New Hampshire Health News Digest

The Web-based Office will have its day | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com : " September 28, 2005 The Web-based Office will have its day -Posted by Richard MacManus @ 1:00 am I first profiled a Web 2.0 office in early September and since then more web-based office products have surfaced. Peter Rip posted recently that he's now 'bumped into an alpha or beta Web-incarnation for every Microsoft desktop product'. He says most are AJAX, but some are Flash or Flex-based (both Macromedia products). Peter thinks desktop apps are on the way out, because 'no one works at their desktop anymore.' While he rightly points out that office people are spending more and more time on the Net, I don't agree with his conclusion that this necessarily signals the end of desktop apps - yet. A recent Computerworld article states that laptops will soon replace the desktop as the preferred business PC, citing mobility as the main reason for this trend. Microsoft office produc...

BREITBART.COM - Just The News : "CIA faces spy shortages as staffers go private WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As CIA Director Porter Goss tries to rebuild the agency's global operations, he faces a shortage of experienced spies created by a post-September 11 stampede to the private sector, current and former intelligence officials say. Goss, who a year ago inherited a CIA wracked by criticism of intelligence failures over Iraq and the September 11, 2001, attacks, has come under fire from critics about the publicized departures of several high-level clandestine officers. Reform advocates see the loss of senior officials as a natural consequence of changes intended to root out an old guard blamed for lapses that prompted Congress to put the CIA under a new director of national intelligence, John Negroponte. 'The CIA and the intelligence community failed this country pretty badly. That's why there's new leadership at the CIA. Change is not easy,' said Rep. ...

Independent Online Edition > Science & Technology >> I want to teach the world to surf, says the man who invented the $100 laptop : " One man in Boston has a plan that he hopes will bridge the world's gaping digital divide - and quickly. The visionary is Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his idea consists of a new kind of laptop computer that will cost just $100 (£57) to buy. It will also be a little different in design from the sleek machines some of us in the west have learned to love or covet. It will be foldable in different ways, encased in bump-proof rubber and will include a hand-crank to give it power in those corners of the globe where electricity supply is patchy. The first prototype of the machine should be ready by November and Mr Negroponte - who was one of the first prophets of the internet before most of us understood the word - hopes to put them into production next year. ...

BREITBART.COM - Just The News : "EU Wants Shared Control of Internet Sep 30 10:00 AM US/Eastern By AOIFE WHITE AP Business Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance. A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over. EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important 'because the Internet is a global resource.' 'The EU ... is very firm on this position,' he added. The Geneva talks were the last preparatory meeting before November's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia. A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet rout...

Google confirms Ames plan / Search engine plans offices, partnership with space agency : Google Inc. confirmed Wednesday that it will build up to 1 million square feet of offices at NASA Ames Research Center and collaborate with the space agency on research surrounding topics such as supercomputing that could benefit everything from moon launches to online searches. The partnership is intended to blend the expertise and huge resources of one of the leading Internet companies with an army of scientists focused on the stratosphere and beyond. 'Google and NASA share a common desire to bring the universe of information to people around the world,' said Eric Schmidt, the company's chief executive officer, in a statement. 'Imagine having a wide selection of images from the Apollo space mission at your fingertips whenever you want it.' The partnership, announced late Wednesday at a press conference at the NASA facility, will bring a marquee tenant to the Ames ...

Which of These Foods Will Stop Cancer? (Not So Fast) Mr. Michelson is one of a growing number of people worried about cancer - because it is in their families or because they have seen friends suffer with the disease - who are turning to diets for protection. Cancer patients, doctors say, almost always ask what to eat to reduce their chances of dying from the disease. The diet messages are everywhere: the National Cancer Institute has an "Eat 5 to 9 a Day for Better Health" program, the numbers referring to servings of fruits and vegetables, and the Prostate Cancer Foundation has a detailed anticancer diet. Yet despite the often adamant advice, scientists say they really do not know whether dietary changes will make a difference. And there lies a quandary for today's medicine. It is turning out to be much more difficult than anyone expected to discover if diet affects cancer risk. Hypotheses abound, but convincing evidence remains elusive. Most of the proposed dietary cha...

600 barrels of loot found on Crusoe island Jonathan Franklin in Santiago Monday September 26, 2005 The Guardian The archipelago is named after Robinson Crusoe, but perhaps it should have been called Treasure Island. A long quest for booty from the Spanish colonial era appears to be culminating in Chile with the announcement by a group of adventurers that they have found an estimated 600 barrels of gold coins and Incan jewels on the remote Pacific island. "The biggest treasure in history has been located," said Fernando Uribe-Etxeverria, a lawyer for Wagner, the Chilean company leading the search. Mr Uribe-Etxeverria estimated the value of the buried treasure at US$10bn (£5.6bn). 600 barrels of loot found on Crusoe island Jonathan Franklin in Santiago Monday September 26, 2005 The Guardian The archipelago is named after Robinson Crusoe, but perhaps it should have been called Treasure Island. A long quest for booty from the Spanish colonial era appears to be culminating in Chi...

