Increment

China may scrap one-child policy

Thu Feb 28, 9:28 AM

(adds details, writes through

By Lucy Hornby

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, worried about an ageing population, is studying scrapping its controversial one-child policy but will not do away with family-planning policies altogether, a senior official said on Thursday.

With the world's biggest population straining scarce land, water and energy resources, China has enforced rules to restrict family size since the 1970s. Regulations vary but usually limit families to one child, or two in the countryside.

"We want incrementally to have this change," Vice Minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission Zhao Baige told reporters in Beijing.

"I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers," Zhao said. She added that the current plan was to study the issue seriously and responsibly, but avoid sudden changes that might cause a spike in births.

Teams studying the issue would have to consider the strain of China's huge population on its scarce resources, popular attitudes, and how much of a social net China can afford to provide without the traditional reliance on large families to care for the aged, she said.

Surveys show that 60 percent of Chinese younger than 30 want two children, and only a "very small" number want more than three, Zhao said.

The average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime has decreased to 1.8 in China today, from 5.8 in the 1970s, and below the replacement rate of 2.1.

China says its policies have prevented several hundred million births and boosted prosperity, but experts have warned of a looming social time-bomb from an ageing population and widening gender disparity stemming from a traditional preference for boys.

Still, the government has previously expressed concern too many people are flouting the rules.

Normally, between 103 and 107 boys are born for every 100 girl infants, but in China, 118 boys are born for every 100 girls, Zhao said. Experimental policies include trying to improve women's welfare and girls' access to schooling.

State media said in December that China's population would grow to 1.5 billion people by 2033, with birth rates set to soar over the next five years.

Officials have also cautioned that population controls are being unraveled by the increased mobility of China's 150 million-odd migrant workers, who travel from poor rural areas to work in more affluent eastern cities.

China has vowed to slap heavier fines on wealthy citizens who flout family planning laws, in response to the emergence of an upper class willing to pay standard fines to have more children.

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

Empathic Signatures

Brain activity linked to parental instinct
Provided by: The Canadian Press
Written by: Sheryl Ubelacker, Health Reporter, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Feb. 26, 2008

TORONTO - What is it about a baby's face that draws us like bits of metal to a magnet? Well, scientists think they may have the answer - and it's all in the brain.

In experiments using a neural scan, researchers at Oxford University found that a specific region of the brain associated with emotion lights up with activity within milliseconds of subjects seeing pictures of infants' faces.

But images of adult faces didn't elicit the same response, said co-principal investigator Morgen Kringelbach, noting that the reaction was the same for both men and women, and for people with and without children.

"We can see what happens immediately in the brain," the neuroscientist said in a phone interview from England on Tuesday. "And what you see is activity starting from the back of the brain, just like you would with any visual stimuli."

Quite to the scientists' surprise, they found that when subjects looked at babies' faces - and only babies' faces - the region of activity shot ahead to an area of the brain above the eyes, known as the medial orbitofrontal cortex.

Kringelbach said the response in the brain to a baby's face - which occurs within one-seventh of a second, or a little more than in the blink of an eye - is "almost like a signature."

"So that's what makes us think that what happened is really almost like a parental instinct, certainly something that tells us that babies are special, that they need caring for."

"And we know that people who have lesions to that region (of the brain) basically lack emotions."

The researchers, whose study is published in Wednesday's online edition of a Public Library of Science journal, believe their finding could have important applications for identifying postpartum depression.

They suggest brain scans could provide a potentially predictive test for people prone to postpartum depression, a disease marked by an inability to bond with a newborn, which occurs in about 13 per cent of mothers and three per cent of fathers.

"One thing that's well-established in postnatal depression is there's something wrong or something different about the way the mothers and the fathers approach the kids, the way they respond to them," he said. "It's almost as if some of them don't look at their babies."

While there may be many reasons why postpartum depression occurs, Kringelbach said it may be that parents with the disorder don't have the "neural signature" that allows them to respond to their infant.

"If you don't get that signal, maybe that's why you get into this state: 'I should be feeling something for my baby, yet I don't."'

"If that's true, and that's what we're assessing at the moment, then we might be able to use that to pick up much earlier who is more likely to become postnatally depressed."

Dr. Ariel Dalfen, a psychiatrist at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, said the study lends credibility to the belief that depression and postpartum depression are biological in origin.

"I see a lot of women with postpartum depression, so I spend a lot of time helping them realize that this is really an illness and it's not just they're being weak or lazy people," Dalfen said.

