base. "The righteous rage then becomes not just a rationalization for threatening rhetoric, but it has the potential of moving people to action," he said (McLaughlin 2010).
To be sure, any attempt to document changes in violence must be soaked in uncertainty. In much of the world, the distant past was a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, even for events in the historical record, statistics are spotty until recent periods. Long-term trends can be discerned only by smoothing out zigzags and spikes in horrific bloodletting. "Yet, despite these caveats, a picture is taking shape. The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon, visible at the scale millennia, century decade, and years." (Pinker 2007).
Yair Bar Haim, a professor in the Tel Aviv University psychology department and lead researcher, said he found that despite popular thinking, soldiers under stress become less vigilant to threats, rather than more sensitive to them. The soldiers became disassociated and tuned-out, he said in a university press release (Shipley 2010).
The Price of Assassination. "One of the main incentives is a kind of local prestige grounded in grievance. When people feel aggrieved - feel that foreigners have wronged them or exploited them or disrespected them - they may admire and appreciate those who fight on their behalf. Terrorists are nourished ultimately by a grass-roots sense of injustice." (Wright 2010).
Mothers' Plea: Stop the Violence. About 250 people prayed and sang Sunday evening at an anti-violence rally organized by mothers whose children have been wounded or killed. "There's nothing worse than losing a loved one to violence," Lorraine Stackhouse told the crowd (McAndrew 2007).
Invisible Weapons: Psychological the Mind, Physical the Body. One invisible weapon or technology that affects the mind, psychological manipulations or harassment is used to use another invisible weapon that affects the body, the weapon of high levels of stress and sleep deprivation, coritsol and adrenaline, which can lead to acid-base disorders and serious illness such as brain aneurysm, heart attacks, and cancer (PHIA 2010).
U.S. and U.S. Conflicts
Newly released documents regarding crimes committed by United States soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions. They show repeated examples of troops believing they were within the law when they killed local citizens (AP 2007).
The sense of duty among those who serve here, still strong, is nonetheless tempered by the fact that the war is winding down slowly � or, as one officer put it, petering out � with mixed results. �The way I look at it, it�s my job,� said Staff Sgt. Trevino D. Lewis. �It�s my career.� Most don�t seek sympathy, and they complain no more than anyone would who lived and worked in gravel-strewn camps in dust and searing heat. �I want a normal life,� he said (Myers 2010).
After nine years of war, the U.S. Army is showing signs of stress according to an internal report released today. The figures in recent years are staggering. The number of soldiers committing suicide has increased since 2004. Use of prescription drugs has tripled in the past five years; Crime is rising as well. Each year has seen an increase of 5,000 misdemeanors over the previous year. Sexual offenses have tripled since 2003. Domestic abuse is up 177 percent in the past six years. �Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy� said the report (Raddatz and Radia 2010).
Research has yielded some treatments that studies show help soldiers, and the military. Yet the history of treatments for combat stress has often been a circular one, with experts �remembering and forgetting and remembering and forgetting. �All these people have been under a tremendous amount of stress,� said Dr. Stephen Sonnenberg, a psychiatrist at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, speaking of soldiers and those who treat them. �They are holding the stress for everybody� (Goode 2009).
Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed. When the poll was conducted earlier this month, a little more than 3,100 U.S. troops had been killed. The midpoint estimate among those polled was right on target, at about 3,000. The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans' tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands (Benac 2007).
At least 87,215 Iraqis have been killed in violence since 2005, according to a previously undisclosed Iraqi government tally obtained by The Associated Press. Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and a review of available evidence by the AP, the figures show that more than 110,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion (Meyer 2009).
Iraqis now face a new threat to getting on with their lives: a frenzy of violent crime. Photos of missing children are pasted on electricity poles and the concrete blast walls. There are few statistics tracking the number of crimes, in part because the government remains focused on the bombings and other insurgent attacks. Crime has become at least as consuming as the violence directly related to the war. And like the lack of electricity and other services, crime is now a top complaint of Iraqis (AP 2009).
Iraqi medical care has fallen to the brink of collapse since the U.S.-led invasion five years ago. At one point, Baghdad - a city of more than 5 million - had no neurosurgeon, said Dr. Hussein al-Hilli, director of the Ibn Albitar Hospital in Baghdad. He described �big shortages of drugs, big shortages of everything� According to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry released earlier this year, 618 medical employees, including 132 doctors, as well as medics and other health care workers, have been killed nationwide since 2003 (Hinnant 2008).
�I offer all Afghans my sincere condolences and personal regrets for the recent loss of innocent life as a result of coalition airstrikes,� Gates said after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. �I think the key for us is, in those rare occasions when we do make a mistake, when there is an error, to apologize quickly, to compensate the victims quickly and then carry out the investigation,� Gates told reporters. �You have my word� (Burns 2008).
The number of Afghan civilians killed in violence in 2009 was higher than in any year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, a United Nations report says. Civilian casualties rose by 14% in 2009 compared with 2008, the UN Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) reported. The Unama report said 2,412 civilians had been killed in Afghanistan in 2009 compared with 2,118 in 2008. �The intensification and spread of the armed conflict in Afghanistan continued to take a heavy toll on civilians throughout 2009,� the report said (BBC 2010).
Afghan civilian death toll jumps 31 per cent due to insurgent attacks � UN. A rise in insurgent attacks has led to a 31 per cent increase in the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, the United Nations said in a new report released today. The total number of civilian casualties in the first six months of this year, according to the human rights section of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), is 3,268 � including 1,271 deaths and 1,997 injuries. �The human cost of this conflict is unfortunately rising,� Staffan de Mistura, the Secretary-General�s Special Representative and head of UNAMA, said. Of the total number of casualties, 2,477 were attributed to anti-government elements (AGEs), representing 76 per cent of all casualties, up 53 per cent from 2009, while 386 were attributed to pro-government forces (PGF) activities, representing 12 per cent of all casualties, down from 30 per cent in 2009. The number of children killed or injured has risen 55 per cent, along with 6 per cent more women, over the same period last year, the report found. �Afghan children and women are increasingly bearing the brunt of this conflict. They are being killed and injured in their homes and communities in greater numbers than ever before,� said Mr. de Mistura (UNAMA 2010).
One in three �militants� killed in US Predator Drone attacks in Pakistan's remote tribal areas is in fact a civilian, according to a report by an American think tank. The report, by the Washington-based New America Foundation, will fuel growing criticism of the use of unmanned drones in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants. Critics say their use not only takes innocent lives, but amounts to unlawful extra-judicial killing of militants (Nelson 2010).
Psychologists Explain Iraq Airstrike Video �We don�t express our better angels as much as we�d like to think, especially when strong emotions are involved,� Said Dr. Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University. He added, �What another person does in that situation should stand as forewarning for what we would do ourselves� (Carey 2010).
With the United States looking to cut defense costs many defense companies are looking for international buyers to take the big, pricey weapons that the Pentagon no longer wants or needs fewer of. �This is a world market right now,� says Chris Chadwick, Boeing's president of military aircraft. Congress must approve weapons sales to foreign governments, but Congress has never moved to block a sale once it was formally notified. .�Weapons could be the single biggest U.S. export item over the next 10 years,� said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute (Manning 2009).
False Ads: There Oughta Be A Law! - Or Maybe Not. There�s no such truth-in-advertising law governing federal candidates. They can legally lie about almost anything they want. In fact, the Federal Communications Act Federal Communications Act (U.S. Code: Title 47, Sec. 315. - Candidates for public office) even requires broadcasters who run candidate ads to show them uncensored, even if the broadcasters believe their content to be offensive or false (Jackson 2004).
Senate Records Show Doubts on �64 Vietnam Crisis. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday released more than 1,100 pages of previously classified Vietnam-era transcripts that show senators of the time sharply questioning whether they had been deceived by the White House and the Pentagon over the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. �In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them,� Senator Frank Church (Bumiller 2010).
Research Finds 935 False Statements By Bush Administration . A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements �were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses (AP 2008).
Nearly six in 10 Americans say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the United States, according to a new national poll �One reason that Americans think the government is broken is that they think the way we choose our elected officials is broken,� says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland (Steinhauser 2010).
Crime U.S.
Although a person's snap into violence may come as a total surprise, in most cases there is a psychological buildup to that point, said Dr. Peter Ash, director of the Psychiatry and Law Service at Emory University in Georgia. �You would think they would give it a lot of thought, but sometimes they go into a somewhat dissociated state where their feelings are really kind of split off from what they're doing,� Ash said. �They may even experience it as if they went on autopilot� (Landau 2009).
