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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Review: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland against GM crops

Tittle of the Article: Celtic revolt against Westminster over GM crops
Author: Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Date of Publication: Sunday, 28 September 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/celtic-revolt-against-westminster-over-gm-crops-944768.html

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

Ministers have launched a new campaign to plant GM crops in Britain. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments have declared themselves opposed to any modified crops in their territory, setting the scene for a confrontation with Westminster.
For years, London Ministers have voted consistently in the EU to allow the sale of modified food and animal feeds throughout Europe, giving Britain the strongest pro-GM record in the union. However, no GM crops have yet been cultivated commercially in Britain thanks to public hostility and trials which found that growing them harmed wildlife.
According to Ian Pearson, the science minister of Britain, a “significant majority of Britons will want to choose GM” once they learned of its advantages. He strongly believes that “there are benefits to the consumer of adopting GM technologies”. The three other governments of the UK reject Britain Ministers’ new campaign. Wales restated a long-standing policy of taking "the most restrictive approach to GM crop cultivation" and Northern Ireland signalled that it would join with the Irish Republic to keep the technology out of the entire island. But the toughest opposition of all is being mounted by Scotland, where the first minister, Alex Salmond, has himself stressed his rejection of modified crops. The Prime Miniser is supported by Scotland’s environment minister, Michael Russell. He declared that they are simply “not interested in GM cultivation”.
Mr Russell is planning to form a united front with Wales and Northern Ireland. He said that “there is a unanimity of view” among the three governments regarding the GM crop issue. And more important is the fact that he is working on a counter-strike against Westminster. The Prime Minister of Scotland is supporting his view denouncing that it is wrong that UK ministers take this position on half of the country while the other three governments hold an opposite view. In this way Britain’s Ministers are failing to represent both strands of opinion at the European level, what is expected to be the case.

Review: Call Centres threaten India's fight against HIV

Title of the article: Call centre Romeos threaten India's fight against Aids
Author: Andrew Buncombe in Delhi.
Date of publication:Sunday, 28 September 2008
Source:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/call-centre-romeos-threaten-indias-fight-against-aids-944775.html

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

In recent years, telephone call centres have emerged as a symbol of the new, modernised India. As they spread all over the country, so do the opportunities for casual sex afforded by working overnight in the cramped conditions of many call centres. Most of the workers there are educated, English-speaking young people, but many of them have little education about the danger of Aids and the way the HIV virus is spread
The UN estimates that up to 2.5 million people in India are infected with HIV or have Aids. It is unknown how many of the country's estimated 1.3 million call centre workers are infected, but anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing numbers are leaving themselves open to infection. Dr Suniti Solomon, who runs an Aids clinic in the southern city of Chennai said three or four call centre workers visited her clinic every week to be tested for HIV, because they were concerned after having unprotected sex.
To cope with the problem condom dispensers are to be installed in call centres, alongside the machines for coffee and snacks. These will be acompained by Aids prevention campaigns.
Many sections of society in India reacted against these meassures. One female call centre worker complained that condom machines would damage the reputation of the centres and make parents more reluctant to let their daughters take jobs in them. This proves how conservative attitudes still dominate Indian society and the problem is that these attitudes are hampering the fight against Aids.
With a society which seems not to accept the pass of time, and a disease which spreads faster than medical researches, India seems to be stucked in its fight againts HIV.

Review: China Cannot Stop Smoking

Review: China Cannot Stop Smoking
Tittle of the Article: New Antismoking Signs are almost Visible through the Haze
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/asia/23smoking.html?ref=world
Author: ANDREW JACOBS
Date of Publication: July 23, 2008

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

In China, where one in four people smoke, a decade of public campaigns against tobacco have gain very little succes. The most recognisible achivemnet in this fight is the ban against cigarrettes in school, railway stations and other public places, in Beijing due to the Olympic Games. Furthermore, Chinese athletes were not permitted to accept tobacco company sponsorship and cigarrettes advertising on billboards were restricted.
About 350 million of China’s 1.3 billion people are regular smokers, and eventhough 1.2 million people die each year from smoking-related causes, there is some widespread belife that cigarrettes hold some health benefits. Unlike cigarrettes in much of the world, Chinese brands carry no health warning on labels.
“Cigarrettes have an extra value in China that helps improve many social interactions”, said Tang Weidrang, a researcher at the China Tobacco Museum in Shangai, a pro-smoking institution finaced by China’s Tobacco Industry. We have to take into account that the nation’s lukeswarm efforts to curb smoking are complicated by the government’s control over the tobacco industry, which provides about $31 billion in taxes each year, about a 8% of the governmet’s revenue. China produces a third of the world’s tobacco. Zhang Baazhen, a vice director of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, warned that “without cigarrettes the country’s stability will be affected”.
Early this year, Beijing announced a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, but the proposal quickly died. It does not help that cigarrettes are extremely cheap. Along with all the little succes in fighting against smoking, Chinese people have started to assumed that more than addicted they are dependant on cigarretes, and so does China’s government in supporting smoking as it does.