"They don't feel love for their children, and they can't figure it out. They don't want to be with their kids, they don't get excited by their kids, they don't enjoy their kids," she explained.

"And it becomes a sort of feedback loop, because the mother sees the child, doesn't respond and then the infant doesn't respond when it doesn't get the kind of response it needs to feel safe and loved."

Kringelbach said it's important to identify and treat postnatal depression in a parent, not just for that individual but also for their child's long-term well-being.

"Because we know that children of people with postpartum depression ... don't do as well on emotions. They are much more likely to be depressed themselves and much more likely to have anxiety disorders."

The Terror of Obesity

Obesity more dangerous than terrorism: experts

Mon Feb 25, 1:56 AM

SYDNEY (AFP) - World governments focus too much on fighting terrorism while obesity and other "lifestyle diseases" are killing millions more people, an international conference heard Monday.

Overcoming deadly factors such as poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise should take top priority in the fight against a growing epidemic of preventable chronic disease, legal and health experts said.

Global terrorism was a real threat but posed far less risk than obesity, diabetes and smoking-related illnesses, prominent US professor of health law Lawrence Gostin said at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit here.

"Ever since September 11, we've been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public," Gostin told AFP later.

"While we've been focusing so much attention on that, we've had this silent epidemic of obesity that's killing millions of people around the world, and we're devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money."

The fifth annual conference of the Oxford Health Alliance -- co-founded by Oxford University -- has brought together world experts from academia, government, business, law, economics and urban planning to promote change.

An estimated 388 million people will die from chronic disease worldwide over the next 10 years, according to World Health Organisation figures quoted by the alliance.

"There's a political paralysis in dealing with the issue," said Gostin, an adviser to the US government and a professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities.

He noted that prevention of obesity and its effects had hardly rated a mention in the current campaign for the US presidency.

"Yet the human costs are frightening when we consider that obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an entire generation, resulting in the first reversal in life expectancy since data collecting began in 1900," he said.

Like terrorism, some passing health threats get major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world's deaths, the meeting was told.

"It is true that new and re-emerging health threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism and climate change are dramatic and emotive," said Stig Pramming, the Oxford group's executive director.

"However, it is preventable chronic disease that will send health systems and economies to the wall."

The conference is due to end Wednesday with a "Sydney Resolution" calling on governments and big business among others to take action to avert millions of premature deaths due to chronic disease.

"The way we live now is making us sick, it's making our planet sick and it's not sustainable," said Asia-Pacific co-director Ruth Colagiuri.

The Sydney resolution focuses on four key areas, including the need to make towns and cities healthier places in which to live by urban design which promotes walking and cycling and reduces carbon emissions from motor vehicles.

Insufficient physical exercise is a risk factor in many chronic diseases and is estimated to cause 1.9 million deaths worldwide each year, said Tony Capon, professor of health studies at Australia's Macquarie University.

"We need to build the physical activity back into our lives and it's not simply about bike paths, it's about developing an urban habitat that enables people to live healthy lives: ensuring that people can meet most of their daily needs within walking and cycling distance of where they live," he said.

The resolution also calls for a reduction in sugar, fat and salt content in food, making fresh food affordable and available and increasing global efforts to stop people smoking.

The Politics of Chemicals

Depression drugs 'little better than placebos'

Tue Feb 26, 8:30 AM

LONDON (AFP) - Best-selling anti-depressants like Prozac and Seroxat are barely more effective than placebos in treating most people with depression, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The research, which analysed 47 clinical trials, breaks new ground by incorporating data not previously released by drug companies which researchers obtained under US freedom of information laws.

Its findings prompted some academics and mental health campaigners to question whether people with mild and moderate depression should be prescribed drugs like Prozac, which has been taken by 40 million people worldwide.

"The difference in improvement between patients taking placebos and patients taking anti-depressants is not very great," said Professor Irving Kirsch of Hull University, who led the team.

"This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments.

"Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit."

The study, published in the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine, looked at Prozac, Seroxat, Effexor and Serzone and found the drugs were only better than a placebo for some people with severe depression.

Kirsch's team said it was one of the most thorough probes into the impact of new generation anti-depressants or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Drug companies strongly questioned the findings.

A spokesman for Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, said that "extensive scientific and medical experience" had shown it is "an effective anti-depressant".

And GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Seroxat, said the study had not acknowledged the "very positive benefits" of the drugs.

"Their conclusions are at odds with what has been seen in actual clinical practice," a spokesman said.

"It is widely recognised by experts in the field that studies in depression are challenging and very difficult to conduct."

