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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 60
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 Servicios Periodisticos photo
The new Nicoya libraryNicoya gets new
library
with a municipal boost By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Municipalidad de Nicoya will inaugurate a new 1,100-square meter public library. The 235 million-colon ($435,000) project includes 35 million of municipal money for equipment such as computers. The facility is part of the Sistema Nacional de Bibliotecas of the Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud. Marco Antonio Jiménez, the municipal mayor, said that inauguration will be Thursday at 2 p.m. Arrest made in robbery cases of drugged cargo haulers By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial agents detained a 40-year-old man Tuesday on suspicion that he used knockout drops to rob truckers. The man faces allegations of attempted murder in perhaps as many as 18 cases, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. Agents said that a robber contacted cargo haulers by telephone and promised them a job moving some merchandise. The agreed meeting place was a remote location. When the truckers arrived, the robber first offered them a drink that he had laced with some type of sleeping medicine, agents said. When the trucker passed out, the robber checked out their cargo and possessions for valuables and money, said agents. Some of the truckers ended up in the hospital where blood tests revealed what had happened, said agents. Agents said they followed the man and saw him meet a trucker in Paseo Colón and accompanied him to a remote location in Heredia where the trucker took a drink. Agents said the man took the trucker's cell telephone and 5,000 colons in cash. Agents said that there were seven cases in San José where the suspect had been identified. There are 11 more cases with the same method elsewhere in the country, so the victim will be asked to make an identification, agents said. Lawmakers and Limón group press for two Chinese loans By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some lawmakers really are pushing for approval of twin loans that will provide the funds for a Chinese company to begin widening Ruta 32 more than 100 kilometers from Limón to Río Frio. Meanwhile some residents of Limón engaged in a march to the capital to press the case for the $465 million job. Elibeth Venegas of Partido Liberación Nacional and other lawmakers held a press conference Tuesday to characterize the project as a necessity. She was accompanied by members of what is called the Fuerza Caribe, an organization from the Caribbean coast. The measure, which is approval for two loans, has been reported out of committee and now is in the hands of the full legislature. The principal opponent is Manrique Oviedo Guzmán, a legislator of the Partido Acción Ciudadana. He has said that the price the country was ready to pay for the highway job was $165 million too high. He based his comments on a Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo estimate provided by a private firm. The lawmaker has raised the issue repeatedly. The deal is unusual because there has been no engineering work. The job consists of making the two-lane highway four lanes and also building a number of overpasses. China Harbour Engineering Co. Group and China Road and Bridge Corp. already have been picked for the job, but the legislature must approve the loans. The Export–Import Bank of China would make two loans, one for $100 million and one for $296 million. Costa Rica is putting up $90 million, including an extra $20 million for expropriating property and relocating public services. The larger loan would be at 4 percent interest, and the smaller one at 2 percent. Other lawmakers object because the ruling contract is in Chinese and the project is covered by Chinese law even though the job is in Costa Rica. The loans are denominated in Chinese currency, which may face exchange rate problems in the future. Impact of downtown quake considered over three days By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The four downtown districts of the San Jose's central canton are 12.5 kilometers square and during the day contain the greater part of the professional population of the country. How will this area and occupants be affected by a major earthquake? That is the question experts have been considering for three days through today in a detailed study of the possibilities and impact of a quake. The session was set up by the Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias and the World Bank. Those at the session in the Hotel Wyndham San José Herradura are considering the impact of various models with different parameters and vulnerabilities of the area, the commission said. Food industry joins fight against too much sodium By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country's food industry is embarking on a project to educate consumers over the human body's requirements for sodium. The principal way sodium is ingested is with salt. The Cámara Costarricense de la Industria Alimentaria said its members would be active in trying to reduce the consumption of sodium. Sodium is linked to heart disease and strokes. The chamber said it would urge a balanced diet, nutritional education and fight against a sedentary lifestyle. It also said that the greater percentage of the ingestion of sodium comes from food prepared in the home.
