Police will maintain plate restrictions


The next two weeks may be called midyear vacation, but traffic police are not taking any time off and are issuing tickets for those who enter the metro area with the incorrect final digit on their vehicle' license plate.

The Policía de Tránsito announced Friday that the restrictions based on plate number will continue to be enforced. The police decided this even though no public school classes are held during the two weeks and such vacations usually warrant lifting the restrictions.

The fine is 21,000 colons, about $38.

The director of the Policía de Tránsito, Mario Calderón, said that despite school closings, a significant number of small buses travel within the metro area carrying teachers and students who might be headed to vacation spots. He also said that five out of the 10 fatalities last year happened in the metro area. In addition, he said that a large number of persons will be celebrating World Cup events. He cited a study by the Cámera Nacional de Turismo that said vacation occupancies are expected to be lower due to the World cup.

However, the police director did not tie this fact into why they have an impact on metro traffic. The next Costa Rican World Cup game is Saturday, for example.

Calderón said that 726 traffic officers will be on duty throughout the country.

The license plate restrictions are in force Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays vehicles with the last digit of the plate ending in 1 or 2 are prohibited from traveling the area generally outlined by the Circunvalación. Tuesday the prohibited numbers are 3 and 4, and so on.


Odorless gas results in a warning


The national regulatory agency said that liquid petroleum gas being produced in the country did not pass the small test June 17.

A warning has been issued to the public, and the Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo has been asked to take corrective steps.

Petroleum gas does not have an odor that humans can sense.  So disagreeable smelling substances are deliberately put in the gas in case of a leak. The Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos said its sensing machines should have been able to detect ethyl mercaptan or dimethyl sulfide. A government decree covers the percentage of these additives in petroleum gas.

The refinery is supposed to present a report Tuesday detailing the measures it has taken to correct the problem.

The tests were taken at the refinery plant in Moín.

The agency said it was very worried that some of this odorless gas has gotten into the chain of commerce. This is the gas many Costa Ricans use for cooking and heating water.


Isthmus may have major impact on world


When North and South America joined millions of years ago to create the isthmus blocked a strait between the two oceans. The worldwide effect may have been significant.

New research published in Nature Scientific Reports says that the closing of the strait caused the last ice age.

The research is by Thomas Stevens of Royal Holloway, University of London. He wrote that he found a previously unknown mechanism by which the joining of North and South America changed the salinity of the Pacific Ocean and caused major ice sheet growth across the Northern Hemisphere, according to the university. The change in salinity, in turn, encouraged sea ice to form which, in turn, created a change in wind patterns, leading to intensified monsoons. These provided moisture that caused an increase in snowfall and the growth of major ice sheets, some of which reached three kilometers thick.

The Earth has experienced at least five ice ages over the last four billion years, scientists say, but Stevens is referring to the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation that started about 2.5 million years ago. That resulted in a series of warming and cooling that brought sheets of ice into temperate areas of the planet. The last such event ended about 10,000 years ago.

Although the age of the isthmus is disputed, Stevens and his team analyzed deposits of wind-blown dust called red clay that accumulated between six million and two and a half million years ago in north central China, adjacent to the Tibetan plateau, and used them to reconstruct changing monsoon precipitation and temperature, said the university.

“Until now, the cause of the Quaternary ice age had been a hotly debated topic,” said Stevens, quoted in the university release. “Our findings suggest a significant link between ice sheet growth, the monsoon and the closing of the Panama Seaway, as North and South America drifted closer together. This provides us with a major new theory on the origins of the ice age, and ultimately our current climate system.”

Scientists say that a series of islands and a peninsular began to join about 30 million years ago resulting in a fully formed isthmus about 2.5 to 3 million years.

Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panamá have done extensive work on the geological changes that created the isthmus. Says the research institute of the impact of the closing of the seaway:

For three million years, Panama has separated the oceans and joined two continents. It promoted the exchange of species between the Americas, enabling Amazonian fauna to colonize areas as far north as Mexico and creating the abundant tropical biodiversity we have today. It is responsible for the extensive development of coral reefs, initiated a new global ocean circulation pattern, contributed to the glaciation of the northern hemisphere, and changed the climate of the tropics. Because of the isthmus, the winds that cross the Gulf Stream are warmed, and Europe is spared from freezing over in the winter. It is even possible that the ancestors of the human race came down out of the trees because of climate change in Africa which was also a product of the emergence of the Isthmus.


North Korea holds two more U.S. citizens


North Korea says it is preparing to put two American tourists on trial for committing crimes against the state.

The official Korean Central News Agency said Monday that Jeffrey Fowle and Matthew Miller had committed hostile acts that were confirmed by their testimony and evidence.

North Korean media said 56-year-old Fowle entered the country on April 29 and was arrested for acts not consistent with being a tourist. The French news agency says he was detained after he left a Bible in his hotel room.

Pyongyang says 24-year-old Miller entered the North on April 10 and was arrested after he ripped up his tourist visa and demanded asylum.

No details were given on the dates of the trials.

North Korea has also been holding Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae since November 2012.  He is serving 15 years of hard labor for what Pyongyang says were hostile acts against the state.


Vehicle fumes said to distract pollinators


Insects that pollinate flowers and crops face an increasingly complex and distracting world of smells.

Their olfactory receptors are activated by all scents, the natural smell of blossoms and grasses, as well as man-made ones, such as fumes from car and truck engines. Researchers at the University of Washington and University of Arizona say those background odors can mask floral scents. As a consequence, insects spend more time and energy looking for flowers.

Using advanced instruments, the researchers found that background odors significantly influenced how a moth called Manduca sexta detected flower scents, both in nature and in laboratory settings. Writing in the journal Science, they report the moths, which can detect odors about as well as dogs can, were easily misled by non-floral scents.

The scientists now plan to look at honeybees to see whether emissions from cities affect pollination at surrounding farms.


Gay Pride marked around the world


Gay Pride parades have taken place around the world, in cities large and small, including San José.

"Pride Weekend" celebrations took place Sunday in several major U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Events also took place internationally on Saturday in France, Spain, Israel, Turkey, Mexico and Peru.  The weekend-long event highlights equal rights for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community and commemorates the 1969 inception of the modern gay rights movement.

The U.S. events come amid an eventful year since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the statute that denied federal recognition to same-sex marriages and cleared the way for gay couples to wed legally in California.

Since then, seven more states have legalized same-sex marriage, boosting the total to 19, plus Washington, D.C.

In Costa Rica, the Gay movement hopes that the news administration and a new legislature will legalize some form of  civil union.

The Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social already has ruled that same-sex partners should be covered for health care in the same way spouses and other dependents are.