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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 39
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Data on smokers to
be released today
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The health ministry is expected to make public today the results of a nationwide survey of tobacco use. The ministry last did a survey in 2010 that showed 24.8 percent of men and women between 12 and 70 used tobacco. The percentage this year is expected to be lower. In years past some 50 percent of Costa Rican men used tobacco, according to the figures from the Ministerio de Salud. The reduction in use is attributed to campaigns by the ministry and the increased awareness among members of the public of the dangers of tobacco use. The survey report comes at a time of worldwide efforts to eliminate smoking. For example, this week in Australia the first large-scale, direct evidence on smoking and mortality showed up to 1.8 million of the 2.7 million smokers will die from their habit if they continue to smoke. That is a report from the Sax Institute. The research, just published in the international journal BMC Medicine, is an important reminder that the war on tobacco is not yet won, and Australia's world-leading efforts in tobacco control must go on, said Sax. Costa Rica has signed an international convention designed to reduce smoking through campaigns and legal efforts.  Servicios
Periodisticos Globales photo
This collapse
of a shoulder at Puriscal creates a dangerous condition. Experts say road
collapses preventable
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country is not condemned to have roads falling away and other disasters caused by landslides, according to soil scientists. The Asociación Costarricense de la Ciencia del Suelo puts the blame on lack of planning for the repeated collapses of highways. The problem not only is the soil, they say, but the failure to control water. The country has seen two major collapses on main highways in the metro area and the current one at Kilometer 37 of the Interamericana Sur. Such roadway incidents cost millions for producers, truckers and average motorists. The association will be hosting a gathering of soil experts March 16 to 20. An announcement said that the country could save millions by proper use of the soil. In the case of the Interamericana Sur, for example, workmen trying to repair the road found a thick layer of clay underneath the roadbed. That material encourages slides, and may be the reason why one lane fell far downhill. More than 200 experts from much of the hemisphere will be at the gathering, which will be in the Hotel Barcelo San José Palacio and later at the Barceló Playa Tambor. Floria Bertsch and Renato Jiménez, president and vice president of the Costa Rican association, said that the country should create a national policy to make better use of natural resources and to avoid collapses and the poor design of roadway drainage. Pulsed therapy seminar set for Saturday By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The benefit of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy is the topic of a free seminar and demonstration Saturday in San Isidro de El General. The presenter is Renata Beffa of San Jose’s Healing House, who characterizes the therapy as a non-invasive and pain-free treatment which stimulates the same meridian points as acupuncture. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved several devices that generate the electromagnetic field. This is the system NASA uses to treat astronauts, athletes use to recover from sports injuries, and Linus Pauling and others have employed to stay young and vibrant, said a release about the 11 a.m. seminar, which is at Bazookas Restaurant on the Interamericana highway in San Isidro. The therapy can be administered by a device called a MicroMat a flat electromagnetic field generator. The technique was pioneered by veterinarians who used pulsed therapy to help horses with fractured legs. The pulses have a positive effect on bones and can help them knit. The announcement said that the therapy has evolved from alternative to traditional medicine in recent years, with many prestigious hospitals and clinics using devices with remarkable and measurable results. The therapy has been shown to benefit everything from arthritis, to circulation, to digestive disorders, sleep disorders, and cell regeneration, as well as many other conditions, it added. Reservations are requested at 6036-4283. Sniper killer gets life term in Texas By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A jury in Texas has convicted a man in the shooting death of a former U.S. Navy SEAL whose life story was turned into the current hit movie “American Sniper.” The man, Eddie Ray Routh, was found guilty Tuesday night of murder in the deaths of Chris Kyle and Kyle's friend, Chad Littlefield, at a shooting range and resort in February 2013. Jurors deliberated for less than three hours. Since prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in the case, the 27-year-old Routh received an automatic life sentence without parole. Kyle and Littlefield had taken the former Marine to the shooting range as a means of helping Routh, who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq and in Haiti during the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake. His attorneys said Routh was suffering from mental illness at the time of the shootings, and believed Kyle and Littlefield were going to kill him during the outing. Chris Kyle was credited with over 100 confirmed kills during his four deployments during the U.S.-led Iraq war. The movie based on his autobiography was nominated for this year's Academy Award for best picture, and has earned more than $300 million in box office receipts.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 39 | |
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| Unfavorable news reports seem to have remained in the
