Adult students are often better motivated than traditional-age students, but many have not taken an examination for many years. Thus, finding appropriate methods of assessment poses a challenge.
Background and Purpose
The Houston Community College System's Central College has about 27,000 full-time equivalent students who have various goals including changing careers, acquiring associate degrees and transferring to programs which will result in 4-year degrees. There are no residential facilities at the college which is located in downtown Houston, Texas. Some students are homeless, physically challenged, in rehabilitation programs; and others are traditional students. The average age of our students is 27 years old.
Older students present the faculty member with unusual challenges since they don't necessarily respond well to traditional methods of teaching and assessment. However, they are capable of succeeding in learning mathematics if given appropriate support and opportunities to show what they have learned. Many students have personal difficulties at the beginning of the semester. They are challenged with housing arrangements, parking and transportation problems. Day care is also a problem for many single or divorced women. Although the students have social problems and economic constraints, they are motivated to strive toward the academic goals of my class. They honestly communicate their difficulties and they share their successes. I design activities and assessment in my class to address these special needs of my students. Flexibility and compassion create an environment rich with opportunities to learn, while the expectations of excellence, mastery and skills acquisition are maintained.
These non-traditional students usually begin my course in college algebra with little confidence in their abilities. They are reluctant to go to the board to present problems. Older students tend to do homework in isolation. Many of them do not linger on campus to benefit from interaction with their classmates. College Algebra students at Central College have no experience with mathematics software or computer algebra systems such as DERIVE, and are uncomfortable with computer technology generally. While older students may be uncomfortable with reform in college algebra, with time they do adjust and benefit from a pedagogical style which differs from the one they expected. In this article, I discuss some assessment techniques which I have found help these students grow, and allow them to show what they have learned.
I usually start my college algebra classes with a 10 or 15 minute mini-lecture. I pose questions which encourage discussion among the students. These questions are sequenced and timed to inspire students to discover new ways of approaching a problem and to encourage them to persist toward solutions. Students are invited to make presentations of problems on the board.
Cooperative Learning offers opportunities for sharing information and peer tutoring. Students are invited to form groups of four or five. I assign the work: for example, the section of Lial's College Algebra test on word problems. Each group selects its group leader. Participants keep a journal of their work, and each member must turn in a copy of all solved problems in their own handwriting. Students are warned that each group member must be an active problem solver and no one is to be a "sponge." One class period is dedicated to forming the groups and to establishing the rules for completion of the assignment, and a second to work on the assignment. If the word problems are not completed in the designated class period, the assignment become a homework assignment to be completed by each group. Approximately 30 word problems requiring the use of equations are solved using this method.
As a result of this activity, students become aware of their strengths and weaknesses and become better at pacing themselves and at self assessment. Although I give a group grade for projects, I do not give a group grade for classwork or participation in discussion groups: each individual receives a grade for work completed.
Projects provide an opportunity for students to become familiar with the Mathematics Laboratory. The goal of the project is graphing and designing at least three images: a cat's face, a spirograph and a flower. Most designs are accomplished using lines and conics such as circles, ellipses and parabolas.
Some students do library or internet research for their projects: they look up trigonometric equations and discover the appropriate coefficients to produce the best (and prettiest) flowers, or use polar coordinates or parametric equations. An objective of the research is to identify role models and people of diverse backgrounds who persisted and succeeded in mathematics courses or professions that are mathematics dependent. A second objective is to inspire students to write about mathematics and to record their attitude toward mathematics and technology. I had the students in summer school find a web page on Mathematics and Nature, and write a short report. They also did research on biomimetics and composites to become aware of the usual connections in science, mathematics and nature. Connecting mathematics to the world around them helps motivate them to work harder learning the mathematics. The Mathematics and Nature web site that the students found is the one that I have linked to my page. I encouraged the students to use e-mail and to provide feedback to me by e-mail.
Examinations usually contain 14-20 questions requiring the students to "show all work." This gives me an opportunity to see exactly what their needs are. Four examinations and a comprehensive final are administered. The student is given the option to drop the first examination, if the grade is below 70. This option provides a degree of flexibility and often relaxes tension.
Our most successful endeavor has been the establishment of my web page, using student research and feedback to improve the design. The web page can be accessed at http://22.214.171.124. I have an instructional page (with information for my students on syllabus, expectations, etc.) and a personal page that students viewed and provided corrective feedback. This activity inspired many students to do more research using World Wide Web. Encouraging students to use this technology helps some of those who are feel bypassed by technology overcome their fears. One student sent me an e-mail message: "This project to research your webpage was not only educational to students it gave them an opportunity to use current fast moving technology." Another commented, "I have been meaning to start on my own for quite some time, and now you have inspired me to do so." Attitudinal learning took place and students seemed more excited about the mathematics class and the use of technology.
The college algebra classes have developed into a stimulating and broad intellectual experience for my students. They gained the algebra skills and a new attitude about mathematics and careers in mathematics. The drop out rate in my college algebra classes is lower than most classes in my department. Approximately 89 percent of the students passed the course with grade C or above, while others realized that they did not have the time nor dedication to do a good job and they simply dropped the course. I believe students made wise judgments about their own ability and that they will probably re-enroll at a later date to complete the coursework.
With persistence on the instructor's part, older students become more confident learners. For example, toward the beginning of the semester, a 62-year-old businessman would often ask me to do more problems on the board for him. He would say, "Darling, would you work this problem for me?...I had a hell of a time with it last night." I didn't mind his style as long as he continued doing the work. Eventually, he would put forth more effort and go to the board to show the class how much progress he made. He would point to the area where he was challenged, and then a discussion would ensue. As I observed his change in behavior I noted that he and other students were taking more and more responsibility for their learning.
Participants in my classes seem more appreciative of the beauty of mathematics and mathematics in nature. Students who successfully completed their designs using DERIVE discovered the beautiful graphs resulting from various
types of mathematics statements. They learned how to use scaling and shifting to design images that were symmetric with respect to a vertical axes. While designing, for example, the cat's face, they learned how to change the radius and to translate small circles to represent the eyes of the cat. Some students used a simple reflection with respect to the x-axis to obtain a portion of their design. As they pursue their work, they had conferences with me to gain more insight.
Many students needed to learn basic computer skills: how to read the main menu of a computer, search and find DERIVE, and author a statement. Tutors were available in the Mathematics Laboratory and I assisted students when questions arose. It was the first time many of my students had ever made an attempt to integrate the use of technology into college algebra.
More students are enthusiastic about the use of technology in mathematics. Three years ago only about 5 percent of the Central College students owned graphing calculators or used a computer algebra system. In 1997, approximately 35 percent of them are active participants in the Mathematics Laboratory or own graphing calculators.
Use of Findings
As a result of student input, via informal discussions and e-mail, I will lengthen my mini-lectures to 20-25 minutes. Furthermore, at the end of each class I will review concepts and provide closure for the entire group. More demonstrations using the TI-92 will help prepare the students for their project assignments and a bibliography on "Diversity in Mathematics" will assist the student research component. I usually document class attendance on the first and last day of class so that I have a photographic record of retention. The inspiration to design a more suitable attitudinal study using a pre-test and post-test to measure change in is my greatest gain as a result of these experiences.