�Males were more than nine times more likely than women to commit murder.��Homicide is of interest not only because of its severity, but also because it is a fairly reliable barometer for all violent crime. At the national level no other crime is measured as accurately�. �Homicide Trends in the United States.� An analysis of data the Federal Bureau of Investigation gathers through its Uniform Crime Reporting series (Fox and Zawitz 1999).
Prevalence and Nature of Violent Offending by Females. Results from the study suggest that consistent with prior literature, females are more likely to commit property crimes compared with drug crimes and violent crimes. In addition, results suggest that females are more likely to commit violent offenses by themselves. Females had a much higher involvement in drug and violent offenses when they were co-offending with males. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (Koons-Witt and Schram 2003).
Women Offenders: Programming Needs and Promising Approaches. More than 43 percent of women inmates (but only 12 percent of men) said they had been physically or sexu ally abused before their admission to prison. Women in prison used more drugs and used those drugs more frequently than men. About 54 percent used drugs in the month before their current offense, compared with 50 percent for the men. National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice (Morash, Bynum, and Koons 1998).
Four in ten criminal offenders report alcohol as a factor in violence. Although alcohol consumption and alcohol-related deaths are in decline, alcohol abuse is still linked to a large percentage of criminal offenses, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) said today. Almost four in 10 violent crimes involve alcohol, according to the crime victim, as do four in 10 fatal motor vehicle accidents. And about four in 10 criminal offenders report that they were using alcohol at the time of their offense. About one in five victims of alcohol-related violence (about 500,000 victims annually) report financial losses totaling more than $400 million. Two-thirds of the violent crime victims who were attacked by an intimate--a current or former spouse or a boyfriend or girl friend--report that alcohol had been a factor. Among spouse violence victims, three out of four incidents were reported to have involved alcohol use by the offender (BJS 1998).
Federal authorities had been monitoring members of a Michigan-based Christian militia for some time but were forced to �take them down� over the weekend after learning of an imminent threat against police, the U.S. attorney leading the prosecution said. The arrests dealt �a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States,� Attorney General Eric Holder said (AP 2010).
In February 2007, Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney general under President George W. Bush, issued a stern warning to those who murdered blacks with impunity during the civil rights era: �You have not gotten away with anything. We are still on your trail.� Families of the victims had waited decades for resolution, while suspects and witnesses had died. More than three years later, they are still waiting. There have been no federal indictments since Gonzales' announcement (Dewan 2010).
Fighting Crime by Reading Minds. Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago say they have taken a step closer to that reality with a test that could uncover nefarious plans by measuring brain waves. �In total we were able to identify 10 out of 12 'terrorists.'� said psychologist John Meixner. The investigators also correctly matched 20 out of 30 crime-related details, such as types of explosives and specific sites and dates (Harrell 2010).
1 Out Of 100 Americans Are Being Stalked Survey Reveals. An estimated 3.4 million Americans identified themselves as victims of stalking during a one-year span, according to federal crime experts who on Tuesday released the largest-ever survey of the aggravating and often terrifying phenomenon. About half of the victims experienced at least one unwanted contact per week from a stalker, and 11 percent had been stalked for five or more years, according to the report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (Crary 2009).
Police rounded up an estimated 6,400 fugitives nationwide during a three-month sting the Justice Department said. Among the fugitives caught were 300 gang members, 542 sex offenders and 73 homicide suspects, acting Deputy Attorney General Craig Morford said. �Every single parent can appreciate the value of taking a single sex offender off the streets near their home,� Morford told reporters. �Then multiply that by 542.� More than 1 million fugitives are wanted on warrants that have been issued nationwide, said Marshals Director John F. Clark (AP 2007).
A spike in murders in many cities is claiming a startling number of victims with criminal records, police say, suggesting that drug and gang wars are behind the escalating violence. David Kennedy, a professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says �The notion that these (murders) are random bolts of lightning is not the reality,� While it was common in the past for murder victims to have criminal records, the current levels are surprising even to analysts who study homicides (Johnson 2007).
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake rarely speaks of the night the city's dangers arrived at her front door. But in the days after the stabbing death of a young Johns Hopkins researcher in Charles Village, she has been thinking about the moment that she says helped shape the way she views violent crime.�There is no acceptable amount of death. There is no acceptable level of violence,� Rawlings-Blake tells Baltimore Sun colleague Julie Scharper. �This is more than a public safety issue. This is a moral issue (Brown 2010).
Book 'Em: Murder Behind the Badge. Interview with Stacy Dittrich former police officer and, former detective by Barry Leibowitz. Do you think 'killer cops' are created by the pressures of dealing with criminals every day? Dittrich: Absolutely not. There are hundreds of thousands of officers that perform their job daily with honesty and dignity. Again, these men and women sought this particular job out, coming into it with deep-seated personality disorders/traits that were there long before they were sworn in as officers. The power and authority of becoming a police officer helped them carry out the crimes they would have, undoubtedly, committed anyway (Dittrich 2010).
Serial Murder � Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators. Generally, mass murder was described as a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders. These events typically involved a single location, where the killer murdered a number of victims in an ongoing incident��.. The term �serial killings� means a series of three or more killings, not less than one of which was committed within the United States, having common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes were committed by the same actor or actors. Protection of Children from Sexual Predator Act of 1998 (Title 18, United States Code, Chapter 51, and Section 1111) (FBI 2005).
The war on the streets is escalating. As gangs and other criminals pack more firepower, police departments say they find themselves in an arms race. The officers say they need to level the playing field to survive. �They don't get out and run from us anymore. They stop, and they're shooting at us.� Miami's police department also is in the process of arming every officer with an assault rifle. �It's a little bit embarrassing that we're engaged in this, but what is the alternative?� said Miami police Chief John Timoney (Candiotti 2007).
Executions in Texas slightly lower homicide rates there, about five to 10 killings in the year afterwards, suggest criminologists. The executions also may displace homicides to nearby states, however. The study led by sociologist Kenneth Land of Duke University says �We conclude that evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the months of or after executions� (Vergano 2009).
Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. (Staff Report, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil & Constitutional Rights, Oct. 1993, with updates from DPIC) (DPIC 2010).
Nearly half of the 2 million inmates in state prisons across the USA � 48% � say they have relatives who also have been incarcerated, according to a Justice Department report in 2004. Social scientists and law enforcement authorities say the influence of family members may be one of the most important and largely unaddressed factors in determining whether people adopt lives of crime (Johnson 2008).
To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes. A DNA profile distills a person�s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of �junk� DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless � they don�t correlate with any observable characteristics. The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one�s genome as a whole (Seringhaus 2010).
Firearms
Mass Shootings More Common Since 1960s. What is it about modern-day America that provokes such random violence? Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox blames guns, at least in part. �I know that there were high-powered guns before,� he said. �But this weaponry is just so much more pervasive than it was.� Australia had a spate of mass public shooting, culminating in 1996. Within two weeks the government had enacted strict gun control laws that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since (Crenson 2007).
Gun whips up a Metal Storm. Metal Storm's high-speed gun, capable of firing at a rate of a million rounds a minute. Imagine a gun that fires a million rounds a minute -- enough to shred a target in a blink of an eye, or throw up a defensive wall against an incoming missile. This is Metal Storm. (Hiscock 2003).
Meet the pistol that fits in your pocket - and packs a hell of a punch. The SwissMiniGun is the size of a key fob but fires tiny 270mph bullets powerful enough to kill at close range. Officially the world's smallest working revolver, the gun is being marketed as a collector's item and measures just 2.16 inches long (5.5cm). It can fire real 4.53 bullets up to a range of 367ft (112m) (Dolan 2008).
More guns equal more murders in U.S. states: study. American states where more people own guns have higher murder rates, including murders of children, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health reported on Thursday. �Our findings suggest that household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes,� said Matthew Miller, assistant professor of health policy and injury prevention, who led the study. The study found that about one in three U.S. households reported firearm ownership (Snyder 2007).
�While each year, firearms are used in more than 245,000 homicides worldwide (excluding war-torn countries). This is only a small percentage of crimes committed with firearms, which are widely used to threaten and support other criminal acts� (Interpol 2009).
U.S. passion for guns has roots in hunting. To hunters and gun owners, the right to bear arms is a cherished freedom tied to the American identity.�Guns and hunting are deeply associated historically in America,� said William Vizzard, an expert on gun control and related issues who chairs the criminal justice department at the University of California Sacramento. The percentage of Americans who hunt is slowly declining but it remains popular and helps explain a national love affair with guns. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in 2007 there were about 14.5 million paid licensed hunters in America or about five percent of the population. They bought over 35 million tags, permits and licenses, spending more than $723 million (Stoddard 2008).