One leading academic who has studied why drug companies only publish some of their data on new drugs said in the wake of the findings they should be obliged to do so.

Doctor Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists research unit, said the study was "fantastically important".

"I think it's too dangerous to allow drug companies -- where profit is a key factor -- to be able to withhold data which shows that a drug is ineffective or harmful," he said.

Alison Cobb, of mental health charity Mind, hailed the findings as "a serious challenge to the predominance of drugs in treating depression".

"Anti-depressants do help many people but by no means all and some people experience severe side-effects with them," she said.

"Nine out of 10 GPs say they've been forced to dish out drugs because they don't have proper access to 'talking treatments' such as cognitive behavioural therapy, which are recommended as the first-line treatment for mild to moderate depression."

Another mental health charity, Sane, warned the findings "could remove what has been seen as a vital choice for thousands," adding people should not stop taking their drugs immediately.

Crowds and Power: Contagious Enjoyment

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) — Loud commentary and cell phone fumbling may be distracting, but new research suggests that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences. Over the course of the film, movie-watchers influence one another and gradually synchronize their emotional responses. This mutual mimicry also affects each participant's evaluation of the overall experience -- the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like the movie.

"When asked how much they had liked the film, participants reported higher ratings the more their assessments lined up with the other person," explain Suresh Ramanathan and Ann L. McGill (both of the University of Chicago). "By mimicking expressions, people catch each other's moods leading to a shared emotional experience. That feels good to people and they attribute that good feeling to the quality of the movie."

In a series of experiments, the researchers had participants watch a video clip. Some of the participants watched alone, some with other people whose expressions could not be seen due to the presence of a partition, and some with other people whose expressions could be seen. The participants had a joystick they used to indicate their feelings at each moment.

While assessments did not line up by second--people liked or disliked specific scenes in the film according to their own tastes-- the researchers found that people watching a film together appeared to evaluate the film within the same broad mood, generally tracking up or generally tracking down. In another study, the researchers videotaped participants and found that synchrony of evaluations can be traced to glances at the other person during the film and adoption of the observed expressions.

The researchers explain: "Participants who looked at each other at the same time appeared to note whether the other person's face expressed the same or different emotion than their own. Perceived congruity of expressions caused participants to stick with their current emotional expression . . . Perceived incongruity, on the other hand, led to a dampening of subsequent expressions."

They continue: "Social effects described above were bi-directional suggesting that such influences were mutual rather than the result of a leader-follower pattern."

The researchers are the first to examine how a shared experience affects not just our immediate feelings, but also our overall impressions of the experience as a whole. The study is also the first to look at contagious emotions in a naturally developing relationship between two participants, differing from prior studies that used a planted person to express agreement or disagreement with the participant.

Journal reference: Suresh Ramanathan and Ann L. McGill, "Consuming with Others: Social Influences on Moment-to-Moment and Retrospective Evaluations of an Experience." Journal of Consumer Research: December 2007.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Although it's probably obvious to point this out, the recent Lindsay Lohan spread in New York magazine is a rather blatant expression of a peculiarly American form of death-lust. Of course, death in America has become essentially a nostalgia for a time when Images were possible...but there are no Images in America anymore, anymore than there are surfaces there.

Crispin Glover Makes You Happy

China Bans Monsters

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has added ghosts, monsters and other things that go bump in the night to its list of banned video and audio content in an intensified crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Producers have around three weeks to look through their tapes for "horror" and report it to authorities, the General Administration of Press and Publications said in a statement posted on the government Web site.

Offending content included "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror," the administration said.

The new guidelines aim to "control and cleanse the negative effect these items have on society, and to prevent horror, violent, cruel publications from entering the market through official channels and to protect adolescents' psychological health."

The regulations suggest China, where graphic, pirated sex and horror movies are available on most street corners, is keen to step up its control of the cultural arena ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August, which are widely seen as a coming-out party for the rising political and economic power.

They come just weeks after Beijing clamped down on "vulgar" video and audio content, slapped restrictions on Internet sites and handed down a two-year film-making ban to the team behind the steamy "Lost in Beijing."

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

And...

China applies toon taboos
Animated combos nixed
By STEVEN SCHWANKERT

Jessica Rabbit isn't welcome in China -- and Michael Jordan shouldn't show up with any of his Looney Toons pals.

In one of the more bizarre orders from China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, TV shows and films featuring human thesps with animated companions will be banned.

"These human live-action, so-called animation pieces will not receive distribution or distribution licenses," read the order, issued Feb. 15. However, films and shows that have already received permits will continue to air.

