Water shortage in US: What else do you need?

US is facing a major threat in water shortage. Scientists say that it is an imminent fact that they will not have enough water supplies for al its inhabitants. The truth is that the Great Lakes are shrinking and the mountains are melting down, which means that freshwater will not be sufficient.
The US needs urgent measures, mainly based in recycling, and conservation of water resources. The problem is that they are not quite serious about this issue.
"The last century was the century of water engineering. The next century is going to have to be the century of water efficiency." said Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, I think it will be difficult to change the mind of a country which has such high rates of contamination, pullution, and wastes.
It is incredible even for an imaginative person, to reflect on the amount of water that it is wasted every year in the United States. Hundreds of billions of treated water are dumped to the Atlantic through pipes, instead us reusing it to irrigate their soil.
Although, all over the world , we have similar examples of water shortage, that is why we all have to be careful with freshwater usage. We have to think not only about ourselves but about the future generations. We cannot be as reckless as to think that water shortage is not our problem. Water shortage is a world’s problem as well as every environmental failure that our lifestyle may provoke.

Name: Patricia Romano
Title: U.S. Could See a Water Shortage
Date: Friday, Oct. 26, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1677007,00.html

Today’s taboo: Co-sleeping with your child

In most countries, sleeping next to your child is a neccesity, but in the West, the practice is highly disapproved. The problem is that many studies have shown that it is quite common nowadays.
When asked about sleeping habits, parents will not accept that their children sleep with them. This is seen as an unhealthy custom. However, a study conducted in Britain using infrared cameras, showed that children may start sleeping on their own, but at some point during night, they go to sleep with their parents.
When I was pregnant, I became addicted to reading magazines specialized in parenthood. Thanks to those magazines, I understood beforehand, that sleeping in the same bed with my baby would be quite dangerous for him. The first two months he slept in a bassinet beside my bed. I made sure that when he woke up in the middle of the night, after feeding him, he went back to his place. After this time, since my house was like a small apartment, he started sleeping in the kitchen in a travel bassinet (it was easily dismantled). When he was eight months old, he had his own bedroom on the other side of the house. He may have come to my bed 20 times in 7 years, more due to my wishes than his willingness. In fact, sometimes I want him to stay with me at siesta time, and he is reluctant to. He prefers sleeping in his own bed, away from us.
In a paper in Infant and child Development, Dr. Kathleen Dyer, an assistant professor of child, family and consumer sciences at California State University, Fresno, proposed that co-sleeping families can be divided into three categories: Intentional co-sleepers, reactive co-sleepers, and circumstantial co-sleepers. The first group is constituded by those who want to sleep with their children, the second, by those who do not want to sleep with their children, but the necessity obliges them, and the third by those who sleep with their children only ocassionaly because they are on holidays or a relative is staying at home leaving no beds left.
Either way, it is seen as a taboo nowadays to accept that you sleep with your children. Moreover, some parents who publicly recognize it, generally start and finish their stories by saying “I don’t know what can I do to change this situation,” when in fact they do not truly wish it. In today’s families, the main issue is not the child’s dependance on parents, but the parents’ inability to be independent from their children. This is clearly shown in these cases where parents still co-sleep with their children.

Name: Patricia Romano

Title: Shhh...My Child Is Sleeping (in My Bed, Um, With Me)
Date: October 23, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/health/23well.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=610ece6cab261445&ex=1193630400

