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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 83
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Our readers' opinions
Costa Rica still is bestcountry for retirement Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Upon reading today’s A. M. Costa Rica article titled “Can Costa Rica make a turnaround for its expats?” I feel compelled to offer a more moderate and representative point of view. All things considered, Costa Rica is still the best destination for expatriate retirement in the world today even though Panamá may offer higher real estate commissions and more sales action and so garner higher ratings from some quarters. Consider the source. Surely it would be better for Costa Rica’s new regime to avoid taxing the expat population any more than natives. It would be better to not tax or control the people, in general, any more than can be reasonably justified. Times are getting tougher all around, internationally. Our government is feeling the squeeze. It’s not easy to walk this fence. The new regime needs to carefully apply good business planning and attract more foreign interests rather than lose more of them. Yet the contributions made by tourism and the more lasting, large retired population need to be valued and sustained. Too much pressure on these folks may result in seeing them return home, which is the usual pattern when a retiree gets fed up. Very few go to Panamá with good reason. Barriers to open bank accounts result from U.S. government restrictions on personal financial freedom. Uncle Sam swings a big club throughout the Americas. We are told this intervention is meant to control financial activity and cash flow associated with drug dealing and terrorism. Some factions consider this a general assault on everyone’s personal freedom supposedly excused as “security measures.” The many innocent are restricted in order to control the guilty few. These same same rules apply in Panamá and everywhere U.S. influence has sway. This lazy form of policing is bigger picture stuff. According to Charles Zeller of Ship to Costa Rica, "Panamá is no heaven to move to. Importing to Panama is not cheap. Just obtaining the tax exemption costs hundreds of dollars and the customs clearance process is expensive. Except for importing a car and household goods to Panama, the costs are similar to Costa Rica, including paying the duties in Costa Rica. " “With regard to the exemption on cars in Panama, they are not totally exempt either. The exemption is for up to $10,000. Anything above that pays taxes. Cheaper cars over 3 years old pay a fine of $1,500.00. If you import a new car, taxes are lower than Costa Rica. If you import an older car, it might be not so." The net result is Panamá digs into your pockets whether your car is newer and more expensive or older and cheaper." Costa Rica offers many more good places to live than Panamá. Panama City is expensive and too hectic for most retirees. Besides, the climate is extremely hot and humid. Your air conditioning bills will be high. Coronado is like a retirement community two hours away from Panama City. It’s just living with other Americans. As Mr. Zeller states, "Some people I moved to that location ended moving away because they hated it." Boquete is far away from Panama City and downright boring. The only nearby town is David, and there is not much to do there. Bocas is the armpit of the world. I have moved many people there and most of them moved out again. Very expensive and isolated. Hot and foul weather most of the time. People have little education and live in the middle of the drug corridor." Panama's crime rate is higher than Costa Rica's. For example, Panama’s homicide rate is 17.2 per 100,000 while Costa Rica's is half of that -- 8 per 100,000, according to a recent United Nations report. No matter what happens in the world, Costa Rica will become cheaper because the colón will take a dive. If a government has a big deficit, like Costa Rica has, there is no way it can keep their currency from devaluing. This is good for expats that receive foreign currency (dollars or euros.) Imported goods will remain expensive but local products will be cheaper when you receive dollars and pay in colons. You can't find better weather or friendlier Ticos and expats than in Costa Rica. We do not have racial tensions like those in any other country in Latin America. Even the more developed countries are not exempt — Argentina and Chile. All of the countries where the Spanish subjugated large indigenous populations are still plagued by social injustice and cultural rifts. Examples of this are México with its drug war; Colombia with its decades-long guerrilla movement; Venezuela with its failed socialist experiment; and Guatemala, el Salvador and Honduras, which are the most violent countries in the world according to statistics. If not Costa Rica, and considering Panamá is so blah, where do you retire abroad and feel safe? We have a large, educated middle class. Many of them speak English. There is nothing worse than dealing with the ignorance that you encounter in some other Latin American countries. Costa Rica is still the best place to retire if you do not have to make a living here. If you need supplemental income, an Internet based business in the U.S. will help. Christopher
Howard
Heredia Fighting corruption seen as way to fix economy Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I have been told that the new president has stated that he would spend the first two years of his term in office fighting corruption and the balance of his term improving the economy. This president has the opportunity to set Costa Rica on a course that would improve the quality of life for all of those who live in this wonderful nation. The corruption that now exists has been growing and becoming more entrenched for a much longer time than, the tenure of the last administration. It appears that the direction the economy is taking and the quality services provided by the government (roads, schools, medical and, others.) is affecting not only the people who call Costa Rica home but, also, those who are involved in the corruption that is undermining every day life in Costa Rica. Granted those who are involved in corruption may have the resources to leave the country and live comfortably elsewhere, but by far the vast majority of the people who call Costa Rica home are stuck. It has been pointed out to me that if the new president were to to spend his entire first term in office fighting and, defeating corruption and, passing legislation preventing any future corruption. Then, before the end of his first term the economic situation would be well on its way to righting itself. I would be remiss by not mentioning the passing of Jo Stuart. Although I did not always agree with her articles, She brought civility to any subject on which she reported. She will be missed more and more as time goes on. Gordon