Balls of Fire: Bees carefully cook invaders to death Susan Milius Honeybees that defend their colonies by killing wasps with body heat come within 5°C of cooking themselves in the process, according to a study in China. KILL ZONE. Honeybees mob an invader wasp, revving up their body heat until the attacker dies. Tan At least two species of honeybees there, the native Apis cerana and the introduced European honeybee, Apis mellifera, engulf a wasp in a living ball of defenders and heat the predator to death. A new study of heat balling has described a margin of safety for the defending bees, says Tan Ken of Yunnan Agricultural University in Kunming, China. He and his team also report in an upcoming issue of Naturwissenschaften that the native bees have heat-balling tricks that the European bees don't. That makes sense, the researchers say, since the Asian bees have long shared their range with the attacker wasp Vespa velutina, but the European bees became widespread in Asia only some...

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY by Carlo M. Cipolla illustrations by James Donnelly The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that: a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid. b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments. The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an und...

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Chip Helps Electric Outlet Go Broadband By YURI KAGEYAMA TOKYO (AP) - The common electric socket will serve as your home's connection to broadband with a new chip developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. - doing away with all the Ethernet cables or the hassle of hooking up to a wireless network device. Products are still being developed, but gadgets embedded with the chip from the Japanese manufacturer of Panasonic products can hook up to a broadband network by plugging into the common electrical outlet, company officials said Thursday. That's because the Osaka-based company has come up with technology to use electric wiring in the home to relay not just electricity but also data. The technology has been around for some time - including in the United States - but Matsushita's system is unique in that it delivers fast-speed broadband information at up to 170 megabits per second, which is faster than Ethernet. The advantage is that the lowly electri...

USATODAY.com - "NASA administrator says space shuttle was a mistake : By Traci Watson USA TODAY The space shuttle and International Space Station — nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades — were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday. In a meeting with USA TODAY's editorial board, Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth. “It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,” Griffin said. “We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.” The shuttle has cost the lives of 14 astronauts since the first flight in 1982. Roger Pielke Jr., a space policy expert at the University of Colorado, estimates that NASA has spent about $150 billion on the program since its inception in 1971. The total cost of the space station by the time it's finished — in 2010 or later — may ...

Anti-War, My Foot The phony peaceniks who protested in Washington. By Christopher Hitchens Are they really "anti-war"? Saturday's demonstration in Washington, in favor of immediate withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, was the product of an opportunistic alliance between two other very disparate "coalitions." Here is how the New York Times (after a front-page and an inside headline, one of them reading "Speaking Up Against War" and one of them reading "Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities") described the two constituenciess of the event: The protests were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus. The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run...

Oil reserves are double previous estimates, says Saudi : "Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer, and Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company, yesterday declared that the world had decades' worth of oil to come, in an attempt to calm fears about the record prices experienced in recent weeks. Forming a powerful alliance, the Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said, at an industry conference in Johannesburg, that the country would soon almost double its 'proven' reserve base, while Exxon's president, Rex Tillerson, spoke of 3 trillion or more barrels of oil that are yet to be recovered. Mr Naimi said that Saudi Arabia would 'soon' add 200 billion barrels to its current reserves estimate of 264 billion barrels. The level of the kingdom's reserves and future production capacity are a controversial issue, with sceptics suggesting that it is running out of oil. Muhammed-Ali Zainy, of London's Centre for Global Energy Studies, said: 'Since these...

Space Elevator Concept Undergoes “Reel” World Testing By Leonard David A private group has taken one small step toward the prospect of building a futuristic space elevator. LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Washington, has successfully tested a robot climber – a novel piece of hardware that reeled itself up and down a lengthy ribbon dangling from a high-altitude balloon. The test run, conducted earlier this week, is seen as a precursor experiment intended to flight validate equipment and methods to construct a space elevator. This visionary concept would make use of an ultra-strong carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching some 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth into space. The space elevator would be anchored to an offshore sea platform near the equator in the Pacific Ocean. At the other end in space, the ribbon would be attached to a small counterweight. Mechanical “lifters” -- robotic elevator cars -- would move up and down the ribbon, carrying such item...