country this year |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Unfavorable news stories seem to have stayed in Costa Rica. Expats in the tourism business were worried that the 33-day kidnapping of Ryan Piercy would give the country a black eye. So far the story appears to have remained a local one because an Internet search does not show that publications outside the country picked up the running story. Piercy is Canadian and general manager of the Association of Residents. Judicial investigators and the family made few comments on the case until Piercy returned home Sunday, and most news outlets treaded carefully for fear of disrupting the investigation. In fact, there has been few negative stories in the last two months that might change the destination for a tourist. Compared to a country like Venezuela that lurches toward civil war, Costa Rica is, well, tranquil. Over the weekend a report of a rant by the Mayor of Talamanca made the jump from the English-language press to Spanish news outlets. The mayor, Melvin Cordero Cordero, basically told a couple of expats they should leave town |
instead of
making complaints about environmental
faults. Telling foreigners to leave the canton and perhaps the country is the kind of remark that could be picked up by U.S. and Canadian news sources. Tourism operators should be happy that this does not seem to have happened. In the past murders of young tourists on the Caribbean coast and in southern Costa Rica quickly made international news. For a time the string of missing tourists, mostly in Guanacaste, appeared to be the type of news story that would affect tourism. But the cases were so far apart in time and reasonable explanations of non-criminal possibilities blunted the impact. That most recent missing tourist, Cody Dial, vanished in July 2014. He was believed to be going solo through the rugged Parque Nacional Corcovado, a report that suggests his disappearance was related to nature. There has been no evidence to support alternate theories that might affect tourism. And as the spring break tourism season begins, most North American college students have surf, sun and fun on their minds with little consideration of ancient history. Never mind that spring breaker Brendan Dobbins, an Australian visiting from Florida, was the first in the string of missing tourists in 2005. |
| Lawmaker seeking to reopen access to Volcán Turrialba
national park |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A big tourist attraction is the Volcán Turrialba and its national park. However, the park has been closed because of eruptions of the volcano. Although the volcano frequently emits steam and gas, tourism interests are seeking to have controlled access to the park surrounding the mountain. Paulina Ramírez Portuguez, a lawmaker, notes that the park and volcano represent major tourism draws to the area. The lawmaker said that she, the mayor of Turrialba, María Elena Montoya, and Wilhelm von Breymann, the minister of Turismo, are seeking support to have the area opened up. The national emergency commission has closed access for safety reason. The park had been closed from 2009 to 2011, and then the park was closed again in 2013. The last major eruption was in October. The lawmaker's plan is to hold a meeting among tourism interests, business interest and the emergency commission. She also said there is a plan that will be introduced to the legislature to create a trust to provide money for repairing the access roads to the park. The roads would plan an important role in an emergency evacuation. |
 Observatorio
Vulcanológico y Sismológico
de Costa Rica file photo This was the scene at the volcano crater
May 21, 2013
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| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 39 | |||||
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| Massive amounts of Sahara dust fertilize Amazon each year,
study says |
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By the University of Maryland news
staff
The Sahara Desert and the Amazon rainforest seem to inhabit separate worlds. The former is a vast expanse of sand and scrub stretching across the northern third of Africa, while the latter is a dense green mass of humid jungle covering northeast South America. And yet, they are connected. Every year, millions of tons of nutrient-rich Saharan dust cross the Atlantic Ocean, bringing vital phosphorus and other fertilizers to depleted Amazon soils. For the first time, scientists have an accurate estimate of how much phosphorus makes this trans-Atlantic journey. A new paper, accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, puts the number at about 22,000 tons of phosphorus per year, which roughly matches the amount that the Amazon loses from rain and flooding. This phosphorus accounts for just 0.08 percent of the 27.7 million tons of Saharan dust that settles in the Amazon every year. The finding is part of a bigger research effort to understand the role of dust in the environment and its effects on local and global climate. "We know that dust is very important in many ways. It is an essential component of the Earth system. Dust will affect climate and, at the same time, climate change will affect dust," said lead author Hongbin Yu, an associate research scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, a joint center of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Of particular interest is the dust picked up from the Bodélé Depression in Chad. This ancient lake bed contains huge deposits of dead microorganisms that are loaded with phosphorus. Amazonian soils, in turn, are short on phosphorus and other critical nutrients that get washed away by the basin's frequent and heavy rainfall. Thus, the entire Amazon ecosystem depends on Saharan dust to replenish these losses. Yu and his colleagues analyzed dust transport estimates based on data collected by NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation satellite between 2007 and 2013. The team focused on Saharan dust transported across the Atlantic Ocean to South America and beyond, to the Caribbean Sea, because it is the largest transport of dust on the planet. The team estimated the phosphorus content of Saharan dust |