L Balter
Atenas Worker's holiday Thursday will bring out union backers By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Thursday is International Labor Day, which is celebrated here in Costa Rica. The day is a legal holiday, and among other facilities, the embassies will be closed. For some, the holiday represents a chance for another four-day holiday. Friday is nominally a workday, but plenty of workers apply vacation time to achieve a long weekend. For those who stay in the metro area, the big attraction is the worker's parade. Everyone with a complaint is invited to participate. The Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos y Privados is calling for a big turnout from members of its associated unions. The march begins in the vicinity of Calle 20 and ends at the legislature. The participants are not rowdy, and the parade is a great tourism attraction. The association is calling for a new salary scale and a change in the tax structure so that those who have more, pay more. The association also wants a declaration of emergency to fight tax evasion, it said. Also sought is an end to wait lists at the nation's health provider, the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social. The association also wants to keep utilities, such as water, electricity and sewers in public ownership. There is a movement for private power generation. A good bet is that dock workers from Limón will be in town to protest the proposed construction of the APM Terminals container handling facility. This is a concession, and the company's facility will be faster and much more efficient than the public docks in Limón and Moín. The workers see this as a threat. Proponents and opponents of widening Ruta 32 from Río Frio to Limón also are expected to show up. Many in Limón want the highway project to begin. Others oppose accepted a $435 million deal with China to do it.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 83 | |
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| Lawmakers reject plan to continue shrimp trawling in Pacific |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The current legislature has rejected a measure that would circumvent a Sala IV decision to forbid commercial shrimp fishing. Two lawmakers representing the Puntarenas area expressed their regret over the decision and said that 300 families that depend directly or indirectly on shrimp fishing would be affected. They called for an equilibrium between environmental management and fishing. The Sala IV accepted the argument that shrimp trawlers do serious |
damage to coral
and also other ocean inhabitants, such as turtles. In response, the measure, No. 18.968 quickly passed through a committee and was sent to the floor for action. Lawmakers Agnes Gómez and Rodolfo Sotomayor of Puntarenas blamed legislators from Partido Acción Ciudadana and Frente Amplio for killing the bill. The Sala IV ruling does not cut off shrimp fishing. But it instructed government officials not to renew the licenses when they expire of the operators who now have them. |
| Coast guard gets two facilities on the northern Pacific coast |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Government officials inaugurate two stations for the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas Monday. One is in Flamingo and the other is in Murciélago in the far northwest part of the country. The modern station in Flamingo represent a $3 million donation by the U.S. Southern Command in an effort to reduce drug shipments by sea. The station has the capacity of holding 60 officers per shift, said the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública. Construction began a year ago. The station has a floating dock and ramps for taking boats from the water. The second station is in Cuajiniquil de La Cruz. The project, a restoration, cost 17 million colons, about $34,000. The facility can house 10 officers per shift. The money came from the ministry budget. |
 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública photo
This is the new facilty in
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| Costa Rica joins with other nations in regional tourism
campaign |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Costa Rica is embarking in a regional marketing campaign to spike tourism numbers within Central America. Leaders from the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo and the Cámara Nacional de Turismo, unveiled the three-week series of ads and discount packages, entitled Descubre Centroamérica. Danito Correa, the region's commercial director at Avianca Airlines, was also on hand to discuss the $200,000 campaign that started Monday and will continue until May 15. Central American governments joined Avianca to pay for the project. The airline company is sponsoring the travel deals and has $250 flights with more than 20,000 available seats. Correa said the airline is interested in offering prospective passengers with the chance to see Central America's diverse set of sights and experiences. He added that the company is excited to help boost the region's tourism, which grew by more than 4 percent last year. “We firmly believe this is an important action that will stimulate tourism and contribute to the development of one of the most important sectors of this region's economy,” he said. Isabel Vargas, president of the Camara Nacional de Turismo, said |
the chamber has
worked with both private and public sectors to ensure