Birth order differences: Not only on my mind

I have always thought that being an outcast in my house was my parents’ fault. Everything was based on their preferences. They preferred their oldest son, because he was the first born child, the youngest, because he was always seen as a baby, and I was the middle forgotten child. When I was a teenager, I used to have many arguments with my older brother. My younger brother on the contrary, was all the time trying to do exactly the same as the eldest and me. The three of us used to complain about being treated differently. The oldest would argue that my parents’ were too strict with him, I would argue that they did not let me go out with my friends as much as my older brother, and the youngest would say that he never wore new clothes as much as his siblings. Since ancestral times, sibling relationships have been marked by human idiosyncracy. These differences were originally attributed to a simple matter of preferences on behalf of parents. However, due to thorough research, it has been discovered that birth order is a crutial factor in each person’s possibilities to stand out.
There are many examples in history which show the contrast between first-born children and their succeeding siblings. We could name Teddy and Elliot Roosevelt, the former being a well-known writer and president of the United States of America, and the latter dying of alcoholism without anything important to be remembered for. Of course, this was not the only case. There were Richard and Donald Nixon, Bill and Roger Clinton, and George and Neil Bush. Being the younger brothers in the preceeding samples charged with a variety of crimes.
A group of Norwegian researchers, released a study which shows that firstborns are generally smarter than their siblings, enjoying on average a three-point IQ advantage over the next eldest. The second child, in turn, is a point ahead of the third. Sometimes I feel that this is true. My Older brother seems to be smarter than me in some aspects, but I am definitely smarter than my younger brother in some others. Anyway, even when this has been cientifically proved, I have my doubts, because I am the only prospective proffessional among the three of us.
Studies in the Phillipines, show that later born siblings tend to be shorter, weight less and have less possibilities of being immunized. I have to argue again, because in my family, my younger brother is taller than me, and I am fatter than my older brother.
Even in nature these differences are substancial. That is the case of egrets, which lay many eggs but only raise with extreme carefulness the first two or three chicks. Moreover, orange trees carry about 100.000 pollinated blossoms, but only 500 will successfully become oranges. In nature, feelings are not involved as with human beings, that is why, everything is limited to the practicity of feeding the ones that have more possibilities to make it. This can be clearly seen with dogs, when the mother abandons the lastborn puppy, or, going to the extremes, even tries to kill it by herself if she believes that is too weak to go on living.
Parents provide more time, attention, and emotional nourishment to the firstborn. It is not a coincidence that family scrapbooks are usually stuffed with pictures and report cards of the firstborn (in my mother’s case, even hair and teeth), and successively fewer of the later-borns. This was proved in my family. While I was preparing a family slideshow last year, I found out that there was no evidence of my younger brother being a baby. What is more, there was not a single photo of him standing alone.
Siblings who want to stand out in a family, often do so by observing the elder child and doing exactly the opposite. There is some truth in it, however, children tend to be brightly selective in terms of imitation. They know that there are some aspects that have to be done in the same way as their older siblings, but some others which require urgent improvement to please the parents.
The birth-order effect is not indestructible. In 2005, investigators at the University of Birmingham in Britain conducted a research about abused children. In general, they found out that when only one child was abused, the scapegoat was usually the eldest.
To conclude, we have to agree that in sibling relationships we can find a strong sense of jealousy, that even when this is not consciously promoted by parents, in one way or another, they are the ones to be blamed for this. The firstborn child is likely to receive more attention until the next sibling appears. This follows the logic that after parents have a second child, the attention has to be undeniable splitted.

Name: Patricia Romano

Title: The Power of Birth Order
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1672715-1,00.html

Bad ethics or nice sensitivity?

A young woman went on surgery for a biopsy of a lump she had in her collarbone. She was really aprehensive for anaesthesia's risks, so, she asked the surgeon for a local anaesthetic. The doctor was worried about her having a nervous breakdown, because he had to use a special tool to cut a piece of her bone, but he agreed on her request anyway. The woman was nervous, however, she bravely tolerated everything. They stayed in the OR until the pathologist called on the intercom with the results. The doctor did not want to receive such data throught the intercom, but the pathologist could not listen to the doctor´s insistence on saying that the patient was awake and listening.
The pathologist said that this woman had a serious case of cancer. The woman freaked out, and started screaming and crying for mentioning her children. In a matter of seconds, the anaesthesiologist put her through an IV a milky substance which erases the last ten minutes from memory, and the woman fell in a heavy sleep.
The nurses were quite upset about this, arguing that they should not have done that. However, the doctor only said “Well done” to the anaesthesiologist.
The doctor needed more time to do more tests, and to reasure that things would not change for this young mother. His idea was that, even when anything would change in the patient’s condition, he would have more time to choose the best way to give the worst news. Moreover, the patient would have a different mental preparation to receive whatever comes.
In the end, the woman died from cancer six years later, without knowing of the OR’s incident. The doctor still holds his idea of having done something good. He claims that it is not that anyone can use this drug at any time, but in some moments, you have to reflect upon your patient’s mental welfare. Doctors are not only to fix the physical failures, but to preserve the patients in a hollistic way.
I agree with this doctor’s choice, because it is not that he did not say the truth to this woman, but he managed it in a different way. He cared for the person, not for the medical problem. It would be quite interesting to find more doctors like this one.

