2008: April 16th Good News (Wife Saves Husband in Yachting Incident, World's Oldest Living Tree 9550 Years Old, more...)

Good Afternoon All,

I'm running a bit late today... still morning here, and only have a few moments to shower before work. Thank goodness today is Thursday (work starts later today), but I'm sooo out of time!

Anyway, today I'd like to point out the article about potatos. I loved this article about how potatoes could be the next food to help with the food crises. I had no idea, for instance, that potatoes provided more food per acre than rice or soybeans.

Another good article, that unfortunately is copywrited (I provided the link) is about the defense minister of Spain, who is both female, and pregnant. I think it's pretty cool that the armies of Spain are being inspected etc by a woman. The picture shows her looking at the troops, and showing her pregnant belly. :)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy today's articles. I'll see you tomorrow!



Today's Top 5:

1. World's Oldest Living Tree -- 9550 years old -- Discovered In Sweden (Science Daily)
2. Wife Rescues Husband off New Zealand (Yachting Monthly)
3. Bank Swindler Wanted in Spokane Caught in Boulder (Denver Post)
4. Million-Song Jukebox at Your Fingertips (Independent IE)
5. Infamous Taliban Leader Killed in Pakistan (CBS NEWS)



Honorable Mention:
1. How Potatoes Could Save the World (The Scotsman)
2. Bikini Corals Recover From Atomic Blast, Although Some Species Missing (Science Daily)



Unpublishable:

Pregnant defense minister a first in Spain
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24162934/
updated 3:51 p.m. ET April 16, 2008
This is a cool story about how well Spain is embracing gender equality. There is a picture of the defense minister examining the troops where you can see her pregnant belly.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



Today's Top 5:

1. World's Oldest Living Tree -- 9550 years old -- Discovered In Sweden
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm
ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2008) —

The world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden. The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.
For many years the spruce tree has been regarded as a relative newcomer in the Swedish mountain region. "Our results have shown the complete opposite, that the spruce is one of the oldest known trees in the mountain range," says Leif Kullman, Professor of Physical Geography at Umeå University.
A fascinating discovery was made under the crown of a spruce in Fulu Mountain in Dalarna. Scientists found four "generations" of spruce remains in the form of cones and wood produced from the highest grounds.
The discovery showed trees of 375, 5,660, 9,000 and 9,550 years old and everything displayed clear signs that they have the same genetic makeup as the trees above them. Since spruce trees can multiply with root penetrating braches, they can produce exact copies, or clones.
The tree now growing above the finding place and the wood pieces dating 9,550 years have the same genetic material. The actual has been tested by carbon-14 dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, USA.
Previously, pine trees in North America have been cited as the oldest at 4,000 to 5,000 years old.
In the Swedish mountains, from Lapland in the North to Dalarna in the South, scientists have found a cluster of around 20 spruces that are over 8,000 years old.
Although summers have been colder over the past 10,000 years, these trees have survived harsh weather conditions due to their ability to push out another trunk as the other one died. "The average increase in temperature during the summers over the past hundred years has risen one degree in the mountain areas," explains Leif Kullman.
Therefore, we can now see that these spruces have begun to straighten themselves out. There is also evidence that spruces are the species that can best give us insight about climate change.
The ability of spruces to survive harsh conditions also presents other questions for researchers.
Have the spruces actually migrated here during the Ice Age as seeds from the east 1,000 kilometres over the inland ice that that then covered Scandinavia? Do they really originate from the east, as taught in schools? "My research indicates that spruces have spent winters in places west or southwest of Norway where the climate was not as harsh in order to later quickly spread northerly along the ice-free coastal strip," says Leif Kullman.
"In some way they have also successfully found their way to the Swedish mountains."
The study has been carried out in cooperation with the County Administrative Boards in Jämtland and Dalarna.
Adapted from materials provided by Umeå University.