Guns are a hobby like any other. Black, who lives on the Arizona-Mexico border, is one of millions of gun collectors in the United States, where authorities estimate that there are more than 200 million firearms held in private hands in a country of 300 million people. There are hunters and home security advocates, and then there are the gun collectors.�People are 'Oh, you collect guns, you must be bad.' That's nonsense. Gun collectors aren't criminals, they are nobody to be frightened of,� says Black.�I love machinery, and I love history, and history was written with firearms,� he said. �They were probably the most spectacular things ever built.� He has a wide variety of firearms which he says is for self defense. �I like to be self sufficient, I don't want to be a slave to anybody, it's not going to happen,� he says (Gaynor 2008).
Gun owners more often kill themselves than others. The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves. Suicides accounted for about 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There was nothing unique about that year. Gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the past 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 2.6 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting and cases that involve undetermined intent. Studies have shown that homes in which a suicide occurred were three to five times as likely to have a gun present as households that did not experience a suicide, even after accounting for other risk factors (Stobbe 2008).
Percent of murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults in which firearms were used, Year 2007. Total: Number 1,317,910, Percent with firearms 29.2. - Murders: Total Number 16,929, Percent with firearms 68.0. - Robberies: Total Number 445,125, Percent with firearms 42.8. - Aggravated assaults: Total Number 855,856, Percent with firearms 21.4 (FBI 2010).
Rob Furlong, a former corporal of the Canadian Forces, holds the record for the longest confirmed sniper kill in combat. In 2002, he participated in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan's Shah-i-Kot Valley as a member of the 3rd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI). The distance was measured as 2,430 metres (2,657 yd / 1.509 miles) (Friscolanti 2006).
Which goes faster, bullets or rockets, and how much faster? The fastest bullet (probably the Winchester .223 Super Short Magnum) has a muzzle velocity of about 4000 feet per second or 2,700 mph (4400 km/h) (Holladay 2004).
The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said. U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said. �There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide� (MacInnis 2007).
International
Conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo have taken the lives of an estimated 5.4 million people since 1998 and continue to leave as many as 45,000 dead every month, according to a major mortality survey released today by the International Rescue Committee (IRC).The vast majority died from non-violent causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition�easily preventable and treatable conditions when people have access to health care and nutritious food. The conflict and its aftermath, in terms of fatalities, surpass any other since World War II,� says the aid group�s president, George Rupp. �Congo�s loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the state of Colorado perishing within a decade. Although Congo�s war formally ended five years ago, ongoing strife and poverty continue to take a staggering toll (IRC 2010).
Darfur death toll rises to two-year high in Sudan. About 600 people died in fighting in the Sudan region of Darfur in May, the highest monthly toll since peacekeepers were deployed in 2008, officials say. The joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force said most had died in fighting between Sudan's army and rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem). According to the UN, an estimated 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than 2.6 million displaced since ethnic rebels took up arms in 2003 (BBC 2010).
Number of forcibly displaced rises to 43.3 million last year, the highest level since mid-1990s. Annual figures released Tuesday by the UN refugee agency show that some 43.3 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2009, the highest number of people uprooted by conflict and persecution since the mid-1990s. At the same time, according to the 2009 Global Trends report, the number of refugees voluntarily returning to their home countries has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years (UNHCR 2010).
Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military dubbing it the �father of all bombs.�Alexander Rukshin, Russian deputy armed forces chief of staff, told Russia's state First Channel television, �the bomb which has no match in the world is being tested at a military site.� �The destruction is inflicted by an ultrasonic shockwave and incredibly high temperature,� the reports said. �All that is alive merely evaporates� (Solovyov 2007).
Soviet Program, 'Perimeter,' Ensured Nuclear Response in Event of U.S. Nuclear Strike. A device that triggers a nuclear holocaust in the event of a U.S. strike against Russia. The Cold War-era Soviet �doomsday machine� was -- and might still be -- very much a reality. �As far as I know, the system remains in essentially the same status as it was,� said Bruce Blair, president of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank World Security Institute and one of the first to write about the Perimeter system. He emphasized that Perimeter's continued existence is �a symptom of a continuing grave danger� (Heussner 2009).
Survivor recalls horrors of Cambodia genocide Pol Pot regime brutalized its enemies from 1975 to 1979. Water torture elicited screams of prisoners �choking in water� at Cambodia's notorious Tuol Sleng Prison. I visited the once secret S-21, now a museum, with Van Nath, a former inmate. Van Nath was given electric shock torture. He described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered. The Cambodian genocide ultimately killed 2 million people. Fourteen thousand of them had passed through the gates of hell at Tuol Sleng Prison (Amanpour 2008).
China's government is coming under increasing pressure to reduce its use of the death penalty, slowly shifting the country's legal system away from centuries of authoritarian tradition and toward greater legal protection for individual rights. China has refused requests by the United Nations to disclose the number of people it executes. Amnesty International says China executed more than 1,700 people in 2008, roughly three-quarters of the world total (Kuhn 2010).
The Ladies in White, a group made up of family members of imprisoned dissidents, march in protest along the main avenue of the upscale Havana district of Miramar. Speaking to reporters after the group's traditional Sunday march protesting the 2003 imprisonment of their loved ones, leader Laura Pollan said they had heard nothing from the government about its plans. �Here, nothing is known. Everything is a state secret,� said Pollan (Franks 2010).
The premier of China, North Korea's main ally, offered condolences Saturday to South Korea for the sinking of a warship blamed on Pyongyang after promising that Beijing would not defend any country guilty of the attack. Also some 20 South Korean military commanders met to discuss responses to the ship sinking, a Defense Ministry official said. �They discussed how to cope with different types of North Korean military provocations and strengthen defense readiness against the North� (Ahn 2010).
Iran's Ahmadinejad unveils bomber drone. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, ruled out an Israeli or US attack.�I reject the possibility of an attack by Israel. Israel is too weak to face up to Iran militarily,� he said in an interview broadcast on Sunday by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television channel.�Israel doesn't have the courage to do it... and I do not think its threat is serious� (Pouladi 2010).
A U.N. investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza has found evidence that both sides committed �war crimes.� The United Nations says the investigation concluded that �Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity,� during its Dec. 27-Jan. 18 military operations in the Palestinian territories. The global body said the report �concludes there is also evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity,� by firing rockets into southern Israel (AP 2009).
Civilians on both sides caught in crossfire. Sami Abdel-Shafi, who lives just a few hundred meters from Gaza's seashore, said he hears almost constant bombardment from Israeli ships offshore as well as thundering airstrikes by Israeli jets. With �almost no sleep� since Israeli airstrikes against Hamas targets began, Abdel-Shafi said the conflict has been very traumatizing. A similar sentiment is echoed by Dove Hartuv, who lives in his Israeli kibbutz Nahal Oz, a regular target of mortars and rockets launched in Gaza for the past eight years. �What we want is just what every ordinary citizen would want -- to live in peace and to be able to live with our neighbors,� he said (CNN 2009).
Poverty
U.N.: Hunger Kills 18,000 Kids Each Day. Some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs, a �terrible indictment of the world in 2007,� the head of the U.N. food agency said (Lederer 2007).
10 Million children worldwide die from lack of health care. More than 200 million children worldwide under age 5 do not get basic health care, leading to nearly 10 million deaths annually from treatable ailments like diarrhea and pneumonia, a U.S.-based charity said Wednesday. Nearly all of the deaths occur in the developing world, with poor children facing twice the risk of dying compared to richer children, according to Save the Children's global report (Cerojano 2005).
Somewhere in the world, a child dies of hunger every five seconds -- even though the planet has more than enough food for all. . U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon laid out this sobering statistic as he kicked off a three-day summit on world food security. �Today, more than 1 billion people are hungry,� he told the leaders. Six million children die of hunger every year -- 17,000 every day, he said. Urgent action is critical, Ban said. In 2050, the world will need to feed 2 billion more mouths -- 9.1 billion in all. �Our job is not just to feed the hungry but to empower the hungry to feed themselves� (CNN 2009).
Saving half the water lost could supply 90 million people with clean water, says a UN report. Almost all dirty water produced in homes, businesses, farms, and factories in developing countries is washed into rivers and seas without being decontaminated. And up to 60 percent of supplies that have been purified are lost through leaky pipes and ill-maintained sewage network. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said 2.2 million people deaths are attributed to diarrhea, mostly from dirty water, and 1.8 million children aged under five who succumb to water-borne diseases (Pflanz 2010).
More than 2.5 billion people live without a toilet. United Nations agencies estimate that the persistent lack of toilets and sewage treatment leads to the deaths of some 700,000 children a year from diarrhea and other avoidable ailments linked to fecal contamination. Olav Kjorven, a director of the U.N.D.P., said �This is an amazing policy failure,��The economics are there, the technology is simple, and the morality of it is clear,� he said. �What�s lacking is the will.� It�s, well, not pretty, but pretty vital to figure out in a world heading toward 9 billion individuals, each with a digestive system with two ends� (Revkin 2008).
