Economists give birth to a 1-year- old downturn. So when do things get better?

br / GREENAPPLECANADA.COMbr / ALL PRO MODELS NOW ON SALE $299br / br / br / You Should Detoxify Your Bodybr / br / We are living in the most polluted environment in the earth's known history. We are continually inhaling and assimilating residues from petrochemicals, plastics and pesticides that occupy cell receptor sites and block hormone utilization. Consider the following statistics:br / br / * 1,600% increase in birth defects since 1980br / * 250% increase in breast cancer since 1980br / * 59% decrease in male sperm count since 1940br / * 500% increase in cancer mortality since 1900br / * 400% increase in heart disease since 1900br / br / All of the above statistics are directly related to the increased exposure to petrochemicals, toxins, heavy metals and other chemicals in the environment. While no process or modality can guarantee the prevention of these conditions, it is logical to assume that an ongoing detoxification program - the act of minimizing toxic accumulations in the body - will reduce the incidence of chronic degenerative disease and improve overall quality of life.br / br / Virtually all alternative healing approaches make liberal use of detoxification protocols. Detoxifying the body has been a familiar modality to all ancient healing traditions, including Ayurvedic, Chinese and Native American, for thousands of years. The Benefits of an Ion Cleansebr / br / taking a break is something we could all use. But when life doesnÂ’t allow us the luxury, we need to make sure that weÂ’re doing something to help our bodies keep up. With a cleanse, you can enable your body to withstand the rigors of your busy life, while also protecting it from the damage that you might have already caused. Our bodies arenÂ’t made to last forever, but they can certainly last longer when we think about a detox cleanse.br / br / Why you need to detox from time to timebr / br / Think about the trash can in your home. When it gets to be too full, you empty it. That seems simple enough. What you might want to consider is that your body acts in much the same way, storing trash and toxins until it gets too full and needs to be emptied. Some of us react to this build up by having digestive troubles, while others of us can become tired and lethargic. Instead of waiting for your body to react, you can be proactive by doing some sort of detox body cleanse plan that will help the trash be taken out more frequently.br / br / When toxins accumulate in our bodies, a number of things can occur. For one, you might notice swelling in your extremities, you might see that your face is puffy or that your digestion is slower. While these seem like smaller problems, without a detox cleanse routine, these toxins will back up into vital organs like the kidneys and colon, causing more problems than just simple fatigue.br / br / ENJOY THE VAST HEALTH BENIFITS OF A IONIC SPA CLEANSE TREATMENT.br / br / *increases energy levels. *alleviates constipationbr / *normalizes blood pressure *reduces water retentionbr / *boosts the immune system *liver detoxificationbr / *helps speed up metabolism to help in weight reductionbr / *purges heavy metal * wrinkle acne and other skin problemsbr / br / br / BUY PROFESSIONAL GRADE MACHINES VISIT GREENAPPLECANADA.COM TO VIEW ALL OUR HEALTHbr /

Built by the British Royal Society of Arts to bring waste and recycling issues to the public eye - Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment(aka WEEE) Man weighs in @ 3.3 metric tons - What is he made of? Firstly, large household appliances, such as washing machines and television sets make up a large part of his structure. Then there are smaller objects, such as toaster, irons, and other electrical tools. There is lighting equipment and automatic dispensers, IT and telecoms equipment and toys and leisure items, all making up this latter-day Frankenstein's monster of Brobdingnagian proportions. This guy is big! Waste is no longer out of sight, out of mind. The hope is that his birth will make people think about their behavior when it comes to disposing of the electrical equipment they no longer want. - The Wanderings of the WEEE Man [via Neatorama]

a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/electrojunk_sculpture_for.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/electrojunk_sculpture_for.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/electrojunk_sculpture_for.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arts/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Arts/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Felectrojunk_sculpture_for.htmltitle=Electro-junk%20sculpture%20for%20environmental%20awarenessbodytext=%20Built%20by%20the%20British%20Royal%20Society%20of%20Arts%20to%20bring%20waste%20and%20recycling%20issues%20to%20the%20public%20eye%20-%20Waste%20Electrical%20and%20Electronic%20Equipment%28aka%20WEEE%29%20Man%20weighs%20in%20%40%203.3%20metric%20tons%20-%20What%20is%20he%20made%20of%3F%20Firstly%2C...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a

