What Challenges Are Boys Facing and What Opportunities Exist to Address those Challenges?

Many adolescent boys are doing well. They graduate from high school, stay out of trouble, and reach adulthood prepared for the world of work and the responsibilities of family. For young men like these, opportunities have never been greater.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation commissioned a review of the literature on the risks and assets that affect boys ages 10 through 18. By summarizing and synthesizing the existing literature, the project aims to pinpoint what strengths make some boys likely to succeed and what risks, or challenges, increase the likelihood that they will struggle. It does not make an effort to compare boys to girls; it does not intend to imply that an issue for boys isn't also relevant for girls. In fact, research shows that many of the same risk and protective factors, as well as interventions, may be relevant for both boys and girls.

A major goal of the project is to provide information about approaches that help boys stay on the right track. These approaches range from formal programs, such as anti-drug or anti-gang programs, to environmental interventions, such as when a community bands together to create safe places for youth to congregate, to more informal approaches, such as when a concerned adult befriends a troubled adolescent.

The project has produced a brief on key findings, an annotated bibliography, and fact sheets focusing on seven research areas, or domains: mortality and victimization, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, mental health, education, employment, and constructive use of time. The project examines the influence, both positive and negative, of boys' characteristics; their families, peers, and schools; and their communities. This project also highlights the positive impact that caring adults in families, schools, and communities can have on the well-being of boys and young men.

House arrest for 'drug delivery boy'

Despite concerns from Crown that a conditional sentence could not "control" him, a provincial court judge has sentenced a 23-year-old Courtenay man to one year house arrest for trafficking cocaine.

Phillip Morgan Saunders was initially arrested on Nov. 16, 2007, after police smelled marijuana during a scuffle over a bottle of vodka in Saunders' possession.

When returned to the detachment, a small amount of pot as well as 0.6 grams of cocaine were found on Saunders.

"He was rambling on about how the marijuana, the vodka and the coke were all his and he was bringing them home," said federal Crown prosecutor Bonnie Macdonald.

About three months later, as Saunders awaited trial on the drug possession charge, an unidentified source told police that a particular phone number was being used for a dial-a-dope operation.

Police called the number and set up a buy for three spitballs, or 1.2 grams, of cocaine. They were met by Saunders.

Defence lawyer Michael Harris said his client was not the one behind the dial-a-dope operation.

More information : http://www.canada.com/House+arrest+drug+delivery/1506620/story.html

Helium rains inside Jovian planets

LIVERMORE, Calif. – Models of how Saturn and Jupiter formed may soon take on a different look.

By determining the properties of hydrogen-helium mixtures at the millions of atmospheres of pressure present in the interior of Saturn and Jupiter, physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have determined the temperature at a given pressure when helium becomes insoluble in dense metallic hydrogen. The results are directly relevant to models of the interior structure and evolution of Jovian planets.

Hydrogen and helium are the two lightest and most common elements in the universe. Because of their ubiquitous nature, they are critical in cosmological nucleosynthesis and are essential elements of stars and giant planets. Hydrogen by itself in the observable universe provides clues to the origin and large-scale structures of galaxies.

However, scientists have struggled to determine what conditions are needed for the two elements to mix.

Ornithopter

Man has long been fascinated with birds and their ability to fly. Before the Wright Brothers achieved their first heavier-than-air controlled flight in 1903, hundreds of men and women attempted to fly in gliders, airships, balloons and other fantastic innovations. As early as the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci studied the flight and wing structure of birds. His detailed design of a human-powered ornithopter - an aircraft deriving its thrust and lift from flapping wings - was based on these studies. Although he never actually flew the machines he designed, his ideas were replicated and modified throughout the next four centuries. In 1871, Alphonse Penaud successfully flew a rubber-powered model ornithopter - the Planophore - for a distance of 181 feet in 11 seconds. Since then, many other inventors have developed ornithopters. This turn-of-the-century photograph pictures Arnold Coblitz in his ornithopter. The engraving - Flugmaschine - depicts an ornithopter constructed and tested unsuccessfully by Swiss watchmaker Jakob Degen living in Vienna in the early 1800s. Even today, a team based at the University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies is conducting research on ornithopters.