The adult learner can be an exceptional student; adults
learn very rapidly in part, because they don't need to spend
time becoming adults, as traditional-aged students do.
However in my experience, adults may be more terrified of tests,
they may feel a great sense of failure at a low grade, they may
be slower on tests, and they may have lost a lot of
background mathematical knowledge. Also they have more
logistical problems which make working outside of class in
groups harder, thereby not benefitting from explaining and
learning mathematics with others. The methods I have used
are specifically designed to bring the adult learners together,
to relieve anxiety, to encourage group work, the "OK-ness"
of being wrong.


MGH Hotline 04.09.10 Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an intravascular imaging technology that offers the promise of revealing the microscopic characteristics of a vulnerable coronary plaque.
The MGH leads international study to identify vulnerable coronary plaques
OCT PIONEER: Jang at the March 13 OCT Registry Symposium
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an intravascular imaging technology that offers the promise of revealing the microscopic characteristics of a vulnerable coronary plaque. Using near-infrared light, OCT creates extremely high-resolution images from within an artery. The images have a resolution at least 20 times better than standard imaging technologies, such as computed tomography.
MGH Heart Center researchers, together with a coalition of 20 international sites, will create the world's largest registry of patients who have had OCT of the coronary arteries. Researchers hope the data will help determine the ability of OCT to identify vulnerable plaques in patients as well as its benefits as a follow-up procedure to stent placement.
When a vulnerable plaque in a coronary artery ruptures, the result can be catastrophic, blocking blood flow to the heart muscle and causing a heart attack. Cardiologists estimate that vulnerable plaques cause two-thirds to three-quarters of all fatal heart attacks. Standard imaging technologies are not able to identify the microscopic characteristics of these at-risk plaques.
The international research team -- led by MGH interventional cardiologist Ik-Kyung Jang, MD, PhD, a pioneer in the field of cardiac OCT -- will collect data from 3,000 patients who had cardiac OCT during a catheterization procedure and will follow them for five years with the goal of determining the effectiveness of the technique in identifying at-risk patients.
In a clinical study in 2002, Jang was the first physician to use OCT technology in a human heart, and he has led several studies of the technology over the years. Use of cardiac OCT has grown exponentially with more than 10,000 cases performed worldwide last year.
"The MGH OCT Registry is the first international effort to share information about OCT use in cardiac care," says Jang. "This collaboration will bring together a wealth of information and help us facilitate scientific advancement in the field."
The registry was launched during the first MGH OCT Registry Symposium on March 13. The study's international sites in Japan, China, Korea and Australia will begin enrolling patients in June. Enrollment in the United States will begin pending clearance of the technology by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"The development of OCT and its rapid adoption are enabling clinicians to capture in vivo what was previously seen only through a pathologist's microscope," says Jang. "Of course, the long-term goal is to identify plaques and prevent sudden cardiac death and heart attacks."
For more information, e-mail Iris A. McNulty, BSN, RN, of the Cardiology Division, at email@example.com.
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Artist's rendering of Mariner 4 in space. Credit: NASA
"Mariner 4 ran into a cloud of space dust," says Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center Space Environments Team. "For about 45 minutes the spacecraft experienced a shower of meteoroids more intense than any Leonid meteor storm we've ever seen on Earth." The impacts ripped away bits of insulation and temporarily changed the craft's orientation in space.
Fortunately, the damage was slight and the mission's main objective -- a flyby of Mars -- ad been completed two years earlier. But it could have been worse.
"There are many uncharted dust clouds in interplanetary space. Some are probably quite dense," says Cooke. Most of these clouds are left behind by comets, others are formed when asteroids run into one another. "We only know about the ones that happen to intersect Earth's orbit and cause meteor showers such as the Perseids or Leonids." The Mariner 4 cloud was a big surprise.
What does a piece of space dust look like? This picture shows one that is only 10 microns across. It was captured by a U2 aircraft in the stratosphere. Credit: NASA
"Of all NASA's Mars spacecraft, Mariner 4 was the only one we've sent with a micrometeoroid detector," he continued. During its journey to Mars and back, the detector registered occasional impacts from interplanetary dust grains -- as expected. The space between the planets is sprinkled with dust particles. They're harmless in small numbers. But when Mariner 4 encountered the cloud "the impact rate soared 10,000 fold," says Cooke.
Mapping these clouds and determining their orbits is important to NASA for obvious reasons: the more probes we send to Mars and elsewhere, the more likely they are to encounter uncharted clouds. No one wants their spaceship to be surprised by a meteor shower hundreds of millions of miles from Earth.
Much of Cooke's work at NASA involves computer-modeling of cometary debris streams -- long rivers of dust shed by comets as they orbit the sun. He studies how clumps form within the streams and how they are deflected by the gravity of planets (especially giant Jupiter). He and his colleagues also watch the sky for meteor outbursts here on Earth. "It's a good way to test our models and discover new streams," he says.
One such outburst happened on June 27, 1998. Sky watchers were surprised when hundreds of meteors streamed out of the constellation Bootes over a few-hour period. Earth had encountered a dust cloud much as Mariner 4 had done years earlier.
The meteors of 1998 were associated with a well-known meteor shower called the June Bootids. Normally the shower is weak, displaying only a few meteors per hour at maximum. But in 1998 it was intense. Similar outbursts had occurred, with no regular pattern, in 1916, 1921, and perhaps 1927.
The source of the June Bootids is comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, which orbits the Sun once every 6.37 years. The comet follows an elliptical path that carries it from a point near the orbit of Earth to just beyond the orbit of Jupiter. Pons-Winnecke last visited the inner solar system in 2002. The comet's dusty trail is evidently clumpy. When our planet passes through a dense spot in the debris stream, a meteor shower erupts.
Meteor forecasters D.J. Asher and V.V. Emel'yanenko (MNRAS 331, 1998, 126) have calculated that the meteors seen in 1998 might return in 2003, although 2004 is more likely. "That's why watching for June Bootids this year is important: any activity now may herald another outburst in 2004," notes Robert Lunsford, Secretary-General of the International Meteor Organization, who is encouraging people to monitor the sky this week.


The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Ecological and Economic Foundations
Human well-being relies critically on ecosystem services provided by nature. Examples include water and air quality regulation, nutrient cycling and decomposition, plant pollination and flood control, all of which are dependent on biodiversity. They are predominantly public goods with limited or no markets and do not command any price in the conventional economic system, so their loss is often not detected and continues unaddressed and unabated. This in turn not only impacts human well-being, but also seriously undermines the sustainability of the economic system.
It is against this background that TEEB: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project was set up in 2007 and led by the United Nations Environment Programme to provide a comprehensive global assessment of economic aspects of these issues. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, written by a team of international experts, represents the scientific state of the art, providing a comprehensive assessment of the fundamental ecological and economic principles of measuring and valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity, and showing how these can be mainstreamed into public policies. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity and subsequent TEEB outputs will provide the authoritative knowledge and guidance to drive forward the biodiversity conservation agenda for the next decade.