The U.N. Children's Fund published a report saying that nearly 200 million children under five in poor countries were stunted by a lack of nutrients in their food. More than 90 percent of those children live in Africa and Asia, and more than a third of all deaths in that age group are linked to undernutrition. In Africa the rate of stunted growth was about 38 percent in 1990. Last year, the rate was about 34 percent. South Asia is a particular hotspot for the problem, with just Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan accounting for 83 million hungry children under five (David and Cheng 2009).
Scientists and development experts across the globe are racing to increase food production by 50 percent over the next two decades to feed the world�s growing population, yet many doubt their chances despite a broad consensus that enough land, water and expertise exist. The number of hungry people in the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or nearly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, despite a 12-year concentrated effort to cut the number (MacFarquhar 2009).
Number of world's hungry to top 1 billion this year. The number of people on the brink of starvation is set to reach a record high of 1.02 billion � or one-sixth of the global population � in 2009, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projected today. �A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty,� said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, with the lower incomes and rising unemployment reducing access to food for the poor. Charactering it as a �silent hunger crisis,� he said that it threatens world peace and security, highlighting the need for a broad consensus on eradicating global hunger (UN 2009).
Most of humanity will be living in cities by next year. Some 3.3 billion people will live in cities by 2008, a report by the U.N. population agency report said. By 2030, the number of city dwellers is expected to climb to 5 billion. Without proper planning, cities across the globe face the threat of overwhelming poverty and limited opportunities for youth, said U.N. Population Fund Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. When cities fail to meet the needs of growing populations, religious beliefs tend to become extreme, said Obaid (Toler 2007).
Environment
The human and economic losses caused by natural disasters in 2008 were devastating. More than 235 000 people were killed, 214 million people were affected and economic costs were over 190 billion US$. In 2008, 354 natural disasters were recorded in the EM-DAT database, which is less than the 2000-2007 yearly average number of 397. The death toll was three times higher than the annual average of 66 813 for 2000-2007. Asia remained the most affected continent. Nine of the top 10 countries with the highest number of disaster-related deaths were in Asia. While China, the U.S., the Philippines and Indonesia reported the largest number of natural disasters, Djibouti, Tajikistan, Somalia and Eritrea topped the list of number of victims per 100 000 inhabitants (CRED 2009).
At least 2,120 people have died this year in a particularly calamitous monsoon season in South Asia, double the number killed last year. Some 600 have perished in the past two weeks alone. Many of the deaths in the region could have been easily prevented, doctors said, blaming lack of access to basic medication and ignorance of how to treat the waterborne diseases that followed the deluge (Alam 2007).
While he acknowledged that scientists are unable to predict its consequences, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday compared the scourge of global warming to the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Although it is a �long-term� fight, he said, reducing gas emissions may save the life of �everybody� on the planet, the same way that fighting terrorism and its proliferation saves lives in shorter terms (Avni).
Weather-related disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, a leading British charity said in a report published on Sunday. From an average of 120 disasters a year in the early 1980s, there are now as many as 500, with Oxfam attributing the rise to unpredictable weather conditions cause by global warming. The number of people affected by disasters has risen by 68 percent, from an average of 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994 to 254 million a year between 1995 to 2004 (Reuters 2007).
Climate change 'may put world at war'. Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned. The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space programme, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures (Clover 2008).
Everyone has experienced anger at one point in their lives and some of us � males mostly, going by statistics � have channeled that anger into violence. Biologist David Carrier, of the University of Utah says �Western society, as a whole, is in mass denial about the magnitude of the problem that violence represents for the future. Carrier warned that �if basic resources such as food and clean water become more limiting then the environmental and social drivers of violence may become more difficult to control� (Whipps 2009).
The world has experienced many periods of mass extinction caused by a variety of natural factors, but the greatest period of mass extinction the world has ever seen is occurring right now. It is reckoned that the current rate of extinction is between a hundred and a thousand times faster than the average historical extinction rate for the planet. The current period of extinction is known as the Holocene extinction event, sometimes referred to as the sixth extinction. Scientists estimate that during the last century between 20,000 and two million species have become extinct. However, the observed rate of extinction has accelerated dramatically in the last 50 years, linked almost exclusively to the activities of human beings. Some experts have estimated that up to half of presently existing species may become extinct by 2100. It is estimated that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct (Green 2008).
Biodiversity is essential for the maintenance of vital ecosystem services, and ultimately for human survival. Why is biodiversity in crisis? The escalating extinction crisis shows that the diversity of nature cannot support the current pressure that humanity is placing on the planet. Facts: Coral reefs provide food, storm protection, jobs, recreation and other income sources for more than 500 million people worldwide yet 70% of coral reefs are threatened or destroyed. 17,936 species out of 52,017 assessed so far are threatened with extinction. Of the world�s 5,490 mammals, 78 are Extinct or Extinct in the Wild, with 188 Critically Endangered, 450 Endangered and 492 Vulnerable. 1,895 of the planet�s 6,285 amphibians are in danger of extinction, making them one of the most threatened groups of species known to date. What are the main threats to biodiversity? Habitat loss and degradation, Invasive Alien Species, Over-exploitation of natural resources, Pollution and diseases, Human-induced climate change (IUCN 2010).
Acting as super-predators, humans are forcing changes to body size and reproductive abilities in some species 300 percent faster than would occur naturally, a new study finds. Hunting and fishing by individual sportsmen as well as large-scale commercial fishing are also outpacing other human influences, such as pollution, in effects on the animal kingdom. Chris Darimont of the University of California, Santa Cruz said �While wolves might prey on 20 animals, humans prey on hundreds of thousands of species�. Policy shifts may not save a species, however. �It's unknown how quickly the traits can change back, or if they will,� Darimont said (Britt 2009).
Exposure to lead during childhood increases the likelihood of being arrested for violent crime -- and is linked to decreased volume in regions of the brain associated with judgment and problem solving, according to two new studies. Last year Jessica Wolpaw Reyes of Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., published a report showing that the U.S. phase-out of leaded gasoline in the late 1970s could explain much of the decline in crime seen from 1992 to 2002, as children exposed to less lead became adults (Marshall 2008).
Exposure to potential cancer risks in daily life is widespread but underestimated, especially for children, a presidential panel said today. The Presidential Cancer Panel said the public remains by and large unaware of such common cancer risks as formaldehyde, benzene and radon. The report also faults U.S. policy for allowing most of the 80,000 chemicals in use to go largely unstudied and unregulated (Martin 2010).
A Canadian astronaut aboard the International Space Station said it looks like Earth's ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago. Bob Thirsk, who is two months into a planned six-month stay aboard the station, said he is mostly in awe when he looks out the window, particularly at the sliver of atmosphere wrapped around the planet. �It's a very thin veil of atmosphere around the Earth that keeps us alive,� Thirsk said. �Most of the time when I look out the window I'm in awe. But there are some effects of the human destruction of the Earth as well.��That saddens me a little bit� Thrisk said (Klotz 2009).
Health
Chronic conditions such as heart disease and stroke have become the chief causes of death globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. The shift from infectious diseases including tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria -- traditionally the biggest killers -- to non-communicable diseases is set to continue to 2030, the U.N. agency said in a report. Chronic diseases are diseases of long duration and generally slow progression. Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, are by far the leading cause of mortality in the world, representing 60% of all deaths (Nebehay 2008).
The human genome contains 3164.7 million chemical nucleotide bases (A, C, T, and G). The average gene consists of 3000 bases, but sizes vary greatly, with the largest known human gene being dystrophin at 2.4 million bases. Almost all (99.9%) nucleotide bases are exactly the same in all people. The functions are unknown for over 50% of discovered genes (BERIS 2008).
The often-quoted statement that we share over 90% of our genes with apes actually should be put another way. That is, we share virtually all our genes with apes. However, on average, a single related set of ape and human genes would differ in DNA sequence by about 10%. For mouse, it is more like 20 to 30%, with a lot of variation from gene to gene in those differences (e.g., some mouse and human gene products are almost identical) (Human Genome Program 2003).
The first detailed map of a man's genes shows the genetic code is even more complex than anyone thought. For instance, science still cannot pinpoint what makes a person's eyes blue. Initial study of genome entrepreneur Craig Venter's own DNA map shows 4.1 million places where his genetic code is different from the basic �reference� human genome. �I think the biggest surprise is we are lot more different from one another than we thought,� Venter said (Fox 2007).