US, Afghan troops kill 11 militants in south

International and Afghan troops killed 11 militants when a raid in Afghanistan's volatile south turned into a gunbattle with Taliban fighters, U.S. forces said Friday.

Fighting broke out during the Thursday night raid targeting a key Taliban insurgent in a village in Helmand province, the military said in a statement. The forces came under fire from militants inside a compound as they advanced and returned fire.

The U.S. military said the insurgent targeted in the attack was involved in making bombs that were used for roadside attacks in northern Helmand province.

One insurgent was captured and 11 killed in the fighting in Lashkar Gar district, west of the provincial capital of Kandahar. The statement said one militant tried to use women and children in the compound as human shields, but the force managed to shoot the man without harming the civilians.

A village elder told coalition forces the Taliban forced them to shelter the group for the night, the statement said.

The U.S. is sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to stamp out the resurgent Taliban who have taken de facto control of the south and continue to mount attacks through much of the rest of the country.

Senior U.S. officials say President Barack Obama also plans to deploy 4,000 trainers to build up Afghan forces as part of a new strategy to be announced Friday.
Source http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD9765HJO3

Climate-related Changes on the Antarctic Peninsula Being Driven from the Top and the Bottom of the Ecosystem

Scientists have long established that the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming spots on Earth. Now, new research using detailed satellite data indicates that the changing climate is affecting not just the penguins at the apex of the food chain, but simultaneously the microscopic life that is the base of the ecosystem.

The research was published in the March 13 edition of Science magazine by researchers with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) program. The LTER, which has 26 sites around the globe, including two in Antarctica, enables tracking of ecological variables over time, so that the mechanisms of climate change impact on ecosystems can be revealed. The specific findings were made by researchers with the Palmer LTER, using data collected near Palmer Station and from the research vessel Laurence M. Gould. Both Palmer Station and the Laurence M. Gould are operated by NSF's Office of Polar Programs.

Hugh Ducklow, of the Marie Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, the principal investigator for the Palmer LTER project, said that the new findings are scientifically significant, but they also are consistent with the climate trends on the Peninsula and other observed changes.

However, it took new scientific tools and analytical work by post-doctoral fellow Martin Montes Hugo to verify scientifically what scientists had been inferring from other changes for some time.

"I have to say the findings weren't a surprise; I think with the weight of all the other observations that we had on changes happening to organisms higher up in the food chain, we thought that phytoplankton weren't going to escape this level of climate change," Ducklow said. "But it took Martin to have all the right tools and the abilities to go in and do the analysis and prove what we suspected."

Those data, gathered over years, were essential to tracking patterns that supported the new findings.

"That's the beauty of the LTER program," he added.

Over the past 50 years, winter temperatures on the Peninsula have risen five times faster than the global average and the duration of sea-ice coverage has decreased. A warm, moist maritime climate has moved into the northern Peninsula region, pushing the continental, polar conditions southward.

As a result, the prevalence of species that depend on sea ice, such as Adelie penguins, Antarctic silverfish and krill, has decreased in the Peninsula's northern region, and new species that typically avoid ice, such as Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins, and lanternfish are moving into the habitat.

The LTER researchers show that satellite data on ocean color, temperature, sea ice and winds, indicate that phytoplankton at the base of the food chain are also responding to changes in sea-ice cover and winds driven by climate change. However, there are contrasting changes in northern and southern regions, and the satellite and ground-based data provide insights into the forcing mechanisms for each region.

The researchers weren't surprised that primary productivity in the waters of the Peninsula has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. But the contrasting changes in the north and south were a surprise.

Galactic Dust Bunnies Found to Contain Carbon After All

Galactic Dust Bunnies Found to Contain Carbon After All Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers have found evidence suggesting that stars rich in carbon complex molecules may form at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

This discovery is significant because it adds to our knowledge of how stars form heavy elements -- like oxygen, carbon and iron -- and then blow them out across the universe, making it possible for life to develop.