CGI and 2-D characters alongside human actors jeopardize "the broadcast order of homemade animation and mislead their development," according to a report from the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Order comes as the Chinese government attempts to increase local production of Mandarin-language toons and cut the amount of foreign animated programming appearing on Chinese television.

However, national and provincial children's channels are struggling to acquire enough content to meet demand or even fill their own programming schedules.

"Sarft's notice is a clear indicator that, despite government support, the local animation industry is still struggling," said David Wolf, CEO of Beijing-based consultancy Wolf Group Asia. "Unfortunately, simply clearing more airtime isn't going to make the product any better or more competitive."

Chinese regulatory authorities are notoriously skittish regarding broadcast and film themes that include the supernatural or fantasy, including talking animals. "Babe" was banned on the basis that animals can't talk and some viewers would be confused.

Scatology in Advertising III

A Wonderful Case of Endurance

A most wonderful case of endurance of pain and heroism was one occurring in Italy, 3.103 which attracted much European comment at the time. A young woman, illegitimately pregnant, at full term, on March 28th, at dawn, opened her own abdomen on the left side with a common knife such as is generally used in kitchens. The wound measured five inches, and was directed obliquely outward and downward. She opened the uterus in the same direction, and endeavored to extract the fetus. To expedite the extraction, she drew out an arm and amputated it, and finding the extraction still difficult, she cut off the head and completely emptied the womb, including the placenta. She bound a tight bandage around her body and hid the fetus in a straw mattress. She then dressed herself and attended to her domestic duties. She afterward mounted a cart and went into the city of Viterbo, where she showed her sister a cloth bathed in blood as menstrual proof that she was not pregnant. On returning home, having walked five hours, she was seized with an attack of vomiting and fainted. The parents called Drs. Serpieri and Baliva, who relate the case. Thirteen hours had elapsed from the infliction of the wound, through which the bulk of the intestines had been protruding for the past six hours. The abdomen was irrigated, the toilet made, and after the eighteenth day the process of healing was well progressed, and the woman made a recovery after her plucky efforts to hide her shame.

ANOMALIES and CURIOSITIES of MEDICINE by George Milbury Gould

Simulated Pregnancy

In the next thirty years we will see more robotic technology integrated into our society, furthering our experience of reality through agency. Robots already go beyond the limitations of our bodies. They build things that we find too difficult or tedious, assist us in our medical care, and are beginning to substitute as our sexual partners. Just as the computer and the automobile have augmented our communication and transportation capabilities, the robot is destined to be essential to our society. What will humanity’s relationship be to the robot in the future?

Using recorded brainwave activity and eye movements during REM sleep to determine robot behaviors and head positions, "Sleep Waking" acts as a way to "play-back" dreams. Through this piece we hope to investigate one of the possible human-robot relationships.

Fashion and the Energy Oeconomy

Microfiber fabric makes its own electricity?

Wed Feb 13, 1:21 PM

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.

If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement," Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement.

The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires -- tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.

One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.

"When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect," Wang said in a telephone interview. "What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity."

His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibers with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibers.

"They automatically grow on the surface of the fiber," Wang said. "In principal, you could use any fiber that is conductive."

They added another layer of polymer to prevent the zinc oxide from being scrubbed off. And they added an ultra-thin layer of gold to some fibers, which works as a conductor.

To ensure all that friction was not just generating static electricity, the researchers conducted several tests. The fibers produced current only when both the gold and the zinc oxide bristles brushed together.

So far, Wang said the researchers had demonstrated the principle and developed a small prototype.

"Our estimates show we can have up to 80 milliwatts per square meter of this fabric. This is enough to power a little iPod or charge a cell phone battery," he said.

"What we've done is demonstrate the principle and the fundamental mechanism."

Wang said the material could be used by hikers and soldiers in the field and also to power tiny sensors used in biomedicine or environmental monitoring.

One major hurdle remains: zinc oxide degrades when wet. Wang's team is working on a process that would coat the fibers to protect the fabric in the laundry.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Alan Elsner)

(julie.steenhuysen@reuters.com ; +1 312 408 8131))

Redeem Your Reputation

Report: Singapore retailer pulls "Jesus" cosmetics after complaints

Tue Feb 12, 5:16 AM

By The Associated Press

SINGAPORE - A cosmetics line that extolls the virtues of "Looking Good for Jesus" has been pulled from stores in Singapore after some Catholics complained the items were disrespectful.