A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the �oops area� becomes extra active, while the �reward area� slows down, making us think we are too different. �We show that a deviation from the group opinion is regarded by the brain as a punishment,� said Vasily Klucharev, postdoctoral fellow at the F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study (Landau 2009).
It turns out that people with adequate social relationships have a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival than people who have poor or insufficient relationships. That means that having good relationships is comparable to quitting smoking in terms of survival benefit, and is a stronger factor than obesity and physical activity (Landau 2010).
U.S. researchers now think breaking up may not be so hard to do. �We underestimate our ability to survive heartbreak,� said Eli Finkel, an assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University. �On average, people overestimate how distressed they will be following a breakup,� Finkel said. �People who are more in love really are a little more upset after a breakup, but their perceptions about how distraught they will be are dramatically overstated when compared to reality,� Finkel said. �At the end of the day it, it is just less bad than you thought� (Steenhuysen 2007).
Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson has studied why some societies are healthier than others. He found that what the healthiest societies have in common is not that they have more�more income, more education, or more wealth�but that what they have is more equitably shared. It turns out that not only disease, but a whole host of social problems ranging from mental illness to drug use are worse in unequal societies. Increased equality has the opposite effect: that communities without large gaps between rich and poor are more resilient and their members live longer, happier lives (Wilkinson 2010).
Even infants can tell the difference between naughty and nice playmates, and know which to choose. Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday's journal Nature. "It's incredibly impressive that babies can do this," said study lead author Kiley Hamlin. "It shows that we have these essential social skills occurring without much explicit teaching." (Borenstein 2007).
Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves. The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain (Vedantam 2007).
Tobacco key facts: Tobacco use kills 5.4 million people a year - an average of one person every six seconds - and accounts for one in 10 adult deaths worldwide. There are more than one billion smokers in the world. Globally, use of tobacco products is increasing, although it is decreasing in high-income countries. Almost half of the world's children breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke. Tobacco kills up to half of all users. 100 million deaths were caused by tobacco in the 20th century. Unchecked, tobacco-related deaths will increase to more than eight million a year by 2030, and 80% of those deaths will occur in the developing world. If current trends continue, there will be up to one billion deaths in the 21st century (WHO 2010).
Smokers with cancer could quit and double survival. Until now, there has been little proof that quitting smoking after developing lung cancer makes any difference to survival. British researchers analyzed previous data from 10 studies examining how long smokers survived after being diagnosed with lung cancer. People with lung cancer who continued smoking had a 29 to 33 percent chance of surviving five years. But those who kicked the habit had a 63 to 70 percent chance of being alive after five years (Cheng 2010).
The National Center for Health Statistics a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report Monday on health behaviors of American adults. Among the other key findings: 61.2 percent of adults are current drinkers, nearly a quarter said they were lifetime abstainers. About 14 percent were former drinkers and around 5 percent were classified as heavy drinkers. Men were more likely be current drinkers than women (67.6 percent compared with 55.3 percent)(CBS 2010).
Psychoactive substance use poses a significant threat to the health, social and economic fabric of families, communities and nations. The extent of worldwide psychoactive substance use is estimated at 2 billion alcohol users, 1.3 billion smokers and 185 million drug users. 76.3 million persons with alcohol use disorders worldwide. At least 15.3 million persons who have drug use disorders (NIDA 2010).
Auto injuries are the leading cause of death in people ages 10 to 24 around the world the World Health Organization said yesterday. The organization promoted a long list of suggestions. The improvements include safer roads and vehicles, better urban planning, helmet laws, prosecution of speeders and drunken drivers, better education of the driving and walking public, and simple interventions such as putting reflective tape on backpacks. "It is a big public health issue for kids, and we can do something about it," said Etienne Krug, a physician who heads WHO's department for injury and violence prevention (Brown 2007).
More than 1.2 million people die in road traffic crashes every year. As many as 50 million people are injured or disabled by road traffic crashes every year. Half of all crash victims are vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Correctly used seat-belts reduce the risk of death in a crash by 61%. Mandatory use of child restraints can reduce child deaths by 35%. Helmets reduce fatal and serious head injuries by up to 45% WHO 2010. Enforcing a drinking and driving law around the world could reduce alcohol-related crashes by 20%. For every 1km/h reduction in average speed, there is a 2% reduction in the number of crashes (WHO 2010).
About 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Fear is a basic primal emotion that is key to evolutionary survival. "Fear is a funny thing," "One needs enough of it, but not too much of it." said Ted Abel, a fear researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. David Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specializing in treating anxiety disorders says "You're experiencing this powerful discomfort but you're getting tricked into treating it like danger." The normal response for dealing with a real threat is either flee or fight, But if the threat is not real, the best way to deal with fear is just the opposite: "Wait it out and chill." (Borenstein 2007).
If you have a purpose in life -- lofty or not -- you'll live longer, a new study shows. It doesn't seem to matter much what the purpose is, or whether the purpose involves a goal that's ambitious or modest. "It can be anything -- from wanting to accomplish a goal in life, to achieving something in a volunteer organization, to as little as reading a series of books," said study author Dr. Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center (Doheny 2009).
A study suggests that high self-esteem isn't necessarily healthy. "There are many kinds of high self-esteem, and we found that for those in which it is fragile and shallow it's no better than having low self-esteem," says researcher Michael Kernis, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. "People with fragile high self-esteem compensate for their self-doubts by engaging in exaggerated tendencies to defend enhance their self-worth." Self-esteem has come under examination after discovering links to aggressive behavior. Kernis says high self-esteem can become harmful when it is accompanied by verbal defensiveness, such as lashing out at others when a person's beliefs are threatened. (Warner 2008).
Hostile people may be paying a price in terms of heart health, a new study finds. These people showed a thickening in the walls of their neck arteries tied to a 40% higher risk of having the artery narrow. And that could boost their risk for cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke, the researchers concluded. Lead researcher Angelina Sutin, a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. National Institute on Aging said, "Agreeable people tend to be trusting, straightforward and show concern for others, while people who score high on antagonism tend to be self-centered and quick to express anger," (Reinberg 2010).
People with extreme views seem more willing to share their opinions than others says study. Kimberly Rios Morrison, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University says "When people with extreme views have this false sense that they are in the majority, they are more willing to express themselves." That situation can set up a self-feeding cycle that promotes the voicing of extreme views on one side of an issue and causes moderate and even extremists on the other side to stay relatively quiet. (LiveScience 2009).
Why It's Hard to Admit to Being Wrong An inteterview with Dr. Aronson is a social psychologist by Joe Palca, NPR. PALCA: What is cognitive dissonance? Dr. ARONSON: It's a drive, like hunger or thirst, and it feels uncomfortable whenever we hold two ideas or beliefs that conflict with each other and especially if the major idea is about who we are. PALCA: And so where's the problem? Dr. ARONSON: The problem comes when we make a serious blunder, then the problem is by reducing the dissonance, we don't learn from our mistakes. And therefore, we're likely to commit the same mistake over and over again. Or like some politicians, if we dig ourselves into a hole, if we commit ourselves to a war that isn't going well, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper by justifying the initial decision to go to war.. PALCA: But then, are you saying that cognitive dissonance is so powerful that a global leader would persist in a policy simply to make himself able to sleep better at night? Dr. ARONSON: That's precisely what I'm saying. It's - cognitive dissonance is a powerful motive. And it's an unconscious motive. We're convincing ourselves that we're right even when - as God sees it or as other people around might see it - we're wrong (Aronson 2007).
Skin cancer is colorblind -- no 'free pass'. "Pigmentation doesn't give you a free pass," said Dr. Charles E. Crutchfield III, a dermatologist specializing in ethnic skin. "It doesn't matter what color your skin is, everyone can get skin cancer." (Rice 2009).
Psychologists have long studied nonverbal communication. But some researchers have begun to focus on a different, kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words. Dr. Hertenstein a psychologist at DePauw University in Indiana said "In effect, the body interprets a supportive touch as" "l'll share the load." (Carey 2010).
France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable researchers said. If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to the researchers. �I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?� said Ellen Nolte McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (Dunham 2008).
College students today are less likely to �get� the emotions of others than their counterparts 20 and 30 years ago, a new review study suggests. Specifically, today's students scored 40 percent lower on a measure of empathy than their elders did. �We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,� said Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. �This generation of college students grew up with video games, and a growing body of research is establishing that exposure to violent media numbs people to the pain of others� (Bryner 2010).
Liquid H2O is the sine qua non of life. Making up about 66 percent of the human body, water runs through the blood, inhabits the cells, and lurks in the spaces between (Ballantyne 2007).
