Review: US Government Supports Renewable Energy Systems.

Tittle of the Article: Here Comes The Sun Shower.

Author: Larry Hunter
Date of Publication: February 9, 2009
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/opinion/10hunter.html?ref=opinion


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The Obama Administration will launch a program to develop renewable enery sources. It is expected that the program will also create jobs at the same time that it will serve to limit pollution by the use of sun's energy for solar hot-water systems, which is nowadays a well developed and relatively low-tech method.This method is an alternative to the electricity generating solar panels and it is believed to be more effective than the later.

Hot water systems can create the same amount of useful energy with fewer panels than the electricity generating solar panels method. Another advantage of hot water systems is that the cost to install it, is cheeper in comparision to solar panels. The hot water system also works better than panles in areas where there are less hours of solar sunlight.This means that in places like the southwest where there are more hours of direct sunlight per day much more energy can be produced.All these benefits make the hot water system a more effective method than the solar panels which are almost useless in some places of the world.

Since January, the government of the US is helping the homeowners of these systems with 30% of the install system cost for both, hot water and solar panels systems. Beside of the differences betwen them, the basic idea of the program is to encourage society to use sustainable energy which has no side effects for our natural environment.

Review: Think of stress as something good.

Tittle of the Article: I love stress.
Author: Cath Janes
Date of Publication: Saturday 31, January 2009
Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jan/31/work-life-balance-stress-at-work



Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The article "I love stress" by Cath Janes deals with the wrong use that people makes of the word "stress". The truth is that there are more than 650 definitions of stress and even the most well-known specilaists don't know what it really means.

According to Cath Jnaes people perceive stress as a common way to interpret any feeling of anxiety everywhere. Stress is many times even perceived as a disease and sometimes, the problem is not so but a simple imposibility to cope with challenges in life. In other words, people confuse stress with lack of courage.

This doesn't mean that stress doesn't exist at all. It is real and in some occasions it can be really dangerous. Stress can easily be felt at workplace and turn up in a real disease, but what happens is that in most of the cases people just overeact when facing problems and exaggerate. It is then when people tend to assume that they are stressed.

An specialist on the field explains in the article that nowaday people tend not to assume that stress is an integral part of the workplace. It's something inevitable that goes hand in hand with work. If people assume stress like that it wouldn't be so much discussion about it.There are also specialists who belive that stress is not only common in workplace but also necessary since it forces people to their full potential.

Nowadays, there's a huge "stress industry" which supports the belief that stree should be erradicated from people's lives. People is encouraged to fight against stress, to assume that they are stress when they are not, and even to undergo medical treatments when it isn´t necessary.On the other hand, there are those who believe that stress makes people more resilient and helps to deal better with challenges of working life. According to the author of the article, this is the only way in which we should think about stress.

The less we ask, the less they learn.

I recently attended a meeting at my workplace in which my colleagues and I were given instructions as regarding the begining of classes and what the authorities of the school expects from us for the new year.
It really caught my attention what the headmistress ask to the literature teachers: "Don't insist on students reading Garcia Márquez or Borges, just ask them to read magazines". Inmediatly, a discussion begun between the headmistress and some of the teachers attending the meeting. They all argued about what students should or shouldn't be ask to do.
The truth is, as one of the literature teachers said, that there are objectives already planned by the Minister of Education of our province as well as content for each subject already decided, to which teachers should adjust as much as possible. It is supposed that those contents and objectives were carefully planned and are what students need to handle after leaving school. So, if we don't adjust, and teach whatever we want, we are not giving them the necesary elements, or what the system considers to be the necessary elements to develop in our society.
The headmistress seemed not to understood, or care about this, and continue arguing insisting on another truth: we cannnot demand students to read those kind of literature, before they learn to read. This demostrates the failure that our educational system is going trhough in which studenst arrive secondary school without having learn all the basic contents that they are suposed to learn previously. Nowadays we can easily find in our schools students of the higher courses of tehn secondary school who cannot read or spell words, or who have no reading comprehension skills at all.
Both sides were right. unfourtunatelly, anybody could reach to the conclusion of which is teh ebst way to dela with thi reality ( or theses realities). Towards the end of the meeting, the phsycopedagogue of the school said that the situation is such because students are every time asked to do less and less, and that maybe is time to start asking them to read what they are supose to read at secondary school, and try to revertwhat was done wrong in the past. we all left the meeting thinking of that words.....