Name: Patricia Romano
Title: The Ethics of Erasing a Bad Memory
Date: Monday, Oct. 15, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1671492,00.html

No Fear

Review n 3
Name: Mauricio Catena
Article: Bullying Fear Can Harm Children
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Author: Aislinn Simpson
Date of Publication: October 29th ,2007
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/29/nchild129.xml

Tim Gill, a former government adviser who has been investigating children behaviour,
claims that normal rough and violence of childhood which is sometimes interpreted as bullying is important for children to build up their character and to deal with difficult social situations. In his book, No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society, he accepts that it is important to protect kids from sexual predators, kidnapping and peers violence, but we have to do it without overprotecting them.

Nowadays, parents tend to wrap their children in a cotton wool, and this exaggerated behaviour can damage the child´s normal encounter with reality and how to deal with their own problems. This overprotection can build anxiety disorders in the child, apart form damaging the social interaction with their peers and other members of the community.

The author claims that the vast amount of money spent by the government in vetting child abusers could have been invested in training and raising awareness since most kids are abused by their family members. He also thinks that nowadays children are no more in danger than they were 20 years ago, and that there is a culture of risk averse in society. Maybe the only way to solve this problem is to build a child-friendly society, where communities take care of each other and the government should encourage people to make this happen. According to him, it is true that we as adults have the responsibility to take care of our children, but a risk averse behaviour is not the solution to this problem.

In my opinion, I think that nowadays there is a real increase in violence between young people; just look at the phenomenon of school shooting in several institutions all over the world, and also the way kids shoot themselves fighting or bullying their peers. It is reasonable to think that overprotection is bad for kids, but we have to find a way to protect them without affecting their freedom. It is true that bullying is not the only danger at which our children are exposed to in the present, and it would be very positive to raise awareness about other matters such as sexual abuse and kidnapping.

Africa Connected

Review n 2
Name: Mauricio Catena
Article: Africa Waiting For Net Revolution
Source: BBC News
Author: Darren Waters
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7063682.stm

Nowadays, only a few percentage of the population in Africa use the Internet, and the broadband penetration is below 1%. These were some of the topics dealt at the Connect Africa meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. This conference took place in Africa in order to solve these problems and to try to get financial support to improve technology and telecommunications in the continent.
The head of the International Telecommunication Union, Dr Hamadoun Toure, called for “immediate action” and is rather optimistic about the future:” "If you have just 1% of broadband access today you have 99% of opportunity.The good news is that Africa has had the highest growth in mobile use globally - twice the global average over the past three years. For the first time economic indicators are positive from Africa."
In this continent, high-speed access to the Internet is rare and this situation prevents Africa from being part of the rest of the world. This problem also affects education and telecomunications, as the institutions cannot update the technological devices they have. The main problem in Africa is the lack of interconnectivity: more of the 70% of internet traffic within Africa is routed outside the continent, increasing the costs for business and consumers. According to Dr Toure, the solution is to attract the private sector investment so it can help the continent´s economy to grow.
In Toure´s words” The heads of state present will give assurances to the private sector on the availability of competition and the creation of a proper regulatory environment for them in which to evolve," he said. "The private sector from outside Africa and inside will make fruitful partnerships." "Africa has to create the opportunities; Africa doesn't need charity”. "We need to make sure we have a good environment that will attract private sector investment. There's nothing wrong with making profits in Africa”.
It is believed that Africa will achieve its goal by 2015, when more people will have access to the Net and much more money will be invested in telecommunications and technology. Up to now, more than $ 8bn was invested in telecommunication infrastructure across the continent in 2005. We hope that people from this continent will have the chance to improve their economy and be part of the world.