Category: Utilities
Released: Nov 26, 2008
Price: Free

Description:
Perpetuum is the Revolutionary Lunar Calendar for the iPhone and iPod touch. If you're like us, you don't like reading dates and numbers from a table and then try to figure out how many days you have until the next new or full moon. Perpetuum solves this problem and gives you the information you need in a way we couldn't find anywhere else. Spinning the moon clockwise will get you forward it time, while anticlockwise goes back. -New Moon is UP -First Quarter is on the RIGHT -Full Moon is DOWN -Last Quarter on the LEFT Features: -No internet connection required. -To change the date, drag the moon or tap the date. -Weekend days are drawn brighter so you can instantly see which day of the week a certain moon phase will be in. -Shake the phone/ipod to return to the current date. -Ability to set a marker to a certain moon phase (your birth date for example) You'll definitively get addicted to it after getting a taste of it's power. Many lunar calendars assume the lunar cycle length is constant (or better said they are using the mean length of 29.53 days). Unlike those calendars, Perpetuum calculates the precise moment for all the moon phases. What customers are saying : "After using Perpetuum a bit, I really like it. I've been using the same old moon calendars for years and this one is really different and fun to use. Also fast!" "Thanks for the app. Beautiful interface. However I can't get it to reset to the present date by shaking." "Well done. This is tops and a uses a great method. Worth every Penny." PERPETUUM LITE EDITION NOTE : This version has the same functionality as the full version but it's limited to dates before the 1st of January 2009.

Website: http://www.perpetuumcalendar.com
Support Website: http://www.perpetuumcalendar.com

Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.


Get it on iTunes: Perpetuum Lite - Moon Phases

What could be more fun, with a brand new baby in the house, than sitting down and writing a bunch of letters to people you rarely see? Lots of things. But you should probably do it anyway. And dads can offer valuable assistance in this task. Pregnant and new moms appreciate the support. Brought to you by Stork Avenue. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Auteur : DadLabs
Tags : birth announcements baby notes letters infant newborn dad dads fathers fatherhood parenting dadlabs
Envoyé : 01 décembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle has released his new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Prses) under a Creative Commons License. It can be downloaded free or read online. There are chapters on Thomas Jefferson's views of IP, musical borrowing and the birth of soul, free software, and synthetic biology. Lessig is impressed. Doctorow says he is a law prof who writes like a comedian (is this a good thing?), and credits Boyle's first book for getting him involved in online rights."pa href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/30/2236247amp;from=rss"img src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?from=rssamp;op=imageamp;style=h0amp;sid=08/11/30/2236247"/a/ppa href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/30/2236247amp;from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/mykTjBi5fZzHEDQa4Z3zkHgCuzQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/mykTjBi5fZzHEDQa4Z3zkHgCuzQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/p4iRYPEuKf8" height="1" width="1"/

I'm a little apprehensive about posting this thread as it is a very touchy issue for some, so here we go. Today I received my final paper topic for psyc 1 by email. I don't like the topic but I have about a 5% chance of getting a new one, so I'm going to stick with it.

I have - like the majority of you - come to understand that you don't turn homosexual, but are born homosexual. However, I'm assuming that the topic wants me to dive a lot farther than just saying your born that way, and move research the way of birth order, sibling ratio, the way the person was raised, and childhood experiences.

I have already found several articles on the topic, but It always helps if I have some input from a large pool of people. So I'm extending my topic question onto you guys, What makes a homosexual, homosexual?