The Counterterrorism Blog: U.S. Congressman Proposes High-Tech Defense to Prevent Terrorist Infiltration Rep. Rick Renzi, U.S. Congressman from the 1st District of Arizona, is proposing the deployment of high-tech equipment along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent infiltration by terrorists. Rep. Renzi represents the largest district, geographically, in the U.S. (except for those districts covering an entire state) and serves on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee and Financial Services Committee. Rep. Renzi's announcement on his "Red Zone Defense" proposal states, "Along with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), drones, ground sensors and tower sensors, we need aerostat balloons equipped with night-vision and infrared technology and other intelligence payloads to see into Mexico looking for illegal aliens before they get to the border. This capability will provide a constant stream of real time intelligence, which can then be down-linked to a multi-agency command ce...

U.S. Special Forces killed Al Qaeda’s No. 2 terror mastermind in Iraq, Defense Department officials say. FOX News has confirmed that Abu Azzam, who was believed to have been in charge of the financing of terrorist cells in the war-torn country, was killed during a raid in Baghdad Sunday. Azzam is thought to be the top deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted terrorist. Azzam is the latest in a series of top Zarqawi deputies that been killed or captured by coalition forces in recent months. Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq group has taken responsibility for some of the country’s most horrific acts of terror including car bombings, kidnappings and beheadings of Iraqi civilians and westerners.

NOLA.com: T-P Orleans Parish Breaking News Weblog : "Rumors of deaths greatly exaggerated Widely reported attacks false or unsubstantiated 6 bodies found at Dome; 4 at Convention Center By Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell Staff writers After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies. 'I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome,' Beron recalls the doctor saying. The real total was six, Beron said. Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, ...

The Counterterrorism Blog: First Signs of Daylight in Battle with Zarqawi in Iraq A break between mainstream Sunni Iraqis and fringe Salafist extremists International terrorism consultant Evan Kohlman has highlighted the split between mainstream Sunni's in Iraq and the Salafist extremists, symbolized by correspondence this past week between the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and al Qaeda in Iraq. Kohlman references the response of AMS to Zarqawi's declaration of war on the Shi'ite, in which they strongly condemn his actions, and two replies from al Qaeda that display disappointment in the AMS and proclaim Zarqawi was misquoted.

WSJ.com - Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software : "Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software Delay in New Windows Version Drove Giant to Develop Simpler, Flexible Product Engineers Get Trip to 'Bug Jail' By ROBERT A. GUTH Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL September 23, 2005; Page A1 REDMOND, Wash. -- Jim Allchin, a senior Microsoft Corp. executive, walked into Bill Gates's office here one day in July last year to deliver a bombshell about the next generation of Microsoft Windows. 'It's not going to work,' Mr. Allchin says he told the Microsoft chairman. The new version, code-named Longhorn, was so complex its writers would never be able to make it run properly. [Jim Allchin] The news got even worse: Longhorn was irredeemable because Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their...

The Observer | International | Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina : by Mark Townsend Houston Sunday September 25, 2005 The Observer It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, s...

New York Post Online Edition: commentary : "RUSSIAN TO SYRIA'S SIDE By URI DAN September 23, 2005 -- JERUSALEM - Russia is trying to defend the Syrian regime against U.S. pressure and possible U.N. sanctions, according to a secret Israeli foreign office cable. 'Russia regards Syria as its only foothold in the Middle East,' the report said. That's quite a change from the days when Moscow also had strong allies in Cairo, Baghdad and elsewhere in the region. Russia has been trying to upgrade its ties to Syria, beginning with the visit of President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow last January. But Russia is suddenly worried about Syria's growing isolation in the international arena, due to American charges of Damascus' support of terror in Iraq and because of what the cable called 'the Syrian fingerprints' in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently told The Post the evidence provided ...

In Syria, democrats chomp at bit Anticipating a new law that will allow the creation of political opposition parties, some Syrians aren't waiting. By Rhonda Roumani | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor DAMASCUS – Political life in Syria has long been stagnant, dominated by the ruling Baath Party since the 1960s. But in June, the Baath Party Congress recommended the establishment of a new political party law that would allow the creation of new nonethnic and nonreligious political parties. Since then, Samir Nashar, a wealthy businessman from Aleppo, has spent weeks on the road, personally recruiting prominent intellectuals, economists, and businessmen to join the National Free Coalition, a new party that hopes to represent Syria's bourgeoisie. But in a country where new political parties still remain illegal and gatherings of four or more people may be punishable by jail, Nashar's recruitment drive is proving difficult. "Because of the ...