Global Warming, Global Warning

I recently read an article about global warming and the lastest discoveries about the issue and I got really shocked about the fact then we have only 4 years left to save the planet. This was the declaration made by a climotologist of the United States who works for Nasa. This specialist has spent the last 20 years studying global warming and the green house effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions.
Another information that caught my attetion was that he was banned by the government authorities of the US and the UK in different oportunities for the declarations he made as regarding global warming. But now, he is not treated like that, but as the best specialist on climate change. What made the governments of UK, US and several other countries to consider him to be right on what he declares is the fact that it has been proved that he is telling the truth. It is truth what he predicts as it is truth what he said in the past.
The warnings of this man were listen by few people. And not so many countries joined with him in his fight against global warming. Now, we are suffering the consequencies of that. We are near the deadline, and just now we decided to listen. This is tipical of our kind, to listen to the truth and act when we are in real danger, near the end, insted of preventing.
We finally decided to listen to the ones who know about climate change, but this is only the very first step. What follows now is to act, and we should do that quickly.

Review: Global Warming, we should act quickly.

Tittle of the Article: We have only four years left to act on climate change - America has to lead.

Author: Robin Mckie.
Date of Publication: 18 January, 2009
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-climate-change

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

Jim Hansen, director of Nasa's Institute for Space Studies, is a distinguished climatologist who believes that the world's future generations are threatened by a global greenhouse catastrophe. As many other specialists on the field, Hansen points out the carbon dioxide emissions that derive from industry and transport as the main causes of the problem.
The US climatologist explained that the country new president, Barak Obama, has in his hands the last chance to save the world from the climate catastrophe. He says that humans have only four years left to save the world from melted sea caps, flooded cities, species extintion and spreading deserts.

The former president of the US, George Bush, didn't participate so much in the wolrd's attempts to stop carbon dioxide emissions, moreover, he didin't sing the Kyoto Climate Treaty. For Jim Hansen, Obama's first duty is to counteract the mistakes that the Bush administration did as regarding climate change in the past. He believes that the best option to start solving the problem of the carbon dioxide emissions will be a carbon tax, imposed to the world through political preassure. This will raise the prices of fuel across the world making the use ñless attractive.This should also be accompained with programs for bilding wind, solar and renewable energy plants.

The British administration banded Jim Hansen for the declarations he gave about climate change and the announcementshe gave on radio and TV warning the population about the issue. However, most of his reserches gave accurate information and now it is proved that he was right about climate change.

In 1998 he announced that global warming is to blame for the weather change and he persisted with this warning over time. In 2005, he confirmed that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and in this time the White House banned him because of that declaration.

Hansen has recently sent a letter to the actual goverment authorities of the US, Germany and the UK, countries which are responsible for most of the atmosphere carbon dioxide, asking them to join in the fight against of global warming, but unfortunately he is still waiting for an answer.

Review: Skateistan, a Park of Hope for Afghan Youth

Tittle af the Article: Skateboarding in Afghanistan Provides a Diversion From Desolation
Author: Adam B. Ellick
Date of Publication: January 25, 2009
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/sports/othersports/26skate.html?pagewanted=1

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

In the violent reality in which people live in Afghanistan, Oliver Percovich, a 34 years old skateboarder from Australia, tries to give youth a little bit of fun. In this country where war is an everyday reality, children find it very difficult to have the normal life a child deserves.

Violence, shootings and suicide bombers have become common aspects of their lives, taking into account that children in Afghanistan grow up among them.

Oliver Percovich has the will to open the first skateboarding school park of Afghanistan, which will offer Afghan youth an alternative to their violent and devastating reality.

Its important to recognize the will of Kabul authorities to approve Percovich's project although they didn't give him yet an official authorization.

For most of Afghanistan children, skateboarding will be their first sport. However more than offering them the chance to practise a sport and to have fun, Percovich's idea also has a democratizing sense. His school will try to "mend the nation's deep social and ethnic division". The skateboarding park will be open for children of all the country despite they social status and ethic origin. In this school children will have the posibility to share more time with other children of a different ethnicity as well as with children of a different economical position than their. The idea is to join Afghanistan youth under one single cause.

Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school age children in the world, according to the United Nations. For the vast majority of them, sports are virtually nonexistent and most public schools don't even have a playground. For Afghan children, a new positive environment is the best way to seek for a better future, and this is what Skateistan, the first skateboarding school of Afghanistan, will try to offer them.

Review: To Uploud Videos for You Tube Became a Job

Tittle of the Article: You Tube Videos Pull In Real Money

Author: Brian Stelter
Date of Publication: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/media/11youtube.html?hp


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

Filming videos and uplouding them for You Tube used to be just a pastime for web surffers, but to many of them it has already become a full time job.

You Tube, the online video site, invited members of the web page to become "partners" of the company.

These people are an example of the Internet's democratizing effect. Sites like Yuo Tube allow anyone with a high speed connection to find audience and clientele, simply by posting material and promoting it online.

The director of product management for YouTube explains how the partners program grew including nowaday thousands of participants who have turned their hobbies into business.

Some of the You Tube partners are major media companies such as Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and Warners Brothers. But individual users are now able to compete alongside with them. You Tube denied to give the exact number on how much money partners earn on average but a spokesmen from the company said that "hundred of partners are making thousands of dollars a month".

Review: Tea Not Longer Profitable In China

Tittle of the Article: A County In China Sees Its Fortune In Tea Leaves Until a Bubble Burst
Author: Andrew Jacobs
Date of Publication: January 16, 2009
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/world/asia/17tea.html


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The Southwest of China owns its prosperity to the production of green tea. It's brand of tea known as Pu'er enabled tea farmers and manufactures to become millionaries in the past. In recent yeras, the situation has changed dramatically due to the collapse of the tea market and as a result, thousands of Chinnese farmers became poor.

The few tea traders who survived the implosion of the Pu'er market admitted to be ruined. They explained that the rise and falls of the Pu'er market partly reflects the lack of investment opportunities that the government provides to the rural areas of the Southwest of China. They also affirmed that there's a concentration of cash in the big cities of the country.

The Southwest of China used to get crowded during the harvest and buyers came from all over the country to buy Pu'er tea. The prosperity encouraged producers to invest in the tea fields but after the crash of the market most were left with nothing but a valueless production of tea.
The fewer producers and farmers who survived the crash of the tea market hope the situation improves soon. There's an old belief in the southwest of china and that is that tea tastes better with age. For all those farmers who still have their production of tea in that area this is what gives them hope. They believe that al least they have a product that will be sold at a very high price, but only if the market reopens for them.

Review: Men And Women Change Roles Due To Recession

Tittle of the Article: As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men In Job Forces

Author: Catherine Rampell

Date of Publication: February 5, 2009

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/business/06women.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The recession that the US is experiencing in the post war era has left the country with more women employed that men, being the mayority of employers women for the first time in American history.

This is simple because women tend to be employed in areas which suffer less the ups and downs of the country's economy, such as education and health care. However, a study has revealed that women are less capable of being breadwinners. It is a fact that women have more permanent jobs than men but at the same time women also occupy the mayority of half time jobs with no health or unemployed insurance. These types of jobs have a lower salary than the average salary of men who generally work full time and in better conditions Even in full time jobs women are payed less than men.

Due to the recession women represent the 47.1 % of the work force in America and most people who loss their jobs were men. The problem is that despite women may be saffer in their jobs they find it very difficult to support a family.

To this situation women add the reality that they are also householders. They do most of the housework being employed or not. Husbands do lees work at home than wives, despite if they do have a job or not and this is the result of the way in which housework has been traditionally organized. And even if nowadays it is common for women to work outside home it is not so common for men to do the housework.

The recession the US is undergoing has put pressure on the roles of men and women and being more men unemployed than women has push husbands to help their wives with the house duty while women work outside.