Astronomers have long been baffled by a strange phenomenon: Why have their telescopes never detected carbon-rich stars at the center of our galaxy even though they have found these stars in other places? Now, by using Spitzer's powerful infrared detectors, a research team has found the elusive carbon stars in the galactic center.

"The dust surrounding the stars emits very strongly at infrared wavelengths," says Pedro García-Lario, a research team member who is on the faculty of the European Space Astronomy Center, the European Space Agency's center for space science. He co-authored a paper on this subject in the February 2009 issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

"With the help of Spitzer spectra, we can easily determine whether the material returned by the stars to the interstellar medium is oxygen-rich or carbon-rich."

The team of scientists analyzed the light emitted from 40 planetary nebulae – blobs of dust and gas surrounding stars -- using Spitzer's infrared spectrograph. They analyzed 26 nebulae toward the center of the Milky Way -- a region called the "Galactic Bulge" -- and 14 nebulae in other parts of the galaxy. The scientists found a large amount of crystalline silicates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, two substances that indicate the presence of oxygen and carbon.

This combination is unusual. In the Milky Way, dust that combines both oxygen and carbon is rare and is usually only found surrounding a binary system of stars. The research team, however, found that the presence of the carbon-oxygen dust in the Galactic Bulge seems to be suggestive of a recent change of chemistry experienced by the star.

The scientists hypothesize that as the central star of a planetary nebula ages and dies, its heavier elements do not make their way to the star's outer layers, as they do in other stars. Only in the last moments of the central star's life, when it expands and then violently expels almost all of its remaining outer gasses, does the carbon become detectable. That's when astronomers see it in the nebula surrounding the star. "The carbon produced through these recurrent 'thermal pulses' is very inefficiently dredged up to the surface of the star, contrary to what is observed in low-metallicity, galactic disk stars," said García-Lario. "It only becomes visible when the star is about to die."

This study supports a hypothesis about why the carbon in some stars does not make its way to the stars' surfaces. Scientists believe that small stars -- those with masses up to one-and-a-half times that of our sun -- that contain lots of metal do not bring carbon to their surfaces as they age. Stars in the Galactic Bulge tend to have more metals than other stars, so the Spitzer data support this commonly held hypothesis. Before the Spitzer study, this hypothesis had never been supported by observation.

This aging and expelling process is typical of all stars. As stars age and die, they burn progressively heavier and heavier elements, beginning with hydrogen and ending with iron. Towards the end of their lives, some stars become what are called "red giants." These dying stars swell so large that if one of them were placed in our solar system, where the sun is now, its outermost border would touch Earth's orbit. As these stars pulsate – losing mass in the process – and then contract, they spew out almost all of their heavier elements. These elements are the building blocks of all planets, including our own Earth (as well as of human beings and any other life forms that may exist in the universe).

FDA CLEARS CAMERA PILL TO PHOTOGRAPH SMALL INTESTINE

FDA today cleared for marketing a swallowable capsule containing a tiny camera that snaps pictures twice a second as it glides through the small intestine.

The product represents a technological advance in methods of examining the gastrointestinal tract.

The device, made by Given Imaging Ltd., an Israeli company with North American headquarters in Norcross, Ga., is intended to visualize the inside of the small intestine to detect polyps, cancer, or causes of bleeding and anemia.

Currently the standard method of detecting abnormalities in the intestines is through endoscopic examination in which doctors advance a scope down into the small intestine via the mouth. However, these scopes are unable to reach through all of the 20-foot-long small intestine, and thus provide only a partial view of that part of the bowel.

The camera capsule is designed to take photos of the entire small intestine, enabling doctors to see areas that the endoscope cannot reach.

The device, called the Given Diagnostic Imaging System, comes in capsule form and contains a camera, lights, transmitter and batteries. The capsule has a clear end that allows the camera to view the lining of the small intestine.