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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, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 60 | |
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 A.M. Costa Rica/Michael Krumholtz
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Another casino for downtown That steel taking shape north of the Aurola Holiday Inn is the site of a new downtown casino. Hostel workers said they expected the casino to be built and open in two to three months. There are already seven casinos in the downtown area, but one, the Horseshoe, is closed for remodeling, according to workers there. |
| Sala IV says the salaries of public employees are an open
record |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The constitutional court ruled that the right of the public to know the salaries of public employees transcends the individual right of privacy. The case stemmed from a request by a man, identified in a brief Poder Judicial summary as Alejandro Fernández Sanabria, sought salary information from the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social. He wanted data from 1990 to 2013. The Caja is financially troubled and the topic of much political discussion. His request was denied. The Caja does not seem to be behaving arbitrarily but, instead, relying on the new Ley de Protección de la Persona frente al Tratamiento de sus Datos Personales. The Caja also seems to have said finding the data would take too much time. However, the Sala IV constitutional court said that when information |
is public a
citizen is not required to justify a request for information by saying
why it is needed. Instead, the state has the responsibility to make the
information accessible by means of the technological methods at its
disposal. The court did agree that some information about public employees is personal and should not be divulged. In the case of the Caja the court said the agency must respond to the citizen in a month and tell him how long it would take to put the information sought together and how much the effort will cost him. The privacy law is being observed by others in the Poder Judicial. Court workers have begun purging the names of individuals involved in cases from records that are released to the pubic. That has brought an outcry from private investigators and others who require the names to check credit and employment records. |
| Road agency promises two lanes for Interamericana by Thursday |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The nation's road agency said that the Interamericana highway will be restored to two lanes Thursday at a place where a slide took away much of the road base. The roadway collapsed Saturday at a place called El Vivero between Esparza and San Ramón. For a time traffic was rerouted. Then a single lane was opened. This is the major highway that has linked the Central Valley with the Pacific coast. The new San José-Caldera highway is taking some of the traffic. |
The Consejo
Nacional de Vialidad said that it was workmen putting in a draining
system under the road that caused the slide. It said that the
Laboratorio Nacional de Materiales y Modelos Estructurales at the
Universidad de Costa Rica was being asked to investigate to determine
why the collapse happened. The agency said that eight other concrete drains under the roadway have been installed along the same route. The agency said that there are 86 drains under the Interamericana Norte that are being replaced slowly. It added that the national road network is very vulnerable to these types of slides, washouts and collapses. |
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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 | ||||||
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 60 | |||||
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| Mild electrical current shown to make people smarter, less
prone to errors |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Teachers often urge their students to put on their thinking caps as a way of encouraging serious reflection. However, a real thinking cap could someday become a reality. New research shows it’s possible to control the ability to learn by applying mild electrical current to the brain. Writing in the Journal of Neuroscience, the Vanderbilt University researchers say the results of their studies could eventually provide help to those wanting to improve their learning abilities and could also be used to treat various conditions such as schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The researchers made their findings after being intrigued by past studies that show a spike in negative voltage within the medial-frontal cortex of the brain milliseconds after a person makes an error. This area of the brain is thought to be responsible for the oops reaction whenever an error is made. The previous research did not explain why this brain reaction occurs, so the Vanderbilt duo decided to find out by testing several theories. They also wanted to see if that activity in the medial-frontal cortex would influence the ability to learn since the brain allows humans to learn from our mistakes. “And that’s what we set out to test: What is the actual function of these brainwaves?” said researcher Robert Reinhart, a doctoral candidate. “We wanted to reach into your brain and causally control your inner critic.” The theories Reinhart and research partner Geoffrey Woodman, an assistant professor of psychology, wanted to test was to see if it was possible to control the brain’s electrophysiological – electrical properties of a living cell – response to mistakes, and if the effect could be purposely controlled either up or down depending on which direction an electrical current is applied to it. They also wanted to see how long the effect of the electrical application would last and whether the same