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/55508?ns=guardianpageName=Life+and+style%3A+Leopard-print+clothing%3A+a+warningch=Life+and+stylec3=The+Guardianc4=Fashion%2CLife+and+stylec5=Fashion+and+Beauty%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Hadley+Freemanc7=2008_12_01c8=1126607c9=articlec10=GUc11=Life+and+stylec12=Fashionc13=c14=h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FFashion" width="1" height="1" //divpLike Slade and spice-"enhanced" liqueurs, leopard print is one of those things that for 364 days of the year is obviously an assault on the senses, but, come Christmas, is perceived as "jolly", "festive" and "a bit of fun". "A sensible but chic cover-up for a Christmas party," as one current fashion magazine would have it. (Perhaps I should add that such advice is aimed only at the female of the species. Not even Christmas can stop leopard print turning a man into anything other than Jonathan Ross.)/ppPerhaps it is the association between Christmas and soap operas that explains why dressing like Bet Lynch to mark the birth of the Messiah suddenly makes perfect sense. True, Christmas is not known for subtlety on any level, from the food, to TV schedules to the fondness for tinsel and sequins. But dressing like something in a David Attenborough documentary does not make you look like animalistic sexuality unleashed. It does not even make you look like a 60s wannabe starlet (and that comment is directed at yoo-hoo, Madame Kate Moss). It makes you look like a half-cut barmaid, desperately hoping for a bit of mistletoe. And as everyone knows, no one from a soap opera has a happy ending at Christmas./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/fashion"Fashion/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/GxtbtFYOq0eWizXq4uT22mwMv68/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/GxtbtFYOq0eWizXq4uT22mwMv68/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/28622?ns=guardianpageName=Society%3A+After+Savannach=Societyc3=The+Guardianc4=Child+protection+%28Society%29%2CNetherlands+%28News%29%2CSociety%2CWorld+newsc5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CChildren+Societyc6=Aida+Edemariamc7=2008_12_01c8=1126606c9=articlec10=GUc11=Societyc12=Child+protectionc13=c14=h2=GU%2FSociety%2FChild+protection" width="1" height="1" //divpIn the very early morning of Tuesday September 21 2004, a police car on patrol through the wooded outskirts of Holten, in eastern Holland, noticed a vehicle travelling down a road closed to traffic and pulled it over. A search of the boot revealed not the contraband that might have been expected - drugs or smuggled cigarettes, perhaps - but the body of a small child, and a shovel./ppSavanna was three years old, but weighed only 10kg, as a one-year-old might. She was severely undernourished, and covered in bruises. It was later established that she had probably died the day before, when her mother, Sonja de J, then 32, stuffed her mouth with a washcloth and taped it over. Savanna had a cold and couldn't breathe through her nose. She suffocated. /ppThe lines that the case then followed will, post-Victoria Climbieacute;, post-Baby P, be familiar. Stories began to appear in the Dutch papers about a little girl from Alphen aan den Rijn, a small city near The Hague. Neighbours, friends and family spoke of ongoing abuse. The girl got hardly any food, they said. She was tied to a bed, she was hit, she was forced to have cold showers. Everyone was worried. So worried that they asked social services to intervene./ppIn fact, the family had been in close contact with social services for a long time. It emerged that Sonja de J's two older children (born in 1992 and 1993) were already in care. A younger baby was taken away after Savanna was found. Savanna herself was put on the child protection register when she was 11 months old. A family guardian - a specialist social worker - was appointed and visited the family regularly. /ppIn April 2002 the then one-year-old Savanna was taken away from her mother and placed into temporary care. According to the Dutch newspaper Trouw, which went through the child protection reports, she was malnourished and neglected, and the mother was refusing to accept the advice of youth welfare services. But in July, Savanna was returned to her mother. Why, exactly, remains unclear. Then the guardian fell ill, so in November 2002 another guardian, Mieke A, was appointed. According to her lawyer, Simeon Burmeister, she visited every two weeks, and reviewed the case more often than that. Sometimes she visited in her spare time, "because she felt that the family was a real problem. But not as bad as they turned out to be"./ppThen, in May 2004, the new baby was born. In the Netherlands, a maternity nurse, or kraamverzorgster, is assigned to a family and helps out all day, for the first eight days. The nurse who went to see Sonja de J was alarmed by the way she was treating Savanna. The child seemed to be kept in her room all the time, and wasn't eating properly. She seemed bruised and cowed. So the kraamverzorgster raised the alarm. In fact, several professionals involved with the children raised their concerns and reported suspected abuse. They were not, however, aware that there was a family guardian because she had never been in touch./ppInformation obtained by the public prosecutor indicates that legal measures were immediately put in place, on May 14 2004, to take Savanna into care. However, Mieke A (who was 46 at the time, so not a novice), decided that this wasn't necessary and overruled them; a paediatrician who visited in July concurred. Two months later Savanna was dead. On October 4, 350 people marched silently through Alphen aan den Rijn in her memory. /ppFor the first time in the history of Dutch law, a guardian was charged in criminal court. Initially, says her lawyer, the charge was accessory to murder; at the last minute this was changed to negligence leading to grievous bodily harm. She should have listened to others more, said the prosecution; she should have picked up the signs that things were going horribly wrong. They did not ask for a prison sentence but for a suspended sentence of 150 hours of "work punishment". "The prosecutor tried to argue that there was a deal between mother and guardian to kill the child," says Burmeister. "The guardian did her work, but actions like this can always happen. She could not have known - she only had two hours every second week to visit the family. In these two hours they have to see everything. Maybe she didn't do her work very well but in Holland that's not a criminal offence."/ppDuring the trial, a picture emerged of a care worker who was too ready to listen to the mother. Sonja de J was known to have a borderline personality disorder - and although the guardian knew this, she seems not to have taken sufficient notice of it. But under such circumstances it would have been difficult to extrapolate a norm from brief meetings; Sonja de J could, presumably, often be quite charming./ppMieke A was interrogated by the police for six days. She was charged on March 18 2005, and was finally brought to what would become an enormously high-profile trial on May 31 2007. She was acquitted on November 16, 2007, three years after Savanna died. The court decided the death was not the guardian's fault and that she did work hard for the family. However, the judge censured her for believing her own findings to be more important than anyone else's. Sonja de J was sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter, while her boyfriend, Mario B, got two years for GBH. When they finish their sentences, they will be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit on an order that lasts until the doctors say the inmate can be released back into society. It can be indefinite. /ppChildcare services in the Netherlands now recognise two periods: before Savanna, and after Savanna. As with Victoria Climbieacute;, as will be with Baby P, the aftermath is rarely as simple as imprisonment for the perpetrators. It reverberates through systems, through countries, through professions, and through the lives of vulnerable children all over the country./ppIn the Netherlands the first evidence of a Savanna effect was a spike in the numbers of children being put on to child protection registers, or into care. As there are 15 different regional jurisdictions, there are no reliable national figures. Estimates based on anecdotal evidence veer from 5% to 40%, but Arne Theunissen, who began his career as a guardian, and is now a researcher in the department of clinical child studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, also points to the figures for Amsterdam, the largest agency in Holland. In 2004, 1,620 children were taken into care; in 2005, after Savanna, there were 2,891, an almost 75% increase. (There is also a growing demand for foster parents. According to a spokesperson for the Dutch Organisation for Foster Parents, there were 14,000 Dutch foster children in 2002 and 20,000 in 2007 - a 30% increase. "Many people say it's because of the Savanna effect," said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. "It could be. But it's more complicated than that, it has to do with the difficulties of being foster parents.")