2. Wife Rescues Husband off New Zealand
http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/auto/newsdesk/20080316101809ymnews.html
Yachting Monthly, 16 April 2008

Tony Curphey, a solo British sailor, was rescued by his wife after he got into trouble 700 miles off the coast of New Zealand. For the past ten years, Tony and his wife, Susanne, have been sailing the globe separately, meeting only in port.
Mr Curphey's 27ft plywood clipper, Galenaia, had started taking on water in a storm. Mr Curphey, 67, from Emsworth, Hampshire, radioed his wife who was 150 miles away on her 40ft ketch So Long. Mrs Curphey, 47, from Bavaria, said: "Australians still complain how much it cost to rescue Tony Bullimore and my Tony didn't want to follow in his footsteps."
Susanne took two days to reach her husband, and the conditions meant that it took five attempts to get a tow line attached. The couple kept in touch with rescue services by radio and reached Nelson, NZ, after 8 days.
On a yacht club blog, Susanne wrote "I had just about reached 40ºS in the Tasman Sea on day 29 of the passage when Tony reported a problem. During the last gale Galenaia had sprung a leak, with the skeg and rudder severely damaged and he had to pump every hour! He managed to dive to inspect the fault and support the skeg with several ropes. His words on the radio were: "Id rather be rescued by Susanne than by the authorities using my Epirb!?"



3. Bank Swindler Wanted in Spokane Caught in Boulder
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8944633
Article Last Updated: 04/16/2008 09:53:16 AM MDT

SPOKANE, Wash.—A confessed bank swindler who fled from a federal courtroom and stranded his lawyer, apparently after seeing he was about to be arrested, has been caught in Boulder. Acting on an anonymous tip, two police officers arrested John Earl Petersen, 56, when he answered a knock on the door to his room at the University Inn at 12:45 a.m. Sunday, Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said.
Officers also found a blond wig and several books about changing identity, and impounded a late-model black Cadillac DTS that was reported stolen in Spokane after Petersen failed to make payments, Huntley said.
Petersen walked out of U.S. District Court on Dec. 11. Officials said he apparently saw legal documents that showed he was going to be taken into custody because his supervised release had been revoked for parole violations. They say he took off under the noses of FBI agents, deputy U.S. marshals and federal probation officers in the courtroom.
Defense lawyer Bevan J. Maxey, who had caught a ride from Peterson to court from his north side law office, was stranded.
Maxey told The Associated Press on Wednesday he had not spoken with Peterson and was awaiting notification of his client's return to Spokane.
Petersen was the mastermind in a fraud scheme from 1990 to 1996 that led to the $11 million collapse of Mountain Bank of Whitefish, Mont. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering but got a substantially reduced sentence of five years in 1998 by agreeing to testify against former bank officers he had bribed.
More recently, he was living in Spokane at the home of his 95-year-old aunt, apparently using her bank account to lavishly remodel the residence after moving her into a nursing home, according to an affidavit from a federal probation officer.
Petersen was summoned to court in March 2006 for violating conditions of his supervised release, which was supposed to run through next May, but remained at large after promising to provide financial information, avoid liquor and other drugs and meet other conditions.
He was cited again on Nov. 28 for violating supervised release.
Details of the accusation that led to the hearing from which he fled have been withheld.



4. Million-Song Jukebox at Your Fingertips
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/millionsong-jukebox-at-your-fingertips-1349175.html?r=RSS
Wednesday April 16 2008

A NEW generation of MP3 players could provide music lovers with millions of songs at their fingertips.
Scientists have developed a way of dramatically increasing the memory on iPods and other gadgets while retaining their small size.
Future devices could store 150,000 times the amount of models on the market now, according to researchers at Glasgow University.
They have created a tiny switch which would see 500,000 to one million gigabytes squeezed on to one square inch.
The current limit is around 3.3 gigabytes.
The technology is being developed along with scientists at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory in Warrington, England.
Dr Vin Dhanak of the laboratory said the team now faced the challenge of resolving "fabrication issues'' surrounding the device.
The molecular switch is controlled by taking nanoparticles, each a millionth of a millimetre in size, and placing them on to a gold or carbon surface.



