Barrack Obama speaking: Throughout America’s history, there have been some years that simply
rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare. And then there are
the years that come along once in a generation, the kind that mark a
clean break from a troubled past and set a new course for our nation.
This is one of those years.

We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our
lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks.

Nearly 2 million jobs have been now lost. And on Friday, we’re likely
to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World
War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want
and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs.

Manufacturing has hit a 28-year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or
make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage.
Many workers are watching their life savings disappear. And many, many
Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.

Now, I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if
we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done,
this recession could linger for years.

The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall
$1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than
$12,000 in lost income for a family of four.

We could lose a generation of potential and promise as more young
Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train
for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive
edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and our standing
in the world.

In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

This crisis did not happen solely by some accident of history or normal
turn of the business cycle. And we won’t get out of it by simply
waiting for a better day to come or relying on the worn-out dogmas of
the past.

We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility
that stretched from corporate board rooms to the halls of power in
Washington, D.C.

For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous
decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little
regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans
without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some
borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn’t
afford.

Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline and too
often focused on scoring political points instead of problems they were
sent here to solve.

The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets and our government.

Now, the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means
that it’s not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are rooted in
past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness. (01/09/09)
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BBC Environmental Science — Half the world’s population could face a climate-induced food crisis by 2100, a new report by US scientists warns. Rapid warming is likely to reduce crop yields in the tropics and subtropics, according to Prof David Battisti of the University of Washington, Seattle.

“The most extreme summers of the last century will become the norm, he calculates, using 23 climate models. We must urgently create crops tolerant to heat and drought if we are to adapt in time, he writes in Science journal. “The stresses on global food production from temperature alone are going to be huge,” said Mr Battisti, a professor of atmospheric sciences. “And that doesn’t take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures.”

He collaborated with Professor Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, to examine the impact of climate change on the world’s food security.

The duo combined direct observations with projections from 23 global climate models that contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 global assessment. They calculate there is greater than 90% probability that by 2100, the average growing-season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than any temperatures recorded there to date.

“We are taking the worst of what we’ve seen historically and saying that in the future it is going to be a lot worse unless there is some kind of adaptation,” said Professor Naylor. (01/09/09)

BBC Environmental Science — There’s an intriguing question asked in the pages of the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this week. In a nutshell, it is this: can we forecast sudden, possibly catastrophic environmental changes by monitoring long-term trends?

As Reinette Biggs and her co-researchers point out, what can happen is that a trend gradually worsens for a while, but manageably, until there is a quick, catastrophic flip over into another state - the starkest example being from a species in existence to a species in extinction.

The term de jour for these changes is “tipping points”. And although it’s been bandied around in the arena of global warming for the last four or five years, the example this group uses in the PNAS paper involves fisheries, in particular the collapse of the Grand Banks cod stocks off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s.

The collapse appears to have produced a “regime change”. Once, adult cod kept numbers of smaller fish such as capelin down by the simple expedient of eating them. The depletion of adult cod has enabled capelin to thrive - and now, they are taking their revenge by eating juvenile cod so fast that few make it to adulthood.

The predator has become prey; the ecosystem has flipped over into another “regime”, and may never return. …

So what Reinette Biggs and her colleagues set out to ask in their simple model of an ecosystem very like the Grand Banks cod and capelin conumdrum was this: is there anything in the record, any signals that in retrospect could have shown that a huge change was coming, and indicated whether anything could be done to stop it?

If so, what would that tell us about using a similar prediction technique in the future?

Their conclusion basically was “no”, for the Grand Banks fishery, or for anything else: “Indicators cannot at present be relied upon as a general means for detecting and avoiding ecological regime shifts.”

The situation regarding projections of climate change impacts would appear to back up their view. (01/09/09)
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BBC Medical Science — A combination of drugs could trick the body into sending its repair mechanisms into overdrive, say scientists. The technique could be used to speed the healing of heart or bone damage, they claim.

The bone marrow of treated mice released 100 times as many stem cells - which help to regenerate tissue.

Imperial College London scientists reported their work in the journal Cell Stem Cell, but said human trials were some years away. The release of stem cells by the bone marrow is a natural part of the repair process - different types are sent to replenish tissue depending on the nature of the injury. However, in some cases, for example the damage caused by heart disease, the repair is not entirely successful, and loss of function persists.

The theory behind the Imperial College research is to boost the quantity of stem cells released, which will hopefully mean a swifter and more complete recovery.

Techniques already exist to increase the numbers of blood cell producing stem cells from the bone marrow, but the study focuses on two other types - endothelial, which produce the cells which make up our blood vessels, and mesenchymal, which can become bone or cartilage cells.

The mice were given firstly a “growth factor” drug - substances that already occur naturally in the bone marrow, then a new drug called Mozobil. Both endothelial and mesenchymal cells were released at a much greater rate. …

Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “It has long been known that the bone marrow contains cells that can replace lost or aged blood cells. It now seems increasingly likely that the bone marrow also contains cells that have the capacity to repair damaged internal organs, such as the heart and blood vessels, but that too few of them are released to be effective.

“This research has identified some important molecular pathways involved in mobilising these cells. It may be possible to develop a drug that interacts with these pathways to encourage the right number and type of stem cells to enter the circulation and repair damage to the heart.” (01/09/09)
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