2008: March 28th Good News (Earth Hour is March 29th; Harlem Teacher to Teach from Antartica; more...)

Good Afternoon all,

My top story today is about Earth Hour. I ran a story about this a few weeks ago, in preparation for the day, well that day is tomorrow (today if you live here in Seoul, like me, lol). So, I wanted to give people one more story as the world begins its earth hour journey.

A couple other stories that might grab your attention are the one about Cell phones being allowed in Communist Cuba; the one about space junk found in an Australian's back yard; and the one about young cyclist Taylor Phinney, who will turn 18 just in time to compete in the Olympics.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the posts! See you tomorrow!


Today's Top 5:
1. Lights Out: Earth Hour Goes Global (Australian Broadcasting Company)
2. Denver to Receive $200,000 for Solar Energy (Denver Post)
3. Raul Castro: Cubans Can Have Cell Phones (Yahoo News)
4. Brief, High Doses of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack (Science Daily)
5. Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils (New York Times)



Honorable Mentions:
1. American Teen Taylor Phinney Takes Big Step Toward Olympics, Chance to Follow Mother's Tracks (International Herald Tribune)
2. Australian Farmer's Space Junk Discovery (Telegraph UK)
3. Couple Donates Eagle Home to Make-A-Wish Foundation (Idaho Statesman)



Today's Top 5:

1. Lights Out: Earth Hour Goes Global
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/29/2202413.htm
Posted 1 hour 39 minutes ago
Current time: 4:20 pm CST
Updated 54 minutes ago

An Earth Hour light-bulb-shaped hot air balloon takes flight over Sydney Harbour on March 19, 2008. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)More than 20 cities around the world will switch off their lights in the climate change awareness event Earth Hour tonight.
Earth Hour was launched in Sydney last year when many residents turned their lights out for one hour to reduce the city's carbon emissions.
Tonight, 110 Federal Government departments will also join in the event as the Government also sets up a new task force focussing on energy.
Tonight, 2,200 Federal Government buildings will be involved in turning off appliances and lights at 8:00pm AEDT.
Earth Hour executive director Andy Ridley says it is heartwarming to see an initiative that began in Australia has picked up global momentum.
"When people act together it's the aggregate of their actions that start to make a big difference,'' he said.
"Even one hour, that's so tiny, on their own they make absolutely no difference because it's so tiny, but when you add it all up together and imagine we were able to do that a lot more hours of the day - throughout the whole year, that's when we start breaking into really serious emission cuts."
New task force
The new Federal Government task force will look at how to reduce the Commonwealth's footprint on the environment and cutting energy.
Over the next few months, it will consider a range of options, including targets for departments and powering Parliament House with renewable energy.
Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong says it is a necessary step.
"This will report to the Prime Minister in June and will have an ongoing role in making sure this Government leads on sustainability," she said.
The national audit office is also assessing all government agencies to see how much needs to be done to cut emissions.
Senator Wong says the Federal Government wants more long term initiatives focussing on saving energy.
"We'll be looking at things such as setting targets powering Parliament House and electorate offices with renewable and clean energy," she said.
"[Also] looking at how we can use the Government fleet to drive the market for low emission cars.
"These are the options we want to look at to increase Government sustainability."
'Amazed'
Mr Ridley says he is amazed so many people will join the millions in Australia, as well as the Federal Government, in making a difference to global warming.
"What's happened this year has very much surprised us, we're amazed that it's happened and gone so wide,'' he said.
"The way that it's happened has been many different people have gone round the world with the idea and presented on it."



2. Denver to Receive $200,000 for Solar Energy
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8729827
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 03/28/2008 11:09:55 AM MDT

DENVER—Denver is among 12 cities selected this year as Solar America Cities that each will receive $200,000 from the Energy Department to integrate solar energy technologies. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made the announcement today at Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar's third annual energy summit.
Thirteen other Solar America Cities were chosen last year.
President Bush has set a goal to make solar power cost competitive with conventional electricity by 2015.
At Salazar's New Frontiers in Energy Summit, Bodman also stressed the need for a diverse supply of clean, sustainable, secure energy.