 Conceptual Image Lab, NASA/Goddard Space
Flight Center
What the massive amounts of
Sahara dust might look like.by studying samples from the Bodélé Depression and from ground stations on Barbados and in Miami. They then used this estimate to calculate how much phosphorus gets deposited in the Amazon basin. Although the seven-year data record is too short to make conclusions about long-term trends, it is an important step toward understanding how dust and other windborne particles, or aerosols, behave as they move across the ocean. "We need a record of measurements to understand whether or not there is a fairly robust, fairly consistent pattern to this aerosol transport," said Chip Trepte, project scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, who was not involved in the study. Year by year, the pattern is highly variable. There was an 86 percent change between the highest amount of dust transported in 2007 and the lowest in 2011. Yu and his colleagues believe this variation is due to conditions in the Sahel, the long strip of semi-arid land on the southern border of the Sahara. Years of high rainfall in the Sahel were typically followed by low dust transport in the next year. Although the mechanism behind this correlation is unknown, Yu and his team have a few ideas. Increased rainfall could mean more vegetation and therefore less soil exposed to wind erosion in the Sahel. A second, more likely explanation is that the amount of rainfall is related to the wind circulation patterns that sweep dust from both the Sahel and Sahara into the upper atmosphere, where it makes the long journey across the ocean. "This is a small world, and we're all connected together," Yu said. |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
news page
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 39 | |||||||
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Amnesty International says 2014 was catastrophic year By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The year 2014 was a catastrophic one for millions of people around the world, a human rights watchdog group said today. Amnesty International released its annual report accusing world governments of failing to protect civilians from violence by states and armed groups, and calling the global response shameful and ineffective. "As people suffered an escalation in barbarous attacks and repression, the international community has been found wanting,'' Amnesty's secretary general, Salil Shetty, said in a statement. The report said millions of civilians were killed from Syria to Ukraine, Gaza to Nigeria, while the number of displaced people around the world exceeded 50 million last year for the first time since the end of World War II. In 2014, Amnesty International recorded and investigated human rights abuses in 160 countries and territories worldwide. These are some of the findings: * War crimes or other violations of the laws of war were carried out in at least 18 countries. * Armed groups committed abuses in at least 35 countries, more than 20 percent of the countries Amnesty International investigated. * 119 countries arbitrarily restricted freedom of expression, including jailing of journalists and forced closures of media outlets. * 62 governments held prisoners of conscience, people who were simply exercising their rights and freedoms. * 93 countries conducted unfair trials. * 131 countries tortured or otherwise ill-treated people. * 28 countries around the world have laws which completely ban abortion even in cases where a woman’s life or health is in danger and in cases of rape. * 78 countries have laws in effect that are used to criminalize consensual sexual relationships between adults of the same sex. Amnesty criticized the European Union's response to the 4 million Syrian refugees displaced by conflict in the world's worst refugee crisis. By the end of 2014, only 150,000 Syrian refugees were living in EU states, it said, while 3,400 refugees and migrants had died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to make their way to Europe. "It is abhorrent to see how wealthy countries’ efforts to keep people out take precedence over their efforts to keep people alive," Shetty said. Amnesty singled out the United Nations Security Council for criticism, with Shetty saying it had miserably failed to protect civilians. The five permanent Security Council members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S., consistently abused their veto right to "promote their political self-interest or geopolitical interest above the interest of protecting civilians," he said. The report pointed out that the threat of a Russian veto has made it impossible for the Security Council to take any action because of events unfolding in Ukraine. Amnesty is now urging the five states to give up their right to veto action in cases where genocide and other mass killings are being committed. The report said armed groups committed abuses in at least 35 countries out of 160 surveyed in 2014, and called the rise of the Islamic State militant group a particular concern. The report said the Islamic State committed wide-scale war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions that targeted minorities. The militants also killed members of the Sunni community they suspected of opposing them, the report said. Hundreds of women and girls were subjected to sexual abuse by Islamic State fighters, the report said. A huge number of arms were delivered to Iraq, Israel, Russia, South Sudan and Syria in 2014, despite the likelihood of these weapons being used against civilians, it said. The report also highlighted how several governments, including Kenya and Pakistan, reacted to security threats with draconian and repressive tactics. Shetty said world leaders have it in their power to alleviate the suffering of millions