/ppIn Britain, says Kieron Hatton, head of the Centre for Social Work at the University of Portsmouth, the trend was already going that way. The Climbieacute; case simply "reinforced a trend towards risk-aversion in social work caused by inquiries over previous years. Social work in the UK is quite risk-averse - in fact, it's too risk-averse." As for Baby P, the Observer reported last week that there had been as much as a three-fold increase in applications for child protection orders in the previous fortnight. Where the Inner London Court would normally expect to receive between two and three applications a day for children to be placed in care, staff said they were receiving between eight and 10 applications a day. According to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), there was a 26.4% increase in applications for all forms of child protection orders made between November 10 and November 20 across England this year, compared with the same period in 2007. Usually a case like this has a mostly local effect, says Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass. This time,"There is some sign of a genuine national effect, and all local authorities are reviewing their cases, and putting in early applications when they hadn't before."/ppJos Aalders is a volunteer ombudsman for children in the Netherlands. He can be controversial (rather like members of Fathers4Justice, he has been known to dress up as Zorro) but he is nevertheless trusted by countless families, who contact him with complaints about children and the social services. He says that these have risen by about 30%. "The trend has become that it is better to place a child into care then to take any risk whatsoever. And since complaints about abuse can be anonymous and come from anyone, children are taken away too soon in some cases. There is a case at the moment of a baby that was taken from his parents the day after the birth. The parents have very low IQs but they take care of themselves, work, have friends and family to help them. They did not even get a chance to do it right, the child was taken away immediately. I think that's typical of what is going on in child services."/ppMirjam, 36, who worked as a family guardian in a city near Amsterdam for 10 years before resigning a couple of months ago, agrees. (She wouldn't give her last name or place of work; she was unusual, however, in that she is willing to talk.) "I felt there was a lot of fear in how people acted in the months afterwards. Everyone was so afraid it could happen on their watch. Cases proceeded faster; children would be put on the child protection register sooner. And for a while there would be a request every Friday to go and get a child that needed to be taken away from their parents before the weekend." It wasn't just the guardians. Everyone was being more careful, starting with the person reporting abuse, through to the agency registering the complaints and the guardian's employers. /pp"Better safe than sorry is the trend now," says Ton Moolenaar, a social worker for 30 years who now chairs a group for youth welfare workers. "And children aren't placed back with their parents as easily as before." He points out that the large spike in numbers seems to be over. But other "Savanna effects" have endured. "For one thing, the emphasis on the safety of the child is more than it was before. We used to work with a threefold principle: try to intervene as little as possible, try to get children back home as soon as possible and try to let them stay near their homes when they are temporarily taken into care. Only after all of that would we start actually taking a kid away from home and really placing them into care." (Because state care is not necessarily the best solution; in fact, Hatton says bluntly, of the UK, "our care system isn't that great. The outcomes in other countries, such as Denmark and Germany, are much better." )/pp"Because of this," continues Moolenaar, "there are more safety precautions. We have to fill in long lists about the parents, the children, the interaction between the parents and between the parents and the children, which are then reviewed by behavioural scientists. It is very formal and has lead to a bigger workload. The underlying principle is fine though, it is all about the safety of the child."/ppBut, as happened with the Climbieacute; case, where new computer systems meant social workers spent more time staring at a screen than visiting clients, and were progressively being robbed of independent judgment, these new requirements have unintended consequences. According to the spokeswoman for the Dutch Organisation for Foster Parents, welfare workers now "check and double-check everything, have to put it past the team, can't confirm anything. And even though being careful is good, this means the children who are already in a very difficult situation have even more insecurity. They don't know what will happen to them and because social services don't dare to decide, they are left in limbo for longer."/ppThe second major factor was the chilling effect the criminal trial had on guardians, who could not believe that things could come to that. "I, and many colleagues, protested in Utrecht," says Piet Bleeker, 34, who has worked as a family guardian for five years in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands."It was a horrendous incident, but criminal prosecution for mistakes made in your job is quite disturbing. We did not want to be seen as criminals. I sat in the court during the case and it was horrible. The guardian got the blame for everything, while so many others were involved. I do understand it; she was the one responsible for placing Savanna in care or not in the end. But it was still hard to watch. Afterwards I ran through all my own cases in my mind. What child could be at risk, where did I have even the remotest doubt?"/ppIt was already difficult to find people willing to work as family guardians, but the prosecution, and vituperative media coverage of it, made it much harder. Sarah, 25, a social worker from Zwolle, was in training during the case. "The negative attention did get to us at school. You read about a case like this in the paper and it's about life and death. Plus the fact that the social worker was brought to court. As a 22-year-old you don't easily choose to go into that field. We discussed it often and me and my friends were just more reluctant to specialise as family guardians."/ppA similar thing has happened here in the UK over the past few weeks. "We've had to do quite a lot of work with students to talk them through it," says Hatton, who blames the singling-out of social workers in media reports in particular. "We try to help the students understand that once they go into practice they'll be encouraged to enhance their training, that really people who are newly qualified shouldn't be working on very complex child protection cases." The problem is though, as he well knows, that there are so many vacancies, and such large caseloads, that this is often inevitable - which, of course, increases the chances of naive or bad decisions, and the cycle starting again./ppSince Savanna, the Netherlands has put various safeguards in place, many of which could be instructive here too. According to Jos Andriessen of the MOgroep, an umbrella agency for the 15 separate youth welfare agencies, there are to be fewer children assigned to each guardian; 15-17 by halfway through next year, down from 25. Decisions must be made by a team, rather by individuals. Risk-analysis is now a priority. There is now a 24-hour crisis number that people can ring. By 2010 there should be disciplinary board for social workers, so incidents can be referred there, instead of to the criminal courts. Agencies are cooperating more effectively and are clearer about each other's responsibilities./ppHowever, Theunissen believes they could go further. At the moment, the decision to remove a child from its family is overseen by a judge. He believes that the same rigour should be applied to the decision not to remove a child because "the decision to do nothing is as important as the decision to do something". In the UK, Douglas believes that in the most serious cases, where social workers are concerned but unable to prove anything, it should be possible to turn to methods used by the police - hidden cameras, for example. "It's a high-risk decision, because lots of organisations would cite human rights issues. But without identifying real dangerousness you won't get anywhere."/ppBut in the end, as Theunissen puts it, "however professional you are, you can never be sure what's going on in the night, behind the doors". It does not help to demonise those whose job it is to find out - rather, there should be collective investigations, collective decisions, and an earned trust, in the idealism of those who work with the most vulnerable children in society. "I never doubted my job," says Bleeker. "I never wanted to quit. I don't know many people who did. There is a lot of bad publicity; I still get it sometimes, people being almost aggressive when you say where you work. Then I take a deep breath and I sit down to explain my work to them. There is so much good in it, but we can't talk about cases, everything is confidential, so it's hard to explain. People in this field can't let it go easily. You can't just quit and leave your 15 cases"./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/childprotection"Child protection/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/netherlands"Netherlands/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/nSP3iuzQicoZHBWDju0qQFPscV0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/nSP3iuzQicoZHBWDju0qQFPscV0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