Toothless Taliban By Bill Roggio Afghanistan has successfully conduct its second round of elections since its liberation from the Taliban in 2001. Turnout is estimated at over fifty percent. Despite promises to disrupt the election from al Qaeda and the Taliban, the violence on election day was insignificant. The BBC tallies up the election day violence: • A skirmish between police and Taliban. Two police and three Taliban are killed. • A French soldier is killed by a land mine. • Two rockets fired at a UN compound. • One Taliban fighter killed during an attack on a police station. • A candidate's house is bombed, injuring five. • Three rockets fired at Jalalabad airport. • A rocket attack on polling station in Andar district of Ghazni province. • A rocket attack on polling station in Dargam district of Kunar province. Afghanistan is the former haven of al Qaeda and the model Islamist state for al Qaeda’s desired Caliphate. The Taliban has vowed it would disrupt t...

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > World -- Muslim violence destroying economy in southern Thailand PATTANI, Thailand – The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day. After 20 months of insurgent violence, the no-work threat has driven another nail into what is becoming an economic coffin in Thailand’s terrorized southern provinces. “My business has been bad as customers are afraid to come out,” said Thanchanok Putroy, 39, chopping up a catfish in the market where most stores were shut and buses aren’t running. Among the hundreds killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are police and soldiers, but police records show that 80 percent are civilians – rubber tappers, shopkeepers, civil servants, construction workers and ice cream vendors. Bombs have exploded ...

Dramatic success in Tall Afar battle cuts off insurgents supply lines from Syria. The enemy in this area is -- this is the worst of the worst in terms of people in the world. The enemy here was drawn to Tall Afar for a couple of reasons. First of all, Tall Afar is positioned along routes that lead from Mosul into Syria. So it was important to the enemy to have freedom of action, not only in Tall Afar, but in western Ninevah province, so they could access sources of external support in Syria. Also, this area is important to the enemy because this enemy -- al Qaeda in Iraq -- wants to foment ethnic and sectarian violence and wants a chaotic environment so that they can operate freely in this area, and ultimately what they hope is that Iraq will fail and descend into civil war. And this area is conducive to those sort of efforts because you have an ethnic minority here: the Turkmen. You have - that - ethnic minority is further divided between a majori...

CNN.com - Islamic schools under abuse scrutiny - Sep 18, 2005 : "ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The accounts are disturbing: beatings, forced sex and imprisonment with shackles and leg irons. Abuse accusations from hundreds of children sent to study at Islamic schools are prompting growing calls from parents and rights groups for a full-scale investigation. But officials have moved slowly and cautiously in probing the charges of mistreatment in Quranic schools, or madrassas -- pointing to a paradox across much of the Muslim world. It's often easier to tackle Islamic militants than to confront the cultural taboo on publicly airing alleged sex crimes and challenging influential clerics. Still, if Islamic institutions ever face a reckoning over sexual abuse -- such as the Roman Catholic upheavals in recent years -- it could begin in Pakistan where institutions already are under unprecedented scrutiny by anti-terrorism agents. 'We are forcing people to look this prob...

Call-by-Web - Lifehacker : "Call-by-Web READ MORE: VOIP Have you ever wanted a strange mechanical voice to call your friends? In addition to many developer tools, CDyne provides automated voice messaging services. In particular, it has a free-to-try web page where you can enter a phone number and a message to send. Quick update: Yes, you can “call” Canada as well as the US. Point your browser to the NotifyPhoneBasic page. To test the system, enter the number you wish to dial and the text you wish to say. Add your own phone number and name into the CallerID and CallerIDname fields. Choose a Voice ID between 1 and 10. (I like the masculine tones of number 4. Avoid the French lady who’s number 7.) Finally, type 0 into the LicenceKey field and click Invoke. The screen will clear and a “Queued” notice will appear. CDyne will place the phone call for you. You may want to call your self a few times to get the hang of things before you try calling out."

Iran's President Does What U.S. Diplomacy Could Not : "Iran's President Does What U.S. Diplomacy Could Not U.N. Speech Raises Doubts About Nuclear Program By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 19, 2005; Page A12 NEW YORK, Sept. 18 -- Five weeks ago, Iran's new president bought his country some time. Facing mounting criticism after walking away from negotiations with Europe and restarting part of Iran's nuclear program, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked the world to withhold diplomatic pressure while he put together new proposals. On Saturday, dozens of international diplomats, including the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, gathered at the United Nations to hear how Ahmadinejad planned to stave off a crisis. Instead his speech, followed by a confused hour-long news conference, was able to do what weeks of high-level U.S. diplomacy had not: convince skeptical allies that Iran may, in fact, use its nuclear energy progra...