BBC Social Science – The first legalised home computers have gone on sale in Cuba, but a ban remains on internet access.

This is the latest in a series of restrictions on daily life which President Raul Castro has lifted in recent weeks.

Crowds
formed at the Carlos III shopping centre in Havana, though most had
come just to look. The desktop computers cost almost $800 (£400), in a
country where the average wage is under $20 (£10) a month. But some
Cubans do have access to extra income, much of it from money sent by
relatives living abroad.

Since taking over the presidency in
February, Raul Castro has ended a
range of restrictions and allowed Cubans access to previously banned
consumer goods. In recent weeks thousands of Cubans have snapped up
mobile phones and DVD players. But only now have the first computer
stocks arrived.

Internet
access remains restricted to certain workplaces, schools and
universities on the island. The government says it is unable to connect
to the giant undersea
fibre-optic cables because of the US trade embargo. All online
connections today are via satellite which has limited bandwidth and is
expensive to use.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s ally and a critic of the US, is laying a new cable under the Caribbean. (05/05/08)
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BBC Science – Drug resistant tuberculosis is posing a growing threat in the UK, probably fuelled by immigration, say experts.

A Health Protection Agency team examined 28,620 TB infections in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2005.

They
found the proportion of cases resistant to any of the first-line drugs
rose from 5.6% to 7.9%. The British Medical Journal study also found a
small increase in cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB).

However, although the number of people becoming infected with
drug-resistant TB has almost doubled, from 170 in 1998 to 336 in 2005,
they still make up a small proportion of the total number of TB
infections.

The
HPA researchers found a significant increase in resistance to one
particular drug, isoniazid, outside London. Many of these patients came
from sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian
subcontinent, where they may have developed immunity to the drug.

The
researchers said measures to control outbreaks of TB among prisoners
and drug users were not up to scratch. They said the shortcomings of
the current system were illustrated by
the fact that an outbreak of drug resistant TB among prison inmates and
drug users which began in London in 1999 was still producing new cases.

The HPA team, led by Dr Michelle Kruijshaar, concluded: “The observed
increases highlight the need for early case detection, rapid testing of
susceptibility to drugs, and improved treatment completion.” (05/05/08)
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BBC Science –
Many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless
they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted, US scientists
have said.

Researchers led by the University of Washington said insects in the
tropics were much more sensitive to temperature changes than those
elsewhere.

In contrast, higher latitudes could experience an insect population boom.

The scientists said changes in insect numbers could have secondary effects on plant pollination and food supplies.

In the research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, the US scientists studied how temperature changes between
1950 and 2000 had affected 38 species of insects.

Unlike warm-blooded animals, cold-blooded organisms cannot regulate
their body temperatures by growing a coat of fur or shedding it when it
gets warm. They are instead limited to either seek shade when hot or
sun themselves when cool.

The scientists predicted such species would struggle to cope with the 5.4C rise in tropical temperatures expected by 2100.

“In the tropics, many species appear to be living at or near their
thermal optimum, a temperature that lets them thrive,” said Joshua
Tewksbury of the University of Washington. “But once temperature gets above the thermal optimum, fitness levels
most likely decline quickly and there may not be much they can do about
it,” he added. (05/05/08)
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