the success of Descubre Centroamérica. She said the
country strives to
be a destination that leads the way for the region's tourism market,
while mutually benefitting the other countries. “Central America has a wide range of natural and cultural wonders,” Ms. Vargas said. “Each country offers a unique ingredient that makes it attractive for tourism, so it is valuable to encourage more Central Americans to visit our country.” She said the country is interested in opening doors to South American markets as well to bring in a consistent stream of travelers from places like Argentina and Brazil. The tourism institute's marketing director, Viviana Rudin, said this activity coordinated between neighboring countries represents an important step for Costa Rica to reinforce its position as one of Central America's most notable and reliable tourist attractions. After the press conference Ms. Rudin said the ads would be published through both web and radio media outlets. Each country's tourism ministry worked with Avianca to create the ad series, she said. This is the third straight year for the campaign series that also includes Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panamá. Travel bookings made during the period are valid from May 1 until June 20. |
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| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 83 | |||||
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| Moral dilemma in foreign language prompts different
reaction, study says |
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By
the University of Chicago news staff
Would you sacrifice one person to save five? Such moral choices could depend on whether you are using a foreign language or your native tongue. A new study from psychologists at the University of Chicago and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona finds that people using a foreign language take a relatively utilitarian approach to moral dilemmas, making decisions based on assessments of what’s best for the common good. That pattern holds even when the utilitarian choice would produce an emotionally difficult outcome, such as sacrificing one life so others could live. “This discovery has important consequences for our globalized world, as many individuals make moral judgments in both native and foreign languages,” says Boaz Keysar, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. “The real world implications could include an immigrant serving as a jury member in a trial, who may approach decision-making differently than a native-English speaker.” Leading author Albert Costa, also a psychologist in Barcelona, adds that “deliberations at places like the United Nations, the European Union, large international corporations or investment firms can be better explained or made more predictable by this discovery.” The researchers propose that the foreign language elicits a reduced emotional response. That provides a psychological distance from emotional concerns when making moral decisions. Previous studies from both research groups independently found a similar effect for making economic decisions. In the new study, two experiments using the well-known trolley dilemma tested the hypothesis that when faced with moral choices in a foreign language, people are more likely to respond with a utilitarian approach that is less emotional. The first experiment presented participants with the footbridge scenario of the trolley dilemma. Study participants are asked to imagine they are standing on a footbridge overlooking a train track when they see that an on-coming train is about to kill five people. The only way to stop it is to push a heavy man off the footbridge in front of the train. That action will kill the man, but save the five people. In other words, study participants were faced with the dilemma of choosing between actively sacrificing one person, which violates the moral prohibition against killing, or by inaction allowing five people to die. The researchers collected data from people in the U.S., Spain, Korea, |
France and Israel.
Across all populations, more participants selected the utilitarian
choice, to save five by killing one, when the dilemmas
were presented in the foreign language than when they did the problem
in their native tongue. Even with randomizing the participants’ language groups, “those using a foreign language were twice as likely to respond with the utilitarian approach that is more in the service of the common good of saving more people,” said lead author Costa. He is currently a visiting professor at Chicago. The second experiment included a version of the dilemma that is less emotional. In this dilemma, the trolley is headed towards the five men, but study subject can switch it to another track where it would kill only one man. People tend to be more willing to sacrifice the one man by pulling a switch than by pushing him off the footbridge because the action is less emotionally intense, the researchers note. The language of presentation did not affect participants’ decisions in this dilemma; with either language, the vast majority of people prefer the utilitarian option in this less emotional scenario. The team evaluated data from 725 participants, including 397 native speakers of Spanish with English as a foreign language, and 328 native speakers of English with Spanish as a foreign language. Each participant received the two dilemmas either in their native language or a foreign one. When presented with the less emotional scenario, more than 80 percent of participants preferred to divert the train and that percentage remained high in their native and foreign language. On the other hand, when presented with the more emotional scenario, people are once again significantly more likely to sacrifice one to save five when making the choice in a foreign language. Keysar says decisions appear to be made differently when processed in a foreign language. “People are less afraid of losses, more willing to take risks and much less emotionally-connected when thinking in a foreign language.” Co-author Sayuri Hayakawa, a doctoral student in psychology, says the way individuals learn the language is key. “You learn your native language as a child and it is part of your family and your culture,” she said. “You probably learn foreign languages in less emotional settings like a classroom and it takes extra effort. The emotional content of the language is often lost in translation.” “What this study tells us is that moral judgments can be affected depending on whether the language in which it is presented is a native or foreign one,” Costa said. “Awareness of this impact of languages on moral dilemmas is fundamental to making more informed choices.” |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 83 | |||||