3. Raul Castro: Cubans Can Have Cell Phones
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_cell_phones
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 28, 12:42 PM ET

HAVANA - President Raul Castro's government said Friday it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the communist-run state. It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.
Some Cubans previously ineligible for cell phones had already gotten them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world.
Telecommunications monopoly Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., or ETECSA said it would allow the general public to sign prepaid contracts in Cuban Convertible Pesos, which are geared toward tourists and foreigners and worth 24 times the regular pesos Cuban state employees are paid in.
The decree was published in a small black box on page 2 of the Communist Party newspaper Granma.
The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and while the communist system ensures most Cubans have free housing, education and health care and receive ration cards that cover basic food needs, the average monthly state salary is just 408 Cuban pesos, a little less than $20.
A program in Convertible Pesos likely will ensure that cell phone service will be too expensive for many Cubans, but ETECSA's statement said doing so will allow it to improve telecommunication systems using cable technology and eventually expand the services it offers in regular pesos.
The statement promised further instructions in coming days about how the new plan will be implemented, and there were no lines of would-be customers mobbing ETECSA outlets as they opened for business.
ETECSA is a mixed enterprise that operates with foreign capital from the Italian communications firm Italcom.



4. Brief, High Doses of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327092140.htm
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008)

Long known for its role in preventing anemia in expectant mothers and spinal birth defects in newborns, the B vitamin folate, found in leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts has now been shown to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals.
In a new study, an international team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report that rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements. On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth.
The team's findings, set for publication in the April 8 edition of the journal Circulation, come just weeks after other international studies in humans suggested that low-dose folic acid supplements may prevent dementia in the elderly and premature births.
"We want to emphasize that it is premature for people to begin taking high doses of folic acid," says senior study investigator David Kass, M.D., a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute.
"But if human studies prove equally effective, then high-dose folate could be given to high-risk groups to guard against possible heart attack or to people while they are having one," says Kass.
The more likely and most practical advantage to ingesting supplements, he says, lies in folic acid's potential to act as a short-term buffer for people who may be having a heart attack and who rush to their local emergency room complaining of chest pain.
Clinical trials are expected in the near future, although Kass says a major challenge in testing is that a high dose of folic acid for humans comparable to that given the rats would require an average-size adult to swallow more than 200 one-milligram pills per day, "an impractical and unrealistic regimen, even if the body excretes the excess."
In addition, he cautions, "we do not yet know if folate is safe to consume in this high a dose, or how much or how little of it is needed to be effective," citing 25 milligrams per day as the highest dose previously tested safe to consume in adults as.
Kass says that such large amount of folate may also yield unpredictable side effects. Some studies have linked the nutrient supplement to increased rates of colon and prostate cancer.
Each year, an estimated 565,000 first-time heart attacks occur in the United States, with an additional 300,000 recurrent heart attacks.
Results from the new study, conducted in rats - dozens were fed supplements and dozens more did not receive any - showed that overall pumping function during heart attack remained strong in vitamin B9-fortified animals.