5. Infamous Taliban Leader Killed In Pakistan
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/16/terror/main4019115.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_4019115
LONDON and PESHAWAR
Pakistan, April 16, 2008

(CBS) This story was written by CBSNews.com's Tucker Reals in London, and Sami Yousafzai, reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan. A senior Taliban commander who became a hero to Islamic militants for his role in shooting down a U.S. helicopter in 2005, killing all 16 special forces troops aboard, has been killed by Pakistani security forces, officials and Taliban militants tell CBS News.
Mullah Ismail, a notorious Taliban commander from the Afghan province of Kunar, was killed in a shootout with Pakistani police as he traveled with a kidnapped trader, a local police officer said Wednesday. He was apparently on his way into the lawless Northwest Frontier Province along the Afghan border.
Officer Mukarma Khan said Ismail, also known as Mullah Ahmad Shah, had kidnapped the trader from a camp for Afghan refugees in Pakistan and was trying to transport him back to the border when he failed to stop at the checkpoint. He apparently opened fire on the police and was killed in the following exchange of gunfire.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed the death of the key commander and said he was a prominent Taliban figure in the area.
Abdul Jalal Jalal, chief of police in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where Ismail was based, told CBS News that he was also aware about the militant's death in Pakistan. He described him as the "most wanted terrorist in Kunar province."
A Taliban sub-commander in Kunar province, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not confirm the killing. But he told CBS News Ismail's death "would be a full-scale blow." He praised Ismail for the shooting down of the Chinook in 2005.
Ismail was also said to be a key facilitator of al Qaeda militants in the region - many of whom come from outside southeast Asia and do not speak the local languages. According to Taliban sources, Osama bin Laden personally honored Ismail's authority in the area after the Chinook attack in a letter sent through an intermediary.
Police chief Jalal said Ismail and the militants under his command were behind many attacks on NATO, U.S. and Afghan forces in the northeastern part of Afghanistan.
Ismail became a hero for al Qaeda and the Taliban after his group hit a U.S. Navy MH-47 Chinook helicopter in late June 2005, apparently with a shoulder-fired rocket. The helicopter was one of four aircraft ferrying special forces into the area on a reconnaissance mission.
It was considered a lucky shot from an inaccurate weapon; but it left eight Navy SEALs and eight Army air crew from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment dead. Read report from June 30, 2005.
It was the deadliest single attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the invasion to topple the Taliban in 2001.
The Chinook was shot down as it ferried troops into the region to search for four Navy SEALs who had gone missing in the area in late June. Three of the men were found dead, but one, who was wounded, managed to escape - read report from July 3, 2005 - to a local home, where he was hidden from the Taliban and eventually rescued by U.S. forces.
On Wednesday, Afghan shepherd Gulab Khan, who says he's the one who saved the life of the only surviving SEAL, told CBS News that Mullah Ismail attacked his village the day after the helicopter was shot down, searching for any survivors.
Khan said he protected the SEAL, but his actions brought death threats from Ismail and his militants, which prompted the shepherd to relocate his entire family to the provincial capital. He described Ismail as the most powerful militant in Kunar province.


Honorable Mentions:

1. How Potatoes Could Save the World
http://news.scotsman.com/world/How-potatoes-could--save.3984822.jp
16 April 2008

AS WHEAT and rice prices surge, the humble potato is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid slopes of the Andes to the tropical flatlands of Asia. They require very little water, mature in as little as 50 days and can yield between two and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice.
"The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Centre in Lima, a non-profit scientific group.
Like others, she says the potato is part of the solution to the hunger caused by higher food prices, a population that is growing by one billion people each decade, climbing costs for fertiliser and diesel, and more cropland being sown for biofuel production.
To focus attention on this, the United Nations named 2008 the International Year of the Potato, calling the vegetable a "hidden treasure".
Governments are also turning to the tuber. Peru's leaders, frustrated by a doubling of wheat prices in the past year, have started encouraging bakers to use potato flour to make bread. Potato bread is being given to schoolchildren, prisoners and the military, in the hope the trend will catch on.
Supporters say it tastes just as good, but not enough mills are set up to make potato flour. "We have to change people's eating habits," Ismael Benavides, Peru's agriculture minister, said. "People got addicted to wheat when it was cheap."
Even though the potato emerged in Peru 8,000 years ago near Lake Titicaca, Peruvians eat fewer potatoes than people in Europe: Belarus leads the world in consumption, with each inhabitant devouring an average of 376lb a year.
China, a huge rice consumer that historically has suffered devastating famines, has become the world's top potato grower, while in sub-Saharan Africa, the potato is expanding more than any other crop. India has told food experts it wants to double potato production in the next five to ten years.
In Latvia, sharp price rises caused bread sales to drop by 10 to 15 per cent in January and February, as consumers bought 20 per cent more potatoes.
The developing world is where most new potato crops are being planted, and as consumption rises, poor farmers have a chance to earn more money. "The countries themselves are looking at the potato as a good option for both food security and also income generation," Ms Anderson said.
The potato is already the world's third most-important food crop after wheat and rice.
Potatoes come in some 5,000 types, and Peru is sending thousands of seeds this year to the Doomsday Vault near the Arctic Circle, contributing to a gene bank for food crops that was set up in case of a global disaster.
In colours ranging from alabaster white to bright yellow and deep purple, and with countless shapes, textures and sizes, potatoes offer inventive chefs a chance to create new, eye-catching dishes.
The Lima potato centre says they are a great source of complex carbohydrates, which release their energy slowly, and have only 5 per cent of the fat content of wheat.
They also have a quarter of the calories of bread and, when boiled, have more protein than corn and nearly twice the calcium. They contain vitamin C, iron, potassium and zinc.
One factor helping the potato remain affordable is the fact that, unlike wheat, it is not a global commodity, so has not attracted speculative professional investment.
Each year, farmers worldwide produce 600 million tonnes of wheat – almost double the potato output – and some 17 per cent of that flows into foreign trade.
Analysts say less than 5 per cent of potatoes are traded internationally, and prices are mainly driven by local tastes, as opposed to international demand. Raw potatoes are heavy and can rot in transit, so global trade in them has been slow to take off. They are also susceptible to infection with pathogens.
The downside to that is prices in some countries aren't attractive enough to persuade farmers to grow them. People in Peruvian markets say the government needs to help lift demand. "Prices are low. It doesn't pay to work with potatoes," said Juana Villavicencio, who spent 15 years planting them and now sells the tubers for pennies a kilo in a market in Cusco, in Peru's southern Andes.
But science is moving fast. Genetically modified potatoes that resist "late blight" are being developed by the German chemicals group BASF. That is the disease that led to famine in Ireland during the 19th century and still causes about 20 per cent of potato-harvest losses in the world, the company says.
Scientists say farmers who use clean, virus-free seeds can boost yields by 30 per cent and be cleared for export. That would generate more income for farmers and encourage more production, as companies could sell speciality potatoes abroad, instead of just having them turned into frozen chips or crisps.
USE THEM TO MAKE FLOUR, VODKA – OR GOLF TEES
• TO BOOST demand, Peru's government has started to serve bread made from potato flour in its schools, hospitals, prisons and to members of its armed forces. The move counters high wheat prices, but is also a point of Andean pride. The potato was first domesticated in Peru some 8,000 years ago, but the average Peruvian eats only 176lb of potatoes a year, compared with 376lb in Belarus, the world leader.
• To make potato flour for bread, you have to boil, dry, peel and then grind the potatoes into a fine powder. As an added bonus, bread made from potato flour is safe for people with an allergy to gluten, which is found in most grains.
• Vodka was first made from potatoes in Poland at about the turn of the 20th century, halving the cost of making vodka from wheat. Some 5kg of potatoes are needed to produce one litre of vodka.
• The potato, sometimes dismissed as a fat-filled food, is actually nutritious. A medium-sized potato has about 110 calories, contains almost no fat and is full of vitamins and complex carbohydrates, which release energy over time. Potatoes come in many colours – not just white – and contain antioxidants, which are thought to help prevent cancer.
• Most of the world's potatoes are consumed fresh, but they can also be used to make less-perishable products, such as alcohol, crisps and biodegradable golf tees.
• The potato is the obvious inspiration behind the classic Mr Potato Head toy, which was introduced in 1952 by Hasbro, and followed a year later by his wife, Mrs Potato Head. The plastic toys, which starred in the blockbuster films Toy Story and Toy Story 2, are brown, hollowed-out potatoes that have detachable eyes, ears, arms and feet.
The full article contains 1182 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.