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| Researchers worry the flu in Mideast may have mutated By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has killed about a third of the people known to have caught it. There is no treatment and no vaccine. That’s the bad news. The relatively good news is that it does not spread all that well. Most cases so far have been people with other health problems, such as cancer, diabetes or kidney disease, or health care workers who come in close contact with sick patients. The virus first appeared in September 2012. It’s a member of the coronavirus family, which includes germs that cause the common cold, as well as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. That disease popped up in southern China in 2003, infected about 8,000 people in 29 countries and killed about 800 before it was contained. The most recent data from the World Health Organization reports 261 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome infections, including 93 deaths. Other case tallies are higher and put the death toll over 100. A spike in cases in Saudi Arabia beginning last week has raised worries among health experts that the virus has mutated into a more spreadable form. That would be a danger sign. But German researchers have examined DNA from some of the new Saudi cases and have not found any significant change in the virus. That’s good news, but researchers say they need more data to be sure. And they still do not know why the case count spiked. “Some of this could be seasonality,” said epidemiologist David Swerdlow, who heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to MERS. “Some of it could be better surveillance. Some of it could be that there’s a large outbreak ongoing in some health care facilities, perhaps.” It’s not yet clear where the virus came from originally, but camels are the lead suspect. Unfortunately, there is a lot about the virus that scientists do not know. What they do know are lessons that SARS drove home, said Amesh Adalja with the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “The world is a small place, that borders don’t mean anything,” he said. “And that the total health security of the globe is really tied up in identifying these threats as quickly as possible and then trying to stop them in their tracks.” He said that’s why health officials around the world are keeping a close eye on Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.  NASA photo
William Shatner receives a
plaqueNASA honors
Capt. Kirk
with medal for his generosity By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
For years actor William Shatner played the swashbuckling space hero, Capt. James Tiberius Kirk of the mega popular Star Trek franchise, and now he can boast an award from the U.S. space agency, NASA. Shatner was awarded the Distinguished Public Service medal, the highest award bestowed by the agency to non-government personnel Saturday during his annual charity event in Los Angeles. According to the citation, the award is presented for “outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” “Words cannot express my thoughts on being recognized by @NASA,” wrote Shatner on his Twitter feed. Shatner has a long history with NASA. The first space shuttle, Enterprise, was named to honor the popular television show and movie series, according to NASA. Shatner also voiced a NASA documentary marking 30 years of space shuttle missions, and during the final flight of shuttle Discovery, the actor recreated the famous introduction of the television series to wake up the crew. In 2012, Shatner hosted a video about the Curiosity rover’s mission to Mars. “William Shatner has been so generous with his time and energy in encouraging students to study science and math, and for inspiring generations of explorers, including many of the astronauts and engineers who are a part of NASA today, ” said David Weaver, NASA’s associate administrator for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington in a statement. “He's most deserving of this prestigious award.” Shatner’s Capt. Kirk character made the actor a household name. The television series ran only three years, from 1966 to 1969. Shatner reprised the character for seven Star Trek movies from 1979 to 1994. Past recipients of the award include astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory director and Voyager project scientist Edward Stone, theoretical physicist and astronomer Lyman Spitzer, and science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. Radar being used to seek body of Miguel de Cervantes By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The search is on for the remains of arguably the most important figure in Spanish literature, Miguel de Cervantes. Researchers in Spain are planning to use ground penetrating radar to search the floor of a Madrid convent for the bones of the author of what is considered the world’s first novel, "The Adventures of the Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha." Records show Cervantes died in poverty at 69 on April 22, 1616. His remains were reportedly entombed in the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid's historic Barrio de las Letras, or literary quarter. The exact location of the remains within the convent is unknown. The convent does have a plaque honoring the famous author. Researchers say they will focus on the oldest part of the convent first, but that finding, exhuming and identifying the remains could take months. "The radar cannot tell you whether it is the body of the writer, but it can indicate the place of burial," Luis Avial told reporters on Friday. Avial, who’s leading the team added that