Review: The Peaceful Pill Handbook

Title of the article: In Tijuana, a Market for Death in a Bottle
Source: The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/world/americas/21tijuana.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=7a39725c70e25908&ex=1216958400
Date of Publication: July 21, 2008
Author: MARC LACEY.

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

It would be rather difficult to believe that you can find advices of how to commit suicide in a book, but it is true. “The Peaceful Pill Handbook” by Phillip Nitschke, is a book that lays out methods to end one’s life. Its author is the founder of Exit International, an Australian group that helps people who want to end their lives. It is banned in Australia and in New Zeeland. Anyway, its advices have already “helped” many people to committe suicide.
One of the book’s most popular advices is to buy Mexican Pentobarbital, a barbiturate commonly known as Nembutal. The drug, literally takes a person’s breath away and it can kill by putting people to sleep. It is tightly regulated in most countries but in Mexico, the drug is “readily available” says P. Nietschke in his book.
It is no surprising how easy is to buy the drug in Mexico, if we take into account that it is a country which has a huge problem of contraband. It is presicely in Tijuana pets' shops where Nembutal can be bought in small bottles of its concentrated liquid form. Once widely available as a sleep aid, this drug is now used mostly to anesthetize animals for surgery and to euthanize them.
Considered as “the most trouble-free and painless form of suicide” by P.Nitschke, Nembutal goes in brand names like Sedal-Vet, Sedalphorte and Barbithal. People who buy the drug are known as “death tourists”. They visit the veterinary pharmacies in Tijuana, Mexico, paying as little as 30 dollars for a dose. Some of them show the shops’ owners one of the many photos of bottles of Nembutal provided in Mr. Nitschke’s book. And although pet shops owners acknowledge that foreigners regularly inquire about the drug, they assumed “the customers were using it to end the lives of their animals”.
This situation changed after an article published by “El Norte”, a regional newspaper, detailed how easy was to buy pentobarbital and how foreigners intended to use it. Consequently, local authorities are seeking to clamp down on unauthorized purchases and shops are now supposed to sell the drug only to licensed veterinarians who present a prescription.
A second step to solve this problem, should be, in my opinion to reconsider Mr. Nitschke’s book as a threat to people willing to die. The book not only offers advices of the best ways to commit suicide but it also tells people where to buy the drugs to do it. This is totally inmoral and it may also be considered a crime, taking into that what Mr. Nitschke is doing is a form of “assisted suicide”, which is illegal in many countries.

Review: What Play Means for Children.

Title of the article: The Importance of Play
Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/family/article_2742.shtml
Author: Judy Hansen
Date of Publication: May, 2008.

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

Most people may think that children play because they are bored, but to play is much more than that. Jude Hasen explains in the article “The Importance of Play” the role that this activity has for children and how play becomes a door to the world for them. For this author, when children play, they are immersed in a world of wonder, exploration and adventure, which gives children the opportunity to learn and experience things themselves. Taking into account her explanation, there’s no doubt that play is vital then, for children’s development.
As any important activity in human life, to play has different stages: the first one during toddler hood, the second stage when children are preschoolers and the third stage during children’s school age. Each stage is adjusted to each age capacities and abilities, and each one adds important experiences to children’s life and development.
What is more amazing than the stages of play, is the fact that play “benefits the child in ways that might be difficult for adults to imagine” as J. Hasen states in the article. To support this opinion, the author explains the most relevant benefits that play has in children’s life. First of all, play brings joy. Apart from that, it “fosters socio-emotional learning” because when playing children display their independence in the decision to embark in play activities. On the other hand, play “hones physical and motor development” since it involves the uses of the sense and the body.
As important as those benefits, is the fact that to play “facilitates cognitive learning”. It is vital to the intellectual development of a child. To play “enhances language development”, “encourage creativity” and “provides bonding experiences”. Taking into account all these benefits explained in the article, it is clear that play is a very important factor in children’s life.
But what is the importance then, in getting to know what play means for children? First of all, to know this, may encourage parents to support their children’s playtime. If parents get to understand play as an extremely beneficial activity for their children, their view over this activity will always be positive, leading to parent’s support to it. And this support is no other thing that a great contribution, and the best contribution, that parents could do to their children life and development.

