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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 49
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Turtle trackers show links
between gulf and Nicaragua By
the Programa Restauración de Tiburones
y Tortugas Marinas. After nesting on Nicaraguan beaches, hawksbill sea turtles visit the brackish waters of mangrove swamps in the internal gulf of Nicoya. The information was confirmed by a group of researchers from the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative, in collaboration with students from the University of Costa Rica and Costa Rican researchers from the non-governmental organizations Pretoma and Widecast. The biologists were first alerted by the Nicaraguan organization Paso Pacífico, that a hawksbill turtle that nested at Playa Brasilón, along Nicaragua's southern Pacific on Aug. 9, 2012, had made its way into Costa Rica's gulf of Nicoya. Because the Nicaraguan researchers had equipped the turtle with a satellite transmitter, they were able to determine that it had stayed more than 150 days within the mangroves and lagoons surrounding Abangares. When the researchers inspected the site last Feb. 28, they didn't only catch an adult hawksbill sea turtle, they also found out that it had nested five times throughout 2012 in Estero Padre Ramos, northern Nicaragua. This was possible because the turtle carried a metal tag on one of its fore flippers, which had been applied by the international organization Flora and Fauna International. "This discovery highlights the importance of reaching bi-national agreements to guarantee the survival of the hawksbill sea turtle, a critically endangered species," said Alexander Gaos, director of the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative. "The species is essential in the maintenance of the marine ecosystem, a function that is extremely important for the coastal communities of both countries, which depend on healthy and productive seas," pointed out the expert. For Astrid Sánchez, a member of the Eastern Pacific Hawksbill Initiative and graduate student in tropical coastal area integrated management at the University of Costa Rica, a study of the ecology of the hawksbill's diet in this area could contribute to the understanding of why adult hawksbills choose mangrove habitats within the gulf of Nicoya. "Because the species is critically endangered in the eastern tropical Pacific, it's particularly important to identify critical nesting and feeding habitats alike, and work towards the development of the most convenient local and regional management strategies. Researchers also made note of the presence of numerous boats practicing illegal fishing methods, including drag nets (an artisanal version of a shrimp trawl net) and gill nets with illegal mesh sizes. "Costa Rica needs to immediately attend to this problem, as it's evident that illegal overfishing is being done under a veil of absolute impunity," said Randall Arauz. "If ecosystem based fisheries are not promoted in the Gulf of Nicoya, it will be impossible to reestablish populations of fish that coastal communities depend on, and endangered species like the hawksbill turtle may succumb," Arauz is with Pretoma, an acronym for the Programa Restauración de Tiburones y Tortugas Marinas. Four Canadian ships due to begin Caribbean patrols By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Canada is adding more maritime firepower in the battle against illegal trafficking in American and Caribbean waters. The Canadian Department of National Defence said it would enlist four naval ships and an aircraft to assist in Operation CARIBBE 2014. The campaign is a joint venture between Western and European countries to prevent illicit activity like drug trade from occurring on the coasts of Central America. Canadian officials have been aiding forces in Operation CARIBBE since 2006. Last year they helped collect more than 5,000 kilograms of cocaine. This year, the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force plan to let their warships and planes patrol the region’s east and west coasts. Canadian Ships being deployed include the "Kingston," "Glace Bay," "Nanaimo," and "Whitehorse," while the monitor aircraft is a CP-140 Aurora. "Every year, our efforts, and those of our partner nations, are responsible for the interception and seizure of millions of dollars of illicit drugs in this region's international waters and airspace,” said Rob Nicholson, Canada’s minister of National Defence. New offices in Puerto Rico for Tico consul general By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Costa Rican foreign ministry said Monday that it has opened new consul general's offices in Puerto Rico. Foreign minister Enrique Castillo was there to do the honors, and he met later with David E. Bernier, the Puerto Rican secretary of State, according to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto. Puerto Rico supplies a disproportionate number of tourists to Costa Rica, in part because of the common language. A number of Costa Ricans also have significant business interests there. Our reader's opinion