the while the radar can find the bones, the process of exhuming them will be delicate. Experts say that while there are no known living descendants of Cervantes, they will be able to confirm the remains based on some physical traits Cervantes was believed to have. For one, he was reported to only have six teeth at the time of his death. More noticeable, perhaps, would be wounds Cervantes received while aboard the ship "La Marquesa" at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, during which he was reportedly hit with three musket shots, two in the chest and one in the arm which rendered the limb useless. The cost of the endeavor is expected to be $138,000. Drug firm cites successes in anti-dengue clinical trials By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The French drug manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur says its vaccine against dengue fever protected more than half of all children in a late-stage clinical trial. Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne illness that infects an estimated 400 million people each year. The vaccine was tested in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam on more than 10,000 children, protecting 56 percent of them. Another large trial is underway in Latin America. Those results are expected later this year. Experts say a 50 percent reduction in dengue cases is significant. Olivier Charmeil, chief executive of Sanofi Pasteur, is quoted as saying, "Our goal is to make dengue the next vaccine-preventable disease." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one-third of the world's population living in tropical and subtropical regions is at risk for illness and death caused by dengue fever, sometimes called breakbone fever. Symptoms of infection, include a sudden high fever, severe headache, eye pain, joint pain and pain in muscles and bones. Some people also develop a rash, gum and nose bleeding as well as easy bruising. Currently, there are no vaccines to prevent the viral infection, which is spread by mosquitoes. When the infection is recognized early, the only treatment for dengue fever is prompt, supportive care, which can substantially reduce the risk of complications and death. Otherwise, people are told to avoid mosquitoes. The disease was first recognized as a worldwide problem in the 1950s, and the hunt for a successful vaccine has been on ever since then. Among other agencies, Sanofi worked with the U.S. Army on its vaccine. Dengue fever is endemic to Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Microsoft issues advisory over vulnerable Explorer By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. software giant Microsoft issued an advisory Saturday about a newly-discovered security flaw in its popular Internet Explorer browser that exposes many computers to hackers’ attacks. According to Microsoft, most vulnerable are computers using Internet Explorer versions 9 through 11. Experts warn that hackers can gain access to their computers and install malicious software if users let themselves be tricked into viewing a certain website or opening an e-mail attachment. If a user has administrative rights, a hacker could gain control of the its whole system, which means that even U.S. federal government computers could be attacked. Experts from U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team advise using different Internet browsers, such as Firefox or Chrome, until Microsoft issues a fix for the problem. Environmentalists honored for activism and courage By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Grassroots environmental activists from six regions of the world were awarded with the 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco Monday. Each year the $175,000 award recognizes individuals who have shown courage and initiative against the odds to take action to protect the world. This year's Goldman Prize winner in South Africa is Desmond D’Sa, who grew up in Durban and worked in a nearby chemical factory. His poor working class neighborhood is surrounded by gas and oil refineries, paper mills and agrochemical plants. Half of its 300,000 residents have asthma and also suffer from high rates of cancer. A refinery explosion sparked his activism and he began to organize against the expansion of a toxic waste dump near his neighborhood. “We started to develop a community and create awareness," D'Sa said. "We have health workshops. We take bucket samples to ensure they know what’s causing all the illnesses. So we have developed the knowledge base. We have agitated. We have lobbied. We were able for the first time in the history of this country to get the industry bosses to be held accountable for their actions.” The landfill was forced to close and, despite threats to his life and property, the Goldman award winner is now fighting the expansion of Durban’s port, which would displace thousands of people without compensation, while also increasing pollution. “We’ve shown that as a united force, you can stop environmental racism," he said. "And we’ve shown communities that there needs to be a new way of doing business.” Indonesian biologist Rudi Putra is the Goldman laureate representing the world’s island nations, where the majority of the world’s palm oil is grown. The oil is in everything from cookies, chocolate and baby formula to cosmetics and soap products. Palm oil plantations are replacing the forests in Sumatra, one of the most bio-diverse regions of the world. So Putra has turned his own chain saw on illegal operations, cutting down the trees on nearly 500 hectares. Putra has succeeded in getting village chiefs, local officials and the police to join him on his crusade. But, he says, there is much more to do. “Recently we started an international petition against damage to the ecosystem, and we got over 1.4 million signatures worldwide, which were submitted to the Indonesian government to cancel their plans to develop the rain forest here," Putra said. "We are determined to win this battle, too.” Europe is represented in the Goldman Awards by zoologist Suren Gazaryan from Russia. Gazaryan made headlines with his challenge to former president Dmitry Medvedev, who had wanted to build a luxury home in a nature