HELP, I NEED SOMEBODY, HELP

The title of one of The Beatles hits pictures exactly what most of our teenagers and children are shouting for: HELP. As I was reading the newspaper this morning, a sad artcle on Nueva magazine caught my eye. This article said that 51% of children between the age of 11- 14 were already drinking alcohol. And the percentage rises in adolescents. According to Alicia Belmonte, IPLAS' director, nobody can sell alcoholic drinks to minors. But it seems that not all of the shop owners respect the law.

But the problem is that drinking beers and other alcoholic substances is not as bad as consuming marihuana. So if we see teenagers drinking we will not tell them this is harmful for them. Therefore, this is a beleif we must change. Smoking, drinking is as dangerous as drug consumption. In fact, most of car accidents, are caused by excessive amount of alcohol.

There are several reasons WHY teenagers drink alcohol: Self-gratification, pressure form their peers, psycho-dynamic relief. Therefore, young alcoholics need a great deal of help to overcome this problem. In this sense, parents must work in unison with doctors and shrinks in order to save their sons and daughters. Otherwise, they will be in a no way out road.

In Tucuman, there is a worse problem. Dancing clubs and discos close at 4.30 at night. But teenagers do not go back home. They stay at somebody's house and drink there until they are no longer masters of their will. Consequently, I shall repeat my idea: Parents take care of your children, see where they are going. Do not ask WHY my son or daughter drinks alcohol. Just do something about it.

Hopefully, adults will re-gain consiousness about this problem and will try to tackle this problem. Until then, youth will be killed by vicious. Please, let's do something!

Source:

• http://www.contexto.com.ar/nota.


• http://www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/alcohol/teenagers.

The End Of The Record Industry?

Review n1
Name: Mauricio Catena
Articles: “Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want” by Josh Tyrangiel, October 1st, 2007, Time.com; “Radical Remix” by Josh Tyrangiel, October 3rd ,2007, Time.com. Link: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1666973,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1668161,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar


The world of Rock, and the record industry in particular, were shocked some weeks ago by the news that Radiohead, the English Alternative Rock band, was going to release their most anticipated new album without a record label, through the Internet and with no suggested price. The announcement was posted by the guitarist Jonny Greenwood in the band´s blog Dead Air Space. Their contract with EMI/Capitol expired in 2003 after their sixth album, Hail to the Thief was released. According to the members of the band, the way in which their new album In Rainbows is released is in part an experiment; it is exciting for them to know how much music costs for people.

Buying the record is rather simple; people enter to www.radiohead.com , download the record and pay what they want for the album, and it´s perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all. Everthough Radiohead´s strategy is a risky one, they are going to release a “tangible” version of the album in the traditional way, but this time it will be a box-set that will include an extra album, two vynils of the record and extra material such as a booklet and pictures.

Record industry executives are stunned by the band´s choice of commercializing their music on their own without the support of a record label. They claim that this could the beginning of a new era concerning the way music is sold. However, young bands won´t get benefit from this action because they need the support of a record label to get radio play and placements in record stores. Important and recognized bands should pay attention to this experiment; nowadays there is a decline in the sale of CDs, and artists get most of their income from touring. Apart from preventing record piracy, musician are the true owners of their music and they are free to sell it to the audience without the need of any intermediary. Record labels can be useful to the artists to get them live performances and publishing, so in a way they are not so prejudiced by the way the bussiness is done.