Review: The Great Ape Project.

Title of the article: When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans
Source: The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/weekinreview/13mcneil.html?pagewanted=1

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

The environment committee of the Spanish Parliament is discussing a new bill which aims to grant limited rights to apes, since they are considered our biological relatives. The discussion is based on The Great Ape Project, which takes into account apes’ human qualities such as to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use language, remember the past and plan the future. The directors of the project are the Princeton ethicist, Peter Singer and the Italian philosopher, Paola Cavalieri, for whom apes are part of a community of equals with humans. If the bill is passed, it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes and torture them, and arbitrary imprisonment would been forbidden. Apes in Spain zoos would not be freed but they would receive better care.
The big question under this project arises when deciding which humans’ rights an ape should be offered. To answer this, Mr. Singer explained that the DNA of a chimpanzee is 95% to 98.7 the same as that of humans. And he demanded in his project only rights that he felt all humans were usually offered, like freedom from torture. Under this project’s point of view, Apes’ status would be akin to that of children.
Lots of debates arise after this project was presented in the Spanish Parliament. While people who protect animals feel that “it is a great start to breaking down the species barrier”, scientists would like to keep using chimpanzees to study AIDS virus. On the other hand, Spanish Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals.
The article’s author states his point of view discussing what he considers the basic human right: not to be killed for food. Cannibalism is forbidden to laws of all countries. If we take into account the slide difference between a chimpanzee’s DNA and our, killing them for food as it occurs in Africa, for example, would be a crime, even without The Great Ape Project coming into force.
To conclude, all this matter can simply be seen as all great struggles separating man from beast. In the end, we have to consider that animals cannot protect themselves against humans and that’s what enables us with such superiority over them. That we reconsider our position over animals and that we treat them as equals will remain in my opinion, as something remote, even if the Ape Project is voted by the Spanish Parliament.

Review: A new discovery around HIV

Review: A new discovery around HIV

Title of the article: “Gene Variation May Rise Risk of HIV”
Source: The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/science/17hiv.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Date of Publication: July 17, 2008
Author: NICHOLAS WADE

Garcia Fernandez, Gabriela.

This review is based on an article by Nicholas Wade from the New York Times, which explains the new conclusions reached by scientists in relation to HIV/AIDS. The article is based on a new discovery around the HIV virus found by a group of researchers from Texas and London. The discovery is expected to offer an important insight into the biology of the virus.
According to the article, a genetic variation that once protected people in sub-Saharan Africa from a now extinct form of Malaria may have left them more vulnerable to HIV. This would explain why AIDS is more common there than expected. The genetic variation has been studied in the US, where African-Americans who carried the variation were 50% more likely to acquire HIV than African-Americans who did not.
The geneticist David Goldstein said that “if the new results are comfirmed, it would mean that selection for resistance to Malaria has created a vulnerability to infection with HIV”. The genetic variation involves a change in one unit of DNA. As a consequence of this, red blood cells fail on inserting a certain protein on their surface. This protein is a receptor which receives signals from a hormone known as CCL5, part of the immune system’s regulatory system. The receptor was also used by a Malaria parasite to gain entrance to the red blood cells. More than 90% of people in Africa now lack the receptor on their red blood cells, as do about a 60% of African-Americans.
The Texas-London research team is not certain how lack of the receptor promotes HIV infection, but Dr. Ahuja, who wrote the report, said that “the blood cells act like a sponge for the hormone CCL5”. Because CCL5 is known to obstruct multiplications of the virus, having lots of the hormone in the bloodstream may prevent the infection. Conversely, people whose blood cannot soak up the hormone could be more vulnerable.
Dr. Weiss contribution to the research was the fact that the red blood cell receptor was similar to another receptor, the CCR5. This one occurs on the surface of the white blood cells, which are HIV’s mayor target. A small percentage of Europeans have a mutation that prevents CCR5 receptor from being displayed on the surface of white blood cells, and they are protected against HIV. The absence of the two receptors has the opposite effect: vulnerability to HIV, when the red cell receptor is missing, protection from it, when the white cell receptor is withdrawn.
As it’s often the case with provocative new findings, the researchers may have some way to go before convincing others that their observation is correct. From the time being, this new discovery offers a new possibility to the understanding of the virus, and some answers to the questions that arise around this terrible disease.