reserve in forested land near the Black Sea. President Vladimir Putin had stripped the area of its protected status to allow the project to go ahead. Gazaryan organized a blockade to halt it. “We started a social media campaign against the project that recruited 10,000 people," Gazaryan said. "This showed the public that the very people responsible for creating these laws were the first to violate them. Looking forward my main goal is to continue to try to change people’s consciousness, so that they better understand that nature isn’t something we can just sell off and get rich on. We have to preserve these places for future generations.” Gazaryan won that battle and returned again to the Black Sea to fight construction of a summer house for Putin, in a protected old-growth forest. Here, he was accused of threatening security guards. Rather than face prison time, Gazaryan fled to Estonia where he continues his environmental work. Other Goldman prize winners include Ramesh Agrawal from India who, from his small Internet café, began a successful campaign to halt a huge coal mining project in an area already disturbed by pollution; Ruth Buendia from Peru, who stood up to dam construction that would have uprooted indigenous people, and American attorney Helen Slottje, who used the law to defend many towns targeted by gas drilling operations. Now in its 25th year, the Goldman Environmental Prize has been awarded to 163 activists from 82 countries. Dwarf star is very chilly but still close neighbor By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The coldest-ever brown dwarf star has been found about seven light-years away from Earth and could help scientist learn more about the atmospheres of planets. Brown dwarfs are objects that are too big to be planets, but too small to be considered stars. They begin their lives like stars, but since their mass is so low, they are unable to produce the energy needed to be star. A Penn State University astronomer used NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Spitzer Space Telescopes to find the icy object dubbed WISE J085510.83-071442.5. Its temperature is between -48 to -13 degrees C, even colder than the average winter temperature of the Arctic. The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Spitzer also found other brown dwarfs that were at one time the coldest such objects found. Their temperatures were measured to be around room temperature somewhere between 20 and 23.5 degrees C. The newly discovered brown dwarf star is the fourth closest star system to the Sun. “It is very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close,” said Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. “In addition, its extreme temperature should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures.” The astronomers spotted the brown dwarf with the space telescope after conducting a thorough infrared survey of the entire sky. The observers scanned the cosmos up to three times in some areas of the sky. Infrared observations are one of the only way for astronomers to detect chilly objects like brown dwarf stars. Unlike visible light telescopes, infrared telescopes pick up on an object’s heat signature no matter how faint it might be. Objects such as the brown dwarf would be invisible to visible light telescopes. The astronomers relied on data from Spitzer’s infrared observations to help them determine the icy brown dwarf’s temperature, and a combination of detections from Spitzer and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer helped them to assess the object’s distance. “It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the Sun’s nearest neighbors,” said Michael Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer.” It’s estimated that the WISE J085510.83-071442.5 dwarf star is between three-to-10 times the mass of Jupiter. The astronomers say that, with such a low mass, the brown dwarf could very well have been a gas giant planet, such as our solar system’s outer four planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, that had been kicked out of its star system. Since these types of objects are fairly common in the cosmos, the astronomers have determined that it’s not a planet but a brown dwarf, albeit one of the least massive brown dwarfs that have been found. Basketball team owner is center of racial dispute By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Alleged racial remarks by the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers is overshadowing the National Basketball Association playoffs, and is sparking outrage across the United States. The NBA is investigating whether Donald Sterling is the voice heard on a recording that was obtained by the website TMZ. The male voice is heard asking Sterling's then-girlfriend not to publicize her associations with black people. More of the recording was then released on deadspin.com. The male voice asks the woman to not post photos of black people on her Instagram page and to not bring black people to his basketball games. Sterling has not denied the voice is his. The NBA has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday afternoon to address the issue, while critics around the country are calling for severe sanctions, including forcing Sterling to sell the team. Sterling has a history of racism. In 2009, the real estate mogul paid a record $2.725 million to a settle a federal housing discrimination case claiming he sought to exclude black and Hispanic tenants from his rental properties in Los Angeles. In a silent protest at their playoff game Sunday, Clippers' players turned their warm-up suits inside out so no team logos were showing. President Barack Obama is among those who have weighed in on the issue. He called them incredibly offensive racist statements. A number of Los Angeles Clippers advertisers have begun canceling or suspending their sponsorships of the team. New word is re-shoring to bring jobs back to U.S. By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