methods could be used to control other tasks. To conduct their tests, Reinhart and Woodman took an elastic cap with two electrodes fastened to saline-soaked sponges; the sponges were applied to the cheek and crown of the head of the research subjects. The researchers then applied 20 minutes of very mild direct current stimulation across or through the skull to each of their subjects. During this process, the current traveled from one electrode, called the anodal electrode, which was attached to the crown of the head, through the skin, muscle, bones and brain, and out through the other electrode, or cathodal electrode, attached to the cheek in order to complete the circuit. “It’s one of the safest ways to non-invasively stimulate the brain,” Reinhart said. “The current is so gentle that subjects reported only a few seconds of tingling or itching at the beginning of each stimulation session.” The researchers conducted three of these transcranial stimulation sessions. Their subjects were randomly given either an anodal – current sent from the crown of the head to the cheek, cathodal – current sent from cheek electrode to crown – or a fake jolt that merely produced a tingling effect without actually affecting the brain. After undergoing 20 minutes of transcranial stimulation, the test subjects were given a learning task that involved determining, through trial and error, which buttons on a game controller matched specific colors displayed on a monitor. The researchers would occasionally complicate the tests by showing the subjects a signal that told them not to respond. The subjects had less than a second to respond to each signal correctly, which made it easier for them to make mistakes, providing a number of opportunities for the medial-frontal cortex to fire. |
 Vanderbilt University/John Russell
Robert Reinhart applies the
electrical stimulus to subject Laura McClenahan.The researchers measured the electrical brain activity of each subject as they made their way through the exercises. The measurements provided the researchers with a way to monitor how the brain changed at the very moment the subjects made an error and how the electrical stimulation influenced changes in brain activity. Shortly after the researchers sent the current from the crown of the subject’s head to their cheek – an anodal current – they noticed that the spike in negative voltage was almost twice as large on average as without stimulation. As a result of the anodal stimulation, the researchers found the subjects made fewer mistakes and that they actually learned from their errors faster than they did after a phony jolt was applied. When they sent the current in the opposite direction, from the cheek to the crown of the head – cathodal current – the Vanderbilt duo saw the opposite of the anodal result take place. They noticed that the spike in negative voltage was actually much smaller; the subjects wound up making many more errors and they took longer to learn each task. The researchers noted that while the positive or negative effects generated by each of the stimulation patterns weren’t detected by the test subjects themselves, the results of each test displayed very clearly on their monitoring devices. “This success rate is far better than that observed in studies of pharmaceuticals or other types of psychological therapy,” said Woodman. The researchers said that their tests also revealed that the sessions of electrical stimulation did transfer to other tasks and the effects lasted for about five hours. |
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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, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 60 | |||||
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| IRS prodded by Congress on overseas bank accounts By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United States is one of the few countries that demands that its citizens pay income taxes regardless of the country in which that money was earned. And, in recent years, Washington has become increasingly aggressive about hunting down undeclared American individual and corporate bank accounts held overseas. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin states “Experts estimate that Americans now have more than $1 trillion in assets offshore, and illegally evade between $40 and $70 billion in U.S. taxes each year through the use of offshore tax schemes. U.S. corporations,” he says “are estimated to illegally evade another $30 billion each year through offshore tax dodges.” Over the past five years, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has offered voluntary disclosure programs in which American individuals and corporations with undeclared overseas accounts can admit to their existence and pay penalties, while avoiding criminal prosecution. The IRS says that by mid-2012, this program raked in some $5 billion from those admitting to offshore banking. Americans’ hidden loot is held in various tax havens such as Caribbean islands and Switzerland, a country that established strong banking secrecy laws in 1934. But in the last decade, Switzerland has been pressured to open its ledgers to international scrutiny. U.S. efforts to pierce through Swiss secrecy moved forward recently with the guilty plea of a former Credit Suisse banking official. Andreas Bachmann admitted March 12 to federal charges that he and six other officials at that bank helped U.S. citizens evade taxes by hiding a reported $4 billion of their assets. The Swiss national admitted to violations including carrying cash for American customers so the account holders would not be in excess of legal limits. Also, Bachmann says he personally met with clients in restaurants and other locales to avoid the paper trails of account statements. Bachman is reportedly cooperating with federal authorities as six other Credit Suisse bankers still face