Review: The Film Industry Vs. Internet Piracy

Tittle of the Article: Digital Pirates Winning Battle With Studios
Author: Brian Stelter and Brad Stone
Date of Publication: February 4, 2009
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/business/media/05piracy.html?em

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

On July 2008, the film "Batman, The Dark Knight" arrived in theatres. With its premier Warner Brothers plannned an ambitious antipiracy campaign. Unfortunately, the campaing failed and by the end of the year 2008 more than 7 million people had already illegaly downlouded the film from the Internet.

This clearly demostrated that Hollywood is lossing the battle against piracy and that whatever measure they take, Internet users always find the way to obtain film copies, even when the films are not yet found in DVD. The online film piracy ends up then being a growing problem, contrary to what the film industry expected.

Specialists affirmed that for Internet users is quite easy to find an illegal copy of almost any film on the Net, which are in most of the cases free copies. The illegal copies can be dowlowded using computer programmes that anyone can have and install on their PC. As it is suggested in the article, the conclusion is that "anyone can find free copies of movies still in theatres, in a matter of minutes".

The problem when attacking illegal piracy is that many of the sites that allow free downloud of films and music are locatted in countries which have a low piracy control and are then, hard to monitor.

The result in what respects to the film industry is devastating. The Picture Association Of America has admitted that "illegal downloads are now responsible for about 40% of the revenue the film industry losses anually as a result of piracy". With this data, film producers have no other option that to admit that they are not able to win the battle against piracy whithout a bigger support from part of th Justice. Most part of the film industry declared that to have better laws in relation to the crime of Internet piracy will help them a lot.

Organic Food: Good For You And For the Earth

It is widely known that the quality of the food produced through agriculture has gone down due to the effects of pesticides and hormones that farmers use in their fields. The mass competition related to the production of food has obliged them to do everything they can to obtain bigger amounts of crops per year.And to counteract the effects of plagues a wide variaty of quimicals are being used. All these measures causes changes in the natural balance of the products. And the result, is a product full of hormones and quimicals, and less vitamines and nutrients.
On the other hand, there is a big group of farmers who choose to produce organic products. These means that they grow crops without additives of any kind, that’s why those products are called organic. These are products that consumers can eat in their natural state, without risking their health.
The big problem around organic food, is the cost of it. Since it is food of higher quality, the fields are fewer in comparision to conventional products, as well as the mount of consumers of them. The result of these is a high cost in a product difficult to find.
The benefits of organic food are widely known. The only last thing to do about it is to support it producers. If we all change our diets, little by little to a helthier one, we will be impoving our helath and life as well as supporting small producers who have the intention to offer consumers a healthy product.
Whats more, it has also been proved that the growing of organic food has less environmental side effects than the growing of convemntioanl food, since the fields are not treated with quimicals that polluted the earth. This is for me, another important reason to support the growing and the consumption of organic food.

Review: Experiment proved the benefits of Organic Food

Tittle of the Article: For Three Years, Every Bite Organic

Author: Tara Parker-Pope
Date of Publication: December 1, 2008
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/health/02well.html


Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The pedriatician and author Dr. Alan Greene conducted an experiment on himself in an attempt to prove if people can be 100 percent organic. He devoted 3 years of his life to incorporate organic food into the everyday living.

The experiment lasted 3 years because that is the amount of time it takes to have a breeding animal certifictaed organic by the Department of Agriculture.

Among the challenges that the experiment represented for Dr. Greene, to find organic food to eat was the most difficult one. Sometimes he dind't find organic food at all.

Dr. Greene experiment offered a new insight into the organic food industry. One of his most important discoveries was the fact that consumers can pay twice as much for organic food as for conventional products and to cut back the cost of an organic diet Dr. Greene said that consumers have to cut back on meat.

Dr. Greene took the experiment after wondering if becoming 100 percent organic might improve his own health. Three years later he says he has more energy and wakes up earlier, and he's rarely ill. All these benefits are proved to be the result of having eaten more vitamins and nutrients.

Alongside with his experiment, he proposed a consciuos rise about what organic food means, since he also discovered that few people know about it. In simple words, he explained that organic food means without pesticides, antibiotics or hormones.

What we should know about Assisted Suicide

Assisted Suicide is a complicated issue for law around the world and it has provoke a hot debate everywhere. In some countries, Assisted Suicide laws are clear but in others the law does not provide a clear message about it. This causes confusion, especially in the countries where the criminal code is not defined around the topic.