The Strait Times reports the product line included a "virtuous vanilla"-flavoured lip balm and a "Get Tight with Christ" hand and body cream

Promising to "Redeem your reputation and more," cosmetics were sold by British retailer Topshop and produced by Blue Q.

The newspaper says Wing Tai Retail, which manages Topshop in the city-state, removed the range late last month after receiving complaints.

One of the complainants says the products trivialize Jesus Christ and Christianity.

An unnamed Wing Tai Retail official apologized for offending the Christian community.

Monuments to Loss

Man admits setting fire that destroyed SKorean landmark: report

2 hours, 0 minute ago

SEOUL (AFP) - A 70-year-old man told police he started a blaze that destroyed South Korea's 600-year-old top cultural landmark, a report said Tuesday.

Police late Monday detained the man, identified only by his last name, Chae, in Ganghwa Island, west of Seoul, Yonhap news agency reported. The man said he did it, but Yonhap did not provide further details on his confession.

Police had been investigating whether the Sunday evening fire at the Namdaemun gate in the heart of Seoul, one of the few historic structures to have survived the 20th century Japanese occupation and the Korean War, was arson.

Yonhap said a taxi driver who reported the fire told investigators he saw a man in his 50s climb the stairs to the gate shortly before the blaze started.

Three witnesses reported a suspected arsonist but they had been giving "confusing" testimony, Kim Yong-Su, captain of the Namdaemun police station, told reporters.

Investigators found clothes and a bag similar to those described by witnesses at Chae's home, Yonhap said. Police said they also uncovered a bottle of paint thinner at his residence.

The gate -- an ornate two-storey building on a stone base, the city's oldest wooden structure -- was a major tourist attraction. It was originally built in 1398, but then was rebuilt in 1447 and has since been frequently renovated.

"People must feel hurt by the fire," president-elect Lee Myung-Bak, a former city mayor, said Monday after touring the site. "This is a symbolic place that people want to visit whenever they come to Seoul."

Cheon Ho-Seon, spokesman for current President Roh Moo-Hyun, expressed grief at the "indescribably regrettable" blaze.

"It was our heritage, more significant and more symbolic than any other cultural asset," Cheon said.

Ordinary Koreans inspecting the sooty and charred debris also expressed grief. "It is heartbreaking," said Kim Duk-Il, 40, a visitor from the southern city of Daegu, wiping away tears.

"The gate had endured 600 years," Kim told AFP. "It remained OK even during the Korean War. I still cannot believe this. Our pride has fallen down."

Some of the gate's pillars dated back to the original structure, a rarity in Seoul. Japanese colonialists razed several historic buildings during their harsh 1910-45 rule, and much of the city was destroyed during the 1950-53 Korean War.

"It's devastating: the pride of the nation has collapsed. It's so bad this kind of thing happened on the first weekday of the Lunar New Year," Kim Cheol-su, 55, told Yonhap.

Scores of firefighters battling the blaze believed it was under control late Sunday but it flared up again.

The agency quoted firefighters as saying the Cultural Heritage Administration had asked them to tackle the blaze cautiously, meaning they could not quickly break into the area where the blaze started.

The landmark, surrounded by modern office buildings, is officially named Sungnyemun or "Gate of exalted ceremonies." It was the southern gate in the walls that surrounded Seoul during the Chosun Dynasty of 1392-1910.

It is adjacent to Namdaemun market, a centuries-old market popular with locals and tourists alike.

The Cultural Heritage Administration forecast a long and costly restoration.

"Experts estimate that it will take two to three years to rebuild its architecture and cost some 20 billion won (21 million dollars)," Shim Dong-Jun of the historic architecture division told AFP.

"It's like losing a family member," said Kim Jae-Bun, who has run a drug store nearby for 30 years. "I never imagined it would burn down so helplessly."

Sad Toys

Sad and introspective? Don't go shopping

Sun Feb 10, 12:29 PM

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Glum shoppers hoping to boost their self-esteem with a bout of 'retail therapy' will spend more for the same item and come to regret the purchase, a new study showed Friday. According to a study released at the annual meeting of the Society for Social and Personality Psychology, inward-looking people who are down in the dumps tend to spend more money on the same item than their neutral-emotion counterparts.

Earlier studies have drawn a link between mood and spending habits, but this one highlighted the key role played by how self-focussed a person is.

"It is the combination of sadness and self-focus that drives the effect, and it turns out that sadness leads to an increase in self-focus," said Cynthia Cryder, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the co-authors of the study.

"What we think is going on is that sad and self-focussed people are feeling pretty bad about themselves and have a decreased valuation of themselves. They want to enhance this valuation, and one way to do this is by acquiring material goods," she said.