Excessive wealth is obscene,and keeping it is immoral Dear A.M. Costa Rica: One Trillion Seven Hundred Billion Dollars: That is the combined wealth of the poorer half of the world’s population. It is also the wealth of the world’s richest 85 individuals. I DO feel that such obscene wealth is morally wrong. We are talking billions here. Each of those 85 people is worth $20 BILLION each. These eighty folks own more than 3.5 billion others on this earth (half the population). That is a disgusting amount of money, and I cannot imagine that there is any way that all of it could have been earned without some sort of disadvantage and oppression happening somewhere somehow even if "legal." I know I am telling the super rich that they need to give away some of their financial wealth. What they need to understand is that true wealth is that which we gain from being one with God and treating all others (our neighbors) as well as we treat ourselves. I cannot imagine that, if I was a 20 billionaire that I would not be more than willing to give away at least 10, 20, 30 or even 50 percent of my money to help improve the lot of others. I would consider myself immoral having that much money when there is anyone living in the oppression of homelessness, poverty, and hunger. I am not talking about wild-eyed liberal giveaways that do not last and actually do more bad than good. Yes, we do need to eliminate all curable diseases – including hunger (I call it the disease of greed), and we need to solve the housing crisis. But we can also be most effective through creating sustainable enterprises that seek to solve problems rather than make profits, through micro-finance programs promoted by Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and other innovative ideas that can employ millions, protect the environment and still let the rich be very very rich. How much could a person possibly spend in a day? A person trying to spend $20 billion in an 80-year lifespan would have to spend almost $700,000 A DAY every day of their life, not counting compounded interest! Would that person live any worse if they only had $350,000 to spend in a day and the rest went to helping others? I would need to stretch my moral limits to say yes. Lic.
Thomas Bricker Ghormley-Hessell
Jacó
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 49 | |
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| Even in retirement, ex-coast guard chief can't shake British
tradition |
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By
Michael Krumholtz
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff A familiar Costa Rican name with political legacy is behind a small and relatively unknown sausage business. Claudio Pacheco, the one-time director of the national coast guard and brother of former president Abel, sells homemade pork sausage and produces the monthly e-mail newsletter, Banger News. Pacheco has been making sausage since 1987, initially inspired by the bangers and mash he ate at pubs when he lived in Britain. When they returned to Costa Rica, his wife who worked in the British embassy would sell the bangers to her nostalgic co-workers. Through his newsletter that has 453 subscribers, he lets readers know where and when he will be selling his sausages around town. Along with his sausages, he also sells cheese made from his nephew’s farm and his wife’s lemon curds. “Being that many of my customers are British and foreigners, I don’t have troubles with Tico time,” Pacheco said. He also said he has a decent amount of American and Costa Rican regulars. There is a butcher near the downtown Coca-Cola bus stop where Pacheco has bought his pork for years. He said he primarily uses the leg of pork and believes that his product has an edge on other sausages because of his emphasis on quality meat inside the tubing. Now retired, Pacheco said his company does not have a name and that he makes the sausages because its a passion. “This is just to put some money in the pocket,” he said. “It’s not for doing a commercial thing.” Fittingly, as a kid his classmates nicknamed him "Salchicha." He keeps his days occupied by playing golf twice a week, delving into a newly discovered love of photography, and overseeing an American Legion branch. Pacheco was graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1964, |
Through an agreement that the U.S. government has with a handful of other countries to better their international relations, selected foreigners are able to attend American military schools. He has since helped several other Costa Rican men get into the academy. Under the Miguel Ángel Rodríguez administration, Pacheco was appointed to head the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas. He continued in the position when his brother succeeded Rodríguez as president. Pacheco said he also makes homemade relish and chutney on occasion. If interested in signing up for his emailing list or getting a shipment of bangers, email Pacheco at pacheco.claudio@gmail.com. |
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 Ministerio de Obras Públicas y
Transportes photo
Technician works with traffic
policeman to calibrate the device. |
Traffic police getting some help in calibrating radar devices By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Experts from Costa Rica and Chile have been working with traffic police to calibrate new radar devices. Employees of the Laboratorio Costarricense de Metrología were in Desampardos Friday doing experiments with vehicles and the radar devices. For a time, some of the roadway lanes were closed off. Also involved were employees of the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio. The devices, of course, are going to be used to catch speeding motorists. The Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes said that similar training sessions and calibration efforts will be done in other parts of the country. Efforts to control speeding have had their ups and downs. The automatic devices on major highways that take photos of license plates still are out of service. And traffic police seem to prefer organized checkpoints rather than patrols to catch speeders. The emphasis has been on catching motorists who violate the license plate rule on a day when their car is prohibited from the metro area. Traffic police also are seeking out those motorists with the number 1 or 2 as the last digit of the license if they have not purchased new, secure plates as outlined on the Registro Nacional Web site. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 49 | |||||
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| Artificial lighting shown to hamper bats and may affect seed
dispersal |
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By
the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research Berlin
news staff Increasing light pollution in tropical habitats could be hampering regeneration of rain forests because of its impact on nocturnal seed-dispersers. These new findings were reported by scientists from the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research Berlin. The study, published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, is the first to show that seed-dispersing bats avoid feeding in light-polluted areas. Working with Sowell's short-tailed bats (Carollia sowelli), Daniel Lewanzik from the institute gave the bats a simple choice. He divided a flight cage into two compartments. One was naturally dark and the other was illuminated by a sodium street lamp, the most common form of street lighting in the world. Inside, both parts of the cage the bats were offered their favorite fruits to harvest: pepper plants, nightshade and figs. The results revealed that bats flew into the dark compartment twice as often as the compartment lit by a street lamp. The bats also harvested fruits almost twice as often in the dark compartment. In a second experiment Lewanzik illuminated pepper plants growing in the wild with a street light and measured the percentage of ripe fruit which bats harvested from plants in a dark location and from lit plants. While bats harvested 100 per cent of the marked, ripe fruit from the plants in the dark, only 78 per cent were taken from the lit plants. Although insect-eating bats have been shown to avoid foraging in light-polluted areas, this is the first study to show that fruit-eating bats also avoid lit areas. This has important implications for forest regeneration in the tropics. Bats play a key role in pollinating plants and spreading their seeds, especially the seeds of species that are first to recolonize cleared land. “In tropical habitats bat-mediated seed dispersal is necessary for the rapid succession of deforested land because few other animals than bats disperse seeds into open habitats”, says Daniel Lewanzik, doctoral candidate at the institute and first author of the study. Under naturally dark conditions, bats produce a copious seed rain when defecating seeds while flying. By reducing foraging of fruit-eating bats in lit areas, light pollution is likely to reduce seed rain, he commented. In many tropical countries, light pollution is increasing rapidly as |
 Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife
Research Berlin/Karin Schneeberger
Sowell's short-tailed bats like
these are Costa Rican natives.economies and human populations grow. Natural succession of forests could therefore suffer as tropical habitats become increasingly illuminated. “The impact of light pollution could be reduced by changes in lighting design and by setting up dark refuges connected by dark corridors for light-sensitive species like bats,” Lewanzik says. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 49 | |||||
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| Democratic senators spend night addressing climate By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
At the U.S. Capitol, Democratic senators were speaking all night long Monday on the perils of climate change and urging swift action to combat it. More than 30 lawmakers hope to advance legislation to cut carbon emissions, which are blamed for rising global temperatures. Pro-environmental initiatives have been stalled for years in America’s politically divided Congress, a situation that is not expected to change anytime soon. But that isn’t stopping Democrats from speaking out on the Senate floor. Sen. Patrick Leahy says the evidence of climate change is plain to see. “We see it in California’s scorched farmlands, in Alaska’s retreating glaciers, in Wyoming’s burnt forests and superstorm-ravaged coastlines," he said. "I say it is time to wake up and take action.” Leahy urged passage of laws to boost America’s clean energy sector and tax carbon emissions. No Republicans are joining their Democratic colleagues in the special Senate session. Earlier, however, several Republicans urged legislative restraint. Sen. Jeff Sessions said scientists are not unanimous in assessing the reality, much less the causes, of climate change. “There has been a lot of exaggeration, a lot of hype," he said. "The American people are feeling the crunch already in their electric bills, in their gasoline bills as a result of our efforts to stop a rising temperature that does not seem to be rising right now.” With major environmental legislation stymied in Congress, President Barack Obama has acted on his own where possible. For instance, his administration has boosted U.S. fuel economy standards for automobiles and sought to close the nation’s biggest-polluting coal power plants. The president faces a major test in whether to approve construction of a controversial pipeline to transport Canadian oil - a project backed almost unanimously by Republicans but vehemently opposed by Obama’s pro-environment political allies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the average increase in temperature since 1880 is 1.53 degree F or 0.85 of a degree C. Most scientists would dispute Leahy's use of individual events as evidence for global warming. Solar output and climate linked in European study By
the Cardiff University news staff
Changes in the sun’s energy output may have led to marked natural climate change in Europe over the last 1,000 years, according to researchers at Cardiff University. The study found that changes in the Sun’s activity can have a considerable impact on the ocean-atmospheric dynamics in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on regional climate. Scientists studied sea floor sediments to determine how the temperature of the North Atlantic and its localized atmospheric circulation had altered. Warm surface waters flowing across the North Atlantic, an extension of the Gulf Stream, and warm westerly winds are responsible for the relatively mild climate of Europe, especially in winter. Slight changes in the transport of heat associated with these systems can lead to regional climate variability, and the study findings matched historic accounts of climate change, including the notoriously severe winters of the 16th and 18th centuries which pre-date global industrialization. The study found that changes in the Sun’s activity can have a considerable impact on the ocean-atmospheric dynamics in the North Atlantic, with potential effects on regional climate. Predictions suggest a prolonged period of low sun activity over the next few decades. The study, led by Cardiff University scientists, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bern, was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Paola Moffa-Sanchez, lead author from Cardiff University School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, explained: “We used sea floor sediments taken from south of Iceland to study changes in the warm surface ocean current. This was done by analyzing the chemical composition of fossilized microorganisms that had once lived in the surface of the ocean. These measurements were then used to reconstruct the seawater temperature and the salinity of this key ocean current over the past 1,000 years.” The results of these analyses revealed large and abrupt temperature and salinity changes in the north-flowing warm current on time-scales of several decades to centuries. Cold ocean conditions were found to match periods of low solar energy output, corresponding to intervals of low sunspot activity observed on the surface of the sun. Using a physics-based climate model, the authors were able to test the response of the ocean to changes in the solar output and found similar results to the data. “By using the climate model, it was also possible to explore how the changes in solar output affected the surface circulation of the Atlantic Ocean,” said Ian Hall, a co-author of the study. “The circulation of the surface of the Atlantic Ocean is typically tightly linked to changes in the wind patterns. Analysis of the atmosphere component in the climate model revealed that during periods of solar minima there was a high-pressure system located west of the British Isles. This feature is often referred to as atmospheric blocking, and it is called this because it blocks the warm westerly winds diverting them and allowing cold Arctic air to flow south bringing harsh winters to Europe, such as those recently experienced in 2010 and 2013.” Meteorological studies have previously found similar effects of solar variability on the strength and duration of atmospheric winter blockings over the last 50 years, and although the exact nature of this relationship is not yet clear, it is thought to be due to complex processes happening in the upper layers of the atmosphere known as the stratosphere. Dr. Moffa-Sanchez added: “In this study we show that this relationship is also at play on longer time scales and the large ocean changes, recorded in the microfossils, may have helped sustain this atmospheric pattern. Indeed, we propose that this combined ocean-atmospheric response to solar output minima may help explain the notoriously severe winters experienced across Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries, so vividly depicted in many paintings, including those of the famous London Frost Fairs on the River Thames, but also leading to extensive crop failures and famine as corroborated in the record of wheat prices during these periods.” Malaysian crash shows airlines ignore data base By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Two of the passengers sitting next to each other on the Malaysia Airlines flight that mysteriously disappeared Saturday were traveling with stolen passports. That chilling fact has raised questions about the security of international travel, and why countries might fail to use security tools that are available through international agencies. Imagine Luigi Maraldi's surprise when officials reported he was on the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished Saturday with 239 people on board. The Italian desperately tried to explain to reporters in heavily accented English that he had no clue his stolen passport could get a passenger on board an international flight. "I think my passport maybe nobody can use again because when I come back to Italy I talked with police, Italian police, for look my lost passport and so nobody can use," he said. So if the stolen passport was reported to international authorities, how could it have gotten through security? "If there's no check against the Database of Stolen Passports, you can get on a flight," said Chris Bronk, a passport technology expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Texas. And if you think Malaysia was unique in not checking Interpol's database for stolen passports before letting passengers board flight MH307, you would be mistaken. "Just about everyone else in the world isn't using this database, and that has to change," Bronk said. Bronk says the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates are the only three countries determined to use the database to check passports on all international flights. And only 38 countries use e-chip technology to help verify and track passports as part of a visa waiver program. "So we've put a lot of technology in passports over the last 10 to 15 years now, and they are harder and harder than ever to forge, but if you don't have the digital backend running, it's just a document," he said. So what could be stopping countries from using these tools of the 21st century? Bronk says the infrastructure needed to integrate Interpol's database is time consuming and expensive. He encouraged the State Department and other concerned parties to consider aiding others with this integration, because the process of identifying passengers like the two who got on Flight MH307 is significantly harder without accurate passport data. "Now they are going to have to go back through and figure out if any other information about them was captured in the process of buying the ticket, getting on the plane -- so that goes through everything from 'How was the ticket bought? Was it bought with cash? Was it bought with a credit card?' All the way up to, 'Was there a photo captured? Was the person cleared by security at the airport?' It really depends on what evidence exists," said Bronk. It's unclear how often people travel internationally with stolen documents, but with nearly 40 million stolen passports out there, Bronk says it's safe to assume it happens fairly regularly. Poverty’s revolving door emphasized in new report By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Climbing out of extreme poverty and staying there can be very difficult. A new report warns up to one billion people are at risk of extreme poverty by 2030 unless more is done to support them in hard times. Unemployment, poor health, high food prices, conflict and natural disasters, these are some of the things that can drive people below the poverty line of $1.25 a day. The Overseas Development Institute and the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network have released the "Third Chronic Poverty Report." Network Director Andrew Shepard, the lead author, warns of poverty’s revolving door. “People fall into poverty as well as escape it. And once they’ve escaped it, they can fall back in again.” He said there are three legs of poverty that must be addressed. “You can be poor the whole of your life, chronically poor. And policies, generally speaking, don’t deal very well with that. You can become poor. You can be impoverished. Policies are beginning to address that a little bit better than they did 10 years ago, but there’s still a long way to go on that, especially in Africa, and actually also in Asia. And then once you escape poverty, you need to keep on in an upward trajectory. You need to keep on moving away from poverty because you can easily fall back in again,” he said. It’s estimated there were 1.2 billion people in extreme poverty in 2010. That’s a decline of 700 million since 1990. Shepard says that’s good news, but the trend may not continue. “People who are chronically poor, they’re poor over their lifetimes for reasons and those reasons can be quite hard to tackle. For example, they might be discriminated against. And some countries now have good policies against discrimination, but many countries don’t yet or they don’t implement them.” Shepard said that the most frequent cause for falling back below the poverty line is ill health. The report recommended three approaches to what it calls zero poverty. “The first of these is providing some sort of cash relief, if you like, cash transfers or an employment guarantee. Something which provides a safety net. The second thing is a massive investment in education because education works to help people out of poverty to keep them going in the right direction. And education, of course, works to sustain peoples’ escapes out of poverty provided that you can get them up to a high enough level,” he said. Primary and secondary education levels are a must, he said. The third step to reduce poverty is called “pro poorest economic growth.” Shepard said, “You need jobs, of course. And those jobs can be agricultural, non-agricultural, but jobs also need to be decent. They need to pay some kind of minimum wage. That can be underpinned by an employment guarantee. And you need health and safety provisions.” The report called on all countries to have universal health coverage and good disaster risk management to deal with the weather extremes of climate change. It also said international aid will continue to be extremely important in low-income countries. However, it adds, few donors have displayed real interest in tackling chronic poverty. “The report does an analysis, which shows that there are about 44 countries which spend a total of less than $500 per person per year. That’s on everything. And the report also indicates that quite a few of those countries – I think it was 19 – won’t be doing very much better by 2030,” he said. Shepard said countries also can find more money to help tackle poverty by doing a better job of collecting taxes. He said some of the success stories in reducing poverty in recent years include China, Vietnam, Brazil, Ethiopia, Nepal and Bangladesh. The issue of chronic poverty is expected to be addressed as the international community decides how to replace the Millennium Development Goals. They come due next year. Last October, the World Bank reported the number of people living in extreme poverty had declined sharply in the past three decades. But it warned about 400 million children continue to live in abysmal conditions. Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the goal of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity can be achieved, but only if nations work together with new urgency. Those efforts, he said, must include education and health care for children. No clear victory yet in El Salvador election By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Both candidates in El Salvador's presidential election have claimed victory. However, election officials say the race was extremely tight and neither candidate can yet be declared the winner. The result is an unexpected twist to Sunday's vote. Polls leading up to the election indicated Salvador Sanchez Ceren, of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front held a 10- to 18-point lead over San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano of the right-wing National Republican Alliance. A victory by Ceren would make him the first former guerrilla commander to hold the presidency since a truce ended a devastating 13-year civil war in 1992. Meanwhile, in Colombia, voters showed their support Sunday for peace talks with guerrillas by giving President Juan Manuel Santos a majority in Congress, while voters also elected his conservative rival, ex-president Alvaro Uribe, to the Senate. The result consolidated President Santos as the front-runner in the presidential election on May 25, but thins the majority he will rely on if re-elected for legislative support to implement a peace deal with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia rebels if talks succeed. Uribe has been a fierce critic of President Santos' negotiations with the rebels. The former president's election to the Senate could complicate the talks with the rebels that opened in late 2012 in Havana, Cuba. Report says cocaine use dips but marijuana is up By
the RAND Drug Policy Research Center news staff
The use of cocaine dropped sharply across the United States from 2006 to 2010, while the amount of marijuana consumed increased significantly during the same period, according to a new report. Studying illegal drug use nationally from 2000 to 2010, researchers found the amount of marijuana consumed by Americans increased by more than 30 percent from 2006 to 2010, while cocaine consumption fell by about half. Meanwhile, heroin use was fairly stable throughout the decade. Methamphetamine consumption dramatically increased during the first half of the decade and then declined, but researchers did not have enough information to make a credible estimate of the drug's use from 2008 to 2010. The findings come from a report compiled for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy by researchers affiliated with the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. “Having credible estimates of the number of heavy drug users and how much they spend is critical for evaluating policies, making decisions about treatment funding and understanding the drug revenues going to criminal organizations,” said Beau Kilmer, the study's lead author and co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. “This work synthesizes information from many sources to present the best estimates to date for illicit drug consumption and spending in the United States.” Because the project only generated estimates through 2010, researchers say the report does not address the recent reported spike in heroin use or the consequences of marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington. The report also does not try to explain the causes behind changes in drug use or evaluate the effectiveness of drug control strategies. The study, published on the Web site of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, provides estimates of the amount of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine used each year from 2000 to 2010. The study includes estimates of retail spending on illicit drugs and the number of chronic users, who account for a majority of drug consumption. Researchers say that drug users in the United States spent on the order of $100 billion annually on cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine throughout the decade. While the amount remained stable from 2000 to 2010, the spending shifted. While much more was spent on cocaine than on marijuana in 2000, the opposite was true by 2010. “Our analysis shows that Americans likely spent more than one trillion dollars on cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine between 2000 and 2010,” Kilmer said. The surge in marijuana use appears to be related to an increase in the number of people who reported using the drug on a daily or near-daily basis. The estimates for marijuana are rooted in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which surveys nearly 70,000 individuals each year. Estimates for cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine are largely based on information from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program. The final estimates also incorporated information from other data sources However, since the federal government recently halted funding for the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program, researchers say it will be considerably harder to track the abuse of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine in the future. To improve future estimates, the report recommends investments in programs that collect detailed data from heavy users. It also recommends that federal agencies revise some of the questions on existing self-report surveys. Smokers respond differently to negative tobacco images By
the Institut universitaire en santé mentale
de Montréal news staff What if the use of a product influenced an individual's perception of it, making he or she even more susceptible to its positive aspects and altering the understanding of its drawbacks? This is precisely what happens with cigarettes in chronic smokers, according to a recent study by the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and Université de Montréal. The study showed that chronic smokers have altered emotional reactions when they are exposed to negative and positive images associated with tobacco. “We observed a bias depending on how smoking is portrayed “, explained Le-Anh Dinh-Williams, a student at the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and the study's first author. “For example, the brains of the smokers in our study were more aroused by images that showed smoking in a positive light than by images that encouraged them to stop. They were also more affected by aversive non-smoking related images than by images of the specific negative consequences of smoking.” In Canada and the United States, approximately 20 percent of adults smoke cigarettes despite knowing its adverse effects. “We wanted to understand why knowing about the negative health impacts of tobacco does not prevent smokers from lighting up,” explained Ms. Dinh-Williams. Approximately 70 to 95 percent of smokers who quit their bad habit will, despite their best efforts, start smoking again within one year. “Many factors make it difficult for people to quit. Part of the explanation could certainly be because cigarettes trick the brains of smokers,” stated Stéphane Potvin, a co-author of the study and assistant professor at the institute. “Specifically, we discovered that the brain regions associated with motivation are more active in smokers when they see pleasurable images associated with cigarettes and less active when smokers are confronted with the negative effects of smoking.” Using neuroimaging techniques, the study researchers compared the emotional reactions of 30 smokers as they looked at aversive smoking-related images (e.g., lung cancer) compared to other aversive images (e.g., an old man on his deathbed) as well as favorable smoking-related images.  Aston University photo
Escherichia
coli bacteriaThat five-second
food rule
might have some substance By
the Aston University news staff
Food picked up just a few seconds after being dropped is less likely to contain bacteria than if it is left for longer periods of time, according to the findings of research carried out at Aston University’s School of Life and Health Sciences. The findings suggest there may be some scientific basis to the five second rule, the urban myth about it being fine to eat food that has only had contact with the floor for five seconds or less. Although people have long followed the five-second rule, until now it was unclear whether it actually helped. The study, undertaken by final year biology students and led by Anthony Hilton, professor of microbiology at Aston University, monitored the transfer of the common bacteria Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus from a variety of indoor floor types (carpet, laminate and tiled surfaces) to toast, pasta, biscuit and a sticky sweet when contact was made from 3 to 30 seconds. The results showed that time is a significant factor in the transfer of bacteria from a floor surface to a piece of food; and that the type of flooring the food has been dropped on has an effect, with bacteria least likely to transfer from carpeted surfaces and most likely to transfer from laminate or tiled surfaces to moist foods making contact for more than five seconds. “Consuming food dropped on the floor still carries an infection risk as it very much depends on which bacteria are present on the floor at the time, said Hilton. "However the findings of this study will bring some light relief to those who have been employing the five-second rule for years, despite a general consensus that it is purely a myth. "We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food." The Aston team also carried out a survey of the number of people who employ the five-second rule. “Our study showed that a surprisingly large majority of people are happy to consume dropped food, with women the most likely to do so," Hilton added. But they are also more likely to follow the five second rule, which our research has shown to be much more than an old wives tale.” Activity influences feeling of quake ground motion By
