Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail reporting from Iraq: The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after “special weaponry” was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004. After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah. In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation. “We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles,” Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. “I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus. “The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations.”

“I had two children who had brain damage from birth,” 28-year-old Hayfa’ Shukur told IPS. “My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money.”

Shukur said doctors told her that it was use of the restricted weapons that caused her children’s brain damage and subsequent deaths, “but none of them had the courage to give me a written report.”

“Many babies were born with major congenital malformations,” a paediatric doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down’s syndrome, and limb defects. I can say all kinds of problems related to toxic pollution took place in Fallujah after the November 2004 massacre.”

Many doctors speak of similar cases and a similar pattern. The indications remain anecdotal, in the absence of either a study, or any available official records. (06/12/08)
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George Monbiot writes: Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen, and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares. Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere.

The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming, it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There’s a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artifact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries like Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land.

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers. Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don’t have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; they might grow several different crops in the same field. (06/12/08)
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The New York Times: Science — Staring at a pattern meant to evoke an optical illusion is usually an act of idle curiosity, akin to palm reading or astrology. The dot disappears, or it doesn’t. The silhouette of the dancer spins clockwise or counterclockwise. The three-dimensional face materializes or not, and the explanation always seems to have something to do with the eye or creativity or even personality.

That’s the usual cue to nod and feign renewed absorption in the pattern.

In fact, scientists have investigated such illusions for hundreds of years, looking for clues to how the brain constructs a seamless whole from the bouncing kaleidoscope of light coming through the eyes. Brain researchers today call the illusions perceptual, not optical, because the entire visual system is involved, and their theories about what is occurring can sound as exotic as anyone’s.

In the current issue of the journal Cognitive Science, researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Sussex argue that the brain’s adaptive ability to see into the near future creates many common illusions. …

“It takes time for the brain to process visual information, so it has
to anticipate the future to perceive the present,” said Mark Changizi,
the lead author of the paper, who is now at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “One common functional mechanism can explain many of these seemingly unrelated illusions.” (06/12/08)
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BBC Agriculture — A US government aid agency has formed an alliance with a group headed by former UN chief Kofi Annan to try to boost African agriculture.

Mr Annan has called for a “green revolution” to solve the food crisis.

The new partnership aims to invest in Africa’s inadequate infrastructure, as well as developing new seeds and fertilisers.

Mr Annan says that 40% of African crops are lost after being harvested - a problem which new roads could ease.

The alliance between the US Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) focuses on small-scale farmers.

Akin Adesina, Agra’s vice-president, said the partnership would focus on boosting production in three “breadbasket areas”.

These were the Sahel region where millet and sorghum crops dominate; humid zones where root and tuber foods do well and the east and south of the continent where maize is the dominate crop.

“We believe that we can have a green revolution that allows farmers and households in the Sahel to be able to feed themselves while also allowing those who are eating maize, yams and cassava to be able to feed themselves,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

Mr Annan said there had been 30 years of silent hunger in Africa, where farmers exported food in the late 1960s but now only produced a quarter of the world average per acre.

“Collaborations such as ours are essential to putting in place long-term solutions to the food crisis,” Mr Annan said after signing the deal. (06/12/08)
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BBC Science — In January, the UK government and Welsh Assembly launched a two-year feasibility study into the possibility of harnessing tidal energy in the Severn estuary in order to generate electricity. It has the second largest tidal range in the world, which could be used to meet up to 5% of the UK’s electricity needs.

Two forms of technology are being assessed by the study: tidal barrages and tidal lagoons. The concepts are not new and there have been plans to tap into the river’s resource since the middle of the 19th Century. …

There are two different types of systems that use tidal energy to generate electricity: tidal stream and tidal range.

With a tidal range of about 15m, the Severn is an untapped energy source

Tidal stream systems utilise the energy in fast-flowing current to turn the blades of free-standing turbines, in a similar way that the wind turns turbines on land. This technology is gaining favour because it has lower capital costs and is deemed to have a lower environmental impact than tidal range systems.

Tidal range technology, such as barrages and lagoons, exploits the potential energy in the height difference between high and low tides (known as the tidal range). It works by impounding a large volume of water at high tide, which is then released at low tide through a bank of turbines.

Because the tidal range of up to 14m (46ft) in the Severn estuary is the second largest in the world, technologies that can exploit the energy of the twice-daily tide, such as barrages and lagoons, are seen as the preferred option. (06/12/08)
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The New York Times — According to the Congressional Research Service, there are only about 30 scientists among the 535 senators and representatives in the 110th Congress, and that is counting the psychologist, the psychiatrist, a dozen other M.D.’s, three nurses, an engineer, two veterinarians, a pharmacist and an optometrist.

But physics is on a roll.

“Go back 15 years, and there weren’t any physicists,” said Vernon J. Ehlers, a Republican who taught the subject at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., until he was elected to Congress in 1993.

His was a lone voice until 1998, when Rush Holt, assistant director of the Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory, won election from New Jersey as a Democrat. And today there are three, adding Bill Foster, a physicist at Fermilab and another Democrat, who won a special election in March in Illinois.

“If we continue to reproduce in this manner,” Mr. Foster began, and Mr. Ehlers finished the thought, “the entire Congress would consist of physicists!”

They were joking — probably. But a Congress full of physicists might solve some worrisome problems, the three-member physics caucus argued one afternoon when they met for a joint interview in the Capitol.

There are 435 people in the House, Mr. Holt said, and “420 don’t know much about science and choose not to.” He recalled his exasperation when anthrax spores were discovered in the Capitol in 2001 and colleagues came to him and said, “You are a scientist, you must know about anthrax,” a subject ordinarily missing from the physics curriculum.

“The difference,” he said, “is we would be perfectly happy to pick up a copy of The New England Journal of Medicine and read about the etiology of anthrax.”

“In fact, we basically did that,” Mr. Ehlers said.

“We know more than our colleagues,” Mr. Holt said, “but not more than they could know.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Foster said, “unless things play to their advantage in the next election, they are not interested.”(06/12/08)
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