The patient swallows the capsule, and the natural muscular waves of the digestive tract propel it forward through the stomach, into the small intestine, through the large intestine, and then out in the stool. The capsule transmits the images to a data recorder, which is worn on a belt around the patient's waist. The physician then transfers the stored data to a computer for processing and analysis.

The battery has an expected life of eight hours, which is generally long enough to photograph the small intestine, but not long enough to photograph the entire gastrointestinal tract.

FDA cleared the device based on both animal and clinical studies of safety and effectiveness conducted by the manufacturer. In one of the human trials, Given Imaging studied the use of the camera capsule in patients with suspected small intestine disease. All patients had signs of either unexplained chronic gastrointestinal blood loss or anemia. All had undergone standard endoscopic and radiological evaluations prior to receiving the capsule.

Study results showed that the camera pill was safe, without any side effects, and was able to detect abnormalities in the small intestine, including parts that cannot be reached by the endoscope.

FDA cleared the device for use along with--not as a replacement for--other endoscopic and radiological evaluations of the small bowel. The capsule was not studied in the large intestine.

Yahoo's Bartz Shows Who's Boss

By Robert D. Hof


Just six weeks after taking over as chief executive of Yahoo! (YHOO) from co-founder Jerry Yang, Carol Bartz has now made it quite clear who's in charge and what demands she'll place on her executive team. On Feb. 26, Bartz announced an overhaul of the embattled company's management. The new, streamlined structure is intended to make the company "a lot faster on its feet," Bartz wrote in a post on Yahoo's official blog.

In one of the biggest changes, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen, who joined Yahoo in June 2007, will leave in the next few months after a new CFO is chosen. Jorgensen was a close ally of former Yahoo President Sue Decker, who left in January after being passed over for the top job. Jorgensen's departure follows those of mobile chief Marco Boerries earlier this week and news head Neeraj Khemlani, who's leaving for Hearst as vice-president and special assistant to the CEO for digital media.

The changes, though largely expected after recent reports in the blog BoomTown, are no less momentous for a company that for years has been hobbled by slow decision-making and ineffective execution on those decisions. As far back as 2006, one executive who has since left, Brad Garlinghouse, penned a now-famous "Peanut Butter Manifesto" that outlined those management problems. The new management organization has all major executives reporting directly to Bartz, who lamented in her blog post that there's "plenty that has bogged this company down." "It looks like she isn't afraid to go in with a chain saw," says Kevin Lee, CEO of search marketing firm Didit.

Source www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2009/tc20090226_871329.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories

Cox's Bazar

Miles of golden sands, towering cliffs, surfing waves, rare conch shells, colorful Pagodas, Buddhist Temples and delightful sea-food - all this makes what Cox's Bazar is today , the tourist capital of Bangladesh. The World's longest uninterrupted (120 km.) beach slopes here down to the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal against the picturesque background of a chain of hills covered with deep green forests.

Cox's Bazar is one of the most attractive tourist spots in the world. The warm, shark free, waters are good for bathing and swimming & while the sandy beaches offer opportunities for sun-bathing.

The beauty of the setting-sun behind the waves of the sea is simply captivating. Locally made cigars and handloom products of the tribal Rakhyne families are good buys.

Located at a distance of 152 km. south of Chittagong, Cox's Bazar is connected both by air and road from Dhaka and Chittagong.

Visit to the fascinating picnic spots at Himchari and Teknaf, the Buddhist Temple at Ramu and nearby islands of Sonadia and St. Martin's, Inani Beach and Moheshkhali are certain to become unforgettable experiences for every visitor.

Paleoclimatology

Paleoclimatology is the study of climate prior to the widespread availability of records of temperature, precipitation and other instrumental data. NOAA is particularly interested in the last few thousand years because this is the best dated, best sampled part of the past climatic record and can help us establish the range of natural climatic variability in a period prior to global-scale human influence.

Environmental recorders are used to estimate past climatic conditions and thus extend our understanding far beyond the 100+ year instrumental record. "Proxy" records of climate have been preserved in tree rings, locked in the skeletons of tropical coral reefs, extracted as ice cores from glaciers and ice caps, and buried in laminated sediments from lakes and the ocean.