People tend to think that each person has the right and freedom to decide on a suicide or an assited suicide, and this is the reason why it occurs, even in those countries where it is forbidden. In most cases of Assisted Suicide, the people who help another one to die end in deep trouble with the law, but whichever the resolution that the law apply to them will depend on the country where the event takes place.

Although there are place where Assisted Suicide is legal, this doesn’t mean that anyone can committed. Firts of all, it is important to remember that Assisted Suicide is the process by which an individual is provided with the means (drugs or equipment) to commit suicide, because he or she is incapable of doing it. And this definition clearly shows a distinction between the case of an assited death and that of a simply suicide, the former being sometimes permitted and the later being completely forbiden by the law. Assisted suicide is then allowed in some places such as the Netherlands, Swistzerland and some states of the US, but only under strict criteria. And the procedure involves many doctors that should agree in the decision together with the patient, and some witnesses. In some cases the procedure does not succed and it has some complications for the pacient, for what the people involved in it previously sign a sort of contract where the details as regarding their responsibility is specified.

The most traumatic consequence of an Assisted Suicide that does not succed is when the result of the procedure does not end in the death of the patient but it puts he or she under coma. In such a case, the doctors and the relatives of the patient can still decide to provided him or her with Euthanasia. This term refers to suicide which is performed by people other than the patient and which does not involve the choice of the patient.

Review: A topic for Debate: The Right to Die

Title of the Article: TV Broadcast of an Assited Suicide Intensifies a Contentious Debate in Britain.
Author: Sarah Lyall
Date of Publication: December 11, 2008
Source: The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/world/europe/11suicide.html?ref=world

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela

Assisted suicide is illegal in most of the world’s countries. However, the practise of it increase year after year. New cases are revelead every year which encourage people with fatal diseases to think of assisted suicide as an option to end the suffering.
As the article explains “it’s illegal in Britain to aid, abet, cousel ar procure suicide.” Dispite of what the law says, there has recently been in case of assited suicide in London, which caused a great deal of debate. A man almost completely incapacitated by motor neuron disease decided to kill himself. He was help to do so by his own wife, who took him to Dignitas Clinic, a Swiss clinic famouse for offering this kind of service.
It is believed that almost 100 Britons have already committed suicide in Dignitas Clinic. In it, the man took a fatal mixture of barbiture. He also allowed the cameras to film his last moments which was later on broadcasted on Sky Television as a film called ‘Right to Die?’
This case “throw a bomb into an already contentious debate”. Britain’s director of public prosecutions announced that he would not charged this man’s wife, as he did not charge other people also involved in cases of Assited Suicide. His decision is based basically on the fact that cases of Assited Suicide have often provoked police investigation in Britain but they never end in prosecutions, and people are rarely send to jail. Because of this, it’s strongly believed that law is simply not working.
Oregon, Washington State, Switzerland and the Netherlands are the only places that allow Assited Suicide and only according to strict criteria. In the rest of the world, as in Britain, people who are suffering a fatal medical condition or paralysis are forced to go abroad to die because they have no other option.
The law against Assisted Suicide is supported in Britain on the belief that “it is necessary to ensure that there’s never a case in the country where a sick or elderly person feels under pressure to agree to an assited death”. Unfourtunately, to those who are in that condition, reality is quite the opposite and in most of the cases they really feel that Assited Suicide is the expecting thing to do.

The Tree of Life

The tree of life is a mystical concept used in most of the world’s theologies, mythologies and philosophies. This symbol has also been used in science and other areas. Various trees of life are recounted in the folklore and culture of many civilizations, often related to immortality or fertility. They had their origin in religious symbolism.
In Egyptian mythology, for example, the first couple are Isis and Osiris. They were said to have emerged from the acacia tree of Saosis, which the Egyptians considered the tree of life, referring to it as the "tree in which life and death are enclosed".
In the Hebrew Bible and within Christianity, the Tree of Life is mentioned in the Book of Genesis, in which it has the potential to grant immortality to Adam and Eve. It can be found in proverbs where it's a simile for a blessing. The Tree of Life, in the form of ten interconnected nodes, is also an important part of the Kabbalah.
Among pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, the concept of "world trees", extremely related to that of the tree of life, is a prevalent motif in Mesoamerican mythical cosmologies and iconography. World trees embodied the four cardinal directions, which represented a symbolic connection between the Underworld, the sky and the terrestrial world. Depictions of world trees are found in the art and mythological traditions of cultures such as the Maya and the Aztec. Among the Maya, the central world tree was conceived as or represented by a ceiba tree.It is supposed that Mesoamerican sites and ceremonial centers frequently had actual trees planted at each of the four cardinal directions, representing the quadripartite concept.