by committing enough political and financial resources. "The global outlook on the state of human rights is bleak, but there are solutions. World leaders must take immediate and decisive action to avert an impending global crisis," he said. Obama vetoes pipeline plan but may change his mind By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama has vetoed a bill approving the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that sparked a dispute between environmentalists and oil industry supporters in the United States. The White House sent notice of the veto to the Senate Tuesday. It was the third veto of Obama's presidency. This veto puts a freeze on a top Republican priority, at least temporarily. Earlier this year, the Republican-led Congress approved the bill forcing construction of the pipeline. Obama, in his notice to the Senate, cited a procedural matter as the reason for his veto. Shortly before the president issued the veto, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Congress had passed the bill without waiting for the State Department to conclude a review of the project. "Through this bill, the United States Congress attempts to circumvent long-standing and proven processes for determining whether or not building and operating a cross-border pipeline serves the national interest," Obama wrote in his veto message. Earnest indicated there still was a chance the president might approve the project. "It certainly is possible," he said. "The president will keep an open mind as the State Department considers the wide range of impacts that this pipeline could have on the country, both positive and negative.” Republicans, who support the project because of its job-creation potential, made passing a bill a top priority after gaining control of the U.S. Senate and strengthening their majority in the House of Representatives in November elections. The House voted 270 to 152 to pass the bill Feb. 11 after the Senate approved it Jan. 29. Neither the House nor the Senate passed the proposal by a wide enough margin to override the expected presidential veto. Proposed in 2008, the Keystone XL pipeline would move as much as 830,000 barrels of oil a day, largely from Canada, to the Midwestern U.S. state of Nebraska. From there, it would be routed to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. Republicans and the oil industry have argued that the $8 billion infrastructure project is about creating jobs and boosting energy security. They say it would import oil from a friendly neighbor and ship it to domestic refineries subject to stringent environmental regulations. Democrats and their environmental allies have characterized the pipeline plan as a gift to the oil industry that would worsen global warming and subject parts of the U.S. to the risks of an oil spill. Kerry says extremism fight will be expensive process By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Tuesday called the threat posed by Islamic State and violent extremism the challenge of a generation, as he presented his case to a Senate panel for funding to carry out the Obama administration’s foreign policy. The nation’s top diplomat told the Senate Appropriations Committee that brutal extremist groups like Islamic State represent “a horrendous step backwards in the context of the world’s march toward civility and the rule of law.” The State Department is seeking $3.5 billion to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, to bolster regional security and provide humanitarian aid to those in the region. However, the threat, he added, extends beyond the group to all violent extremists, and it will take a comprehensive strategy to eliminate it. “They have threatened the world with their vision of how they want to live and how they want to impose their life on other people,” said Kerry. “They destroy schools, they destroy books, they rape young girls, they sell people into slavery, they cut off heads in public, they burn people alive.” Obama administration officials last week hosted a summit on countering violent extremism that brought together more than 60 nations and community and religious leaders from around the world. President Barack Obama called on nations to address core issues that may create an environment ripe for extremism, such as poor governance, oppression, poverty, and lack of jobs, education and opportunity. Tuesday Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, a Republican, suggested the root cause of violent extremism “is more than jobs and governance, but comes back to ideology.” Kerry answered, “Well, it is, but why does somebody fall prey to that ideology? Why does somebody think going and cutting off somebody’s head is a good idea?" The secretary of State said his department’s funding request before Congress includes financing for social media and other efforts to counter sophisticated and effective propaganda being distributed by Islamic State through YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other venues to lure more recruits. “There’s no one-size-fits-all shoe that’s going to solve this. It has to be a holistic approach,” Kerry told the panel. “We have to step up and do more, and we have to view it holistically, and we have to understand it’s a whole bunch of things. And if we work at it holistically, we’re going to win,” Kerry continued. “And if we make the wrong judgments, though, about what is going to make a difference, then we’re going to take a lot longer to do what we need to do.” In addition, Kerry said, funding will pay for continuing military efforts to combat terrorists in Iraq and Syria. So far, that has included 2,500 air strikes to help partners on the ground push back militants and retake territory, like the northern Syrian town of Kobani, taken back by Kurdish fighters in January. The diplomat said the U.S. is leading in the fight against violent extremism but it needs more resources to carry out its goal. “The simple fact is we cannot lead, we cannot do what we need to do in the world, on the cheap,” he