iAPMIS : acta pathologica, microbiologica, et immunologica Scandinavica, Vol. 109, No. 5. (May 2001), pp. 321-332./ibr /br /Breast cancer is the leading cancer site in women, both in the developed and the developing world. Incidence rates are increasing in many countries, although, in some, mortality may be stable or slightly decreasing. Geographical differences exist, with high rates of disease in North America, North Europe and Oceania, intermediate rates in South and Central America as well as South and East Europe, and low rates in Africa and Asia. Most of the literature reports that genetic inherited factors account for less than 5% of cases, although some authors advance higher figures, up to about 10%. Risk factors for breast cancer are related to the reproductive life of women: early menarche, nulliparity or late age at first birth, late menopause, diet and physical exercise, as well as hormonal factors, be they endogenous (high levels of free or not bound to SHBG estrogens) or exogenous (long-term use of oral contraceptives or menopausal hormone replacement). The present review does not aim to be exhaustive and fully comprehensive, or to present in detail domains currently well known and accepted by all. On the contrary, it modestly wishes to highlight potentially controversial conditions which could in the future be recognized as new risk factors.br /iAJ Sasco/i

iCancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, Vol. 16, No. 7. (1 July 2007), pp. 1437-1442./ibr /br /Background: Although differences in breast cancer incidence among Occidental and Asian populations are often attributed to variations in environmental exposures and/or lifestyle, fewer studies have systematically examined the effect of age-related variations. Methods: To further explore age-related geographic breast cancer variations, we compared age-specific incidence patterns among cases of female invasive breast cancer from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program and the Osaka Cancer Registry (1978-1997). Results: In SEER, there were 236,130 Whites, 21,137 Blacks, and 3,304 Japanese-Americans in Hawaii with invasive breast cancer. In Osaka, there were 25,350 cases. Incidence rates per 100,000 woman-years ranged from 87.6 among Whites to 21.8 in Osaka. Age-specific incidence rates increased rapidly until age 50 years for all race/ethnicity groups, and then continued to increase more slowly for Whites, Blacks, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii but plateaud for Osaka. Age-specific incidence rates in SEER reflected bimodal (early-onset and late-onset) breast cancer populations, whereas Osaka had only an early-onset age distribution. These age-specific differences in incidence among SEER and Osaka persisted after adjustment for calendar-period and birth-cohort effects using age-period-cohort models. Conclusions: Results confirm striking age-specific differences among Occidental and native Japanese breast cancer populations, probably due to complex age-related biological and/or environmental variations among Occidental and Asian breast cancer populations. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2007;16(7):1437-42) 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-07-0108br /iRayna Matsuno, William Anderson, Seiichiro Yamamoto, Hideaki Tsukuma, Ruth Pfeiffer, Ken Kobayashi, Susan Devesa, Paul Levine/i