1. Integrating the Ecological and Economic Dimensions in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Service Valuation
2. Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services
3. Measuring Biophysical Quantities and the Use of Indicators
4. The Socio-cultural Context of Ecosystem and Biodiversity Valuation
5. The Economics of Valuing Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity
6. Discounting, Ethics, and Options for Maintaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Integrity
7. Lessons Learned and Linkages with National Policies
Appendix 1: How the TEEB Framework Can be Applied: The Amazon Case
Appendix 2: Matrix Tables for Wetland and Forest Ecosystems
Appendix 3: Estimates of Monetary Values of Ecosystem Services
"A landmark study on one of the most pressing problems facing society, balancing economic growth and ecological protection to achieve a sustainable future."
- Simon Levin, Moffett Professor of Biology, Department of Ecology and Evolution Behaviour, Princeton University, USA
"TEEB brings a rigorous economic focus to bear on the problems of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss, and on their impacts on human welfare. TEEB is a very timely and useful study not only of the economic and social dimensions of the problem, but also of a set of practical solutions which deserve the attention of policy-makers around the world."
- Nicholas Stern, I.G. Patel Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics and Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
"The [TEEB] project should show us all how expensive the global destruction of the natural world has become and – it is hoped – persuade us to slow down.' The Guardian 'Biodiversity is the living fabric of this planet – the quantum and the variability of all its ecosystems, species, and genes. And yet, modern economies remain largely blind to the huge value of the abundance and diversity of this web of life, and the crucial and valuable roles it plays in human health, nutrition, habitation and indeed in the health and functioning of our economies. Humanity has instead fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world. The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050. This volume of 'TEEB' explores the challenges involved in addressing the economic invisibility of biodiversity, and organises the science and economics in a way decision makers would find it hard to ignore."
- Achim Steiner, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme
This volume is an output of TEEB: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study and has been edited by Pushpam Kumar, Reader in Environmental Economics, University of Liverpool, UK. TEEB is hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UENP) and supported by the European Commission, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMU) and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), recently joined by Norway's Ministry for Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands' Ministry of Housing (VROM), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and also the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The study leader is Pavan Sukhdev, who is also Special Adviser – Green Economy Initiative, UNEP.
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Scaevola taccada is a dense, spreading shrub that generally grows up to 3 meter in height. The light green leaves are somewhat succulent with a waxy covering and are alternately arranged along the stem.
The blades are elongated and rounded at the tips, 5 to 20 cm long and 5 to 7 cm wide and the edges are often curled downward. The flowers are white or cream colored, often with purple streaks, 8 - 12 mm long, and have a pleasant fragrance. They have an irregular shape with all five petals on one side of the flower making it appear to have been torn in half. The flowers grow in small clusters from the leaf axils near the ends of the stems. The fruits of Scaevola taccada are fleshy berries. They are white, oblong, and about 1 cm long. The seeds are beige, corky and ridged. The inside of the fruit is spongy or corky and the fruits are buoyant. They can float for months in the ocean and still germinate after having been in salt water for up to a year. One study showed that the seeds germinated best after 250 days in salt water.
(National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG). 1994. Naupaka. In Native Hawaiian plant information sheets. Lawai, Kauai: Hawaii Plant Conservation Center. National Tropical Botanical Garden. Unpublished internal papers.)
(Rauch, Fred D., Heidi L. Bornhorst, and David L. Hensley. 1997. Beach Naupaka, Ornamentals and Flowers.)
(Wagner, Warren L., Darrel R. Herbst, and S. H. Sohmer. 1990. Manual of the flowering plants of Hawai'i.)
(Bornhorst, Heidi L. 1996. Growing native Hawaiian plants: a how-to guide for the gardener.)


Stopping Carbon Pollution
Whether you live in a city, on a farm, or anywhere in between, climate change is affecting your weather and damaging the natural world around you. In order to work towards a clean energy future, America needs carbon pollution controls on the largest industrial sources. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is taking long overdue steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries and coal-fired power plants, but right now, these highly polluting sources are allowed to release carbon into the atmosphere without any limits.
The National Wildlife Federation’s top priority is to stop the primary cause of climate change – carbon pollution – before it’s too late. NWF is currently fighting major campaigns to:
Electricity generation is the single largest source of global warming pollution in the United States, representing 41 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. EPA’s newly announced plan to set standards for this sector could require the clean-up of our oldest, dirtiest, least efficient coal power plants. NWF is engaged in a major effort to finalize these rules and dramatically ratchet down our carbon pollution, and we are also supporting EPA's work to address emissions from oil refineries -- the second largest "stationary source" (as opposed to mobile sources like cars and trucks) of global warming pollution in the United States. Strong controls over these big sources will begin holding polluters accountable for their contribution to the climate crisis.
Reducing Emissions in the US and Worldwide
Recognizing that this is a global problem that demands national and international leadership, NWF’s long-term goal is to adopt a national plan that rapidly cuts carbon pollution from all major sources in the US, and safeguards communities and wildlife from the mounting impacts of climate change. The last effort at national legislation – the American Clean Energy and Security Act – passed the House of Representatives in 2009 but stalled in the Senate. Since that time, the impacts of climate change have rapidly escalated. NWF is working hard to get Congress to step up and take action to solve our nation’s most urgent environmental issue.
Avoiding the worst consequences of this disaster also requires a global solution. NWF is partnering with organizations around the world to promote an international agreement that clamps down on carbon pollution, while ensuring that all countries can protect their citizens and wildlife from the impacts of climate change.


Breeding Timing in Cats
Breeding Timing to Maximize Fertility in Cats
Breeding timing refers to a technique that may be utilized to ensure conception in cats by the purposeful timing of insemination during the estrus (heat) period. A fertile female cat is referred to as a queen.
Symptoms and Types
In order to maximize the odds of conception with properly timed breeding, it is best to pin-point, as close as possible, the day of ovulation for the queen. Symptoms of estrus in the queen are evident by her rubbing against objects, being vocal (much more than usual), and an interest shown by the male cat. However, timing of breeding is less critical with cats and ultimately depends on the amount of luteinizing hormone (LH) released, which is triggered via stimulation of the queen’s vagina and cervix.
Breeding timing and related fertility-maximizing techniques may be utilized for a number of reasons. This may be deemed necessary if there is an apparent failure to achieve conception in the queen.
For cats, the most reliable method of determining the ovulation cycle is by progesterone testing.
A hormone that is created at the time of pregnancy
The process of the maturation and release of eggs
The period that an animal is pregnant in which the fetus develops from conception to birth
The time period in which a female is receptive to male attention
Ovarian Tumors in Cats
There are three kinds cat ovarian tumors: epithelial tumors (skin/tissue), germ cell...
Reproductive Genetic Abnormalities in Cats
Sexual development disorders in cats can occur due to errors in the genetic coding,...


The General Council of the Judiciary was set out in the 1978 Constitution (Article 122), following the model of other neighbouring countries such as France, Portugal, and Italy, in particular. Its creation was then a true innovation of the Spanish constituent, since it is impossible to find any direct precedent in our history of an autonomous government organ of the Judiciary which guarantees the independence thereof.
In the history of Spain, there are some remote precedents of institutions and attempts to create an organ which would guarantee the auto-government of the Judiciary, at least partially, however, none of these attempts had the same nature and aim as the General Council of the Judiciary. Especially because an organ of such type only finds its true raison d'être within a democratic system, based on the separation of powers and the effective protection of the fundamental rights and freedoms of the persons.