Placing a higher value on those goods could be an attempt by the sad, self-focussed person to boost their self-esteem by transferring the value of the item to themself.

The big problem is, the purchase is often regretted later.

"A huge key to avoiding decision-effects like this is being aware that you're sad in the first place. But that's rather hard to do," Cryder said.

"Participants in studies such as ours usually have no idea that their feelings influence their decisions, so it's impossible to correct," she said.

"Secondly, always re-evaluate major purchases one day or one week after you make them so that you can make sure that whatever you bought is still attractive to you," Cryder said.

"That lowers the probability that you'll have an over-priced mistake due to some fleeting influence that you didn't know about and still don't know about. You just know, 'Wow... why did I pay so much for that?'"

Which World?

Drunk threatened city with TV remote

Thu Feb 7, 9:12 AM

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A drunken man's threat to blow up half a city with his television remote control forced Australian police to declare a state of emergency at a luxury golf resort, a local court heard Thursday.

Geoffrey Martin Fryatt, 57, a resident of the Fairways Golf and Lifestyle Retreat in Brisbane, was arrested by elite paramilitary police after terrifying neighbors with a knife and threatening to detonate a store of chemicals with the TV remote.

"One push of the button will blow up half of Brisbane," Fryatt shouted in the standoff last May before police in the Queensland state capital opened fire with rubber bullets.

Fryatt's lawyer told the Brisbane District Court that his client lost control after losing much of his life savings in a fraud carried out by his finance broker, local media said.

"People are genuinely scared of sudden explosions," the judge said, sentencing Fryatt to a year's probation. "Frightening members of the public with threats of bombs and bomb hoaxes has a much greater impact than it once did," she said.

Fryatt accepted probation, but said he was concerned it could interrupt plans to travel overseas to do humanitarian aid work, the Brisbane Times newspaper reported.

"Let's get you right before we send you off to a third world country," the judge said.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by David Fox)

The Habitual Practice of Debauchery

Egypt chaining HIV men to hospital beds: rights group

Wed Feb 6, 10:41 AM

CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian HIV-positive men are arrested, tortured and chained to hospital beds for 23 hours a day before facing unfair trials for alleged homosexuality, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

The New York-based watchdog documented a series of arrests after two men were detained in October during an altercation on a Cairo street and taken to the so-called Morality Police after one said he was HIV-positive.

The men, whom HRW did not identify, say they were slapped and beaten for refusing to sign statements the police wrote for them, handcuffed to a desk for four days and subjected to forensic anal examinations to "prove" their homosexual conduct.

Human Rights Watch said such examinations constitute torture and are medically spurious.

The two men are still chained to Cairo hospital beds for 23 hours a day pending a decision by prosecutors on whether to charge them with homosexuality, HRW said.

While homosexuality is not included in a list of sexual offences explicitly outlawed by Egypt's Islamic-inspired legislation, it can be punished under several different laws on morality.

Besides facing widespread public prejudice, Egyptian homosexuals have in the past been sentenced to up to five years in prison on charges ranging from "scorning religion" to "sexual practices contrary to Islam."

Police later arrested two more men whose details were on the original detainees' mobile phones, HRW said, adding a further four were arrested and charged with homosexual conduct.

The arrests were solely on the basis that the men were living in a property where one of the detainees had lived. The suspects were beaten, and deprived of food, water and blankets during the first days of their detention.

They were tested for HIV without their consent after which a public prosecutor told one of them, who tested positive, that "People like you should be burnt alive. You do not deserve to live," HRW said.

Four of the eight arrested were jailed for a year for the "habitual practice of debauchery," a term used to penalize consensual homosexual conduct in Egyptian law, on the basis of coerced and repudiated statements, HRW said.

In addition to the two still detained in hospital, the remaining two are in custody in a Cairo jail.

"The government should end arbitrary arrests based on HIV status and take steps to end prejudice and misinformation about HIV/AIDS," HRW said. "These shocking arrests and trials embody both ignorance and injustice."

"Egypt threatens not just its international reputation but its own population if it responds to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with prison terms instead of prevention and care." said HRW's Scott Long.

"These cases show Egyptian police acting on the dangerous belief that HIV is not a condition to be treated but a crime to be punished," Long said.

HRW slammed the alleged torture and called on authorities to end the practice of chaining detainees in hospital, and ensure that the men receive the highest available standard of medical care for any serious health conditions.

Egyptian authorities did not immediately respond to the allegations.