For years, Chinese companies have sold far more goods in the United States than American firms sell in China. This trade deficit hit $318 billion in 2013. A key reason is that many U.S. companies have transferred their manufacturing to China, a process called offshore outsourcing, resulting in the loss of American jobs. But the tide could be turning. “As China has built its industrial manufacturing base, it’s become very attractive, so not only is it less expensive to manufacture there, but all of your suppliers are there, the whole infrastructure is there," said Rosemary Coates of Blue Silk Consulting, who has helped companies outsource. "But we’re seeing some reversal in that now. In the last year or two, there’s been a lot of attention paid to re-shoring. “ Re-shoring is bringing manufacturing and services back to the United States. Ms. Coates says the shopper plays a major role in where products are manufactured. “The price of shoes may go up, in fact, if they are produced in the U.S. from U.S. products, but we expect to get most of the pricing back to within 10 to 15 percent of the international price," Ms. Coates said. "So you have to make a decision as a consumer whether you want to pay the extra 10 to 15 percent to buy a product that is made here.” Major American corporations like Apple, General Electric and Dell manufacture in China, but sell in the United States. With U.S. unemployment at 6.7 percent, manufacturing and jobs are a political issue in Washington. But experts say there are also good business reasons to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. mainland. “One of them is higher productivity of U.S. labor aided by advancements in computer technology," said Natalia Levina of New York University. Other reasons might be the need to keep inventory levels low which means that manufacturing has to be close to consumption, she said. However, cheap labor in China and other countries is expected to continue to constrain re-shoring to the U.S. in the near term. “It isn’t a matter of just chopping off production and bringing it back to the U.S.," said Ms. Coates. "It’s really a thoughtful process of design, of automation, of innovation, and localization of the product and then being able to produce that for the local market.” As imports from China continue to be unloaded on America's docks, analysts say it will take business ingenuity to develop new products, new markets and new American jobs. Wetlands produce methane, and increase is feared By
the University of Guelph news staff
A surprising recent rise in atmospheric methane likely stems from wetland emissions, suggesting that much more of the potent greenhouse gas will be pumped into the atmosphere as northern wetlands continue to thaw and tropical ones to warm, according to a new international study led by a University of Guelph researcher. The study supports calls for improved monitoring of wetlands and human changes to those ecosystems, a timely topic as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prepares to examine land use impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, says Merritt Turetsky, of the university's Department of Integrative Biology. Ms. Turetsky is the lead author of a paper published in Global Change Biology based on one of the largest-ever analyses of global methane emissions. The team looked at almost 20,000 field data measurements collected from 70 sites across arctic, temperate and tropical regions. Agnieszka Kotowska, a former master’s student, and David Olefeldt, a post-doc at Guelph, also were among 19 study co-authors from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany and Sweden. One of the strongest greenhouse gases, methane, comes from agriculture and fossil fuel use, as well as natural sources such as microbes in saturated wetland soils. The amount of atmospheric methane has remained relatively stable for about a decade, but concentrations began to rise again in 2007. Scientists believe this increase stems partly from more methane being released from thawing northern wetlands. Scientists have assumed that wetland methane release is largest in the tropics, said Ms. Turetsky. “But our analyses show that northern fens, such as those created when permafrost thaws, can have emissions comparable to warm sites in the tropics, despite their cold temperatures. That’s very important when it comes to scaling methane release at a global scale.” The study calls for better methods of detecting different types of wetlands and methane release rates between flooded and drained areas. Fens are the most common type of wetland in Canada, but we lack basic scientific approaches for mapping fens using remote sensing products, she said. “Not only are fens one of the strongest sources of wetland greenhouse gases, but we also know that Canadian forests and tundra underlain by permafrost are thawing and creating these kinds of high methane-producing ecosystems,” she said. Most methane studies focus on measurements at a single site, said co-author Narasinha Shurpali, University of Eastern Finland. “Our synthesis of data from a large number of observation points across the globe is unique and serves an important need.” The team showed that small temperature changes can release much more methane from wetland soils to the atmosphere. But whether climate change will ramp up methane emissions will depend on soil moisture, said Turetsky. Under warmer and wetter conditions, much more of the gas will be emitted. If wetland soils dry out from evaporation or human drainage, emissions will fall, but not without other problems. In earlier studies, Ms. Turetsky found drying peatlands can spark more wildfires. Another study co-author, Kim Wickland, of the U. S. Geological Survey, said, “This study provides important data for better accounting of how methane emissions change after wetland drainage and flooding.” Methane emissions vary between natural and disturbed or managed wetlands, says Ms. Wickland, who has helped improve methods for calculating greenhouse gas emissions from managed wetlands.  University of Basel/Egyptology/ Matjaz
Kacicnik
Mummified remains among
fragments of coffins, cloth and sherds: Tomb KV 40 was plundered
several time and damaged by a fire.Royal Egyptian
tomb holds
kin and favorites of pharaohs By
the University of Basel news staff