There's no escaping the fact that life isn't always fair, but that usually doesn't make unfair treatment any easier to accept. Now new brain imaging studies may help explain why. The research shows that being on the receiving end of fair treatment is inherently rewarding, activating the portion of the brain associated with happiness. Being treated unfairly was shown to activate a region of the brain previously linked to negative emotions, such as moral disgust (Boyles 2008).
An article by Perreau-Linck and colleagues provides an initial lead about one possible strategy for raising brain serotonin. The study is the first to report that self-induced changes in mood can influence serotonin synthesis. This raises the possibility that the interaction between serotonin synthesis and mood may be 2-way, with serotonin influencing mood and mood influencing serotonin (Young 2007).
Paranoia on the rise, experts say. If you think they're out to get you, you're not alone. Paranoia, once assumed to afflict only schizophrenics, may be a lot more common than previously thought according to British psychologist Daniel Freeman. Freeman is a paranoia expert at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College. Experts say there is a wide spectrum of paranoia, from the dangerous delusions that drive schizophrenics to violence to the irrational fears many people have daily. �Paranoia is defined as the exaggerated or unfounded fear that others are trying to hurt you (AP 2008).
Screaming sports coaches and cutthroat tycoons have it wrong: Nice guys do finish first, a new study suggests. The Harvard University study involved college students playing the same game over and over. Common theory has held that punishment makes two equals cooperate. But when people compete in repeated games, punishment fails to deliver, said study author Martin Nowak. �On the individual level, we find that those who use punishments are the losers,��Those who escalate the conflict very often wound up doomed� said Novak (Borenstein 2008).
The Bible counsels misers that it's better to give than to receive. Science agrees. People who made gifts to others or to charities reported they were happier than folks who didn't share, according to a report in the journal Science. Andrea Koslow, director of advertising at the American Red Cross, said: �The act of helping has its own profound effect.� �People need a humanitarian outlet ... feeling that they make a difference ... that's very motivating,� Koslow said (Schmid 2008).
Sex
Prehistoric Fish Pioneered Sex. Sex has been a fact of life for at least 380 million years, longer than previously thought. Internal fertilisation was widespread among prehistoric fish living on ancient tropical coral reefs in the Devonian period, research published in the journal Nature on Wednesday showed (Hirschler 2009).
South Africans received a horrifying measure of just how bad their country's rape crisis is with the release of a study in which more than a quarter of men admitted to having raped, and 46% of those said that they had raped more than once. The study, conducted by South Africa's Medical Research Council, reveals a deeply rooted culture of violence against women, in which men rape in order to feel powerful, and do so with impunity, believing that their superiority entitles them to vent their frustrations on women and children (Lindow 2009).
Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research. Experts also found that abortion rates are virtually equal in rich and poor countries, and that half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe. The study was done by Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute and colleagues from the World Health Organization. About 70,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions. An additional 5 million women suffer permanent or temporary injury. �The only way to decrease unsafe abortion is to increase contraception,� said Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute (Cheng 2007).
The number of induced abortions declined worldwide between 1995 and 2003, from nearly 46 million to approximately 42 million. About one in five pregnancies worldwide end in abortion. Most abortions occur in developing countries. Worldwide, 48% of all induced abortions are unsafe. Approximately 220,000 children worldwide lose their mothers every year from abortion-related deaths. The World Health Organization defines unsafe abortion as a procedure for terminating an unintended pregnancy carried out either by persons lacking the necessary skills or in an environment that does not conform to minimal medical standards, or both. Samples of Unsafe Abortion Methods Used: Drinking turpentine, bleach or tea made with livestock manure, inserting herbal preparations into the vagina or cervix, placing foreign bodies, such as a stick, coat hanger or chicken bone, into the uterus, Jumping from the top of stairs or a roof (Guttmacher 2009).
Violence against women and girls is a problem of pandemic proportions. At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime � with the abuser usually someone known to her. Perhaps the most pervasive human rights violation that we know today, it devastates lives, fractures communities, and stalls development (UNIFEM 2010).
Experts are studying a phenomenon that brings a whole new meaning to the term 'unwanted pregnancy.' This month, Elizabeth Miller assistant professor of pediatrics at University of California, Davis, published a study in the journal �Contraception� detailing �reproductive coercion,� when the male partner pressures the other, through verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage, to become pregnant. �You have guys telling their partners, 'I can do this because I'm in control' or 'I want to know that I can have you forever' says Miller (Kliff 2010).
33.4 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 30 million people live with HIV/AIDS in low- and middle-income countries and 2.1 million children with HIV/AIDS worldwide at the end of 2008. 2.7 million people were newly infected with HIV worldwide and Two million people died from HIV/AIDS worldwide in 2008 (WHO 2009).
In its first study of women�s health, the World Health Organization said yesterday that the AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44. Throughout the world, one in five deaths among women in this age group is linked to unsafe sex, according to the agency. �Women who do not know how to protect themselves from such infections or who are unable to do so face increased risks of death or illness�� (AP 2009).
�There are two major trends in world population today,� says Bill Butz, Population Reference Bureau (PRB) president. �On the one hand, chronically low birth rates in developed countries are beginning to challenge the health and financial security of their elderly. On the other, the developing countries are adding over 80 million to the population every year and the poorest of those countries are adding 20 million, exacerbating poverty and threatening the environment� (PRB 2010).
More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don't have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year. If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say. The world's population is projected to jump to 9 billion by 2050, with more than 90% of that growth coming from developing countries (AP 2009).
It seems that every few months, the male birth control pill is just around the corner. This month, a new drug from London touted as the next big prospect for the male birth control pill created a buzz. More and more people are clamoring for options that would allow men to share in the burden of preventing pregnancy. A 2005 study showed that nearly 50 percent of men in the United States would be willing to try a new form of birth control, and up to 72 percent of men in other countries are interested in new forms of male contraception (Karalakulasingam 2006).
New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. Professor Murray Straus concludes that children who are spanked are more likely as adults to coerce partners to have sex, to have unprotected sex and to have masochistic sex. �The best-kept secret in child psychology is that children who were never spanked are among the best behaved,� Straus said (AP 2008).
The prevalence of domestic violence among Gay and Lesbian couples is approximately 25 - 33%. Some states offer no domestic violence protection to gays 'It's Just a Quarrel': American Bar Association Journal (Barnes 1998).
Each year, between 50,000 and 100,000 Lesbian women and as many as 500,000 Gay men are battered (Murphy 1995).
After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart. College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex - they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and �it feels good,� (Borenstein 2007).
What percentage of your ancestors were men? No, it�s not 50 percent. Citing recent DNA research, Dr. Baumeister explained that today�s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Their lines were dead ends (Tierney 2007).
Earth, Space and Science
Life constantly faces the prospect of extinction. Life requires energy, water, and carbon; an environmental disaster that removes water, dooms life. Other environment disasters threaten. The harsh radiation of space is blocked only by Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. Environmental instabilities cause ice ages. One day, billions of years from now, our Sun will burn out. Other, heavier stars end their lives in explosions called supernovae; the blast and radiation from a nearby supernova could destroy all life on Earth (NASA 2010).
NASA cannot keep up with killer asteroids. NASA is supposed to seek out almost all the asteroids that threaten Earth but lacks the money to do the job, a federal report says. The agency estimates that about 20,000 asteroids and comets in Earth's solar system bigger than 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter are potential threats to the planet (AP 2009).
Scientists Warn of Solar Storms to Come. The sun is getting ready to ramp up its activity, and when it does we could be in for some real trouble, scientists say. A solar storm of the strongest variety could cause 20 times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina, said a 2008 National Academy of Sciences report on space weather (Heussner 2009).
A collision 160 million years ago of two asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter sent many big rock chunks hurtling toward Earth, including the one that zapped the dinosaurs, scientists said on Wednesday. That catastrophe eliminated the dinosaurs, which had flourished for about 165 million years, and many other life forms, and paved the way for mammals to dominate the Earth and the eventual rise of humankind, many scientists believe (Reuters 2007).
Scientists think that Earth probably formed at about the same time as the rest of the solar system. They have determined that some chondrite meteorites, the unaltered remains from the formation of the solar system, are up to 4.6 billion years old. Scientists believe that Earth and other planets are probably that old. They can determine the ages of rocks by measuring the amounts of natural radioactive materials, such as uranium, in them. Radioactive elements decay (change into other elements) at a known rate (Dutch 2004).
Last week, the United Nations consolidated four agencies that tackle women's issues and created a new super agency. The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) UNIFEM: Roughly 60 percent of the world's population living in poverty are women and girls. Women are outnumbered four to one in legislatures around the world. Over 60 percent of all unpaid family workers globally are women, and women still earn on average 17 percent less than men. About one-third of women still suffer gender-based violence during their lives. (Basu 2009).