The amount of blood pumped by the treated hearts during a 30-minute window when blood flow to the heart was restricted to simulate a heart attack stayed near normal for rodents, at an average ejection fraction of 73 percent. Meanwhile, it fell in the untreated group to 27 percent.
Similarly, the muscle wall at the front of the heart kept contracting during heartbeats, thickening by 37 percent in the supplement-fed group, but the muscle could barely compress, thickening by 5 percent, in the untreated group. (Sixty percent would be the normal amount of thickening in a healthy rat heart.)
Moreover, researchers found that an injection of folic acid into the bloodstream of rats that had never before taken supplements, within the first 10 minutes of a heart attack, was almost equally as effective as preventive therapy in reversing muscle damage, and in lowering infarct size by a factor of 10.
"Folic acid is already well known to be safe to consume in high doses in the short term, and it is very inexpensive, costing pennies per milligram, so its prospects look promising," says Kass.
Researchers plan further tests to determine precisely why folate protects the heart, and to determine how effective it is in not-as-high doses. But they point out that it has long been known for its role in the normal workings of the cell's principal energy source, the mitochondria, whose function is essential to maintaining healthy blood vessels.
It was this evidence that led to the latest study, which, says lead investigator An Moens, M.D., suggests that folate acts as an energy reserve in the heart, "providing much needed energy for muscle contraction, in the form of ATP, at the same time the heart is being starved for oxygen-carrying blood by a blocked artery."
According to Moens, a postdoctoral cardiology research fellow at Johns Hopkins, study results showed that high-energy phosphate levels went down 43 percent in the blood of treated rats, but levels dropped by one-third more (by 66 percent) in untreated rats.
"With more fuel, the heart kept pumping even though its blood flow was reduced," says Moens, now a cardiologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. "The smaller heart attacks seemed related to this better energy balance in the heart produced by the folate."
In the study, heart function was monitored by more than two dozen key tests, such as echocardiogram and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as by blood analysis before, during and after the heart attack, when blood flow was allowed to resume in the coronary artery that had been blocked.
Among the team's other findings that backed up the protective effects of folate on the heart were mild, slight dips in systolic blood pressure during heart attack in treated rats, while pressure fell in untreated animals by 25 percent. Similarly, blood flow was stable in the treated group, but dropped by 40 percent in untreated animals. Post-heart attack buildup of dangerous chemicals, known as reactive oxygen species, was halved in treated rats. And fatal arrhythmias, unstable heartbeats that can immediately follow a heart attack, also went down from 36.7 percent to 8.3 percent in the supplement-fed group.
"In future, we might just pop in an I.V., and give people high-dose folate while they are waiting for their catheterization or CT scans to search for blockages," says Moens.
Funding for the study of folate, one of eight B vitamins, was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Peter Belfer Laboratory Foundation, with additional support from the American Heart Association, the Belgian American Educational Foundations, as well as the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
In addition to Kass and Moens, other Hopkins researchers involved in this study were Hunter Champion, M.D., Ph.D.; Azeb Haile, M.S.; Muz Zviman, Ph.D.; Djahida Bedja, M.S.; Kathy Gabrielson, D.V.M., Ph.D.; Nazareno Paolocci, M.D., Ph.D. Kass is also the Abraham and Virginia Weiss Professor of Cardiology at Hopkins. Additional researchers from Belgium included Marc Claeys, M.D., Ph.D.; Dirk Borgonjon, M.S.; Luc Van Nassauw, Ph.D.; Floris Wuyts, Ph.D.; Rebecca Elsaesser, Ph.D.; Paul Cos, Ph.D.; Jean-Pierre Timmermans, Ph.D.; and Christiaan Vrints, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Antwerp; and Barbara Tavazzi, M.D., Ph.D., and Guiseppe Lazzarino, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Rome. Further assistance with biochemical analysis was provided by Pawel Kaminski, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael Wollin, M.D., Ph.D., both from the New York University School of Medicine.
Adapted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.