2. Bikini Corals Recover From Atomic Blast, Although Some Species Missing
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080415101021.htm
ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2008) —

Half a century after the last earth-shattering atomic blast shook the Pacific atoll of Bikini, the corals are flourishing again. Some coral species, however, appear to be locally extinct.
These are the findings of a remarkable investigation by an international team of scientists from Australia, Germany, Italy, Hawaii and the Marshall Islands. The expedition examined the diversity and abundance of marine life in the atoll.
One of the most interesting aspects is that the team dived into the vast Bravo Crater left in 1954 by the most powerful American atom bomb ever exploded (15 megatonnes - a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb). The Bravo bomb vapourised three islands, raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees, shook islands 200 kilometers away and left a crater 2km wide and 73m deep.
After diving into the crater, Zoe Richards of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University says, “I didn’t know what to expect – some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral (up to 8 meters high) had established, creating thriving coral reef habitat. Throughout other parts of the lagoon it was awesome to see coral cover as high as 80 per cent and large tree-like branching coral formations with trunks 30cm thick. It was fascinating – I’ve never seen corals growing like trees outside of the Marshall Islands.
“The healthy condition of the coral at Bikini atoll today is proof of their resilience and ability to bounce back from massive disturbances, that is, if the reef is left undisturbed and there are healthy nearby reefs to source the recovery.”
However the research has also revealed a disturbingly high level of loss of coral species from the atoll. Compared with a famous study made before the atomic tests were carried out, the team established that 42 species were missing compared to the early 1950s. At least 28 of these species losses appear to be genuine local extinctions probably due to the 23 bombs that were exploded there from 1946-58, or the resulting radioactivity, increased nutrient levels and smothering from fine sediments.
“The missing corals are fragile lagoonal specialists – slender branching or leafy forms that you only find in the sheltered waters of a lagoon,” Zoe explains. While corals in general have shown resilience, Zoe adds that the coral biodiversity at Bikini Atoll has proven only partially resilient to the disturbances that have occurred there.
Maria Beger from the Commonwealth Research Facility for Applied Environmental Decision Analysis at The University of Queensland took a Geiger counter with her on the expedition.
“The ambient gamma radiation the residential island of Bikini atoll was fairly low – pretty much like the background radiation in an Australian city. However when I put the Geiger counter near a coconut, which accumulates radioactive material from the soil, it went berserk,” Maria remembers.
Extensive decontamination works have been carried out at Bikini atoll making it safe to visit, however local produce is unsafe to eat, and it is unlikely the Bikinian people will return to live on Bikini Atoll in the near future.
The coral survey was carried out at the request of the atoll’s local government.
For comparison the team also dived on neighbouring Rongelap Atoll, where no atomic tests were carried out directly although the atoll was contaminated by radioactive ash from the Bravo Bomb and local inhabitants were also evacuated and for the most part, have not returned. The marine environment at this Atoll was found to be in a pristine condition.
The team thinks that Rongelap Atoll is potentially seeding Bikini’s recovery, because it is the second largest atoll in the world with a huge amount of coral reef diversity and biomass and lies upstream from Bikini.
Zoe says that ironically, thanks to the bombs, Bikini Atoll represents a priceless laboratory showing how in the absence of ongoing stress, some corals have the capacity to recover from vast upheavals, which may contain valuable lessons for the management of reefs in other parts of the world including Australia.
“Apart from occasional forays of illegal shark, tuna and Napoleon Wrasse fishing, the reef is almost completely undisturbed to this day. There are very few local inhabitants and the divers who visit dive on shipwrecks, like the USS Saratoga, and not on the reef” says Maria.”
Because of its incredible history and current undisturbed character Bikini Atoll is now part of a larger project to have northern Marshall Island Atolls World Heritage listed. The expedition served to illustrate the tragic history of the Bikinian people is not entirely reflected below the surface because the reefs of Bikini are recovering to present themselves as havens of abundance to the marine life of the Northern Pacific Ocean.
The team’s report on Bikini corals surviving atom bombs appears in Elsevier’s Marine Pollution Bulletin No. 56, March 2008 page 5-3-1-515.
Adapted from materials provided by ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies.