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San
José, Costa Rica, Friday, March 14, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 52
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Dollar takes a 24.73-point hit
on the Monex exchange By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The market for dollars was volatile Thursday, the Banco Central reported. The money market, the Monex, closed with the dollar being 24.73 colons lower than it was the previous day. The Banco Central said that it did not have to intervene in the marketplace to protect the colons. It did, however, purchase $12 million in dollars to satisfy various government needs. This is a daily event. There were $38.6 million in private transactions. The Monex figures reported by the Banco Central are lower than the rate of exchange posted by banks today. Banco Nacional will sell a dollar for 557 colons, according to the Web site. That figure had been 570 the day before. The lowest Monex figure reported by the Banco Central was 540.79 colons for a dollar. However, the central bank had posted earlier today an official exchange rate of 558.73 colons. The Monex activity seems to have reduced the price of a dollar about 13 colons. Some businessmen said they expect the dollar to continue its increase that started in early February, particularly as the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to reduce the amount of bonds it will purchase each month to bolster the U.S. economy. Thursday's activity may have been due to large firms selling dollars so they could meet their twice monthly payrolls today. At Banco Nacional today the rate to purchase colons is 542. Central Pacific hosting movie festival on the beach By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Manuel Antonio and Quepos are in the midst of the third Festival Cine Nacional. The free festival is on the beach in the open air and at a local park through Sunday. Sponsors are the Centro Costarricense de Producción Cinematográfica of the Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud and the Municipalidad de Aguirre. The productions include short videos, animation and other Costa Rica works. Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Marina Pez Vela in Quepos at 7 p.m. the full-length movie "Chirripó." directed by Gerardo Selva will be shown. The festival has this Web site: Press rights monitor in México reports a telephoned threat Special
to A.M. Costa Rica
The Inter American Press Association Thursday condemned threats made against Balbina Flores Martínez, correspondent in Mexico of the organization Reporters Without Borders and called on the authorities to urgently act to ensure her physical safety. Ms. Flores Martínez, who has been working with Reporters Without Borders for 13 years, reported the threats were made to her Wednesday. A release issued by the press freedom organization said that during a phone call to her Mexico City office a person identifying himself as “Captain Omar Treviño” said, “I am nearby in the State of Mexico, I am coming from Michoacán, and I have been hired to hurt you. I know who you are, where you work, I have been investigating you for the past 15 days.” The journalist, who shares offices with the staff of the magazine Zócalo and of the National Press Workers Union, reported the threat to several police and human rights agencies. Ms. Flores Martínez has spent years reporting in Mexico on the situation of violence and levels of impunity suffered by journalists in that country, the association said. Our reader's opinion
Salt in Costa Rica containsquantities of fluoride Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Re: Margaritas and World Salt Week Another reason to avoid salt is that here in Costa Rica, the salt is fluoridated and not the water. There is now plenty of evidence that fluoride is a nasty poison. In fact, it is normally the major ingredient of rat poison. It is recently been shown to reduce kids’ IQs by about seven points by the time they are 12. Supposedly it is added to the salt or water to prevent tooth decay, not as a systemic medication, but rather, as a topical application. Somehow the experts have figured out how the act of eating food with salt on it can adequately coat all the teeth with this poison, but not affect anything else, like for example the brain. As for the dosage when added to salt, this article has indicated people are eating an excessive amount of salt. One might extrapolate from that, then, that people are also consuming an excessive amount of fluoride. All the processed foods, all the restaurant foods, all the toothpastes . . . we are being bombarded here with fluoride. And as one dentist pointed out, the people putting the fluoride in the salt are not all that meticulous when it comes to measuring. Even some of the sea salt here has fluoride added. Another brand of sea salt doesn’t have fluoride, but it doesn’t have iodine either. There is at least one brand of sea salt, however, that not only doesn’t contain fluoride but does contain a rich amount of iodine. James
Marshall
San Marcos de Tarrazuú EDITOR'S NOTE; The Harvard study of fluoride and IQ in China referenced by the letter writer is HERE! Canadian oil sands came from far-away locations By
the University of Calgary news service
They're called the Alberta oil sands but most of the sand actually came from the Appalachian region on the eastern side of the North American continent, a new University of Calgary-led study shows. The oil sands also include sand from the Canadian Shield in northern and east-central Canada and from the Canadian Rockies in western Canada, the study says. This study is the first to determine the age of individual sediment grains in the oil sands and assess their origin. To determine the origin of the sand, the researchers used a mass spectrometer to date the age of tiny and extremely durable crystallized minerals called zircons that are present in the oilsands. Most of the oil sands' sediment contains zircons that range from 300 million to 1.2 billion years old – the same zircon signature found in Appalachian sources in eastern North America. No one knows for sure, but lead study author Christine Benyon and her co-authors propose three theories, all involving sediment transported by a continental-sized river system.
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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, Friday, March 14, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 52 | |
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 A.M. Costa Rica/Michael Krumholtz
Protesters gather for what
amounts to a group photo with the Monumento Nacional in the background |
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| 23 groups gather to express their views on the rights to
water |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Water rights activists marched in front of the Asamblea Legislativa Thursday. The crowd, made up mainly of fishermen and environmentalists, vocalized its demand that Costa Rican waters and coasts be a public priority. Behind the slogan, “Water is our right, not a business,” the demonstrators rallied to protest the expansion of privately funded hydroelectric plants and the increase of farm fishing in the Gulf of Nicoya. There were 23 committee groups of workers, students, and environmental organizations that occupied the street east of the legislature and Parque Nacional. |
Part of the
protesters included those who oppose a proposal to legalize one more
time the use of trawling nets to catch shrimp. The practice has been ruled unconstitutional because of the damage the nets do to coral and because turtles frequently are killed. Some legislators came out to stand with the demonstrators, including Frente Amplio's José María Villalta. A representative opened the gates of the legislative complex and allowed five of the protestors to enter to discuss their grievances behind closed doors. |
| Traffic police begin to hand out tickets for motorists in
yellow boxes |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Traffic police are cracking down hard on motorists who block the flow at intersections. Transport workers have been marking yellow lines at nine key intersections, and the Policía de Tránsito are calling these zones cajas amarillas or "yellow boxes." |
So far 45
motorists have been ticketed for being inside the yellow boxes and
blocking traffic from their right or left. The fines are 49,000 colons, about $90. Vehicles blocking the lane when a traffic signal changes are a main reason for jams in the metro area. A big violator are buses, which can block an entire street due to their size. |
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The strawberry
surprise engenders concerns about the future of food
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| My friend Steve is back in
town. He had to choose between spending March in Minnesota or
Costa Rica; and he brought a friend, John. John is an architect,
and he saw more buildings in downtown San José in a weekend than
I saw in my first month here. He agreed with me that San
José is under enjoyed by tourists who are still being advised to
“avoid downtown San José.” The city is filled with
museums, art galleries, some stunning buildings, charming and restful
parks and a maze of a market where you can buy a variety of things at a
reasonable price. There also is often something musical happening in
the parks. And finally, there are the people. Pedestrians are
everywhere. The walking boulevards are streaming with people, and I
have always found the atmosphere positive and welcoming. . We celebrated Steve’s return with the three of us going to the feria in Pavas this past Saturday. It has been a while for me, because neither the weather nor I was in the mood. Saturday was a perfect feria day. It was nice to be back to get Ana’s very fresh eggs. I am tired of eggs from the supermarket that stand upright in the water, which means they may be paying attention but they are not that fresh. Ana’s eggs lie on their side, the way they started out in the world. I was also able to get a bottle of honey at my honey stand. I have learned to avoid buying it from the people who walk around with unlabeled bottles of honey and won’t let you smell what's inside. Whatever it is, it is not honey. Driving to the feria I saw a young man selling beautiful red strawberries and rejoiced that they are in season, so I bought a large carton of big red strawberries at the feria. I could hardly wait to get them home to try. When I finally did wash the first one and take a bite. I was transported into a brave and frightening new world. It was sour! I have never eaten a perfect, big, red, and ripe looking strawberry that was sour! Strawberries are going the way of tomatoes: beautiful to look at, sturdy, and great for shipping. Eating them is another matter. The pleasure is gone. So we add sugar to fruits and salt to vegetables, hoping to discover the taste. One way to control people is to control what we eat. The United States has accepted genetically modified foods (and this includes fruits and vegetables), but other countries have not. One can only hope that Costa Rica will reconsider what is permissible to add to |
their once delicious, although maybe not perfect looking crops of fruits and vegetables. Still, the feria is a great way to start one’s day. You don’t have to buy anything. You can try to resist. You will get a lift of psychic nutrients just walking the rows of food stands and maybe stopping to have breakfast at one of the mini sodas. I am becoming preoccupied with food — the kind that grows, not the packaged kind. Everything seems to be getting larger. Unless you pay premium prices for the mini vegetables, you will find things like carrots and zucchini that, if they keep growing, will be the size of Jack’s beanstalk. Yet, bigger is not necessarily better. In her “Classic Italian Cookbook,” Marcella Hazan says that one should not buy zucchini longer than six inches, nor more than an inch and a half in diameter. She would be horrified to see what they have in some stalls. I recently read some disturbing news about the use of antibiotics mainly to make animals (and who knows, maybe vegetables) larger as well to kill bacteria. I am beginning to feel as if the ghost of Buckminster Fuller has taken up occupancy in me. Like him, I say over and over, “Small is beautiful.” And may I add, “And probably better for us.” However, I am something of a hypocrite. Steve, John and I retired to a Te con Te Bistro afterwards for breakfast. John ate a healthy Tico breakfast with rice and beans, an egg, and I don’t know what else because I was too busy enjoying my very large croissant and strawberry naturale drink. I wonder where they buy their strawberries. |
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| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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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, Friday, March 14, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 52 | |||||
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Food |
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| Overfishing has more impact than climate variations, study
says |
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By
the Investigación y Desarrollo news staff
Fisheries that rely on short life species, such as shrimp or sardine, have been more affected by climate variations because this phenomenon affects chlorophyll production, which is vital for phytoplankton, the main food for both species. That assessment comes from the research “Socioeconomic Impact of the global change over the fishing resources of the Mexican Pacific” headed by Ernesto A. Chávez Ortiz, from Mexico's National Polytechnic Institute. Work performed at the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine Sciences at the institute indicates that in the last five years there have been no spectacular changes attributable to climate variations. What has affected the fishing resources more is the high market demand. “Globally, a great part of the fishing resources is being exploited to its maximum capacity. Several have passed over its regeneration capacities and are overexploited” Chávez Ortiz points out. The specialist at the marine science center said that the research consisted in correlating weather and fisheries analysis. This confirmed what has been intuitively said for awhile: A lot of the variability in the fishing is due to climate change. “In the research we found a clear and objective way to show it: We took historical data from FAO regarding fisheries, available since 1950, compared it to the data of weather variability and found high correlations." FAO is the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization. Patterns of change were identified, he said. For example, while in the 70s the sardine production increases, in the 80s it decreases below average levels. Meanwhile shrimp fishing increased above average but decreased in the 90s. |
 Investigación y Desarrollo photo
A handful of choice shrimpThis way, climate changes were identified in the mid 70s and late 80s that affected the fishing of sardine and shrimp in the Mexican Pacific Ocean, possibly attributable to El Niño. In the particular case of the shrimp, the effects are related to an input of water from the continent. When there’s a good rainy season, there will be an increase in the crustacean production, which is reduced when it doesn’t rain, he noted. |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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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's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, March 14, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 52 | |||||
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 U.S. Navy photo/Operations Specialist 1st
Class Claudia Franco.
Royal Malaysian Navy corvette KD
Terengganu and a U.S. Navy MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter conduct a
coordinated air and sea search for a missing Malaysian Airlines jet in
the Gulf of Thailand. Search for
missing aircraft
expanded into Indian Ocean By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A U.S. official involved in the search for the missing Malaysian plane says the jet may have been flying four hours after it disappeared from radar screens. The official said the jet was sending out a pinging signal — a sign it was trying to communicate with a satellite. He said the plane may have flown another 4,000 kilometers (2,480 miles) after controllers reported it missing. The United States is expanding its search for the plane into the Indian Ocean, far west of its intended flight path. Aircraft and ships from 12 countries are looking for the Boeing 777, but so far have found nothing to clear up the mystery. Authorities have ruled nothing out, including a massive technical failure, terrorism or the possibility that the pilot wanted to commit suicide. The aircraft carried 239 people. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday there was new information -- though not necessarily conclusive -- that the Boeing 777 may have veered far off course from its intended flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and headed toward the Indian Ocean. Carney said the U.S. was consulting with other nations involved in the massive effort to find the jetliner to see what ships and aircraft could be deployed to the Indian Ocean to expand the search operations. Searchers looking for the missing Malaysian passenger jet over vast expanses of water in Asia have been stymied for six days. Theories abound on what might have happened to the jet Saturday, from a terrorist takeover of the plane, to a catastrophic malfunction of the aircraft, to pilot suicide. Malaysian Transportation Minister Hishamuddin Hussein rejected reports that Flight 370 continued flying for several hours after its last known contact and said that Chinese satellite images purporting to show debris from the aircraft in the waters south of Vietnam proved to be another fruitless lead. "We deployed our assets but found nothing," he said. Hishamuddin said Malaysia Airlines asked plane maker Boeing and engine manufacturer Rolls Royce about purported data showing the plane could have flown an extra 4,000 kilometers over four hours. "Since today's media report, MAS has asked Rolls Royce and Boeing specifically about the data. As far as Rolls Royce and Boeing are concerned, those reports are inaccurate." The report by the Wall Street Journal Thursday cited the belief of U.S. officials based on data that is automatically sent by the plane's engines to the ground. The Chinese satellite images emerged Wednesday, with state media saying they showed three fairly large objects near the plane's original flight path toward Beijing. But Hishamuddin said Malaysia later contacted the Chinese Embassy, which said the images were released by mistake and did not show any debris from the plane. He said the Boeing 777 plane was fit to fly, with its last inspection in February and its next one not due until June. He also praised the ongoing search effort, which involves more than 80 ships and aircraft from 12 countries looking in an area that covers 93,000 square kilometers on either side of Malaysia. "The overwhelming support and unprecedented effort on a multinational level, that is something that we should be very proud about, though we need to find the aircraft," he said. Experts say its not too hard for modern aircraft to vanish By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
With satellites crisscrossing the globe and GPS technology available at the touch of a button in everything from cars to cell phones, how did officials lose sight of an airplane with 239 passengers on board? Aviation safety consultant John McGraw says it’s easier than you think. “People are under the impression that every airplane, even when it’s flying across the ocean, is observed on some kind of radar scope, with a human being looking at that scope," McGraw said. "And it's just not the case. Radars don't reach that far.” But McGraw says there is a lot of technology inside the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that helps pinpoint its location. Systems in the jets automatically transmit altitude, weather conditions, position and speed of an aircraft to traffic control. There are also at least three ways the pilot can communicate with officials. If the plane is downed in the ocean, the flight data recorder, or “black box” sends out a sound that is detectable up to three kilometers away. Former FAA accident investigator Michael Daniel says there are also global regulations. “The airline has responsibility for what we call ‘flight following,’" said Daniel, managing director of aviation insight. "That’s an international standard, and they are required to know where the airline is at all times.” But in the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Daniel says the airline hasn’t provided a great deal of information. “The standards may not have been followed,” he said. Rescue crews continue a search to locate the jet and its black box to try to find out what went wrong. After an Air France flight went missing in 2009, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board called for continuously downloading segments of an aircraft’s flight data recorder information in case of emergencies. “In the past they haven’t been able to justify installing that kind of equipment, because it’s expensive, and because there hadn’t been that many accidents where it would have come into play," said McGraw, the aircraft consultant. "This will certainly provide some additional motivation and there may be calls to do that.” Militaries and navies from some 12 nations are working collaboratively in the search for the missing plane. The search, which one aviation expert described as similar to looking for a "needle in a haystack," is being conducted with the help of more than 40 international ships and at least as many aircraft. Operations are currently stretching across some 90,000 square kilometers of water, with international forces working in a grid pattern as not to overlap efforts. Sid McGuirk, a professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said the search for the missing airliner is very difficult, calling it one of the most bizarre sets of circumstances that he’s ever seen in his career. He said the debris field, if the aircraft did impact on water, would be significant. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared early Saturday on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Air traffic controllers from both Malaysia and Vietnam, near where the plane was last seen on radar, say they did not receive any messages from the cockpit alerting them that the plane may have been in trouble. Experts say it is too early to speculate as to the cause of the suspected crash without the cockpit recorder, but say possible scenarios could include catastrophic failure, sabotage or foul play, or some sort of rare occurrence such as pilot incapacitation. Blood test is developed to predict future Alzheimer's By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Scientists have developed a blood test that can predict, with great accuracy, whether someone will develop Alzheimer’s disease. The test could someday help researchers develop drugs for the degenerative brain disorder. There are no effective drugs to treat Alzheimer's. And the only way to positively diagnose someone with the disease is to use expensive, high tech brain imaging. A blood test would make diagnosis much easier. Researchers analyzed blood samples from 525 people, aged 70 and older. Some of the participants had no signs of cognitive impairment. Others had memory difficulties, but no official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Investigators measured the levels of more than 140 lipids or fats in the blood, identifying 10 that were altered in participants who went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease five years later. Neuropsychologist Mark Mapstone, of the University of Rochester in New York, participated in the research led by scientists at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Mapstone said the lipid levels, which were lower in people who developed the brain disorder, were highly predictive of Alzheimer's. “The biomarkers were able to detect at 90 percent accuracy those who would go on to develop the disease. But it is possible that some of these lipids are changed in other diseases. And we have not done that work and it needs to be done.” For example, diabetes is common among older people, and other research has linked the metabolic disorder to an increased risk of dementia. Mapstone said it will be a while before an Alzheimer’s screening test is available to the public. He said researchers want to look for a connection between the biomarkers and what happens in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. When the test does becomes available, Mapstone said people might want to take it to help them plan their financial future and investigate long-term care options . . . if its results point to Alzheimer's. “But without a treatment, the utility of this information is lower. When we have a treatment, then this particular sort of test will become very important because then we can use it to identify the people who get the treatment right away and hopefully we can do something about the disease,” he stated. Mapstone said researchers developed the test with an eye toward finding and testing new drugs for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Conservative gathering gives platform for GOP hopefuls By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The next U.S. presidential election is still more than two years away, but for the first time in decades there appears to be no clear frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016. So what’s happened? A free-for-all has developed among a younger generation of Republicans who see themselves as serious presidential contenders and who are now beating the bushes in hopes of building grassroots support. This phenomenon was on full display during the recent Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington when one Republican hopeful after another took to the stage an in effort to raise their profile for a possible presidential bid two years from now. For the second year in a row, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky emerged as a favorite of the conservative group, winning 31 percent support in a presidential test vote in a field that included numerous potential contenders for the 2012 Republican nomination. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was a distant second at 11 percent. Paul presents a bit of a different profile for a serious Republican presidential contender. His strong libertarian bent makes him a fierce critic of President Barack Obama on the NSA spying scandal, and he brought the conference crowd to its feet by pledging to re-emphasize constitutional principles. “We will challenge you in the courts. We will battle you at the ballot box. Mr. President, we will not let you shred our Constitution!” Paul has also kicked off a debate within the Republican Party on the use of U.S. military force abroad. After more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Paul favors a much more limited military role abroad, reflecting a bipartisan consensus in numerous recent public opinion polls that Americans would prefer to pull back a bit from potential military confrontations overseas. Some take issue with this approach including a likely presidential rival in 2016. Cruz argues that the U.S. still has a pivotal role to play in world events, though he prefers to strike a middle ground between Paul’s hesitancy to use military force and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the Senate’s leading internationalists who favors a more muscular U.S. foreign policy. Cruz was also a leading catalyst for last year’s government shutdown, which backfired for congressional Republicans. But Cruz enjoys intense support from some Tea Party elements and likes to rouse supporters with references to former president Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of Republicans who believe it is possible to elect a true conservative to the White House. Cruz told the conference, “People are hurting, tragically, and we need to turn this country around. We did it in 1980 with a grass roots movement that became the Reagan Revolution, and let me tell you, the same thing is happening all over today.” The conference also showed that the split between establishment Republicans and Tea Party activists is alive and well. The former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin has, become a staple at the conservative gatherings, and she took the opportunity to lash out at what she called Beltway Republicans who seem on a mission to trim the influence of the Tea Party within the Republican Party. Mrs. Palin noted the Republican success in the 2010 midterm elections was due in large part to Tea Party activists and she warned party leaders not to take them for granted during this year’s midterm campaign. “You know that 2010 election victory that swept you into power? You didn’t build that. The Tea Party did!” This split within the Republican Party will have an impact not only on this year’s elections, but on the 2016 nomination battle when the party goes about the lengthy process of choosing a presidential nominee through a series of state primary and caucus votes as well as numerous candidate debates. Carroll Doherty is director for political research at the Pew Research Center for the People and Press. He predicts a fair bit of Republican infighting for the next couple of years. “The Republican Party is going through a lot of turmoil and a bit of division. They are struggling to find their way a bit as parties out of power are often in this position. Democrats have been in this position in the past.” Some Republicans try to downplay the discord within their own party. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2012 and is considering a presidential run of his own in 2016. He told conference attendees not to believe all the hype about a divided Republican Party. “It’s Tea Party versus establishment, libertarians versus social conservatives. There is infighting, conflict, backbiting, discord. Look, I’m Irish. That’s my idea of a family reunion.” But analyst Carroll Doherty says the internal rift within the Republican Party sets the stage for what he says will be the most fascinating battle in decades for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016. “I really think it is going to be interesting. There is no heir to the throne, as it were, as there often is in Republican races, and it is a wide open race.” The presidential primary field could be quite large in 2016. In addition to Paul, Cruz and Ryan, Republicans thought to be considering a run include Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and possibly former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Part of the reason the field is likely to be large is because there is no clear frontrunner for the party nomination, as has been the case in years past. The old saying is, “Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love.” The Republican nomination tends to go to the person who finished second in the previous election cycle. Ronald Reagan lost out on a tough bid against President Gerald Ford in the 1976 campaign but won the nomination and the presidency in 1980. George W. Bush was the consensus pick of the Republican establishment leading up to the 2000 race. The Republican who finished second that year, McCain, became the favorite in the 2008 nomination fight, and he won. Mitt Romney was considered the favorite in 2012 and he eventually won the nomination. For 2012, though, there is no clear favorite and that has whetted the appetite of an ambitious younger generation of Republicans eager for the reins of power. By the way, the part about how Democrats “fall in love” is a reference to the fact that often little-known candidates emerge from relative obscurity to win the party nomination. Jimmy Carter was a relatively unknown former Georgia governor before he began his quest for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1976. Bill Clinton had a relatively low national profile when he embarked on his presidential quest in 1992. And then there is the case of Barack Obama, who was an obscure state senator from Illinois before John Kerry chose him to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. 2016 looks like a different year for Democrats as they consider their presidential options. At the moment there is former secretary of State Hillary Clinton way at the top of the list, and everyone else well behind. Polls show Mrs. Clinton is a strong favorite for the nomination among Democrats, and supporters are impatiently waiting for a go signal from the former senator and first lady, which they expect either late this year or early next, assuming she decides to run. CrossFit fitness concept gains popularity worldwide By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
What started in a California garage in the 1970s is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing fitness concepts worldwide. It's called CrossFit and is a method of whole-body functional fitness. It's used by the U.S. Marines, professional sports teams, fire departments, and police forces. The number of affiliated gyms has doubled every two years, and there are now CrossFit gyms from South America to Europe to Asia. CrossFit is known as one of the most grueling workouts in the fitness world. Each week, CrossFit members flock to more than 8,500 affiliated gyms worldwide. CrossFit incorporates interval training, weight lifting, gymnastics and other disciplines. Trainer Kate Garufi at District CrossFit in Washington said the goal is to perform functional, everyday movements at high intensity to achieve better muscular strength, cardio endurance, and flexibility. “So you can have powerlifting movements, you can have Olympic lifting movements, you can have body weight stuff," said Garufi. "You can have what we call single modal, running, rowing, swimming, anything that can be thrown into a workout with CrossFit,” she said. Workouts of the day, or WODS, are usually posted on a board and exercises performed in a group setting. Results are measured in time taken to complete rounds and number of repetitions. CrossFit enthusiast Hank Mason, a former soccer player, said, "If you were to complete a workout, say, two months ago and you got five minutes, and then you're re-tested again today, tomorrow or whenever, and you got four minutes, that is a pretty concrete indication that you are fitter.” Not all CrossFitters are elite athletes. Samantha Rapoza has been doing CrossFit for about six weeks with the goal to slim down and get stronger. “I think there are so many things that I didn’t know I could do, and I am already making progress that I didn’t expect to make as quickly as I made it. So I think I am going to have to revise my goals a little bit,” she said. There has also been criticism of CrossFit on some Internet fitness forums. The most common is the susceptibility to injury. Former figure model Andrea Ferry is an experienced CrossFit Athlete. She said injuries are avoided through good coaching. “It is up to the coach to make sure that it is scaled for that 67-year-old person like my dad, or someone like myself, to make sure they are moving properly with good technique, good form, that they can handle the weight and they are pacing themselves throughout the workout.” Some 30 percent of CrossFit gyms are now outside the United States, throughout North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. U.N. seeks OK from nations to end using child soldiers By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United Nations is launching a campaign to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers by 2016. It says eight governments on a Security Council list of child recruiters have agreed to sign an action plan to end these violations and to prevent them from occurring in the future. The United Nations has a list of 55 parties that recruit child soldiers. Among them are 46 non-state actors and eight governments, including those of Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen. The U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, is spearheading this campaign jointly with the U.N. Children’s Fund. She says the outlook is promising because nations are unanimous that using children to fight in war is unacceptable and must end. “No government in the world is telling us, 'I have the right to recruit children to send them to fight. It is not your business.' No one is telling us this," said Ms. Zerrougui. "Out of the eight listed, six already signed the action plan with the United Nations and the two remaining are in the process of finalizing their action plan.” Yemen and Sudan have yet to sign the agreement, but say they are committed to stop the use of child soldiers. They presently are in negotiations with the United Nations to make this happen. The U.N. Action Plan obliges governments to ban their military from drafting and using child soldiers. It promises to release children from service and to reintegrate them into civilian life. It also calls upon states to criminalize this practice and ensure that no child under 18 is drafted. In the presentation of her annual report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Ms. Zerrougui spoke about the disproportionate and intolerable impact that conflicts around the world have on children. She noted armed conflict has intensified in several countries, most notably in Syria, South Sudan, and Central African Republic. She added that in other countries, thousands of children also are recruited, killed, maimed, raped and kidnapped. The special representative spent four years serving in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She says she was deeply affected by the terrible stories boys and girls told her about how they had been abducted, recruited, indoctrinated, and used as sex slaves. "Not only girls - girls and boys. That is what happened to them in the bush," Ms. Zerrougui said. "They serve as cooks, they serve as porters, they serve as sex slaves and they are also human shields. That is the reality…You even cannot reintegrate them in their community when they return… because you cut the link with the community and the family. It is terrible what happens to these children. That is why we have to be united and to work and to make sure that these children will not - and never ever be recruited and those who are doing this have to pay a price." Globally, the number of children recruited as soldiers is estimated between 250,000 and 300,000. Drought in California seen causing higher food prices By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
California is a major farming state, and a serious drought is hurting its farmers and raising the likelihood of higher food prices throughout the United States. In the state's Central Valley water-starved farms are cutting production. Last year was the driest on record in California, and this year may be just as dry. Some reservoirs are empty and the Sierra mountain snow pack, which melts and fills rivers in the springtime, is at dangerously low levels, just one quarter of normal. Farmers warn of another Dust Bowl, referring to the drought and dust storms that ravaged American farmlands in the 1930s. California produces nearly half of the United States' fruits and vegetables, and much of it comes from the state's sprawling Central Valley. Dan Errotabere is a third generation farmer who grows tomatoes, walnuts, garlic and other crops in Fresno County. The federal agency that controls the water released from dams and the river system has cut his water supplies to zero. “The last couple of years, dry years, coupled with severe environmental restrictions, has now presented us with a zero allocation year," said Errotabere. More than 200,000 hectares of prime farmland may go unplanted in the Central Valley. Errotabere will let more than 20 percent of his farm lie fallow and lay off 10 of 25 workers. “Right now, we're completely depending on wells to finish these crops off, but I'm going to be fallowing 1,200 acres of our operation. There won't be anything growing on there,” he said. Even years with good rainfall have seen reduced water allocations, as federal and state officials supply water to the Sacramento River Delta, home of delta smelt and other endangered species. Errotabere and other farmers say the water system is mismanaged and that his high-efficiency drip irrigation system offers little help without supplies of water. Ryan Jacobsen of the Fresno County Farm Bureau said the shortage is forcing hard decisions. “The severity of this drought will be seen for possibly a decade to come because of the effects it's going to have on permanent crops and the likelihood that many of these permanent crops may have to come out of the ground.” Those permanent crops include citrus, walnuts and grapes. The effects have not hit the nation's consumers yet, but inevitably they will, as shortages lead to higher prices. Jon Murga of Fresco Community Markets in Los Angeles said politicians need to come up with an answer to the water crisis. “Because that, at this moment, seems to me to be the most important thing that we need to be addressing. Long term, short term, intermediate term, however you choose to look at it,” said Murga.  University of Iowa/ Marty Condon
Female fly on a tropical plantResearchers find
diversity
to be far more complex By
the University of Iowa news service
The tropics are lush regions teeming with a wide variety of exotic plants and animals. But for researchers Andrew Forbes and Marty Condon, there’s even more diversity than meets the eye. In a paper published today in an issue of the journal Science, Forbes and Ms. Condon report the discovery of extraordinary diversity and specialization in the tropics. The paper builds upon previous research conducted by Ms. Condon, who discovered surprising diversity while researching plant species in South America. Later, she, Forbes and their collaborators studied enemies of flies living on male and female flowers of the two closely related plants in a rainforest in Peru. “We looked at species of flies and wasps on two rainforest plants and found more species than theory predicts we should have found,” says Ms. Condon, lead researcher and corresponding author on the paper and professor of biology at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa. “The reason so many species co-exist appears to be that each fly has a very specialized ability to escape all but one parasitic wasp species, and each wasp has a very specialized ability to kill one specific fly species. Specialized interactions between species allow more species to live in the same place,” says Forbes, co-author and assistant professor of biology at the University of Iowa. In particular, the researchers used genetic testing to discover a total of 14 fly species inhabiting the two plants, and 18 species of wasps that killed those flies. “Most insects are specialists,” Forbes says. “We have an idea that being a specialist should reduce the amount of overlap that you have with other species. So if you specialize in eating some plants, there shouldn’t be lots of other similar insects eating the same plants. But we're finding lots and lots of fly species and lots and lots of parasitic wasp species in the same place. “It’s these interactions between plants, flies, and wasps that lead to far more diversity than we expect in this system,” Forbes says. “Each fly can only be killed by one wasp, so when a fly moves into a new type of flower home it escapes that wasp. Eventually, the wasp might find it again, or a new wasp may evolve the ability to kill the fly. "It's like a big game of hide and seek," he adds. The wasps have trouble telling the flies apart and can lay eggs in the wrong species, which kill the wasp offspring before they hatch, improving the flies’ ability to survive and reproduce. “We wondered if the wasps laid their eggs in only one species. Is that the whole story?” Ms. Condon says. “No, it’s not the whole story. It’s a man bites dog story, because the wasp will attack flies that somehow are lethal to the wasp’s offspring, which helped explain this pattern we were seeing.” “Insects are more diverse than we thought. They’re ridiculously, extraordinarily diverse,” Forbes says. “This study emphasizes how interactions between different species can help explain this diversity.” |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, March 14, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 52 | |||||||||
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 North Carolina State University/Jeff Buckel
Black sea bass with stomach
protruding from mouth. Fish show strong
resistance
to trauma of being caught By
the North Carolina State University news staff
In a new study, fisheries researchers from North Carolina State University found that black sea bass (Centropristis striata) can usually survive the physical trauma that results from being hauled up from deep water then released at the surface. The finding is part of a larger study of the fish’s mortality rate designed to help ensure that the black sea bass fishery is sustainable. Black sea bass are bottom-dwelling fish, and are often caught at depths of greater than 60 feet. When the fish are brought to the surface, the rapid change in pressure causes the fish’s swim bladder to expand. This forces other organs out of the way and can result in visible barotrauma, such as the fish’s stomach being forced partially out of its mouth. Conventional wisdom long held that this sort of visible barotrauma meant that a fish would die when thrown back into the water. But that’s not true, according to the study. The research team was attempting to develop accurate estimates of mortality rates for black sea bass, meaning that they wanted to know what percentage of the fish would die if they were caught and thrown back. Discard mortality rates are used to make assessments for fish species, because it helps fisheries officials understand how many fish that are caught and released can be expected to survive. Black sea bass are a valuable species for commercial fishing and are also popular with recreational anglers. Millions of black sea bass are caught and released by recreational anglers off the south Atlantic coast of the U.S. each year. The researchers came up with a novel method for determining the discard mortality rate for black sea bass. First, the researchers worked with a team of scuba divers to tag black sea bass in their natural habitat on the ocean floor. Then the researchers caught, tagged and released the same number of black sea bass in the same area on the same day. The fish tagged on the bottom served as a control group, since they were not subject to changes in atmospheric pressure or other injuries that could be incurred when caught and brought to the surface. Over the next year, tagged black sea bass were caught by the researchers, or by recreational anglers or commercial fishing operations who returned the tags to the researchers. Researchers could then compare the number of tags returned from the experimental group (those tagged on the surface) to those returned from the control group (those tagged on the bottom). This allowed them to determine discard mortality rates. The researchers had put the fish in the experimental group into one of four categories: those without visible injury; those with visible barotrauma; those with hook trauma (meaning the hook had caused significant internal injury); and floaters – those that couldn’t swim down into the water at all. To their surprise, the researchers found that approximately 90 percent of the fish in the experimental group with visible barotrauma but that weren’t floaters survived. This was about the same survival rate as for fish that exhibited no visible injury at all. Fish with hook trauma had a survival rate of 36 percent, while floaters had a 16 percent survival rate. |
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| From Page 7: French wines will be subject of tasting event By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A taste of France comes to Costa Rica through the medium of wine. sommelier Jeffry Zamora Gómez will host an intimate wine tasting for just 30 people. Tasters will be lead through the diverse offerings of wine from French terroir. The five included wines will be sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, Côte du Rhône, Côte Du Ventoux, and a Sichel Sautern desert wine. They will be paired with five food plates. Zamora, a graduate of an Argentinean sommelier school, will show attendants how to best pick out flavors from both white and red wines. He will also instruct them on how to best combine certain wines with certain dishes. The tasting is on March 27 at 6:15 p.m. and will be held at the Alianza Francesa in Barrio Amón. The cost is 10,000 colons for students and elderly, and 15,000 colons for the general public. |