However, most of the consumers prefer one-stop shopping for their music, and a wise thing for the major labels to do is to help to create an ultimate digital-distribution site, where each band can sell their records at the price they want. The existing sites for purchasing music in digital format, such as iTunes, dislike record labels because of their insistence on controlling the prices.

Is it going to be the end of the record industry? We don´t know by now, but we have to be sure that the changes are coming.

I am creating artificial life, declare US gene pioneer

Yarek Waszul Source: www. The economist.com

The first synthetic chromosome has been built out of laboratory chemicals, it can be concidered the first new artificial life form on Earth. This announcement will provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species, and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming. Craig Vender, an American DNA researcher involved in deciphering the human genetic code, is the leader of a team of 20 top scientists involved in this creation.

The synthetic chromosome is 381 genes long and contains 580.000 base pairs of genetic code. The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, christened Mycoplasma laboratorium has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition. It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and become a new life form.

Some people believe Mr Vender has created a chassis on which almost anything could be built, from new drugs for the treatment of multiple diseases to bio-weapons that could be used as a threat to humanity. Although I agree with this belief, I think that carefully controlled this improvement can be a great contribution to humanity instead than a threat. In my opinion the threat in fact is the manipulation that corrupted powers could make of it.

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán - Review nº 2
Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Marital Spats, Taken to heart

Nola Lopez, link: http://www.nytimes.com/


As all married couples know marital spats are an inevitable part of married life, but recient studies published in the New York Times newspaper, showed that the way you fight with your spouse can affect your health.
During a 10-year study period of nearly 4.000 men and women in the US, women who did not speak their minds during a fight with their husbands were four times more likely to die. While men keeping quite in those fights did not have any measurable effect on health.
The tendency to bottle up feelings during a fight is know as self-silencing. It has been linked to numerous psychological and physical health risks, such as depression, eating desorders and heart disease.
Other study involving 150 couples in their 60s, that had been married for more than 30 years and had no signs of heart disease, gave as a result that the emotional tone spouses take during a discussion can take a toll on health. For women, whether a husband`s arguing style was warm of hostile had the biggest effect on their heart health. But the level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man`s heart health. For a man, heart risk increased if disagreements with his wife involved a battle for control.
As a married woman I know that disagreements in marriage are inevitable. So that I share psychology professor, Dr Timothy Smith`s words about the best way of dealing with them. It is, “to do it in a way that gets your concerns addressed without doing damage at the same time”. But there is an important obstacle that should be concidered during a marital spat. To maintain such behaviour involves certain leve of self-control that is not an easy job to do for many couples.


Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán - Review 1
Source: www.nytimes.com

DREAMS, LITTLE DREAMS

It has been proved that all human beings have dreams while they are at rest. It is amazing to see how many of them can actually re-tell what they have dreamt so accuratelly as if it were something that actually happened. The problem arises when these dreams are not only happy illusions but they become nightmares.

The word nightmare has been defined as bad dreams that wake you up. Researches say that nightmares and dreadful dreams offer potentially information about the larger mystery of why we dream in the first place, how our dreaming and waking lives may intersect and cross-infect each other, and, how we manage to construct a virtual reality in our skull.

One of the reasons why bad dreams can offer an insight into the skeleton of dreams is that most of our dreams are bad.
Survey and diary studies have shown that nightmare frequency varies by age and sex. Preschoolers are relatively immune to this phenomena, but not so their elder siblings. Roughly 25 percent of children ages 5 to 12 report being awakened by bad dreams at least once a week.

The content of nightmares also changes over time and across cultures.
Based on my personal experience, I have never gone through this kind of nightmares that would prevent me from sleeping. I feel I do not dream much. So I guess I tend to forget all my dreams.

All in all, having nightmares at night also causes health problems due to the fact that you cannot rest as much as it is requiered in order to re-gain strenght and put your body at some rest.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/science/

Date: October 23rd, 2007.

Article's Title: Basics: In The Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why we dream At All.