said. Justice Department declines to charge George Zimmerman By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Justice Department will not file civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012. A Justice Department statement released Tuesday said that the evidence did not meet the high standard for a federal hate crime prosecution, but that the decision should not end efforts to explore racial tensions in the justice system. The decision closes the federal investigation. Zimmerman, who is the son of a Peruvian mother, shot Martin Feb. 26, 2012, as the teen walked back to a relative's home after purchasing snacks at a convenience store in Sanford, Florida. Once Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder by a state jury in July 2013, Martin's family turned to the federal investigation in the hope that he would be held accountable for the shooting. The killing sparked protests and a national conversation on race. Days after Zimmerman was acquitted, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he considered Martin's death an unnecessary shooting.' In a news release Tuesday, Holder echoed remarks he made in the shooting's aftermath. "We, as a nation, must take concrete steps to ensure that such incidents do not occur in the future,'' he said. British Lords OK technique to modify human eggs By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Britain has become the first country in the world to allow the creation of human embryos from the DNA of three people, a technique intended to help mothers avoid passing on genetically degenerative diseases to their babies. Members of Parliament's House of Lords voted Tuesday to approve the controversial type of in-vitro fertilization that could prevent mothers from passing inherited health problems such as serious heart and brain disorders or muscular dystrophy. But critics see it as a step toward creation of so-called designer babies. The House of Commons approved the move earlier this month. Worldwide, about one in 6,500 children is affected by incurable mitochondrial diseases that could be limited by the genetic modifications. The proposal is supported by key British medical authorities. They see the possibility of virtually eliminating the chance that women who are carriers of defective mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus, could pass them on to their children. Sally Davies, Britain's chief medical officer, said women should be given "the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders." The proposal has drawn strong opposition from some medical ethicists, including David King of Britain's secular Human Genetics Alert. He said approval of the law would lead to a eugenic designer-baby future. The Roman Catholic Church, which is opposed to any artificial reproductive techniques, opposes the British proposal, as does the Church of England, which said last week there has not been enough scientific study of the medical techniques involved. Medical personnel in Britain now will be allowed to remove the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and insert it into a donor egg from which the nucleus DNA has been removed. The resulting embryo then has the nucleus DNA from its parents, but the normal mitochondrial DNA from its donor. Scientists say the resulting embryo's genes have less than 1 percent of the DNA from the donor egg. No mitochondria replacement treatments have been approved anywhere. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year discussed the techniques under consideration in Britain, but decided it was too soon to use them in humans. Monkeys have been produced using one of the laboratory techniques. One U.S. opponent of the procedure is Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism. He said it would further "the commodification of reproduction." He said prospective parents some day will have the chance to have "the kind of baby they want." He said that while he understands the suffering of mothers with a genetic disorder, "the welfare of future children and the moral health of society must count for more." Pakistan seeks to register all users of mobile phones By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pakistan is telling cellphone users they must register their identities by entering fingerprints in a national database, a move the government sees as a way to combat terrorism but one that has privacy experts wary. Mobile phone users have a deadline this week to match their SIM cards with their fingerprints that will be collected and stored by the government. Officials in Islamabad have said those mobile users who don’t or can’t register their fingerprints and SIM cards by the deadline will have their service cut off. Subscriber Identity Module or SIM cards are used by mobile devices to identify specific users and allow them access to their service. But given the enormous size of the task, and the widespread use of mobile phones across Pakistan, that’s increasingly unlikely. While some Pakistanis have been critical of the shortened timeline, they still support the overall goal of fighting terror that is rampant in the country. Pakistan has seen an unprecedented increase in violent extremism in the last decade. Tens of thousands of civilians have died in bomb attacks. People have been targeted and killed for expressing liberal ideas. “I have two SIMS which I am using since five years,” said Sadat Ali, an attorney in Peshawar. “The biometrics team came to our office located on the premises of the courts in Peshawar and they verified my SIM. It’s never too late, but it should have been done before.” The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has estimated there are approximately 130 million mobile phone users in Pakistan, over 70 percent of the population, and many of those users are clamoring for the latest 3G and 4G phones. It’s likely that there are many more SIM cards in use in Pakistan, making the approaching deadline an unprecedented challenge. But as reported by the Washington Post, only 