their day in court. Watching and questioning the effort to get U.S. account information from Swiss banks is the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Headed by Levin, the subcommittee just issued a report titled “Offshore Tax Evasion: The Effort to Collect Unpaid Taxes on Billions in Hidden Offshore Accounts.” The 181-page report says Credit Suisse held more than 22,000 accounts for Americans collectively worth $10 to 12 billion. Credit Suisse is one of 14 Swiss banks that have been under U.S. Justice Department investigation since the 2008 crackdown on Swiss bank UBS. That led to a 2009 agreement in which UBS paid a $780 million dollar fine and revealed some 4,700 concealed U.S. accounts. The Senate subcommittee says Credit Suisse not only secretly held American cash, but also came up with an ingenious way to enable Americans to tap into their Swiss loot. “Another service offered by Credit Suisse,” the report states, “was to employ third party service providers to supply its U.S. customers with credit cards and travel cash cards that enabled them to secretly draw upon the cash in their Swiss accounts.” The report was critical of the Justice Department, stating that it only pried loose 258 American account names from the 22,000 at Credit Suisse. Levin accused the department of a lack of determination to pursue these cases. The Senate panel hearing may give new energy to Justice’s quest for account names, and resolution of Credit Suisse’s case. There are multiple reports that the bank may seek a deferred prosecution agreement with the federal government as did UBS, with a large fine – perhaps in the $800 million range - and account identities revealed. “Criminal cases are all about momentum,” former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Neiman, said. “These hearings are going to give some sort of momentum to the Justice Department.” All of this comes under the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. On July 1, non-U.S. banks and financial institutions will be required to report the presence of accounts held by Americans that, collectively at each institution, are over $50,000. For joint personal accounts, it’s $100,000. For legal entities such as corporations, the trigger point is $250,000. The law, known by its acronym “FATCA,” is both praised and criticized by watchdog groups. While saying the act is an improvement over the status-quo, observers point out that by keeping the total balance of all accounts held at each overseas bank below those thresholds, IRS reporting would not be triggered. Joshua Simmons, with the Washington-based transparency group Global Financial Integrity, points out another way around the law he says is sure to be exploited. “The biggest loophole by far,” he said, “is that foreign banks aren't required to look through offshore companies or other entities to determine whether an American actually controls an account." He added it's "something that should be a common-sense, standard practice regardless of FATCA. There's no excuse for banks not to know with whom they are doing business.” Indeed, U.S. corporate registration laws are lax regarding full disclosure of the identities of parties to the incorporation. Some American states, especially Delaware, rake in a considerable sum from corporate formations and have been reluctant to toughen regulations that may cut down that revenue. Transparency and accountability advocates say what is ultimately needed is global cross reporting of both individual and corporate accounts. The G20 group of nations has stated that the automatic exchange of bank account information for taxation purposes is desired as the new global standard. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently put forth a template legal structure for countries that want to emulate information sharing set forth in FATCA. Jeffrey Owens, a tax expert at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said catching tax evaders was a concern that many member countries share. If countries could agree to new global reporting standards for exchanging information, he said, then maybe there’s a way forward. Meanwhile, the IRS has extended its come clean program without setting an end date for it in hopes of getting more individuals and corporations to come forward. And, it continues to tell Americans that it is better to own up to their foreign bank accounts now than to continue to hide them and suffer criminal penalties when they eventually get caught. Obama and congressmen propose steps against NSA By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Both U.S. President Barack Obama and key committee leaders in Congress are proposing legislation that would end the National Security Agency's collection and storage of massive amounts of Americans' phone records. The proposed changes come in response to a wave of privacy concerns at home and abroad triggered by revelations last year from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Tuesday brought two major announcements on proposed changes to surveillance operations of the National Security Agency, or NSA. Speaking at a nuclear summit in The Hague, President Obama said that revelations about U.S. surveillance have made it necessary to win back the trust of governments, and more importantly, of ordinary citizens. "And so it's going to be necessary for us - the step we took that was announced today I think is an example of us slowly, systematically putting in more checks, balances, legal processes. The good news is that I'm very confident that it can be achieved," said Obama. Under the president’s proposal, which has not been formally released, the government would have to obtain permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain data from phone companies on calls connected to suspected terrorists. The phone companies would be required to provide the NSA with updated information if any new phone calls are made to or from that number. Phone companies would not be required to maintain the phone call records for any longer than they do now. In the U.S. House of Representatives, House Intelligence Committee leaders introduced similar legislation, crafted by the committee's Republican chairman and its ranking Democrat. That bill also bars the NSA from the bulk collection of phone records, but does not require the government to obtain a court order before it asks phone companies for the data. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: “We think that we have found a way to end the government’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, and still provide a mechanism to protect the United States," said Rogers. The ranking Democratic member on the committee, Dutch Ruppersberger, said he believes the House proposal is not that different from the White House proposal, and that agreement can be reached. “I believe we are very, very close. The White House understands that we need to do something to deal with the issue of holding bulk collection because of the perception of our constituents. That is number one," said Ruppersberger. The congressmen did not specify a timeline for possible action on the NSA reforms on the House floor, and the Senate would also have to act before legislation could be sent to the president for his signature. The House proposal is already drawing criticism from some members of Congress and civil rights activists who are calling for more stringent controls on government surveillance to protect citizens’ privacy. SAT test changes seen hurting foreign applicants By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The company that administers one of the two most widely-used U.S. college admissions tests recently announced its first major revisions to its test since 2005. The College Boards' changes to the SAT exam drops infrequently used vocabulary words and the mandatory essay, and add passages referencing U.S. historical documents. When Howard University students from Nigeria and Jamaica were applying to college, they were among the approximately 100,000 foreign students each year who took the SAT. Now, some have mixed emotions on whether the newly announced changes will help or hurt international students interested in U.S. schools. “First of all, they are dropping the vocabulary words, which is, I think, the biggest challenge for most international students,” said Howard University student Peace Umoru. But Shanique Campbell, also a Jamaican student at Howard, has concerns about adding questions about U.S. historical documents. "That I believe will be very scary for international students," said Campell. "We are already faced with knowing that we are taking an American-based exam, and so there are a lot of things that we are not prepared for in terms of what to expect on that exam — cultural references that we will not be able to identify with." Some 800 of the approximately 3,000 four-year colleges in the U.S. do not use the SAT or its rival test, the ACT, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. But, the group's Bob Schaeffer says those that do could put foreign students at a disadvantage. "Students from other countries, particularly those who did not grow up learning English, are at a double disadvantage," he said. "The test is in a foreign language and they did not get test prep. So, it is harder." The revisions begin in 2016 for the 1.5 million students who take the SAT each year. Overall, the revisions appear to be positive, says Eddie West of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. "I feel like the changes are moving the test in a more positive direction insofar as they link up with skills and abilities that students will need to succeed, not just in getting into a college or university, but succeeding once there," said West. But he agrees that references to U.S. historical documents could put foreign students at a disadvantage. "It is going to be relatively uncommon for an international student to be really conversant with the Declaration of Independence or Martin Luther King Jr.’s work, or anything else along those lines that might be cited in the test," he said. West says U.S. colleges need to engage with overseas high schools to learn more about their coursework and make better decisions about admissions criteria. More than 800,000 international students are in the United States, about 4 percent of the college population. High Court hears arguments on Obamacare and religion By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether the owners of private companies should be allowed to use deeply held religious beliefs against abortion to avoid a government mandate to provide health insurance for their workers that includes contraceptives at no extra cost. The country's highest court took up the issue Tuesday. It is a case where the owners of two companies -- a chain of hobby stores and a furniture maker -- claim the government's edict that the workers' insurance include some types of birth control would violate their religious views. In the U.S., the freedom to practice one's religion is guaranteed by the country's constitution. But the question in dispute is whether that guarantee extends to corporations, not just individuals. The dispute over the birth control provision is the latest in a series of contentious debates in the U.S. over national health care reforms. The overall law, President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement, has been upheld by the court, but many Republicans oppose it and numerous court suits have been filed contesting specific provisions. The court is not expected to rule on the birth control insurance provision until June. Search for aircraft on again as weather becomes better By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Aircraft from Australia, the United States, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea have resumed the search for wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in remote waters of the Indian Ocean. Gale-force winds that caused a delay Tuesday have died down, allowing 12 planes and two ships to scour the seas about 2,500 kilometers southwest of Perth in the hunt for potential debris. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which coordinates the search on Malaysia's behalf, said today's search will focus on 80,000 square kilometers. Meanwhile, China has demanded that Malaysia turn over the satellite data used to conclude that the jetliner had crashed, killing all 239 on board. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that an analysis of satellite data received after the flight left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8 indicated the plane had gone down in the Indian Ocean. But that did not satisfy China, home to 153 of the passengers. China's Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng told Malaysia's ambassador that China wanted to know exactly what led Razak to announce that the plane had been lost. Tuesday, angry relatives of the passengers on board the missing Malaysian jetliner protested in front of the Malaysian embassy in Beijing. Around 100 Chinese family members held signs and demanded to know the truth about the plane even as Malaysia Airlines began making initial $5,000 payments to relatives of those aboard. New 3-D technique lets scientists see fast motion By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A ground-breaking new scanning technique has allowed scientists to film the insides of a live, flying insect, capturing the first-ever high-speed 3D images of the flight muscles of flies. Researchers from Oxford University, Imperial College and the Paul Scherrer Institute used a particle accelerator to capture the images, which could one day lead to the development of micro medical devices. The scientists developed the technique in order to study the blowfly’s complicated joint system. "The insect is very fast and very small, with wings that beat 150 times a second," said Oxford University Professor Graham Taylor, a member of the research team. "Each one of those wing beats is controlled by some tiny muscles, some of which are as thin as a human hair. So this is really an enormous technical challenge to understand this, and a particularly challenging target for understanding biological systems.” Writing in PLOS Biology, Taylor says he and his colleagues detail the fly’s mechanics, particularly its steering muscles, that make up just 3 percent of its total flight muscles yet control the output of the much larger power muscles. “And so the flies overcome this problem by way of a very complex system which is all based inside the fly. The problem with looking inside something is that visible light doesn’t penetrate into it. And, so what we need to use is x-rays, just as you would use to look at a bone fracture.” But because the fly's wings beat so rapidly, the team turned to very fast imaging, which began, Taylor says, in a particle accelerator called a cyclotron. "And we put the flies into a powerful beam of x-rays and we spin them around very rapidly. As the flies are spinning around you are able to capture radiographs from different viewing angles and by putting those together, as it's beating its wings, you can reconstruct in three dimensions how the flight motor looks at all of the different stages of the wing beat.” Taylor says they saw in vivid detail, the fly's mechanics. “The power muscles, rather than driving the wings directly, what they do is actually vibrate up and down the body, and those vibrations are communicated through a complicated hinge into the wings themselves. What the muscles that control the wing beat are doing, and this is what we’ve been looking at, is to just tweak the output at the wing hinge to which they are attached directly, and thereby change the shape of the wing beat that results.” That hinge action, Taylor says, compares to what happens to the human calf muscles when someone walks down a steep hill. "That pull in your calf muscles is because they’re taking up the energy that you are gaining, the kinetic energy as you descend down the slope. The fly is doing something very similar, absorbing that energy and diverting it into a different muscle.” Taylor expects the technique devised for these observations will be used to track other small living organisms while also making its way into new micro-medical devices. Russian-U.S. crew blasts off for six months in space By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United States and Russia may be at odds over Ukraine, but they are still cooperating in space. A Russian Soyuz rocket took off from Kazakhstan Tuesday to fly two cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut to the International Space Station. Oleg Artemyev, Alexander Skvortsov, and Steve Swanson will spend the next six months aboard the station carrying out a series of scientific experiments. The current space station crew, a Russian, an American, and a Japanese astronaut, will return home in May. Travelers to the orbiting outpost rely on the Russian Soyuz to take them to and from Earth since the United States retired the space shuttle fleet in 2011. U.N. agency calls pollution world's worse health risk By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The World Health Organization reports air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. A new report finds seven million people died from exposure to air pollution in 2012, more than double the number previously estimated in 2008. The World Health Organization reports one in eight people around the world die from air pollution. It says new data show people exposed to indoor and outdoor air pollution die prematurely from cardiovascular diseases, such as strokes