Among these remote precedents there are the Central or Supreme Board (1849), the Organising Board of the Judiciary (1923) or the Judicial Council, created pursuant to the Royal Decree dated 18 May 1917, although it never started to work as it was revoked in July of the same year. It was re-established in June 1926, to be revoked in May 1931. None of these examples was a precedent stricto sensu. Neither was the Judicial Council created pursuant to the Act dated 20 December 1952, which worked until the implementation of the democratic constitutional system.
The Spanish constituent was influenced by the French Constitution of 1946, which regulates the High Council of Judicature in accordance with the provisions of Title IX. It constituted the precedent for the remaining organs with similar aims, set out later in the Italian Constitution of 1947 (pursuant to Articles 104 and 105), and in the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 (Article 220). The Italian model has been imported by the first Parliament in its fundamental aspects, with exception of its components, which, in the Spanish case, was set out in the Constitution.
The statutory development of the constitutional provisions has taken place through the Organic Act on the Judiciary mentioned in the Carta Magna. However, first the Organic Act 1/1980, dated 10 January, on the General Council of the Judiciary, due to the need to make the Constitutional Court operational, since two of its members should be appointed on a proposal by the General Council of the Judiciary, in accordance with the Constitution (Article 159.1). Subsequently, the Organic Act 6/1985 on the Judiciary, dated 1 July, was enacted, whereby the Council was definitely regulated, thus repealing the Organic Act of 1980, and which implied a change in the form of appointing the members with a judicial background. This system was reformed in 2001.
The Organic Act on the Judiciary in turn has undergone some subsequent partial reforms through the Organic Acts which, in some cases, have been enacted for that purpose, and in others, they affected said Organic Act due to the subject-matter (Military Jurisdiction, Tribunal of the Jury, etc.).
The General Council of the Judiciary is governed by the Constitution, the Organic Act on the Judiciary, and by its own internal regulations: The Regulations 1/1986, dated 22 April, on the Organisation and Operation of the General Council of the Judiciary, the approval of which is incumbent upon the Council.
The Spanish model has been a reference for the creation of similar constitutional organs in Latin America, especially in Argentina.


Cyberattacks: A call for collaborative action
We need to develop a collective consciousness for coping with the growing menace of cyber attacks, says Stanton Sloane.
News of cyber security attacks is becoming all too familiar. Recent reports propose how to combat sophisticated, custom-created malware designed to penetrate government and private industry computer networks, and steal national security secrets. This has raised overall awareness of the problem, but not as much attention has been placed on a key business concern: the theft of commercial intellectual property. We need to develop a collective consciousness for coping with the growing menace of cyber attacks, particularly given the economic and safety issues triggered when valuable intellectual property is the target. That's why advocating a public-private industry collaboration makes the most sense. The isolated efforts of individual nations, industry groups, or companies will be ineffective against 21st century intellectual property crime. This is a bigger problem. A few examples illustrate the point:
- According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), intellectual property theft costs American corporations $250 billion every year. Among those affected are manufacturers, distributors, retailers, employees, artists, consumers, and governments.
- The costs of intellectual property theft are not solely economic; the public's health and safety is also affected. For instance, intellectual property thieves can make huge profits from selling cheap counterfeit versions of products, not only where safety and reliability are essential, but also when brand recognition is key to consumer confidence and loyalty. One example: counterfeit airplane parts played a role in at least 166 U.S.-based accidents or mishaps during a recent 20-year period.
- United States Customs and Border Protection estimates that 750,000 American jobs have been lost due to counterfeiting.
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Intellectual Property Center estimates that intellectual property in the United States is worth between $5 trillion and $5.5 trillion. It accounts for approximately half of U.S. exports with roughly 40 percent driving U.S. economic growth. The impact of intellectual property theft on the U.S. economy is irrefutable.
- Research from the non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit indicates that the destruction from a single wave of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure could exceed $700 billion, or the equivalent of 50 major hurricanes hitting U.S. soil at once.
Beyond the economic impacts, theft of intellectual property provides a significant advantage in learning curve for the thief. My hypothetical example would be the time involved in developing manufacturing techniques to produce advanced jet engine components. Theft of the processes, techniques, and tools required to produce these components instantly provides the thief with years of experience, and quickly levels the competitive landscape.
This is not a new problem. But when we move from the realm of music “pirates” or theft of soft drink formulations into organized, state-led thefts of critical technologies, the threat to national security increases exponentially, even though it is not a direct attack on our defense networks.
There is no simple solution to this problem. The first step, however, must be recognition of the scale and scope of the problem. It is underestimated today. Given the impact an average hacker can create with a simple virus, you can appreciate what a well-financed foreign government-sponsored intelligence organization can do to penetrate a commercial company's network and extract critical intellectual information. Simple virus detection software is not an adequate defense against that type of threat. It is a complex system engineering problem, one which requires a collective government-industry collaboration to counter.
There also needs to be consequences for nations that conduct these activities, or who fail to pursue and prosecute criminals operating within their borders. Granted, that is a hard problem to solve in an age of globalization where international relations are very sensitive, but the alternative is an accelerating shift of technology and financial power out of this country. While current political rhetoric makes us feel good about increasing the country's investment in research and technology, it is pointless to do so if it is just going to be pirated by our foreign adversaries. We are simply saving them the time and money of doing it themselves.
The time for action is now. A “Cyber Pearl Harbor” is in reality an “Economic Pearl Harbor.” The only difference is that the enemy has quietly opened all the underwater valves on the ships, instead of dropping torpedoes.
Dr. Stanton Sloane was appointed president and CEO of SRA International in April 2007.


Einstein quickly settled into his new American life in Princeton, New Jersey. His appointment at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study could have afforded him the total solitude he always said he needed to think clearly through the great problems of physics. But Einstein refused to retreat entirely from the great problems of the moment for mankind. He continued to speak out against Nazi aggression and anti-Semitism in Europe and offered his support to the Zionist project of building a Jewish state in Israel (though he called for a policy of moderation and reconciliation when it came to the growing Jewish conflict with the Palestinian Arabs who also inhabited the ancient Holy Land). Most of all, Einstein advocated a pacifistic vision of a world dominated by peaceful internationalist institutions rather than warlike nationalistic states.
By the late 1930s, however, it had become clear—even to the pacifist Einstein—that peaceful international institutions had no hope of stopping the growing evil of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. In the meantime, scientists—many of them German scientists—had made great progress in exploring the research path laid out by E=mc2. They had achieved nuclear fission—the chain-reaction splitting of atoms—in laboratory tests and recognized the real-world potential for tiny masses of radioactive material to release massive amounts of energy. The wartime application of fission was the atomic bomb, a fearsome weapon that German scientists, by the late 1930s, understood was not only theoretically possible but perhaps technologically feasible to construct. Dozens of émigré scientists—many of them, like Einstein, Jewish refugees from Hitler—arrived in America in the 1930s and '40s fearing that Nazi researchers could help the führer conquer the globe by developing the world's first atomic super-weapon.
In 1939, one of those refugee scientists, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, tried to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to address the threat of German nuclear weapons by launching the Americans' own atomic bomb program. But Szilard, who at the time didn't have much stature outside the scientific community, couldn't get Roosevelt to take him seriously. So he turned to his friend Albert Einstein, the world's most famous scientist. Einstein, the pacifist, signed his name to a letter urging the president to support American research into "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" that might be built using fissionable uranium.