38 million mobile users have registered 53 million SIM cards with their fingerprints. The International News reports that Pakistani authorities are considering extending the registration deadline, but remain firm that once that new deadline is passed, unregistered SIM cards will no longer be usable. The massive biometric data collection plan is part of a larger security crackdown in Pakistan following a string of terror attacks, including one in December at a Peshawar school that killed 150 people, most of them students. Because mobile phones have been used in some of these attacks to trigger explosions, officials in Islamabad hope establishing links between SIM cards and individuals will help combat terror attacks. But some cybersecurity analysts have their doubts. “Mass surveillance of an entire population is traditionally the hallmark of a totalitarian state,” says Patrick Eddington, policy analyst in civil liberties and homeland security at the Cato Institute. “This SIM card registration campaign is a clear indicator that, unfortunately, Pakistan is on the path to becoming a truly totalitarian state.” A former CIA intelligence analyst, Eddington calls the SIM card plan a tacit admission that Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has proven itself unable to penetrate terror cells using more traditional human and signals intelligence tools. Beyond the potential abuses of an individual’s privacy, he says such a massive collection of data as is being proposed will likely have little to no effect. “Terrorist groups survive in part because they’re adaptable,” he said. “So this campaign in Pakistan will not actually solve the problem because the terrorist groups will change their communication techniques and modalities in order to get around this SIM card registration campaign.” |
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2015 and may
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 39 | |||||||||
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 Uppsala Universitet/ Majority
Kwaambwa
The Moringa oleifera is found
throughout GuanacasteAnother use
found for moringa seeds
By the Uppsala Universitet news staff
Scientists continue to find new uses for the moringa tree and its seeds. Previous studies have shown that the extracts from seeds of the Moringa oleifera tree can be used for water purification. In a new study, researchers from Uppsala University show that the Moringa seeds can also be used for separation of different materials. Separation processes are very important in mining industries and the new knowledge could contribute to reduce the needs for expensive synthetic chemicals. Moringa trees are known as miracle trees because of their many uses as food and as a source of oil. Seeds from the trees are also used to purify water. The special properties of the protein in the seeds have been studied by a group from Uppsala University in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Namibia, Windhoek, and the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France. New results published in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science suggest that Moringa seeds could be used for separation of different materials rather than just removal of all impurities. Separation processes are very important in mining industries to remove valuable material from waste. This further application of a natural product would reduce the needs for expensive synthetic chemicals. Protein from crushed seeds of Moringa bind to particles in water and cause them to aggregate. They can then be removed easily by filtration or settling. “The results can help us to find the optimum amount of Moringa seeds to purify water,” says Maja Hellsing, one of the researchers behind the study. Experiments with detergents added to the bound protein showed that the behavior changes for different materials. “Combining the protein with detergents offers new ways to use this natural material in mineral industries that are important in many countries where Moringa grows well”, says Adrian Rennie, who led the study. Technology plan to be presented By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The central government is big on plans. So today officials will present what they call the Plan Nacional de Ciencia Tecnología e Innovación. The plan is supped to chart the country's technology course through 2021. The 8:30 a.m. presentation will be at the Muse de Jade. |
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| From Page 7: Cargo begins to move at West Coast ports By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Most West Coast U.S. ports have been busy since Friday, when negotiators reached a tentative settlement in a nine-month labor dispute and work slowdown. Both sides say with the cargo moving again, they can focus on long-term problems. Dozens of ships have been docked or waiting offshore at 29 West Coast ports, and port officials say it will take months to process all the cargo. Most dockworkers have returned to work, but must still vote on the tentative five-year contract. U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez had increased pressure as both sides talked in San Francisco, but negotiations were not easy, says Craig Merrilees of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. “You know, there are a lot of tough issues in this process that lasted over nine months, and some of them are the kinds of issues that are affecting all workers," he said. "That includes the outsourcing of good jobs.” Workers say clerical jobs at the port have been moving to other states and other countries. They are also worried about increasing automation of the port facilities, reducing the need for workers. Those who move goods into and out of the country include San Francisco coffee company, Ritual Coffee Roasters. “We are reliant on constant arrivals of coffee in order to have a fresh supply,” said company founder Eileen Rinaldi. Others who rely on the ports are small breweries that use imported hops to brew their beer. |