the Seismological Society of America
Scientists rely on the public's reporting of ground shaking to characterize the intensity of ground motion produced by an earthquake. How accurate and reliable are those perceptions? A new study by Italian researchers suggests that a person's activity at the time of the quake influences their perception of shaking more than their location. Whether a person is at rest or walking plays a greater role in their perception of ground motion than whether they were asleep on the first or sixth floor of a building. People in motion had the worst perception. "People are like instruments, more or less sensitive," said Paola Sbarra, co-author and researcher at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Rome, Italy. "A great amount of data and proper statistical analysis allowed us to make a fine-tuning of different conditions for a better interpretation of earthquake effects," said Ms. Sbarra. The paper, co-authored by colleagues Patrizia Tosi and Valerio de Rubeis, is published in the March issue of the Seismological Research Letters. Ms. Sbarra and colleagues sought to analyze two variables: How an observer's situation and location influenced their perception in order to improve the characterization of low intensities felt near small earthquakes or far from larger ones. Contrary to their findings, the current European scale, which is the basis for evaluating how strongly an earthquake is felt, considers location the stronger indicator for defining intensity. The authors analyzed data submitted to "Hai-sentito-il-terremoto?," which is similar to the U.S. Geological Survey's "Did You Feel It?" Web site that analyzes information about earthquakes from people who have felt them. After an earthquake, individuals answer questions about what they felt during the quake, along with other questions regarding their location and activity. Intensity measures the strength of shaking produced by the earthquake at a certain location. Intensity is determined from effects on people, human structures, and the natural environment. The number of people who feel an earthquake is critical to determining intensity levels, and low intensity earthquakes generate fewer reports, making objective evaluation of shaking difficult. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 49 | |||||||||
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 Hidden Garden Art Gallery photo
Alonso Duran at workCelebrated
artist unveils
new works starting Saturday By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Local artist Alonso Duran unveils his “Forces of Nature” exhibit Saturday at the Hidden Garden Art Gallery in Libería. The celebrated artist, who also teaches art history and drawing for architecture, weaves elements of geometry and dimension through all of his works. "Artwork is, at the end of the day, like a musical composition of shapes and colors in a plane which should stimulate the viewer and trigger an impression or impact," he said. Duran was born in Grecía and attended Universidad de Costa Rica where he studied fine arts with a painting emphasis. He has studied alongside Costa Rican artists Blanca Ruiz Fontanarrosa, Domingo Ramos, Guillermo Porras and Grace Herrera Amighetti. He said much of his creative drive is fueled by his lifelong attraction to physics and math. “"Surprisingly, the duality of art and science has always been present in my life and work," he said. "My early works had a very strong connection with mathematics and geometry, without any conscious effort on my part, and gradually my work expanded to other branches of physics and natural sciences.” The artist has received numerous international and national awards and been chosen to participate in some highly selective shows. The Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C., houses some of his past works in its permanent collection. In “Forces of Nature,” Duran said he has mixed his deep knowledge of physics with an organic and nature-motivated style to pay respect to his home country. "My work remains abstract, but I am reconstructing the feelings of the different environments of the Costa Rican landscape through color, balance and texture,” he said. The exhibit opens on Saturday at 10 a.m. at Hidden Garden and Duran will be in attendance for meet-and-greet opportunities. |
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| From Page 7: Competition and innovation meeting topics By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Representatives of four consejos de competitividad are meeting today for the second day with experts in a conference that has the support of the Organization of American States. The consejos come from the Brunca region, the Caribbean, Guanacaste and the northern zone. These are creations of the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio in an effort to improve employment and promote economic development. Also attending the sessions are representatives of industry, public agencies and academic institutes. One goal of the sessions is to promote discussions among the various consejos. Each has their own agendas. For example, the consejo from Brunca, southwest Costa Rica, is emphasizing sustainability. The consejo from the Caribbean is trying to work in conjunction with the central government's development plans for the area. The ministry has been active in creating these promotional arms for innovation and competitivity, and it also has promoted small- and medium-size businesses with various programs and advantages, such as borrowing sources. |