Electronic Transactions Ordinance

To provide a clear legal framework for the conduct of e-business in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Electronic Transactions Ordinance (Cap. 553) (the Ordinance) was enacted on 5 January 2000. The PDF file format Electronic Transactions (Amendment) Ordinance 2004 (the Amendment Ordinance) was also enacted and came into operation on 30 June 2004 to update and improve the Ordinance. In general, the Ordinance, as amended by the Amendment Ordinance, seeks to -

1. accord electronic record and electronic signature (please see the note below) the same legal status as that of their paper-based counterparts; and


2. establish a voluntary recognition scheme for certification authorities to enhance public confidence in electronic transactions.

(Note : For transactions not involving Government entities, a signature requirement under the law can be met by any form of electronic signature so long as it is reliable, appropriate and agreed by the recipient of the signature. For transactions involving Government entities, a signature requirement under the law can be satisfied by digital signature.)

Green supercomputing paves the way for sharing scientific research and collaboration

Energy efficiency ranks second when compared to renewable power generation as a solution to climate change, but for Phillip Dickens, a professor at the University of Maine, it is first in the world of supercomputing.

With the evolution of supercomputers over the last few years, speed, memory and capability have increased tremendously. The early models of computers were enormous in size, often filling a large room. One of the challenges of having a computer this size was the large amount of heat that it generated and how to keep it cool. Two dominant factors that have influenced supercomputer design are Moore's Law and economies of scale.

Today, a modern desktop computer running at 2.66 GHz is more powerful than a 10-year-old supercomputer, and costs considerably less.

In addition, parallelization allows for several smaller parts to work simultaneously and limits the amount of information that can be transferred between processing units. Clusters of computers can also be programmed to function as a single large computer. There are many possibilities that can maximize the energy efficiency of the hardware and software of supercomputers.

Dickens received a two year, $200,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant that funded the development of a scientific grid portal in Maine and the purchase of an energy efficient supercomputer. The purpose of the grid-portal is to make research from the University of Maine Institute of Climate Modeling available to top research scientists down to school age children.

Results of widely used ice sheet models, tools for climate change research, prototype versions of object based caching system, real-time animations and video are just a few of the applications that will be available. In addition, the grid portal will provide the larger community with the computing power, storage capacity, and rendering engine to execute very high-resolution models and receive animations and other visual information in real time.

In a demonstration of energy efficiency, the University of Maine, Department of Computer Science, unveiled the first cyclist-powered "green" supercomputer. Powered by 10 cyclists, the eco-friendly SiCortex SC648 supercomputer successfully ran a program demonstrating glacial melting for 20 minutes.

"The fact that a computer can be powered by a team of cyclists underscores how efficient computers have become," said University of Maine professor George Markowsky.

Computer scientists are continually searching for new ways to reduce the amount of energy it takes to operate computer systems. The SiCortex SC648 is the first of two low power HPC systems to be developed in the state of Maine. It combines desktop accessibility with low cooling requirements of a standard PC, but has the speed and power for high-productivity computing. The SC648 can develop, distribute, run multiple applications and uses 1000 watts of power. In addition to the SC648, the University of Maine has also invested in the SiCortex SC072. It provides answers to complex scientific computing challenges as quickly as conventional cluster computers, but at the fraction of the energy requirement using 300 watts of power. Both computer systems will power the University of Maine Scientific Grid Portal and provide access to computing resources, scientific applications and research animations.

"The computer industry is still in the early phase of realizing the importance of power consumption. Most computer users today don't think about energy and infrastructure costs when making a buying decision. With climate change looming, energy costs skyrocketing and the economy stumbling, power requirements are being thrust into the foreground," said James Bailey, marketing director of SiCortex.

Although Dickens is at the forefront of "green" supercomputing, his desire exceeds the current eco-friendly capabilities. "We are still in the beginning phase. It would have been nice to show multiple displays, all executing different phases, showing different processes. We have one application now and we are looking to get more because there is a lot of demand," he said.