and heart disease, as well as chronic pulmonary diseases and cancer. The World Health Organization reports most deaths from air pollution occur in low-and middle-income countries in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific, where about half the world’s population cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves. Health officials say the use of coal and biomass fuels, such as wood, animal dung and crop waste is responsible for 4.2 million people dying prematurely in 2012. They link an additional 3.7 million deaths in urban and rural areas to outdoor air pollution. Carlos Dora, the agency's public health, environmental and social determinants of health coordinator, said clean air cannot be bought in a bottle. “To resolve this issue, it is quite important that countries, nations take action, which is more or less coordinated and the reason for that is the air shared-small particles travel thousands of kilometers, normally around the hemisphere traveling east. So pollution in one country will affect a number of other countries downwind," said Dora. Dora said air pollution used to be worse in developed than in developing countries. But he says developed countries, notably the United Kingdom, and United States have taken action, which has dramatically reduced air pollution during the past decade. “We know those interventions work on energy especially. On transportation, better engines, cleaner fuels, more efficient energy technologies, reduction in the need for the use of energy, insulation of houses, etc. Clean energy, solar, wind, energy that does not use combustion is better than those that do use combustion," he said. Dora said in most cases healthier air pollution strategies will be more economical in the long run because health care costs will go down. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 60 | |||||||||
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El Salvador's gang
truce shows signs of crumbling By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Two years ago, two of the most violent gangs in El Salvador, Mara Salvatrucha 13 and Barrio 18, signed a truce. But as fighting between the two criminal groups has been on the rise in recent months, so has the death toll. Fears are starting to grow of a renewed gang war in one of Latin America's most dangerous countries. Majucla is one of the poorest and also one of the most violent communities in El Salvador. Located just north of the capital, San Salvador, Majucla is controlled by the infamous gang known as Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13. Shootings are frequent in the dirt road neighborhood, and no one is safe. The owner of a local bus line, Rigoberto Hernández, said businesses have to pay to be spared. “It’s very dangerous because we have to work from 4 a.m, and if somebody doesn’t like you, they can kill you at that time. As we say here, you have to pay to survive,” said Hernández. During the mid-1990s, fighting between Mara Salvatrucha and the rival Barrio 18 gang often killed up to 16 people a day. Between 2003 and 2009, hardline governments filled El Salvador's prisons with gang members without any impact on violent crime. Then, in March 2012, a left-wing government secretly negotiated a peace deal between the two groups, and the city's murder rate was almost cut in half. The gangs created violence-free sanctuaries and rehabilitation centers, like bakeries, where former gang members could find jobs. However, police now say that since January, the murder rate has increased, reaching as many as nine homicides per day. Police inspector José Pérez-Reyes would not confirm that the government had a role in the truce, but said it appears the gangs are back at war. “We have nothing to do with the truce. Apparently it’s an agreement between the gangs. But given the rise in homicides, we think the truce is over,” said Pérez-Reyes. Residents in the capital said that even when the murder rate was down, racketeering and other crimes continued. Bus drivers still have to pay gangs a so-called protection tax, or renta. Adam Blackwell, security chief for the Organization of American States, said a temporary truce is not enough to permanently rid El Salvador and other Latin American countries of the scourge of gang crime. “What happened was a truce. A truce is when at a moment in time there is a cease-fire between fighters in a war. What follows is peace, and peace is always more complicated and always takes more time. That’s what we are trying to build,” said Blackwell. Analysts said gang members need an alternative to street life, and rehabilitation programs can be complex and costly. Hopes are high that the incoming government of leftist President-elect Salvador Sánchez Ceren will be able to curb gang violence and start building such programs. He takes office in June. |
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| From Page 7: Trade treaty with four European nations OK'd By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Asamblea Legislativa has approved on final and second reading a trade treaty between Costa Rica and Panamá and four European states. The European states are Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The agreement was reached last June, but legislative ratification was needed. The four countries make up a trading bloc, the European Free Trade Association. The four countries are those whose leaders were reluctant to join the European Economic Community in the 1960s. Costa Rican trade officials said they expect the exports to these European nations to continue to be mainly agricultural products. Trade with these countries has increased 250 percent in the last decade, officials said. Under the treaty, nearly 99 percent of Costa Rica products will not be subject to customs duties. About 93 percent of the European exports will enter Costa Rica duty-free, officials said. |