Roosevelt, awakened by Einstein's letter to the coming reality of atomic warfare, secretly authorized the Manhattan Project, a huge (and hugely expensive) crash program of nuclear research that produced, in 1945, the world's first atomic bombs. (Ironically, we now know that the Germans abandoned their own atomic program at just about the same time FDR, fearing German superiority in the field, launched the Manhattan Project. And the first working atomic bombs only became available for use in the summer of 1945, after the Germans had surrendered and World War II in Europe was over; a weapon built to stop Hitler thus ended up being dropped on the Japanese instead.)
Though Einstein did not participate in the Manhattan Project itself—the government judged him a poor security risk for top-secret research—his letter to Roosevelt proved to be the crucial turning point in the weaponization of E=mc2. Thus Albert Einstein, lifelong pacifist, might fairly be described as the father of the atomic bomb. Einstein himself recognized the irony, viewing his own role in ushering in the atomic age with a mixture of regret and resignation. In 1954, the last year of his life, he admitted to an old friend, "I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification—the danger that the Germans would make them."6


The South East Europe Programme Area includes 16 countries. For 14 countries the eligible area is the whole territory of the country, namely for Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Republic of Moldova. In 2 countries only certain regions are eligible: in Italy these eligible regions are: Lombardia, Bolzano/Bozen, Trento, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, Emilia Romagna, Umbria, Marche, Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia Basilicata, and in Ukraine: Cjermovestka Oblast, Ivano-Frankiviska Oblast, Zakarpatska Oblast and Odessa Oblast.
The area has been undergoing a fundamental change in economic and production patterns following the 1990 changes. While some regions, especially the capital cities, are adapting well to the new challenges, others are trying to re-orientate themselves. Significant for the programme area are regional disparities in terms of economic power, innovation, competitiveness and accessibility between urban areas and rural areas.
| ||The 16 participating countries are:|
The SEE Transnational Cooperation Programme has been created out of the former INTERREG IIIB CADSES Programme. In the new Structural Funds Period (2007-2013), the CADSES transnational cooperation area has been divided into two spaces: South East Europe and Central Europe, each of them benefiting as a distinct area: the South East Europe Programme and the Central programme.
The South-East Europe area is the most diverse, heterogeneous and complex transnational cooperation area in Europe, made up of a broad mix of countries. The emergence of new countries and with it the establishment of new frontiers has changed the patterns of political, economic, social and cultural relationships.
|* only some of its regions |
In the European transportation network, South East Europe is acting as a bridge between North, South, East and West Europe. The existing networks however cannot keep pace with the rise in demand and the increasingly demanding standards specifications. A large number of instruments and concepts like the Trans-European Networks (TENs) and the Pan-European Transport Corridors cross the area, but need to be further developed.
There are rivers suitable for freight transportation, maritime borders and the Danube, an important international inland waterway and integrating factor in many fields, such as transport, trade and environment. South East Europe is characterised by broad biodiversity and natural resources of high environmental value. The potential for the use of environmentally friendly technologies and the assets for future economic and social development are the strong points of the area, but inherited environmental damage has to be addressed as well. Click on the map for more information about the countries
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The common name for sedums is Stonecrop. There is a Stonecrop Nursery in eastern New York which was the first garden created by Frank Cabot. Frank created the Garden Conservancy, an organization which strives to preserve some of our exceptional gardens for posterity. Each year it also runs its Open Days Program which opens gardens to the public throughout the country. Frank Cabot went on to create Les Quatre Vents, an outstanding garden at his family home in Quebec.
There are two sedums which most gardeners grow; Sedum acre, a tiny low-growing
groundcover plant with bright yellow flowers. This is being used effectively in the Peace Garden in the plaza between the library and city hall.
The other is Autumn Joy which is in bloom now and will continue to provide color for
months to come. Some references say it requires full sun. Not so! I have it in three locations in my garden. I have several plants growing out of a south-facing wall. But there are tall oaks and maples to the south so that the only time it gets direct sun is in spring before the oaks leaf out. The rest of the year it is dappled light. Another plant is in the east-facing bed on top of my long stone wall where it gets only morning sun. The third plant is in my shrub-perennial border where it gets a bit of sun mid-day. Mine is the ordinary run-of-the-mill Autumn Joy, but there are several cultivars offered in nurseries. Among these are: Crimson, Iceberg, which has white flowers, Autumn Fire and Chocolate Drop, growing only eight inches tall with brown leaves and pink flowers.
There are two native sedums: Roseroot, Sedum rosa and Wild Stonecrop, Sedum ternatum. A third Wild Live-forever, Sedum teliphiodes, grows on cliffs and rocks in Pennsylvania and southward.


|Shah Jahan the Magnificent|
|"Shah Jahan on a globe" from the Smithsonian Institution|
|Reign||1628 - 1658|
|Full name||Shahab-ud-din Muhammad Shah Jahan|
|Born||1 May 1592|
|Died||22 January 1666 (aged 74)|
|Place of death||Agra|
|Wives||Akbarabadi Mahal (d. 1677)
Kandahari Mahal (b. 1594, m. 1609)
Mumtaz Mahal (b. 1593, m. 1612, d. 1631)
Hasina Begum Sahiba (m. 1617)
Muti Begum Sahiba
Qudsia Begum Sahiba
Fatehpuri Mahal Sahiba (d. after 1666)
Sarhindi Begum Sahiba (d. after 1650)
Shrimati Manbhavathi Baiji Lal Sahiba (m. 1626)
|Offspring||Jahanara Begum, Dara Shukoh, Shah Shuja, Roshanara Begum, Aurangzeb, Murad Baksh, Gauhara Begum|
Shahab Uddin Muhammad Shah Jahan I (full title: Al-Sultan al-'Azam wal Khaqan al-Mukarram, Abu'l-Muzaffar Shihab ud-din Muhammad, Sahib-i-Qiran-i-Sani, Shah Jahan I Padshah Ghazi Zillu'llah [Firdaus-Ashiyani]) (also spelled Shah Jehan, Shahjehan, Urdu: شاه جہاں, Persian: شاه جهان (5 January 1592 – 22 January 1666) was the ruler of the Mughal Empire in India from 1628 until 1658. The name Shah Jahan comes from Persian meaning "king of the world." He was the fifth Mughal ruler after Babur, Humayun, Akbar, and Jahangir. While young, he was a favourite of Akbar.
Even while very young, he could be pointed out to be the successor to the Mughal throne after the death of Jahangir. He succeeded to the throne upon his father's death in 1627. He is considered to be one of the greatest Mughals and his reign has been called the Golden Age of Mughals. Like Akbar, he was eager to expand his empire. The chief events of his reign were the destruction of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar (1636), the loss of Kandahar to the Persians (1653), and a second war against the Deccan princes (1655). In 1658 he fell ill, and was confined by his son Aurangzeb in the citadel of Agra until his death in 1666. On the eve of his death in 1666, the Mughal Empire spanned almost 750,000,000 acres (3,000,000 km2), about 2/10 the size of modern India.