5. Harlem to Antarctica for Science, and Pupils
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/nyregion/28teacher.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
By SARA RIMER
Published: March 28, 2008

Shakira Brown, 29, will be teaching from Antarctica this fall.

The pitch: Eight weeks in Antarctica. Groundbreaking research into the climate before the Ice Age. Glaciers. Volcanoes. Adorable penguins.
The details: Camping on the sea ice in unheated tents, in 20-below-zero temperatures. Blinding whiteouts. The bathroom? A toilet seat over a hole in the ice.
Stephen F. Pekar, a geology professor from Queens College, was selling Shakira Brown, a 29-year-old Harlem middle school science teacher, on his expedition.
Her response: I’m in.
Dr. Pekar had found just the person for his Antarctica team: a talented, intrepid African-American teacher to be a role model for minority science students.
...
Dr. Pekar wants to get more American students, and particularly more minority students, excited about science. Many studies show teenagers across the United States lagging in math and science scores behind their peers in other industrialized countries.
“These kids don’t have the role models, or the environment, that shows them what the possibilities are,” he said. “I want Shakira Brown’s students to be able to live this experience through her. I want them to be thinking like scientists — like lovers of life.”
The trip is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which sends about 300 scientists to Antarctica each year. Tom Wagner, director of earth sciences for the program, estimates that perhaps three or four African-Americans have joined that research effort.
Relatively few African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians work in the earth sciences, Dr. Wagner said, adding that the foundation was working to bring greater diversity to the field.
Ms. Brown, Dr. Pekar and three of his students leave in October. They and 11 other team members will meet at McMurdo Station in Antarctica for survival training, including learning how to build an emergency igloo.
At Promise Academy, the charter school where Ms. Brown teaches, the students are bursting with questions. Will their teacher catch her own food? (No, but Dr. Pekar is bringing a chef.) What if Ms. Brown falls through the ice? (Unlikely, Dr. Pekar says, though their teacher will learn how to avoid cracks.) Will she see polar bears? (No, bears don’t live in Antarctica.)
Will her fiancé let her make the trip?
“What do you mean, ‘Is he going to let me go?’ ” Ms. Brown has told her students. “Of course he’s going to let me go. I’m independent. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
Eva Ramos, 13, who is in Ms. Brown’s eighth grade class, approves. “Ms. Brown is a very smart woman,” she said. “The trip is going to be hard. But it’s for the good of science.”
Dr. Pekar’s search for a teacher began at Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that runs Promise Academy. Ms. Brown — who gets her students excited about science by having them look at cells under microscopes, ask lots of questions and dream up their own experiments instead of just memorizing facts for state standardized tests — was at the top of everyone’s list as the ideal Antarctica explorer-educator.
Ms. Brown makes science both understandable and cool, Eva said. “When I was younger, I hated science,” she said. “The teachers talked too much. After they talk a lot, you get bored. Ms. Brown gives us examples from real life. When she teaches us something, I learn it in a snap.”
Ms. Brown plans to teach her students — along with dozens of others through the Urban Science Corps, a NASA-affiliated, nationwide after-school program she is helping to develop — with lessons live from Antarctica, via video conferencing and blogging.
At Promise Academy, the Antarctica studies have already begun. On a recent outing to the American Museum of Natural History, Ms. Brown’s students got to touch penguin feathers. They were enthralled by Dr. Pekar’s slides of his last trip to Antarctica.
“I want to get them to visualize it, to envision themselves there,” Ms. Brown said in a recent interview. “You hear about Antarctica in the fourth grade when they’re doing all the continents of the world, but it’s not a place you consider tangible. You can picture Virginia: Your grandmother lives in Virginia. But who lives in Antarctica?”
Ms. Brown grew up in Irvington, N.J., just outside Newark, one of five children raised by a single mother who is a social worker. Sophomore biology at Irvington High School — and an inspiring teacher named Miss Jordan — hooked her on science. She went to Hofstra University intending to become a doctor.
But during a stint as a substitute teacher in a Newark middle school — she was working her way through college — she felt called to teaching, she said.
Story continues... Please visit website above for full story



Honorable Mentions:


1. American Teen Taylor Phinney Takes Big Step Toward Olympics, Chance to Follow Mother's Tracks
http://iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/27/sports/OLY-CYC-Track-Worlds-Phinney.php
The Associated Press
Published: March 27, 2008