Worldchanging's Alex Steffen's got a good, thoughtful piece up about "peak population," the idea that we'll crest humanity's most rapid period of population growth and that it will -- and should -- slow down from here. I love this quote from Kim Stanley Robinson, speaking of birth control: "empowering women is the best climate change technology." It would be a mistake, however, to fail to see peak population as a hugely important insight, because when we know that we are riding a wave of increasing numbers (and increasing longevity) that will crest sometime after the middle of this century, we can also see that 1) The longer population growth rates remain high, the more total people there will be on the planet when we reach peak population, so one of our biggest goals ought to be seeing to it by every ethical means possible that the wave of population growth crests sooner rather than later. 2) If we are successful in reaching peak population sooner, at a lower number of people, rather than later with more people, we will be much more able to confront the myriad interlocking crises we face -- a comparatively less crowded planet is an easier planet on which to build a bright green future. 3) Since we know the single best way of bringing down high birth rates is to empower women by giving them access to reproductive health choices (including contraception and abortion), education, economic opportunities, and legal protection of their rights, empowering women ought to be one of our highest priorities. (As Kim Stanley Robinson puts it, empowering women is the best climate change technology.) 4) Our other main task is to preserve natural systems and transform human economies in order to best withstand this wave of human beings, avoid catastrophe and leave behind as intact a world as we can -- to save the parts (including not just biodiversity but also the diversity of human cultures and histories) so that future generations have as many options as possible. 5) Our best hopes for both avoiding catastrophe and preserving our heritage all hinge on our actions over roughly the next two decades. In that time we have enormous work to do: create at least the model of a zero-carbon, zero-waste civilization; begin deep and widespread impact reduction here in the developed world; sustainably raise the prospects of those (especially women) living in the developing world; and preserve as many working parts of our planetary heritage as we possibly can. After that time, all of these jobs will grow progressively harder, trending quickly towards impossibility. Peak Population and Generation X...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=339c813d5271c0f100b635108717fa65p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=339c813d5271c0f100b635108717fa65p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=339c813d5271c0f100b635108717fa65" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

A new Hong Gil Dong [EN] emerged on the Internet of Korea! A netizen who is just known as “Minerva” started writing his economic analysis in Agora—a Netizens’ panel— in a major portal site, Daum from 2007. He predicted the collapse of Leman Brothers, sudden jump in the foreign exchange rate, and fluctuations of real estate business. His syndrome is explosive and he is more popular and trusted than the government. The government reacts sensitively to the unknown netizen and tries to find who he is under the pretext of having conversations with him.

He became an Internet Legend.

Who is Minerva? It is a question by not just the government, but the netizens.

ì•„ê³ ë¼ ë¯¸ë„¤ë¥´ë°”ëŠ” í¬í„¸ 사ì´íŠ¸ 다ìŒì˜ ì•„ê³ ë¼ì—ì„œ 활ë™í•˜ëŠ” ì¸í„°ë„· 유명 ë…¼ê°ì´ë‹¤. 리먼 브러ë”ìŠ¤ì˜ ë¶€ì‹¤ê³¼ 환율 í­ë“± 등, 대한민국 ê²½ì œì˜ ë³€ë™ ì¶”ì´ë¥¼ 정확히 예견하여 ì£¼ëª©ì„ ë°›ì•˜ë‹¤. ê·¸ì˜ ì˜í–¥ë ¥ì„ ì¸ì‹í•œ 기íšìž¬ì •ë¶€ëŠ” ê·¸ì—게 ì •ë¶€ì˜ ë°©ì¹¨ì„ ì„¤ëª…í•˜ê±°ë‚˜ ìžë£Œë¥¼ 제공하는 등 소통하는 ë°©ì•ˆì„ ê²€í†  중ì´ë¼ê³  ë°í˜”다.[...] ìžì‹ ì„ ‘고구마 파는 늙ì€ì´’ë¼ê³  칭하며 본ì¸ì˜ ì‹ ì›ì— 대해 ë°ížˆëŠ” ê²ƒì„ êº¼ë¦¬ë©´ì„œ ì§ì—…ì´ë‚˜ 경력 ë“±ì— ëŒ€í•œ 정보는 알려진 ë°” 없었으나 ì •ë³´ë‹¹êµ­ì€ í¬í„¸ 사ì´íŠ¸ 다ìŒì„ 통해서 알아본 ê²°ê³¼ 나ì´ëŠ” 50대 초반ì´ê³  ì¦ê¶Œì‚¬ì— 다녔으며 해외ì—ì„œ ìƒí™œí•œ ê²½í—˜ì´ ìžˆëŠ” 사람ì´ë¼ê³  파악했다.[2] ì •ë³´ ë‹¹êµ­ì˜ ì´ ê°™ì€ ì¡°ì‚¬ì— ëŒ€í•´ 대해 ë…¼ëž€ì´ ì¼ì–´ë‚˜ê¸°ë„ 했다. ì´í›„ 미네르바는 “국가가 ì¹¨ë¬µì„ ëª…ë ¹í–ˆìœ¼ë‹ˆ 글쓰기를 멈추겠다. 경제 ì˜ˆì¸¡ì„ í•˜ëŠ” ê²ƒì„ ë¶ˆë²•ì‚¬ìœ ë¼ê³  하다니…‘조국’ê³¼ ‘한민족’ì´ë¼ëŠ” ì´ë¦„으로 í¬ìž¥ëœ ì• êµ­ì‹¬ì„ ê°–ê³  ê³µë™ì²´ ì˜ì‹ ì†ì— ì‚´ì•„ 온 ê²ƒì´ ì–¼ë§ˆë‚˜ ê°€ì¦ìŠ¤ëŸ° 기만ì¸ì§€ 깨닫는 계기가 ë다”는 ê¸€ì„ ë‚¨ê²¼ë‹¤.