The period of his reign was the golden age of Mughal architecture. Shah Jahan erected many splendid monuments, the most famous of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra built as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal (birth name Arjumand Banu Begum). The Pearl Mosque at Agra , the palace and great mosque at Delhi also commemorate him. The celebrated Peacock Throne, said to be worth millions of dollars by modern estimates, also dates from his reign. He was the founder of Shahjahanabad, now known as 'Old Delhi'. The important buildings of Shah Jahan were the Diwan-i-Am and Diwan-i-Khas in the fort of Delhi, the Jama Masjid, the Moti Masjid and the Taj. It is pointed out that the Palace of Delhi is the most magnificent in the East.
Shah Jahan was born as Prince Khurram Shihab-ud-din Muhammad, in 1592 in Lahore, Pakistan as the third and favorite son of the emperor Jahangir, his mother being a Rathore Rajput Princess, known as Princess Jagat Gosain who was Jahangir's second wife. The name Khurram - Persian for 'joyful' - was given by his grandfather Akbar. His early years saw him receive a cultured, broad education and he distinguished himself in the martial arts and as a military commander while leading his father's armies in numerous campaigns - Mewar (1615 CE, 1024 AH), the Deccan (1617 and 1621 CE, 1026 and 1030 AH), Kangra (1618 CE, 1027AH). He was responsible for most of the territorial gains during his father's reign. He also demonstrated a precocious talent for building, impressing his father at the age of 16 when he built his quarters within Babur's Kabul fort and redesigned buildings within Agra fort.
In 1607 CE (1025 AH), at the age of fifteen, Khurram was to marry Arjumand Banu Begum, the grand daughter of a Persian noble, who was 14 years old at the time. She would become the unquestioned love of his life. They would, however, have to wait five years before they were married in 1612 CE (1021 AH). After their wedding celebrations, Khurram "finding her in appearance and character elect among all the women of the time," gave her the title Mumtaz Mahal (Jewel of the Palace).
Mumtaz Mahal had 14 children. Despite her frequent pregnancies, she travelled with Shah Jahan's entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. Mumtaz Mahal was utterly devoted — she was his constant companion and trusted confidante and their relationship was intense. She is portrayed by Shah Jahan's chroniclers as the perfect wife with no aspirations to political power. This is in direct opposition to how Nur Jahan had been perceived.
The intervening years had seen Khurrum take two other wives known as Akbarabadi Mahal (d.1677 CE, 1088 AH), and Kandahari Mahal (b. c1594 CE, c1002 AH), (m.1609 CE, 1018 AH).
According to the official court chronicler Qazwini, the relationship with his other wives "had nothing more than the status of marriage. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favor which His Majesty had for the Cradle of Excellence [Mumtaz] exceeded by a thousand times what he felt for any other." Several European chroniclers suggested that Shah Jahan had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Jahanara Begum. The European traveller Francois Bernier wrote, "Begum Sahib, the elder daughter of Shah Jahan was very handsome... Lal pointed out that Aurangzeb may have been involved in "magnifying a rumour into a full-fledged scandal", and wrote: "Aurangzeb had disobeyed Shahjahan, he had incarcerated him for years, but if he really helped give a twist to Shahjahan's paternal love for Jahan Ara by turning it into a scandal, it was the unkindest cut of all his unfilial acts."
Inheritance of power and wealth in the Mughal empire was not determined through primogeniture, but by princely sons competing to achieve military successes and consolidating their power at court. This often led to rebellions and wars of succession. As a result, a complex political climate surrounded the Mughal court in Khurram's formative years. In 1611 his father married Nur Jahan, the widowed daughter of a Afghan immigrant. She rapidly became an important member of Jahangir's court and, together with her brother Asaf Khan, wielded considerable influence. Arjumand was Asaf Khan's daughter and her marriage to Khurrum consolidated Nur Jahan and Asaf Khan's positions at court.
Khurram's intense military successes of 1617 CE (1026 AH) against the Lodi in the Deccan effectively secured the southern border of the empire and his grateful father rewarded him with the prestigious title 'Shah Jahan Bahadur' (Brave King of the World) which implicitly sealed his inheritance. Court intrigues, however, including Nur Jahan's decision to have her daughter from her first marriage wed Shah Jahan's youngest brother and her support for his claim to the throne led Khurram, supported by Mahabat Khan, into open revolt against his father in 1622.
The rebellion was quelled by Jahangir's forces in 1626 and Khurram was forced to submit unconditionally. Upon the death of Jahangir in 1627, Khurram succeeded to the Mughal throne as Shah Jahan, King of the World, the latter title alluding to his pride in his Timurid roots. Shah Jahan's first act as ruler was to execute his chief rivals and imprison his step mother Nur Jahan. This allowed Shan Jahan to rule without contention.
Although his father's rule was generally peaceful, the empire was experiencing challenges by the end of his reign. Shah Jahan reversed this trend by putting down a Islamic rebellion in Ahmednagar, repulsing the Portuguese in Bengal, capturing the Rajput kingdoms of Baglana and Bundelkhand to the west and the northwest beyond the Khyber Pass. Under his rule, the state became a huge military machine and the nobles and their contingents multiplied almost fourfold, as did the demands for more revenue from the peasantry. It was however a period of general stability — the administration was centralised and court affairs systematised. Historiography and the arts increasingly became instruments of propaganda, where beautiful artworks or poetry expressed specific state ideologies which held that central power and hierarchical order would create balance and harmony. The empire continued to expand moderately during his reign but the first signs of an imperial decline were seen in the later years.
Under Shah Jahan the Mughal Empire attained its highest union of strength with magnificence. The land revenue of the Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan was 20¾ millions. The magnificence of Shah Jahan’s court was the wonder of European travelers. His Peacock Throne, with its trail blazing in the shifting natural colors of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, was valued by the jeweler Tavernier at 6½ millions sterling.
His political efforts encouraged the emergence of large centres of commerce and crafts — such as Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ahmedabad — linked by roads and waterways to distant places and ports. He moved the capital from Agra to Delhi.
Under Shah Jahan's rule, Mughal artistic and architectural achievements reached their zenith. Shah Jahan was a prolific builder with a highly refined aesthetic. He built the legendary Taj Mahal in Agra as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Among his other surviving buildings are the Red Fort and Jama Masjid in Delhi, the Shalimar Gardens of Lahore, sections of the Lahore Fort (such as Sheesh Mahal, and Naulakha pavilion), and his father's mausoleum.
Legend has it that Shah Jahan wanted to build a black Taj Mahal for himself. There is no reputable scholarship to support this hypothesis, however, nor other horrific legends that Shah Jahan maimed, blinded, or killed those responsible for designing and building his tomb.
His son Aurangzeb led a rebellion when Shah Jahan became ill in 1657 CE (1067 AH) and publicly executed his brother and the heir apparent Dara Shikoh. Dara was the eldest of the sons of Mumtaz Mahal. Dara had assumed the role of Regent in his father’s stead which brought animosity towards him swiftly by his brothers. Upon receiving this information, his younger brothers, Shuja, Viceroy of Bengal, and Marad, Viceroy of Gujarat, declared their independence, and marched upon Agra in order to claim their riches. Aurangzeb, the third son, the ablest and most virile of the brothers join them and being placed in chief command, attacked Dara's army close to Agra and completely defeated him. Although Shah Jahan fully recovered from his illness, Aurangzeb declared him incompetent to rule and put him under house arrest in Agra Fort.