The South Pole: A Premier Observatory

Astronomers work at the South Pole to take advantage of excellent viewing conditions. Cold, dry Antarctica will allow SPT to more easily detect the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the afterglow of the big bang, with minimal interference from water vapor. On the electromagnetic spectrum, the CMB falls somewhere between heat radiation and radio waves.

The CMB is largely uniform, but it contains tiny ripples of varying density and temperature. These ripples reflect the seeds that, through gravitational attraction, grew into the galaxies and galaxy clusters visible to astronomers today. The SPT's first key science project will be to study small variations in the CMB to determine if dark energy began to affect the formation of galaxy clusters by fighting against gravity over the past few billion years.

Galaxy clusters are groups of galaxies, the largest celestial bodies that gravity can hold together. "Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is in one of these clusters," Meyer said. "And these clusters of galaxies actually change with time."

The CMB allows astronomers to take snapshots of the infant universe, when it was only 400,000 years old. No stars or galaxies had yet formed. If dark energy changed the way the universe expanded, it would have left its "fingerprints" in the way it forced galaxies apart over the deep history of time. Different causes would produce a different pattern in the formation of galaxy clusters.

According to one idea, dark energy could be Albert Einstein's cosmological constant: a steady force of nature operating at all times and in all places. Einstein introduced the cosmological constant into his theory of general relativity to accommodate a stationary universe, the dominant idea of the day. If Einstein's idea is correct, scientists will find that dark energy was much less influential in the universe 5 billion years ago than it is today.

"Clusters weren't around in the early universe. They took a long time to evolve," Carlstrom said.

Another version of the dark energy theory, called quintessence, suggests a force that varies in time and space. Some scientists even suggest there is no dark energy at all, and that gravity merely breaks down on vast intergalactic scales.

To pinpoint when dark energy became important, SPT will use a phenomenon called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, which distorts the CMB as it passes through the hot gas of intervening galaxy clusters. As the microwaves interact with gas in the clusters, some of the microwaves get kicked into a higher frequency. SPT will measure the slight temperature difference associated with the frequency change and produce an image of the gas in the cluster.

SPT can scan large regions of the sky quickly. Scientists expect it to detect thousands, or even tens of thousands, of galaxy clusters within a few years. "To get a meaningful constraint on dark energy through measuring galaxy clusters, you need something like this South Pole Telescope," Carlstrom said. "The cluster SZ [Sunyaev-Zeldovich] signals cover small patches in the sky relative to the intrinsic variations in the cosmic microwave background. To get the necessary resolution, you need a big telescope. Now we have one."

Senior members of the SPT team include William Holzapfel, Adrian Lee and Helmuth Spieler from the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laborator; Joe Mohr, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; John Ruhl from Case Western Reserve University; Antony Stark, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; Matt Dobbs from McGill University; and Erik Leitch of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

SLIPPERY ELM - Ulmus rubra, Muhl

EXCEPT FOR SCATTERED counties in the Ozarks, slippery elm is found in almost every county in the state. Like American elm, slippery elm is a water-loving tree and grows best on moist, rich soils on lowers slopes, stream banks, river terraces and bottomlands.

The leaf is alternate, simple, with a coarsely double saw-toothed edge. It ranges from five to seven inches long and two to three inches wide. It is egg-shaped with the broadest part above the middle and the base slightly uneven. The tip is drawn out to a long, narrow point. The upper surface of the leaf is dark green and very rough while the under-surface is lighter and hairy. This rough leaf distinguishes it from the American elm which has a smooth leaf.

The fruit occurs in clusters and each seed and stem is 3/4 inch long. A single seed is surrounded by a thin, papery wing, smooth around the edge. It is common to see small drifts of elm seeds along sidewalks in metropolitan areas after a heavy rain.