In Chinese mythology a carving of a Tree of Life depicts a phoenix and a dragon. In Chinese mythology the dragon often represents immortality. There is also the Taoist story of a tree that produces a peach every three thousand years. The one who eats the fruit receives immortality.

I choose

I choose reggae because it inspires and brings calm. It touches your soul whenever you hear it. It makes you slow down. This is how I feel it. You stop your rhythym and get somewhere finally. And you discover that you were not reaching anything since you were just running, and to run causes confusion. You may have believed that you were going to gain what you want faster, but you end up late for everything and without anything because you were lost. This is what you discover with reggae.

I choose reggae because it clears your mind. Its spiritual rhythym and its melodies are like chants with always overwhelming messages. They pull the trigger of your good thoughts and intentions and you start feeling in peace with you and the world. You feel happy and you feel like dancing despite you can be hearing it motionless. It fills you with dancing mood.

I choose reggae because it awakes and makes you be conscious. You commit to your cause when listening to it, because it shows you goods examples to follow. It brings you closer to a message of liberation that pushes you to act, and to never give up. You become doer, and your actions are done passionately. You start to value life and love, and to seek for a life of love.

I choose reggae because it transports you to a land of love, and it makes your actual land to become that land. Your space becomes pure and full of light. It takes you away and brings you closer at the same time. You make contact with the essential and simple marvellousness of the world.

To play drums

It’s not easy to describe how is to play drums. You feel many sensations runing down your body and there is a lot of movement going on. Your head beats as if to tell you when to hit the drums and your arms move as you are always beating, although you are not. You feel deaf of everything behing the sounds of the hits. The drum is an intrument that shuts up every other sound, except the ones that sound in harmony with it.
The beats are consistent but there’s always a minimal variation between each of them. However they always fill the air since they are perceived as the thick smell of yellow flowers floating on water. Each part seems like yellow flowers floating on water. Like little japanese trees growing in the middle of the wet bamboo jungle. As you play the drums the sound comes alive and the jungle comes alive.
Each part of you is connected with the drums, like energy constantly in contact with you and the instrument. And a high amount of coordination is requiered. This is not difficult to gain, it is just a matter of practise. What is really difficult is the tension of the beat. Sometimes you have to hold it, and others you have to pre-released it, and whichever is the case, it should always be done with perfect groovy.
To play the drums is great. It’s like connecting yourself with what exists behind a song. It is like getting in it from outside to inside, and like coming out from inside it to the outside world. Is like going inside you and outside your head at the same time.

Review: Cloning could save animals from extinction.

Tittle of the Article: The Big Question: Will scientists ever be able to resurrect long-extinct animals by cloning?
Author: Steve Connor.

Date of Publication: Wednesday, 5 November 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-big-question-will-scientists-ever-be-able-to-resurrect-longextinct-animals-by-cloning-992019.html

Gabriela Garcia fernandez.