Jahanara Begum Sahib, Shan Jahan's second daughter, voluntarily shared his 8-year confinement and nursed him in his dotage. In January of 1666 CE (1076 AH), Shah Jahan fell ill with strangury and dysentery. Confined to bed, he became progressively weaker until, on 22 January, he commanded the ladies of the imperial court, particularly his consort of later years Akbarabadi Mahal, to the care of Jahanara. After reciting the Kalima and verses from the Qu'ran, he died. Jahanara planned a state funeral which was to include a procession with Shah Jahan's body carried by eminent nobles followed by the notable citizens of Agra and officials scattering coins for the poor and needy. Aurangzeb refused to accommodate such ostentation and the body was washed in accordance with Islamic rites, taken by river in a sandalwood coffin to the Taj Mahal and was interred there next to the body of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal.
Shah Jahan exemplified one of the highest points in the Mughal Empire but also foreshadowed its downfall through the succession of emperors in the Mughal line. With his accession and downfall at the hands of his sons aside, Shah Jahan can clearly be seen as a leader who changed the landscape of India dramatically in the course of his reign; when you take into consideration that the legacy that brought him down as well as his great accomplishment, Shah Jahan gives us a great wealth of knowledge into the internal workings of an empire that was built from conquering, violence, and tolerance while alluding to the unstable hierarchy and the right to power in the Mughal Empire. He came to power through violence and betrayal and was ultimately brought down by the same means, exacerbating the legacy of the Mughals.
Shah Jahan has left behind a grand legacy of structures constructed during his reign. The most famous of these is the Taj Mahal in Agra built to hold the tomb for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Upon his death, his son Aurangazeb had him interred in it next to Mumtaz Mahal. Among his other constructions are Delhi Fort also called the Red Fort or Lal Qila (Urdu) in Delhi, large sections of Agra Fort, the Jama Masjid (Grand Mosque), Delhi, the Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore, Pakistan, the Moti Masjid (Pearl Mosque), Lahore, the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore, sections of the Lahore Fort, Lahore, the Jahangir mausoleum — his father's tomb, the construction of which was overseen by his stepmother Nur Jahan and the Shahjahan Mosque, Thatta, Pakistan. He also had the Peacock Throne, Takht e Taus, made to celebrate his rule.
Numerous accounts of Shah Jahan's personal life were recounted by contemporary European writers.
Like all his ancestors, Shah Jahan's court included many wives, concubines, and dancing girls. Several European chroniclers have noted this. Niccolao Manucci wrote that "it would seem as if the only thing Shah Jahan cared for was the search for women to serve his pleasure" and "for this end he established a fair at his court. No one was allowed to enter except women of all ranks that is to say, great and small, rich and poor, but all beautiful." When he was detained in the Red Fort at Agra, Aurangzeb permitted him to retain "the whole of his female establishment, including the singing and dancing women." Manucci notes that Shah Jahan didn't lose his "weakness for the flesh" even when he had grown very old. However, most of the European travellers in India had access to such information primarily through bazaar gossip and not first hand.
The song Bone Marrow by Canadian band Protest the Hero makes references to/is about Shah Jahan.
Shah JahanBorn: 5 January 1592 Died: 31 January 1666
SHAH JAHAN (fl. 1627-1658), Mogul emperor of Delhi, the fifth of the dynasty. After revolting against his father Jahangir, as the latter had revolted against Akbar, he succeeded to the throne on his father's death in 1627. It was during his reign that the Mogul power attained its greatest prosperity. The chief events of his reign were the destruction of the kingdom of Ahmadnagar (1636), the loss of Kandahar to the Persians (1653), and a second war against the Deccan princes (1655). In 1658 he fell ill, and was confined by his son Aurangzeb in the citadel of Agra until his death in 1666. The period of his reign was the golden age of Indian architecture. Shah Jahan erected many splendid monuments, the most famous of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, built as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal; while the Pearl Mosque at Agra and the palace and great mosque at Delhi also commemorate him. The celebrated "Peacock Throne," said to have been worth 6,000,000 also dates from his reign; and he was the founder of the modern city of Delhi, the native name of which is Shahjahanabad.
<< Shah Alam
Shah Jahan, son of Jahangir, son of Akbar, son of Humayun, son of Babur son of Unknown great grandson(?) of Taimur (Tamerlane).
Regnal name: Ghiyasuddin Shah Jahan
Name before ascending to the throne: Shahzada (Prince) Khurram
The name is also spelt Shah Jehan, or just Shahjahan.
Dara Shikoh, Aurangzeb, Jahanara Begum,


TALLAHASSEE, Fla., March 16 (UPI) -- When it comes to biting, crocodiles are the heavyweight chomp champions of the animal world, Florida researchers say.
Greg Erickson of Florida State University said he and his colleagues had wondered just how hard alligators and crocodiles can bite.
The answer? A bite force value of 3,700 pounds for a 17-foot saltwater crocodile, the highest bite force ever recorded, Florida State reported Thursday.
But it's nothing compared with the largest extinct crocodilians, Erickson said, 35- to 40-foot animals that bit at forces as great as 23,100 pounds.
Measuring bite force in a living crocodile or alligator is dangerous work, he said.
"I have to admit, the first time I placed our meter into the maw of an adult crocodile, I was nervous. It was all over in the blink of an eye.
"When it struck, it nearly wrested my grip from the handle. The noise of the jaws coming together was like a gunshot. The power of the animal was astounding, and the violence of the event frightening."
Gators and crocs have similar maximal bite-force capacity pound for pound, he said, because they basically all have the same musculoskeletal design, just different snouts and teeth.
"It is analogous to putting different attachments on a weed eater -- grass cutter, brush cutter, tree trimmer, they all have the same type of engine," Erickson said. "There are bigger and smaller engines, with higher and lower horsepower, but they have the same attachments."
If there's one lesson to be taken from his research, he said, it's to keep a good distance between yourself and the nearest crocodile.
"If you can bench-press a pickup truck, then you can escape a croc's jaws," Erickson warned. "It is a one-way street between the teeth and stomach of a large croc."
|Additional Science News Stories|
SANFORD, Fla., May 24 (UPI) --Pictures and texts from Trayvon Martin's cellphone show a different side of the teenager a Florida man is accused of killing unprovoked, defense attorneys say.
NEW YORK, May 24 (UPI) --A New York judge has released Amanda Bynes on her own recognizance after the actress was arrested for throwing a bong out of her 36th-floor apartment window.
COLOGNE, Germany, May 24 (UPI) --An auctioneer in Germany said he has set the starting bid for an Apple-1 computer at a stunning, but not record-setting, $116,000.
BRENTWOOD, N.Y., May 24 (UPI) --A New York state dockworker said one of his first acts as a $26.5 million lottery jackpot winner was to quit his job.


SAN DIEGO — SAN DIEGO (AP) - You'll never look at hummingbirds the same again.
The Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into the development of tiny drones inspired by biology, each equipped with video and audio equipment that can record sights and sounds.
They could be used to spy, but also to locate people inside earthquake-crumpled buildings and detect hazardous chemical leaks.
The smaller, the better.
Besides the hummingbird, engineers in the growing unmanned aircraft industry are working on drones that look like insects and the helicopter-like maple leaf seed.
Researchers are even exploring ways to implant surveillance and other equipment into an insect as it is undergoing metamorphosis. They want to be able to control the creature.