Twigs are slender to moderately stout. They are gray and very rough to the touch. The buds are egg-shaped, pointed and covered with dark chestnut-brown hairs. The bark on older trees is reddish-brown. It is furrowed with platy or scaly ridges and the inner bark contains a sticky sap once used as a medicine by Indians and pioneers.

Like American elm, the seeds, buds, and leaves of slippery elm furnish food for the gray and fox squirrel and deer.The wood of slippery elm is heavy, tough, and strong. Of all the elms, it has the best and most durable lumber. It is used in the manufacture of furniture and for many other uses. Because of intertwined fibers, it is hard to split with an axe. Unprotected piles of lumber will twist and warp.

Growing along with slippery elm may be American elm, black cherry, white ash, blue ash, black walnut, bitternut hickory, bur oak, basswood, silver maple, and white oak. This elm is also susceptible to Dutch elm disease and many leaf-chewing insects.

Fresh or Frozen, Defender Is a Good Potato

Long, white-skinned potatoes in the produce section of your supermarket might be "Defender"—the only commercially grown potato in the United States today with tubers and leaves that fend off late blight disease. Worldwide, late blight is generally regarded as one of the worst diseases of potatoes.

Besides starring as a fresh-market potato, Defender also can be processed into frozen products. ARS scientists in the Small Grains and Potato Research Unit , Aberdeen, Idaho, and the Vegetable and Forage Crop Research Unit, Prosser, Wash., worked with university colleagues to in Idaho, Oregon and Washington develop this superior spud. They put it through more than a decade of rigorous outdoor tests before making it available to growers, processors, potato-seed companies and others last year.

The plant's natural resistance to late blight allows growers to use either no fungicides—or much smaller amounts—to control the disease. This feature makes the potato ideal for conventional and organic farms alike.

Kimberlites

Active exploration for diamondiferous kimberlite pipes is ongoing in northeastern Namibia, where kimberlite indicator minerals (e.g. ilmenite, garnet, chrom-diopside) as well as micro-diamonds have been recovered.

Companies exploring for diamondiferous kimberlites include Motapa Diamonds Incorporation, Mount Burgess Mining N.L and DeBeers. Past exploration of kimberlite pipes within the Gibeon Kimberlite Province was unable to delineate diamondiferous kimberlites due to their off-craton setting. To date, no economic diamondiferous kimberlite pipes have been discovered, but great potential exists on both the Congo and Kalahari cratons.

A new national park on Aboriginal land at Cape York

Queensland's second national park (Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal land) was dedicated on 8 August 2008. The new KULLA (McIlwraith Range) National Park (Cape York Peninsula Aboriginal land) is an area of outstanding beauty and biological richness with spectacular escarpments, gorges, waterfalls and rainforests that has been the home of Aboriginal people for thousands of years. It’s jointly managed by the Kulla Land Trust and the Queensland Government.

Money Market Funds

Money market funds have relatively low risks, compared to other mutual funds (and most other investments). By law, they can invest in only certain high-quality, short-term investments issued by the U.S. government, U.S. corporations, and state and local governments. Money market funds try to keep their net asset value (NAV) — which represents the value of one share in a fund — at a stable $1.00 per share. But the NAV may fall below $1.00 if the fund's investments perform poorly.

Investor losses have been rare, but they are possible.Money market funds pay dividends that generally reflect short-term interest rates, and historically the returns for money market funds have been lower than for either bond or stock funds. That's why "inflation risk" — the risk that inflation will outpace and erode investment returns over time — can be a potential concern for investors in money market funds.

UK losing out to the new members of the EU in attracting FDI

With the expansion of the EU with ten new members in 2004, and more set to join in 2007, foreign investors have a much broader selection of lower-wage markets and skill sets from which to choose. The UK has positioned itself as a mature market, producing higher-value goods and services and with a highlyskilled workforce, and continues to be the leading investment location in Europe, according to the UNCTAD World Investment Report 2006.

In line with its positioning as a high-value market, the UK attracts more European headquarters and R&D projects than any other European country1. The UK's focus is to attract hi-tech companies, and exploit the wider aspects of innovation in a variety of knowledgedriven industries.