Some say the world will end with fire, others say in ice. Just as Robert Frost imagined two possible fates for the Earth in his poem, cosmologists envision two possible fates for the universe: Gravity might slow the expansion rate down over time, but for densities below the critical density, there isn't enough gravitational pull from the material to ever stop or reverse the outward expansion. This is also known as the "Big Chill" or "Big Freeze" because the universe will slowly cool as it expands until eventually it is unable to sustain any life. If the density of the universe is greater than the critical density, then gravity will eventually win and the universe will collapse back on itself, the so called "Big Crunch" In this universe, there is sufficient mass in the universe to slow the expansion to a stop, and then eventually reverse it. The WMAP satellite measures the basic parameters of the Big Bang theory including the fate of the universe. The results suggest the geometry of the universe is flat and will expand forever (NASA 2010).
Edo Berger assistant professor of astronomy at Harvard University got an alert early last morning when a satellite detected a 10-second blast of energy known as a gamma ray burst coming from outer space. "We immediately knew what that meant," Berger said. What it meant was that he was looking at the oldest thing ever spotted -- an enormous star exploding 13 billion years ago. Berger said, he was looking "95 percent of the way back to the beginning of time" (CNN 2009).
A new study of ancient "desert pavement" in Israel's Negev Desert finds a vast region that's been sitting there exposed, pretty much as-is, for about 1.8 million years, according to Ari Matmon and colleagues at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is the oldest known vast expanse of surface area. The newly dated desert pavement does not represent the oldest material on Earth, however. A lot of individual rocks have been found that are much older (Britt 2009).
British scientists said that they had figured out key steps in the process by which life on Earth may have emerged from a seething soup of simple chemicals. Genetic information in living organisms today is held in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). But DNA is too sophisticated to have popped up in an instant, and one avenue of thought says its single-stranded cousin, ribonucleic acid, or RNA, came first. US molecular biologist Jack Szostak hailed the research saying. "It will stand for years as one of the great advances in prebiotic chemistry," Opinions vary as to when the first organisms appeared on Earth. One estimate, based on fossilised mats of bacteria found in Australia, is that this happened around 3.8 billion years ago, around 700 million years after the planet was formed (AFP 2009).
Scientists find oldest record of animal life on Earth. Fossils from Australia show animal life on Earth began at least 650 million years ago. Princeton geosciences professor Adam Maloof and graduate student Catherine Rose came upon the fossils while researching a massive ice age that left much of the planet covered in ice 635 million years ago. The researchers call the animals sponge-like because the fossil record shows them to have a network of internal canals, likely for filtering food from seawater as sponges do. The earliest fossils of hard-bodies animals date to 550 million years ago (Lendon 2010).
Most scientists agree that the Milky Way will cross paths with the Andromeda galaxy in about three billion years. Andromeda is about twice as large as the Milky Way. The galaxies are separated by about 2.2 million light years (one light-year is about 6 trillion miles, or 10 trillion kilometers). That gap is closing at about 310,000 miles per hour (500,000 kph). While a collision appears inevitable, astronomers admit that the sideways motion of Andromeda could affect the encounter's timing. John Dubinksi, an astronomy professor at University of Toronto said "Even if the galaxies have a wider passage on the first pass, if they are on a bound orbit they are destined to merge eventually," (Malik 2002).
Until recently, astronomers estimated that the Big Bang occurred between 12 and 14 billion years ago. To put this in perspective, the Solar System is thought to be 4.5 billion years old and humans have existed as a genus for only a few million years. If current ideas about the origin of large-scale structure are correct, then the detailed structure of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations will depend on the current density of the universe, the composition of the universe and its expansion rate. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe WMAP has been able to determine these parameters with an accuracy of better than 3% of the critical density. In turn, knowing the composition with this precision, we can estimate the age of the universe to about 1%: 13.7 0.13 billion years! WMAP definitively determined the age of the universe to be 13.73 billion years old to within 1% (0.12 billion years) (NASA 2010).
"Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow. Science has been greatly successful at explaining natural processes, and this has led not only to increased understanding of the universe but also to major improvements in technology and public health and welfare." "Science is not the only way of acquiring knowledge about ourselves and the world around us. Humans gain understanding in many other ways, such as through literature, the arts, philosophical reflection, and religious experience. Scientific knowledge may enrich aesthetic and moral perceptions, but these subjects extend beyond science's realm, which is to obtain a better understanding of the natural world." According to the National Academy of Sciences (NASA 2010).
"Look at the moon, every night it comes out to remind us that on cosmic scales the universere is violent. The univervse can be catastrophic". Michio Kuku (1947-) P.H.D. Professor of of Theoretical Physics.
Human History
Neanderthals, smaller and squatter than Homo sapiens sapiens, as anatomically modern man is called, lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for around 170,000 years. All traces of these mysterious hominids vanish from the record around 28,000-30,000 years ago, and the cause of this disappearance has sparked a fierce duel of opinion among paleontologists (Ingham 2007).
In the special issue of Science researchers unveiled Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), a 4.4 million-year-old, 125-piece hominid skeleton that is 1.2 million years older than the celebrated Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis). Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley says, "To understand the biology, the parts you really want are the skull and teeth, the pelvis, the limbs and the hands and the feet. And we have all of them." Perhaps most important, Ardi provides clues to what the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimps might have looked like before their lineages diverged about 7 million years ago. (Lemonick and Dorfman 2009).
The handful of teeth from the earliest direct ancestors of modern gorillas ever found leave virtually no doubt, the study's authors and experts said, that both humans and modern apes did indeed originate from Africa. Orrorin -- discovered in Kenya in 2000 and nicknamed "Millennium Man" goes back 5.8 to 6.1 million years, while Sahelanthropus, found a year later in Chad, is considered by most experts to extend the human family tree another one million years into the past. The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago. (AFP 2007).
The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan. So-called 'plant-like' and 'trident-shaped' markings have been found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years. They were found at a site called Harappa in the region where the great Harappan or Indus civilisation flourished four and a half thousand years ago. They were carbon-dated to 3300-3200 BC. This is about the same time, or slightly earlier, to the primitive writing developed by the Sumerians of the Mesopotamian civilisation around 3100 BC. (Whitehouse 1999).
Human fossils found 38 years ago in Africa are 65,000 years older than previously thought pushing the dawn of "modern" humans back 35,000 years. New dating techniques indicate that the fossils are 195,000 years old. The two skulls and some bones were first uncovered on opposite sides of Ethiopia's Omo River in 1967 by a team led by Richard Leakey. The new findings, published in the journal Nature, establish the fossils dubbed Omo I and II as the oldest known fossils of modern human. (Mayell 2005).
Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA -- which is passed down through mothers -- have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago. (Schmid 2008).
Two bottlenecks in evolution led humans to be much more closely related to one another, research claims. Despite physical differences, humans are more genetically similar than you might think. As humans migrated out of Africa, humanity lost much of its genetic diversity. (Clark 2009).
A strip of land on Africa's southern coast became a last refuge for the band of early humans who survived an ice age that wiped out the species elsewhere, scientists maintained. The land, referred to by researchers as "the garden of Eden," may have been the only part of Africa to remain continuously habitable during the ice age that began about 195,000 years ago. "Shortly after Homo sapiens first evolved, the harsh climate conditions nearly extinguished our species," said Professor Curtis Marean, of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. The idea that early humans were once reduced to a tiny remnant population arose from research showing that modern humans have far less genetic diversity than most other species. (ASU 2010).
Two big genetic studies confirm theories that modern humans evolved in Africa and then migrated through Europe and Asia to reach the Pacific and Americas. The two studies also show that Africans have the most diverse DNA, and the fewest potentially harmful genetic mutations. "The one thing that I think we cannot say from this study is that any one person's genome is any healthier or evolutionarily fit than another person's genome," said Carlos Bustamante of Cornell University in New York, who worked on one study. (Fox 2008).
The advent of a writing system seems to coincide with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to count ones property, whether it be parcels of land, animals or measures of grain or to transfer that property to another individual or another settlement. We see the first evidence for this with incised "counting tokens" about 9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile crescent. (Kilmon 2010).
A Neanderthal man who lived as recently as 50,000 years ago may have been killed by a modern human armed with an advanced projectile weapon, a new study suggests. If confirmed, the Paleolithic "murder" would be the first compelling case for an anatomically modern human using a weapon against a member of the extinct human species. (Than 2009).
The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is opening a new permanent exhibit exploring human evolution over 6 million years. The nearly $21-million Hall of Human Origins. It will include more than 285 fossils and artifacts, including the only Neanderthal skeleton in the United States. Curator Rick Potts says the exhibit tracks major milestones of human development and says that science can be compatible with religious perspectives (AP 2010).
Modern Homo sapiens is still evolving. Despite the long-held view that natural selection has ceased to affect humans because almost everybody now lives long enough to have children, a new study of a contemporary Massachusetts population offers evidence of evolution still in action. A team of scientists led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns suggests that if the natural selection of fitter traits is no longer driven by survival, perhaps it owes to differences in women's fertility. (Harrell 2009).
Women
Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread violations of human rights. It can include physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse, and it cuts across boundaries of age, race, culture, wealth and geography. It takes place in the home, on the streets, in schools, the workplace, in farm fields, refugee camps, during conflicts and crises. Globally, up to six out of every ten women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. Gender-based violence not only violates human rights, but also hampers productivity, reduces human capital and undermines economic growth. A 2003 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceeds US$5.8 billion per year: US$4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly US$1.8 billion due to absenteeism (UNIFEM 2010).
Facts & Figures on Violence against Women. The victims in today's armed conflicts are far more likely to be civilians than soldiers. Some 70 percent of the casualties in recent conflicts have been non-combatants most of them women and children. Violence against women during or after armed conflicts has been reported in every international or non-international war-zone, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, C d Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Chechnya/Russian Federation, Darfur, Sudan, northern Uganda and the former Yugoslavia (UNIFEM 2007).
Women's prisons should be shut down and replaced with small secure units, according to a report commissioned for the Home Office. The plan is being recommended by Labour peer Baroness Corston. "Vulnerable women who are not a danger to society should not be going to prison," she said. "Where women have to be imprisoned, we are committed to ensuring they are held in conditions that are clean, decent and fit for purpose." (BBC 2007).
Women in predominantly Muslim countries are struggling to compete for jobs, win equal pay and hold political office, falling behind the rest of the world in eliminating discrimination, a report said Thursday. Nordic nations, by contrast, received the best overall grades for gender parity in education, employment, health and politics, according to the review of 128 countries compiled by the World Economic Forum (Jordans 2007).
One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. 85% of domestic violence victims are women. Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew. Females who are 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence. Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police (NCADV 2007).
According to a 2009 Turkish government report, 42 percent of women surveyed said they had been the victims of either physical or sexual abuse by their husband or partner. The report concluded that one in four married Turkish women had been injured by partner violence. Meanwhile, one in ten Turkish women were injured by such violence while pregnant. Statistics show the violence is in urban and rural regions (Watson and Comert 2010).
Ostracized by society, thousands of India's widows flock to the holy city of Vrindavan waiting to die. "Does it feel good?" says 70-year-old Rada Rani Biswas. "Now I have to loiter just for a bite to eat." Biswas speaks with a strong voice, but her spirit is broken. When her husband of 50 years died, she was instantly ostracized by all those she thought loved her, including her son. "My son tells me: 'You have grown old. Now who is going to feed you? Go away," she says, her eyes filling with tears. "What do I do?" There are an estimated 40 million widows in India (Damon 2007).
Children
The National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV), the most comprehensive nationwide survey of the incidence and prevalence of children's exposure to violence to date, sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence within the past year, either directly or indirectly (i.e., as a witness to a violent act; by learning of a violent act against a family member, neighbor, or close friend; or from a threat against their home or school). Nearly one-half of the children and adolescents surveyed (46.3 percent) were assaulted at least once in the past year (Finkelhor et al. 2009).
Abuse Risk Seen Worse As Families Change. Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries according to a study of Missouri abuse reports. They note an ever-increasing share of America's children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures. Of all families with children, nearly 29 percent are now one-parent families, up from 17 percent in 1977 (Crary 2007).
In 2008, U.S. state and local child protective services (CPS) received 3.3 million reports of children being abused or neglected. CPS estimated that 772,000 (10.3 per 1,000) of children were victims of maltreatment. Approximately three quarters of them had no history of prior victimization (CPS 2010).
Youths
Former Chicago high school teacher says guns were abundant in his school all students in one class claimed to have access to handguns "If we want to stop violence, we need to make real changes," Violence was so omnipresent that when I returned to school a few days after being shot a staggering number of students lifted their shirts to show their bullet wound. "You have to walk away from a lot," observed one former student of mine, "That's how a lot of these shootings happen, it's over nothing." (Okun 2010).
Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General 2001. Most violence begins in the second decade of life. Most youths who become violent begin in adolescence. Their late-onset offending is usually limited to a short period, peaking at about age 16 and dropping off dramatically by age 20. Serious violence is frequently part of a lifestyle that includes drugs, guns, precocious sex, and other risky behaviors. Youths involved in serious violence typically commit many other types of crimes and exhibit other problem behaviors, presenting a serious challenge to intervention efforts. Successful interventions must confront not only the violent behavior of these young people, but also their lifestyles, which are teeming with risk. Violent offenders are frequently victims of violence (HHS 2001).
A survey of more than 33,000 girls aged 12 to 17 found that 26.7 percent had been involved in a serious fight at school or work the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported. "In the public mind, acts of teenage violence are most commonly associated with boys," the report observed, but, it is clear that the problem is pervasive among girls as well." Males do have a higher rate of violence, the report added, with 33.6 percent engaged in one of the types of acts in the year before the study (AP 2010).
Alarming Increase in Violence Among Teenage Couples as Technology Makes Abuse Easier Than Ever. A recent survey shows that even twenty-five percent of 'tweens' say they're experiencing physical violence in their romantic relationships. Relentless texting, constant instant messaging, and virtual mind games played out on social networking sites are all becoming tools of choice for abusive teenagers wanting to control their partners (Couric 2009).
Business
Too many boards are still cavalier. Corporate directors don't like it when shareholders accuse them of being management cronies, but how else can they be seen when they drop the ball on basic responsibilities like leadership development and executive pay? Too many boards are being reactive when it comes to corporate governance. An amazingly high 44 percent of directors say their boards have no succession plans in place for when the CEO leaves, according to a new survey of 632 board members at public companies by the National Association of Corporate Directors (Beck 2010).
Questions that has arisen in the wake of the financial crisis is whether all that alpha-male testosterone at the top of Wall Street firms helped to ratchet up the excessive risk-taking, inflating the housing and securitization bubbles. Would women have made fewer outlandish bets, been more team-oriented and more willing to listen to dissenting views? The fact is that Wall Street has always been very much a Boys Club. Treasury secretary Tim Geithner said that only seven percent of Fortune 500 chief executives are women and only "two to three" percent of finance-related chief executives are women (Cohan 2010).
Does Recession Discriminate Against Women? A new study released by CareOne Debt Relief Services found that savvy, professional women were particularly vulnerable. The study, "Women, Debt and the Recession: A Snapshot of the Changing Face of Debt in America" reported that 45 percent of women seeking debt relief assistance have more than $50,000 in debt. The study also reported a 38 percent increase in the portion of women seeking debt assistance with an annual household income greater than $60,000. The recession left in its wake a new class of women, unaccustomed to significant debt and looking for help (Nance-Nash 2010).
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has an annual budget of $742 million, is charged with overseeing the non-military use of nuclear materials within the United States is having trouble keeping track of its guns, according to a new audit. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Investigations (OI) was unable during a surprise inspection to produce 15 out of 17 firearms it listed as being stored at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md. "Guns are hazardous and sensitive pieces of equipment and should be properly controlled and inventoried," said Jim Foster, who worked in the predecessor to OI (Stuckey 2007).
Media
Adolescents who play violent video games may become increasingly aggressive over time, a new study of Japanese and U.S. teens suggests. The study is among the first to chart changes in gamers' aggressive behavior over time, lending weight to evidence that violent video games can encourage violence in some kids (Pediatrics 2008).
Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) railed against the Washington press corps today on the House floor for paying more attention to scandals then the war in Afghanistan. "The press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that's the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It's despicable, the national press corps right now." Kennedy said (Condon 2010).
Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news -- with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007. Americans have not over the same period grown any more likely to say the news media are too conservative or too liberal (Morales 2010).
The life of a journalist has never been easy in Mexico, a country noted for its one-party rule, corruption and lawlessness. But, since President Felipe Calderon challenged the drug cartels, practicing journalism has become a deadly occupation. Roughly 70 journalists, photographers, editors and producers have been killed in the last decade in Mexico. The deadliest place in the world to get a quote remains Iraq, where 140 journalists have been killed since 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)(Sanchez 2010).
Action-Legend Sylvester Stallone Speaks Out Against 'Insidious' Violence in Films. The 64-year-old "Rocky" icon has a big problem with the way violence is portrayed in so many movies today. "If you're going to do violence and make it heroic, okay." "But if it is insidious like a serial killer? Not good." (McKay 2010).
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