MORE THAN WORDS

If you thought you knew most of the languages around the world, you might be mistaken. A new language has been discovered in the northern part of Colombia. It is called Palenquero. The village, where this language is spoken, is known as Palenque. It was founded by fugitive slaves from Africa.

This language is only spoken in this village and less than half of the community’s 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero. It is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Its closest relative may be Papiamento, spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, which draws largely from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, linguists say.

The colony of San Basilio de Palenque is said to have been founded

after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen blunderbusses.

It is also important to say that Palenquero is the last remain of a Sanish-based lingua franca used by slaves in Latin America.

Nowadays the Palenque village is no longer isolated from the world because villagers have electric light, Internet connection in a schoolhouse, television and many other facilities.

On the other hand, Palenqueros, the community’s residents say the biggest threat to their language’s survival comes from direct contact with outsiders. Many here have had to venture to nearby banana plantations or cities for work, and then found themselves ostracized because of the way they spoke. One defender of Palenquero said: “We are the strongest of the strongest” . “No matter what happens, our language will live on within us.”

In my opinion, this languge will continue to be preserved by its natives because it is very difficult to understant unless you were born in the community. And these villagers are eagered to keep it in this way.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/americas

Date: October 18th, 2007.

Title: A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes.

Review 1: Restorative Justice vs. Capital Punishment

To understand the debate over Capital Punishment, it is necessary to identify the purpose of The Criminal Justice System. Capital Punishment seems to answers to the demands of society: to punish those who commit crimes and to reduce violence overall. But the question of capital punishment is, if it is regurlarly and fairly applied.
Many people in the actual Us society demand vengeance and retribution for violent criminal conduct. Retribute Justice means that the criminal must be made to pay for the crime, by a crude mathematics that demands the scale of justice be balanced. This type of justice is fueled by hatred and satisfied only with full and complete revenge. The more cruel, the more satisfying.
On the other hand, Retribute Justice has a bad history, as it has historically been used to enforce a class society by oppresing the poor and protecting the rich. It has been used to impose racism by applying the law in an unfairly way upon African-American citizens. In this way, the prision system has been linked to a 20th century form of slavery.
Many people argue that Capital Punishment is a deterrent to murder. And the worth of Death Penalty as a deterrent to crimes have ocassioned a great deal of debate. But the results simply have been incoclusive. This may be because whatever deterrence factor exists for Capital Punishment probably exists almost equally for Life Imprisionment. A far grater deterrent than either, would be, more efficient police investigation. An average of twenty-two thousand murders and non-negligent manslaughters are comitted anually in the US but only two thirds, of fifteen thousand suspects, are arrested.
The reality is that severe punishment is not working. Kids and petty offenders under the current system become hardened, violent and persistent criminals. Many who seek to eliminate the culture of violence assert that Capital Punishment actually exacerbates the level and intensity of violence in the community.
To cope with this situation, some people are promoting a Restorative kind of justice which offers a nonviolent response to the violence done. The focus of it, is the separation of the violent person from the society. With a peaceful attitude and a nonvegeful response, the cycle of violence can be broken. In order to foster a less violent society, the treatment of the offender should be as human and nonviolent as posible. Rehabilitation of the offender ought to be a necessary condition of parole. Life Imprisionment without the possibility of a parole ought to be the alternative to Capital Punishment.
In my personal opinion, Restorative justice seeks to eliminate the culture of violence and replace it with a culture of caring. We must not allow our hearts to be fill with hatred, anger, rage and the desire of revemge when we confront an act of violence. Restorative justive does not seek forgiveness for those who commit a crime. But it asks us to protect ourselves from the feeling of violence.

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

Article's Title: Capital Punishment and Violence
Source: http://www.findarticles.com
Date of Publication: February 2004
Author: Robert Grant.

Welcome to IES Lola Mora News Review Blog

This is our space to share our reading of current issues at the local, regional, national and international level. Enjoy and leave your comments, opinions and reactions to the different posts!!!