Minerva is a famous netizen who writes in Agora, Daum. He predicted collapse of Leman Brothers, sudden rise of the foreign exchange rate, and processes of Korean economic changes. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance recognized his influence and announced that they will explain governmental policies and provide information to him. The government says that they look for ways to have communication with him. [...] Minerva calls himself ‘an old man to sell sweet potatoes’ and is reluctant to expose his identity. Nobody knows about his job and career. Checking with a portal site, the intelligence found out that he is in his early 50s, has worked in a stock company, and has lived abroad. Regarding this investigation, there are denunciations. After that, Minerva left the last writing, “The government ordered the silence and therefore I will stop writing. Predicting economy is illegal to their perspective... Now I recognize how deceptive life I have had with patriotism nicely designed with ‘mother land’ and ‘united group’.”

Minerva’s prediction and sensitive reactions of the government seem to bring more attention.

[...]'미네르바'는 올 7ì›”ì— ìžˆì–´ë˜ ë¯¸êµ­ 서브프ë¼ìž„ ì‚¬íƒœì˜ ë¶ˆë˜¥ì´ í•œêµ­ì— ì˜®ê²¨ë¶™ì„ ê²ƒë„ ì˜ˆì¸¡ 했었다고 하네요..ì „ 그것까지는 몰ëžì—ˆëŠ”ë°.. 암튼 미네르바 ë¿ë§Œ ì•„ë‹ˆë¼ ë‹¤ë¥¸ 여러 사ì´ë²„ ë…¼ê°ë“¤ì´ 경제 위기와 관련한 ê¸€ë“¤ì„ ì˜¬ë¦¬ë©´ì„œ 정부 ì •ì±…ì„ ë¹„íŒí•˜ëŠ” 사례가 많아지니까 현재 강만수장관 ë¿ë§Œ ì•„ë‹ˆë¼ ë‹¤ë¥¸ ë§Žì€ ì •ë¶€ ê´€ë£Œë“¤ì´ ìƒë‹¹ížˆ 고심 중ì´ë¼ê³  하네요..

[...]Minerva predicted that the American sub-prime crisis in July would affect Korea. I didn’t expect that part, though. Including Minerva, there are many cyber analysts who write about economic crisis and they write criticisms of government policies. I heard that many government officers as well as the Minister, Kang Man Soo, are worried about this symptom.

Despite the government pressure, his popularity is ballooning and his writing circulates everywhere. People who even didn’t know about him search for him after the government reaction.

미네르바 ë‹˜ì˜ ê¸€ì€ ì–´ë””ê°€ì„œ 볼수있나요? ì•„ê³ ë¼ì—ì„œ 미네님 ê¸€ì„ ê²€ìƒ‰í•´ë„ ì—†ë„¤ìš” 부íƒí•©ë‹ˆë‹¤. 모ìŒì§‘ì´ë©´ ë” ì¢‹êµ¬ìš”.

Where can I see Minerva’s writings? I can’t find them in Agora. Please help me. It will be better if I can get all of them.

Netizens exchange their information and even made a web-café that collected all his writing. Some of them made his writing as an internet book.

ìš”ìƒˆê°™ì€ ê²½ì œë¶ˆí™©ì— ì •ë¶€ì— ì˜ì§€í•˜ì§€ë§ê³  본ì¸ì´ 정보를 얻는게 힘ì¸ê²ƒê°™ìš”. ë‹¤ìŒ ì•„ê³ ë¼ì—ì„œ 경제예측으로 ìœ ëª…í–ˆë˜ ë¯¸ë„¤ë¥´ë°”ë‹˜ì˜ ì£¼ì˜¥ê°™ì€ ê¸€ì„ ëª¨ì•„ë†“ì€ ì¹´íŽ˜ìž…ë‹ˆë‹¤. 10분ì´ë¼ë„ ì½ì–´ë³´ì‹œëŠ”걸 추천해드려요~

Don’t lean on the government in such an economic crisis. This is the place to collect all beautiful compositions of Minerva. I recommend you to read at least 10 minutes.