MANCHESTER, England: Cycling runs in Taylor Phinney's family.
Just six months after making his track debut, the 17-year-old prodigy from an American cycling dynasty is likely off to the Beijing Olympics.
The son of American road star Davis Phinney and 1984 Olympic gold medalist Connie Carpenter-Phinney was quick to express his disappointment after clocking 4:22.358 in the individual pursuit at the world track championships on Wednesday.
Still, that time would be good enough to get Phinney into the Olympics — if USA Cycling, as expected, officially secures a starting spot in the pursuit. Even after he finished eighth Wednesday, USA Cycling officials believe Phinney's ranking in the world standings will be good enough to get him into the Beijing field.
"I'm somewhat happy with the time — it's a personal record for me — but it's still not what I wanted to do," Phinney told The Associated Press. "It's a bit disappointing not finishing where I wanted to, but I didn't expect to rise so quickly. I just have to keep in check that eighth place out of the 17 in the world championships is not that bad."
Today in SportsSullivan breaks world record againBritons continue to break records at world track cycling championshipsSerena Williams, Henin advance with straight-sets wins at Key Biscayne Especially considering that Phinney would only have been found on a soccer pitch two years ago.
That changed with an inspirational trip in 2005 to the Tour de France, where his father became the first American to win a stage in 1986. Within his first year of competitive cycling, he won 23 races. And despite only pedaling in a velodrome for the first time in September, he has already set the sport alight.
Taylor feels a virus hindered his performance, but vows to be in peak shape after returning to Colorado before participating in junior races in Europe. Then, more than likely, it's off to China, where he is determined to return with a medal and like his mom.
"I go to races to win," said Phinney, who turns 18 a month before the games. "I have a pretty high expectation of myself and I think I can do that with the right legs. For me, it'll be cool to be part of the Olympic experience — the opening ceremony and all that."
He doesn't want his opportunity taken away by a possible boycott over China's human rights record and its crackdown in Tibet.
"If it comes to a boycott situation that will be really disappointing," he said. "I hope it doesn't, it is just unnecessary to involve Olympics with political problems, because the Olympics is about the joining together of greatest athletes in the world."
Reaching Beijing will also be a challenge for his father, who undergoes brain surgery on April 4 — eight years after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
"This disease is definitely a challenge, but it's made much easier by being able to use the distraction of Taylor and his results," Davis said. "He recognizes what I've lost with this disease and it gives him a great appreciation for what he's got and he doesn't want to fritter it away.
"He wants to flex his muscle — and that shows me and everyone else he doesn't take it for granted."
Davis Phinney sees the day when his son is an Olympic and Tour de France champion — combining the feats of his parents.
"You have to be careful about imposing your dreams on wishes on your kids," Davis said. "But I know that's what he would like and he's going to surpass my footsteps — or wheel marks — and in many cases he already has.
"I'm biased but what's phenomenal about the kid is his range, he can ride anywhere from 200 meters in a velodrome to 100 miles on the road with equal ease, strength and aplomb."



2. Australian Farmer's Space Junk Discovery
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/28/wspace128.xml
By Bonnie Malkin and agencies
Last Updated: 4:02pm GMT 28/03/2008

A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback believes a piece of space junk has landed on his property.
How about that: More tales of the bizarreFarmer James Stirton found a giant ball of twisted metal last year but only recently decided to look into its origins.
The ball could be part of a rocket
He now believes it is part of a rocket used to launch communications satellites.
Mr Stirton discovered the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.
It was found in the Queensland outback
"I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock," Mr Stirton said.
"I know a lot of about sheep and cattle but I don't know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket."
The object is hollow He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fibre material.
He has contacted some US-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.
Sydney's Powerhouse Museum said it was not uncommon for people to find spacejunk in remote areas of Australia.
In 1979, large parts of the Skylab space station fell to earth near a tiny outback town in Australia's west.
A local council sent NASA a ticket for littering and the then United States President Jimmy Carter rang a local motel to apologise.




3. Couple Donates Eagle Home to Make-A-Wish Foundation
http://www.idahostatesman.com/westada/story/333696.html
Shawn Raecke/ Idaho Statesman03/26/08

This five bedroom home on Eagle Hills Golf Course was recently donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho and will be sold through a public auction on April 5th.
Provided by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of OregonAfter the death of their son from a brain tumor, David and Robin Thomas decided to donate their Eagle home to the Idaho Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dash Thomas received his wish for a laptop computer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon when he was 12 in 1997.Bethann Stewart - Idaho StatesmanEdition Date: 03/26/08
After the death of their son from a brain tumor, David and Robin Thomas decided to donate their Eagle home, shown above, to the Idaho Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dash Thomas, pictured right, received his wish for a laptop computer from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon when he was 12 in 1997.There will be a viewing of the home on Pebble Beach Way at noon Saturday. The five-bedroom, Eagle Hills Golf Course home will be auctioned at noon Saturday, April 5.
"They went to the expense of updating everything inside and out," said Larry Flynn, charity auctioneer and board member of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho. "They were working on it into the fall, knowing they were going to donate it to the Make-a-Wish Foundation."
The Thomases have asked that the proceeds of the auction be used to create a perpetual fund that will be invested to provide wishes into the future.
"Anyone can come and make a bid," Flynn said. "This is a generous gift from a generous family. Whatever we get will be a generous donation."
View the home at www.selequityauction.com/wish/.