War & Childhood

US military in Iraq shows video of 'Al-Qaeda training children'

53 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq are training young children as gunmen and kidnappers, the US and Iraqi militaries alleged on Wednesday, releasing a video of masked and armed youngsters.

Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, a US military spokesman, said five videos showing children being trained by adult militants were seized in a December 4 raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda base in Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad.

"The operation was targeting two senior Al-Qaeda individuals. During the operation two were detained and three were killed," he said. AFP has no independent means to confirm the authenticity of the footage.

The videos released to reporters showed boys apparently as young as nine wearing balaclava masks and European football jerseys and brandishing pistols, machineguns and rocket launchers during a series of training exercises.

One scene shows the gang halting a civilian volunteer on a bicycle and submitting him to a mock kidnapping, holding a pistol to the base of his skull and pinning his hands behind his head.

The boys also practise halting a car and snatching its occupants, while in another scene, they run through an armed assault on a village house and storm out of a minibus brandishing weapons.

Smith said it did not appear that the apparent child militants had been kidnapped or press-ganged. He said investigations were continuing and none of the boys had been detained.

"As we watched the videos and watched the reaction with adults in the neighbourhood, it appears that it is a tribal series of families in which the adults are involved in training and it is their children," he said.

"It's just an assessment -- we don't have custody of those children."

In recent weeks, US and Iraqi spokesmen have raised new concerns over Al-Qaeda's alleged use of children and the mentally impaired in suicide bombings, which Smith called a "disturbing trend."

The second video, of much lower quality, showed the rescue by Iraqi forces of a 10-year-old boy kidnapped in the northern city of Kirkuk by militants who demanded a ransom of 1,000 dollars (680 euros) from his parents.

The footage showed the weeping child reunited with his delighted parents.

Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told the news conference that the videos were a "sign of desperation by Al-Qaeda" and claimed that children were trained to kidnap in order to raise funds from ransoms.

"This is a propaganda weapon designed to inspire emulation and recruit other children," he said. "Using children is disgusting."

Smith referred to two recent incidents in northern and western Iraq in which extremists sent 15-year-old boys to act as suicide bombers, and Askari said two attacks last week in Baghdad were unwittingly carried out by disabled women.

The Oeconomic Burden of Health

Smokers, the obese cheaper to treat than healthy, long-living people: study
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 5, 2008 | 9:34 AM ET
The Associated Press

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

"It [the finding] was a small surprise," said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. "But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more."

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers.

Van Baal and colleagues created a model to simulate lifetime health costs for three groups of 1,000 people: the "healthy-living" group (thin and non-smoking), obese people and smokers. The model relied on "cost of illness" data and disease prevalence in the Netherlands in 2003.

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived about 77 years, and obese people lived about 80 years. Smokers and obese people tended to have more heart disease than the healthy people.

Cancer incidence, except for lung cancer, was the same in all three groups. Obese people had the most diabetes, and healthy people had the most strokes. Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000 US, from age 20 on.

The cost of care for obese people was $371,000 US, and for smokers, about $326,000 US.

Obesity not as costly as once thought: study

The results counter the common perception that preventing obesity will save health systems worldwide millions of dollars.

"This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars," said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.

"If we're going to worry about the future of obesity, we should stop worrying about its financial impact," he said.

Obesity experts said that fighting the epidemic is about more than just saving money.

"The benefits of obesity prevention may not be seen immediately in terms of cost savings in tomorrow's budget, but there are long-term gains," said Neville Rigby, spokesman for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. "These are often immeasurable when it comes to people living longer and healthier lives."

The study, paid for by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, did not take into account other potential costs of obesity and smoking, such as lost economic productivity or social costs.

"We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity," van Baal said. "But they should do it for the right reasons."
© The Canadian Press, 2008

Historical Myths

Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll

Sun Feb 3, 7:22 PM

LONDON (AFP) - Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain's most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns' fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people.

Not Another Holocaust Comic

Germany launches comic book on Holocaust

Fri Feb 1, 10:44 AM

By Sarah Roberts

BERLIN (Reuters) - German schools will launch a comic book next week that aims to teach above all underprivileged children about the Nazi era and the Holocaust.

Although German schools already make a big effort to give pupils a thorough education about the Nazi era, racist violence remains a problem, and the revival of Germany's Jewish community has brought a rise in anti-Semitism with it.

The Tintin-style comic book is called "The Search," and tells the story of Esther, a fictional Jewish survivor of the Holocaust.

Created by the Dutch cartoonist Eric Heuvel, it is already available in the Netherlands. Berlin's Anne Frank Centre, which is backing the project, thinks it will serve a purpose in Germany, too.