Netizens explain why his writing appeals to many people.

‘신드롬'까지 ì¼ìœ¼í‚¤ë©° 정계를 비롯한 사회 ì „ë°˜ì ì¸ íŒŒìž¥ì„ ëª°ê³  온 ‘미네르바'ë¼ëŠ” í•„ëª…ì˜ ë…¼ê°ì´ ì“´ 글 모ìŒìž…니다. ì´ ë…¼ê°ì˜ ê¸€ì„ ì‹ ë¢°í•˜ëŠëƒ 마ëŠëƒì˜ 문제는 ê°œì¸ì ì¸ íŒë‹¨ì— 따른 것ì´ë¯€ë¡œ 제가 왈가왈부 í•  ì„±ê²©ì˜ ìš”ì ì´ ì•„ë‹ ê²ƒìž…ë‹ˆë‹¤. 다만, 우리 사회가 ì´ë ‡ë“¯ 단절ë˜ê³  ì†Œí†µì´ ì´ë£¨ì–´ì§€ì§€ ì•Šì•˜ë˜ ê²ƒì˜ ì›ì¸ì´ ‘나와 다른 ê²ƒì€ ë°°ì²™í•œë‹¤'ë¼ëŠ” ì •ì‹ ì— ìž…ê°í•œ 것ì´ì—ˆìŒì„ ê°ì•ˆí•´ì•¼ í•¨ì€ í•„ì—°ì ìž„ì„ ëˆ„ì°¨ ê°•ì¡°í•´ë„ ê³¼í•˜ì§€ 않습니다. ë”°ë¼ì„œ ì˜ê²¬ì´ 같고 ë‹¤ë¥´ê³ ì˜ ë¬¸ì œë¥¼ 떠나 ‘미네르바'ë¼ëŠ” ë…¼ê°ì´ 어째서 ì‹ ë“œë¡¬ì„ ì¼ìœ¼í‚¨ 것ì¸ì§€, ì •ë¶€ì˜ ë§ì€ 불신하면서 ì¼ê°œ ë„¤í‹°ì¦Œì˜ ë§ì—는 귀를 기울ì´ëŠ” 웃지 못할 ìƒí™©ì´ 왜 벌어지는 것ì¸ì§€ 반드시 확ì¸í•´ì•¼ 합니다.어려운 경제 ìš©ì–´ì— ëŒ€í•´ì„œ 전혀 모르는 제가 ë´ë„, 그저 ‘믿ìŒ'ê³¼ ‘확신'ë§Œì„ ë°”ë¼ëŠ” 정부보단 훨씬 논리ì ìž„ì„ ëŠë‚„ 수 있었습니다. ì½ì–´ 보시면 ì‹ ë“œë¡¬ì— ëŒ€í•´ ì–´ëŠ ì •ë„ ì´í•´ë¥¼ í•˜ì‹œë¦¬ë¼ ë´…ë‹ˆë‹¤.

This is the collection of the writing of ‘Minerva’ who is making a ‘syndrome’ in society as well as in political world. How much you will trust his writing is depending on your perspectives. Anyway, this symptom shows that how much our society is excluded and has hard time to have soft communication. It is because we basically exclude different opinions. Now overcoming this prejudice, we should think about why Minerva’s opinions bring syndrome and why people distrust what the government says, but pay attention to what a netizen says. Even to me who doesn’t know anything about economic terms, his writing looks more logical than the government which only emphasizes ‘belief’ and ‘assurance.’ After checking his writing, you would understand what I mean.

Netizens criticize how the government responds to this syndrome.

제가 알기론 요즘 ‘미네르바'나 ‘김광수'등 사ì´ë²„ ë…¼ê°ë“¤ì´ ì •ë¶€ì˜ ì •ì±…ì— ëŒ€í•´ì„œ 신랄하게 비íŒí•˜ê¸°ë„ í•´ì„œ 정부 ì •ì±… 신뢰ë„ì— í° ì˜í–¥ì„ ë¼ì¹˜ê³  있다 보니까..기íšìž¬ì •ë¶€ê°€ 외국 ì–¸ë¡ ì˜ í•œêµ­ì— ëŒ€í•œ ë¶€ì •ì  ë³´ë„ì— ëŒ€ì‘할려고 외신 ëŒ€ë³€ì¸ ì œë„를 부활하기로 ê²°ì • 하면서, 사ì´ë²„ 경제 ë…¼ê°ì¸ ‘미네르바'와 ê¹€ê´‘ìˆ˜ê²½ì œì—°êµ¬ì†Œì˜ ‘김광수'등ì—게 정부 ë°©ì¹¨ì„ ì„¤ëª…í•˜ê±°ë‚˜ ìžë£Œë¥¼ 제공하는 등 ì¼ë ¨ì˜ 소통(?)ì„ í•˜ë ¤ê³  찾는 거래요. ì•„ë¬´ëž˜ë„ ì´ë“¤ ë…¼ê°&