Who had the privilege to spend eternal life next to the pharaoh? Close to the royal tombs in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, excavations by Egyptologists from the University of Basel have identified the burial place of several children as well as other family members of two pharaohs. Basel Egyptologists of the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project have been working on tomb KV 40 in the Valley of the Kings close to the city of Luxor for three years. From the outside, only a depression in the ground indicated the presence of a subterranean tomb. Up to now, nothing was known about the layout of tomb KV 40 nor for whom it was build and who was buried there. The Egyptologists assumed that it was a non-royal tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty. They first cleared the six meter deep shaft which gives access to five subterranean chambers and then recovered the countless remains and fragments of funerary equipment. The scientists discovered mummified remains of at least 50 people in the center chamber and in three side chambers. Based on inscriptions on storage jars, Egyptologists were able to identify and name over 30 people during this year's field season. Titles such as “Prince” and “Princess” distinguish the buried as members of the families of the two pharaohs Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III, who are also buried in the Valley of Kings. Both pharaohs belonged to the 18th dynasty in the New Kingdom and ruled in the 14th century BC. The analysis of the hieratic inscriptions revealed that tomb KV 40 contains the mummified remains of at least eight hitherto unknown royal daughters, four princes and several foreign ladies. Most of them were adults. However, mummified children were also found: “We discovered a remarkable number of carefully mummified newborns and infants that would have normally been buried much simpler,” said Egyptologist Susanne Bickel of the findings. “We believe that the family members of the royal court were buried in this tomb for a period of several decades.” The identification of people buried in the proximity of the royal tombs gives the team of researchers important insight into who had the privilege to spend eternal life close to the pharaoh. “Roughly two thirds of the tombs in the Kings’ Valley are non-royal. Because the tombs do not have inscriptions and have been heavily plundered we so far have only been able to speculate on who lies buried in them,” explained Ms. Bickel in regard to the importance of the findings for the field of Egyptology. Even though the tomb was looted several times in antiquity as well as at the end of the 19th century, the researchers found countless fragments of funerary equipment, such as fragments of coffins and textiles. ”The remains and the walls have been heavily affected by a fire that was most likely ignited by the torches of the tomb raiders,” said Ms. Bickel. The fragments of various wooden and cartonnage coffins indicate that tomb KV 40 was used a second time as a burial ground: long after the abandonment of the valley as royal necropolis, members of priestly families of the 9th century B.C. were interred here. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 83 | |||||||||
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 Tecnólogico de Costa Rica photo
Youngster demonstrates one of
the robots Monday.Signups open for
teams
in local robotics contest By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Teams can sign up until June 30 for the preliminaries of the World Robot Olympics. The period for signups was launched officially Monday at Tecnólogico de Costa Rica. The competition will be Aug. 16 and 17. Winners will represent the country at the world championship in Sochi, Russia, in November. The competition this year is based on space exploration, and the teams of students are being asked to construct devices for that type of effort, such as a Mars rover. There are age groups that range from 7 to 19. Tornado death toll is 21 in southern United States By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
People in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi are waking up to the aftermath of two days of tornadoes that have flattened homes and businesses and killed at least 21 people. Tens of thousands of people were without power across the central and southern United States Monday. Emergency officials were searching for survivors, even as the ferocious storm system threatened to bring more tornadoes throughout the night in Alabama. A tornado tore through Tupelo, Mississippi, Monday, damaging hundreds of homes, downing power lines and toppling trees. The storm system later pushed into Athens, Alabama, where two people died. Sunday, the suburbs of Little Rock, Arkansas, were the hardest-hit areas. Officials in the southern state said tornadoes killed at least 15 people there. President Barack Obama expressed condolences to the victims Monday during a visit to the Philippines, and said the government will help the victims recover and rebuild. The storm system is hitting on the third anniversary of one of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S. history, which killed more than 300 people and included nearly 300 reported tornadoes across the nation's southeast. |
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| From Page 7: Industrial parks proposed for rural areas By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Representatives of the Chinese Development Bank presented a proposal Monday for a series of commercial parks outside the metro area. The Chinese experts have been studying the country since August 2012 when President Laura Chinchilla sought the advice from the Asian nation's leadership. Representatives from Puntarenas, San Carlos, Limón, Cartago and Guanacaste attended the session. The Chinese proposal is for a central commercial nucleus surrounded by five specialized industrial parks that are complementary. These are special economic zones where the commercial occupants would benefit from some governmental concessions. The idea would be to put to put one such series of commercial centers in each province outside the Metro area. The plan is to generate development, although there was no discussion on where funds would be found. The projects wold develop over 20 years or so, said the Chinese experts. |