"There is not a major gap in the way Germany teaches the history of this era, but this is a new approach," said spokeswoman Melina Feingold, noting that the book could reach some of the children who are least interested in schoolwork:

"We hope the comic will get even underprivileged kids interested in learning about the Holocaust."

The 61-page book, already available in various European languages, will be used alongside worksheets in history classes at secondary schools in Berlin for six months, after which the project hopes to go nationwide.

The book, based on fact, describes how Jews in Germany and the Nazi-occupied Netherlands experienced the genocidal Nazi persecution that took the lives of 6 million European Jews.

It includes the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938, when Jews were beaten and their homes, businesses and synagogues were ransacked and, later on, the deportations to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Through pictures and realistic dialogue, the book depicts the suffering and humiliation that Jews endured as they were stripped of their livelihoods, ostracized and, finally, sent to camps to be worked to death or gassed.

After five decades when it had only a handful of Jewish residents, Germany now has the world's fastest growing Jewish community, with 220,000 arriving from the former Soviet Union since 1990.

But violent anti-Semitic crime is also increasing. Last month, five Jewish teenagers were attacked by a group of punks and subjected to anti-Semitic abuse.

The new comic book is a sequel to Heuvel's "The Discovery," also aimed at school children, based on Jewish history in Europe from 1933 to 1940.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Illiteracy in Marketing

Shop pulls "Lolita" bed for young girls

2 hours, 53 minutes ago

LONDON (Reuters) - A chain of retail stores in Britain has withdrawn the sale of beds named Lolita and designed for six-year-old girls after furious parents pointed out that the name was synonymous with sexually active pre-teens.

Woolworths said staff who administer the web site selling the beds were not aware of the connection.

In "Lolita," a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator becomes sexually involved with his 12-year-old stepdaughter -- but Woolworths staff had not heard of the classic novel or two subsequent films based on it.

Hence they saw nothing wrong with advertising the Lolita Midsleeper Combi, a whitewashed wooden bed with pull-out desk and cupboard intended for girls aged about six until a concerned mother raised the alarm on a parenting website.

"What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either," a spokesman told British newspapers.

"We had to look it up on (online encyclopedia) Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now."

Woolworths said the product had now been dropped.

"Now this has been brought to our attention, the product has been removed from sale with immediate effect," the chain said.

"We will be talking to the supplier with regard to how the branding came about."

(Reporting by Peter Apps, editing by Paul Casciato)

Morbid Consumption

Coke bottle coffins, Made In Ghana

Wed Jan 30, 8:51 AM

ACCRA (AFP) - Michael Essien and Sulley Muntari aren't the only speciality products to be branded Made In Ghana, hosts of the 2008 African Nations Cup.

Take the coast road from downtown Accra, past the plush four star hotel where first round casualties Morocco set up home, and you come to the bustling suburb of Teshie.

Here, beside the 'Opel doctor' car repair shop, is a business that it's fair to say is unique in this world.

Climb up the rickety wooden stairs of Paa Joe Works and you enter a surreal world of bespoke coffins - but not just any old coffins.

Jostling for space in this most unusual of all showrooms are elaborately decorated burial caskets in the shape of an aeroplane, lion, cucumber, tomato, lobster, shoe, snake, a World War Two gun, a white Mercedes Benz, or Coke bottle.

"We have customers from all round the world. The idea is that you order a coffin to reflect what the person has done in their life," explains manager Emmanuel Doku.

"So the lobster could be for a fisherman, the cucumber for a grocer, the aeroplane for someone who has worked in the airline industry, or perhaps who used to fly a lot for his job."

"We had an order a while ago for a football for a 19-year-old local player," added the retired 66-year-old military officer and father of ten.

"We get orders from all over the world," added Doku, who used to play in midfield for Ghana's army team.

"These coffins are only made in Ghana. The tradition started back in the 1950s, now there are five workshops in Accra."

As Doku spoke, below him in the workshop an employee was chiselling away at a whale.

Asked about the most unusual design Doku's company has been commissioned to produce Doku, without a second's hesitation, said: "That's easy, it was back in 1992. A German doctor called us and ordered the womb of a woman."

To confirm the unusual request he then opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a small cardboard box containing a plastic model of the said body part sent by the good doctor as a guide.

Explaining how it all began Doku, who believes Ghana will win the Nations Cup title, said: "It was all started by a man called Ataa Owuo. When his grandmother died he realised that the old lady had never travelled before.

"So he made an aeroplane coffin to take her to heaven."