Scientists in Japan have refined a cloning technique that has enabled them to clone mice from the frozen corpse of a mouse that had been kept in a freezer for 16 years at a temperature of -20C. The team was led by Teruhiko Wakayama of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan. The scientists believe that it might be possible in the future to use the same techniques to clone creatures from the frozen tissue of animals found buried, for example, the frozen corpses of mammoths.
This is not the first time that scientists have produced clones from dead animals. In fact Dolly herself was cloned from a sheep that had died long before. Scientists took tissue from a dead sheep and carefully frozen it using special chemicals called "cryopreservatives". These prevent the formation of damaging ice crystals inside the cells. Dolly was therefore the clone of a frozen animal that had died many years before she was born.
Wakayama and his colleagues pointout that all clones so far produced from dead animals have been created from quick-frozen tissue that has been meticulously kept at very cold temperatures without thawing, using cryopreservation. Scientists declared that this is not possible with dead animals frozen in natural conditions, the cells of tissue will presumably bind strongly to each other and freeze gradually after death due to the large body size. It remains to be shown whether nuclei can be collected from the bodies frozen without cryoprotectants, and whether they will be viable for use in cloning. Scientists have tried with some success to extract DNA from various extinct mammals, such as mammoths and the Tasmanian tiger, but cloning implies a whole set of problems. The first concerns the difficulty of extracting cells with perfectly preserved DNA, since it degrades over time. Corpses frozen for several thousand years are likely to have suffered repeated thawing and freezing that will damage both the cells and their DNA. Another problem is trying to find suitable non-extinct animals to act as surrogate egg donors and mothers.
Some scientists are suggesting this as a last measure to safeguard threatened animals that are difficult to breed in captivity. However, cloning is never going to be the panacea to the threat of extinction. The biggest problems faced by threatened animals are habitat loss, human encroachment on their territories, hunting and climate change. Cloning animals on the verge of extinction could helpspecies to hang on in zoos and parks, but it does little to generate the genetic diversity that is so important for the long-term survival of species. It also does nothing to address the root causes of extinction.

Review: Deforestation increases Global Warming

ittle of the article: Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming
Author: Daniel Howden
Date of Publication: Monday, 14 May 2007

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/deforestation-the-hidden-cause-of-global-warming-448734.html

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez.

The Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of rainforest scientists, recognized that the accelerating destruction of the rainforests around the Earth's equator, is one of the main causes of climate change. The GCP showed deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total. Researches from 2003 proved that two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation, destruction which amounts to 50 million acres. The remaining standing forest is calculated to contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon, or double what is already in the atmosphere. Scientists believe that putting a price on the carbon these vital forests contain is the only way to slow their destruction.
Reducing those catastrophic emissions can be achieved most quickly and most cheaply by halting the destruction in Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere. Indonesia became the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world last week. Following close behind is Brazil. Neither nation has heavy industry, yet they comfortably outstrip all other countries, except the United States and China. Both countries have tropical forest that is being cut and burned. Smoke stacks visible from space climb into the sky above both countries, while satellite images capture similar destruction from the Congo.
No new technology is needed to reduce deforestation, says the GCP, just the political will and a system of incentives that makes the trees worth more to governments and individuals than the cutting of them. Most people think of forests only in terms of the CO2 they absorb. The rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia are thought of as the lungs of the planet. But the destruction of those forests will in the next four years pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025.
Unfortunately, he problem behind deforestation was not included in the original Kyoto protocols. Many reports agreed that forests offer the "single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions". More than 50 per cent of the life on Earth is in tropical forests, which cover less than 7 per cent of the planet's surface. They generate the bulk of rainfall worldwide, function as a coolind band and act as a thermostat for the Earth. Forests are also home to 1.6 billion of the world's poorest people who rely on them for subsistence. However, forest experts say governments continue to pursue science fiction solutions to the coming climate catastrophe, preferring bio-fuel subsidies, carbon capture schemes and next-generation power stations.

To Tucumán

Tucumán, your pure pure sky has sweet air
that smells as cane and sun.
In the seas of cane your sun-tanned men
their machetes work hard.
Tucumán, your valleys are deep and wide
full of cardones and full of ruins
archeological sites, home of Quilmes
and the sweetest wine.
Tucumán, your people are small but strong
of Diaguita heritage.
They work hard from dawn to dusk
in the hot daily routine as summer starts.
Tucumán, your history sculptured freedom
and the sounds of the inmortal hymn.
You held the shouts of Independence
on a winter the 9th of July, 1816.
Tucumán, you seem to be forgetting all these
be proud! be brave! and value yourself Tucumán!
Don't pollute your air and don't thorn your valleys
stop your people and the people from outside.
Make them stand before your history and be
overwhelmed with that.
Tucumán, you are not late.
It's time to raise and be a garden
the paradise of our country
the heart beating in the middle of this land.