The devices could end up being used by police officers and firefighters.
Their potential use outside of battle zones, however, is raising questions about privacy and the dangers of the winged creatures buzzing around in the same skies as aircraft.
For now, most of these devices are just inspiring awe.
With a 6.5-inch wing span, the remote-controlled bird weighs less than a AA battery and can fly at speeds of up to 11 mph, propelled only by the flapping of its two wings. A tiny video camera sits in its belly.
The bird can climb and descend vertically, fly sideways, forward and backward. It can rotate clockwise and counterclockwise.
Most of all it can hover and perch on a window ledge while it gathers intelligence, unbeknownst to the enemy.
"We were almost laughing out of being scared because we had signed up to do this," said Matt Keennon, senior project engineer of California's AeroVironment, which built the hummingbird.
The Pentagon asked them to develop a pocket-sized aircraft for surveillance and reconnaissance that mimicked biology. It could be anything, they said, from a dragonfly to a hummingbird.
Five years and $4 million later, the company has developed what it calls the world's first hummingbird spy plane.
"It was very daunting up front and remained that way for quite some time into the project," he said, after the drone blew by his head and landed on his hand during a media demonstration.
The toughest challenges were building a tiny vehicle that can fly for a prolonged period and be controlled or control itself.
AeroVironment has a history of developing such aircraft.
Over the decades, the Monrovia, Calif.-based company has developed everything from a flying mechanical reptile to a hydrogen-powered plane capable of flying in the stratosphere and surveying an area larger than Afghanistan at one glance.
It has become a leader in the hand-launched drone industry.
Troops fling a four-pound plane, called the Raven, into the air. They have come to rely on the real-time video it sends back, using it to locate roadside bombs or get a glimpse of what is happening over the next hill or around a corner.
The success of the hummingbird drone, however, "paves the way for a new generation of aircraft with the agility and appearance of small birds," said Todd Hylton of the Pentagon's research arm, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
These drones are not just birds.
Lockheed Martin has developed a fake maple leaf seed, or so-called whirly bird, loaded with navigation equipment and imaging sensors. The spy plane weighs .07 ounces.
On the far end of the research spectrum, DARPA is also exploring the possibility of implanting live insects during metamorphosis with video cameras or sensors and controlling them by applying electrical stimulation to their wings.
The idea is for the military to be able to send in a swarm of bugs loaded with spy gear.
The military is also eyeing other uses.
The drones could be sent in to search buildings in urban combat zones. Police are interested in using them, among other things, to detect a hazardous chemical leak. Firefighters could fling them out over a disaster to get better data, quickly.
It is hard to tell what, if anything, will make it out of the lab, but their emergence presents challenges and not just with physics.
What are the legal implications, especially with interest among police in using tiny drones for surveillance, and their potential to invade people's privacy, asks Peter W. Singer, author of the book, "Wired for War" about robotic warfare.
Singer said these questions will be increasingly discussed as robotics become a greater part of everyday life.
"It's the equivalent to the advent of the printing press, the computer, gun powder," he said. "It's that scale of change."


Surface Area: 64 square kilometres
What the natives are called: Alamedanos or “lameatos”
Outstanding Sights: Andalusian Rural Museum, Roman Baths archaeological site and visitor centre, José María ‘El Tempranillo’ mausoleum and courtyard, La Camorra scenic viewpoint, Church of La Inmaculada Concepción, fountain at La Placeta.
Geographical Location: in the northern part of the Antequera region, 72 kilometres from Málaga and 432 metres above sea level. Annual rainfall is about 610 litres per square metre and the average temperature is 16º C.
The municipality of Alameda lies in the Antequera region in the northern part of the province of Málaga and stretches over a plain on which only a few low hills interrupt a level landscape abounding with olive groves, as might be expected in a territory so close to the countryside of Córdoba and Seville.
Due to its location Alameda was, like other neighbouring villages, a crossroads between the provinces of Málaga, Granada and Seville, so the first human settlements date back to the Chalcolithic or Eneolithic period (2,500 B.C.), but the most numerous relics from past ages relate to the Roman domination.
The historian Pliny refers to the city of Astigi Vetus, which would have stood in the same place presently occupied by Alameda. Here three of the most important Roman roads converged, an unmistakable sign of the importance of this locality during that era.
From that time, except for the discovery of a "little treasure" from the sixth century (the Visigoth period), no reliable documents exist exploring the history of Alameda until well into the sixteenth century, despite the fact that during the Arabic domination the entire region of Antequera –all of Andalusia, in fact– played a significant part.
The village passed into the hands of the Marquises of Estepa in the sixteenth century, and for a while it belonged to the province of Seville. In the late seventeenth century, coinciding with the economic recovery of the entire region, Alameda also benefited from greater economic activity and regained a degree of importance. The municipality was finally incorporated into the province of Málaga in the nineteenth century under the new administrative regime.
The easiest and fastest way to get to this locality from the city of Málaga is to take the A-45 (N-331) to the outskirts of Antequera, and there to connect with the A-92 and go towards Seville. Upon arrival at Mollina, take the MA- 703, which leads to Alameda. Another option is to go to Fuente de Piedra, six kilometres beyond Mollina on the same A-92, and then take the MA-701.
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Costa del Sol Tourist Board - Plaza de la Marina, nº4 - 29015 Málaga - Tel: +34952126272 - Fax: +34952225207 - firstname.lastname@example.org


- 1. AMD64 architecture
- AMD64 program model
- 3. Porting applications on AMD64
The article briefly describes AMD64 architecture by AMD Company and its implementation EM64T by Intel Company. The architecture's peculiarities, advantages and disadvantages are described.
Development of computer-solved tasks demands more and more from the hardware these tasks are being solved on. The requirements to computer systems of personal-computer class have been growing year by year for 20 years already. It happens because people wish to solve on their personal computers more and more complex tasks which have been earlier solved only on high-performance mainframes.
What are these requirements to the personal computers for solving complex tasks? Of course, these are requirements of main-memory size and processor's performance (don't mix up with frequency!). IA32 architecture (Intel Architecture 32) dominating during the last decade offers 4Gb (2^32) of main memory of which only 2Gb are usually allocated to an application; different register blocks and sets of various tricks such as branch predication block, which should increase the system's performance without increasing such an abstract parameter as processor's frequency .
Modern tasks for personal computers approach 2Gb while processors' frequency increase cannot help increase performance.
Newly-developed 64-bit architectures SPARC64 and Intel Itanium can to some extend serve to solve the problem of modern 32-bit computers' limitations. But they are intended for hi-end systems and are not available as cheap solutions. It is AMD64 architecture by AMD Company and its implementation EM64T by Intel Company which are to become really popular. These architectures are twins and programs compiled for one of them can be launched on the other as well. But it is the solution by AMD that historically appeared first. EM64T is actually only an implementation of AMD64 by Intel. AMD64 architecture is now implemented in processors of all classes: mobiles, work-stations, servers.
Despite evident advantages of AMD64 platform (which are described in detail in this article) it doesn't introduce anything revolutionary into computing machinery. Porting from 32 bits to 64 bits didn't lead to quality improvements while previous porting from 16 bits to 32 bits had increased systems' safety and performance significantly.
AMD64 architecture is fully described in five documentation volumes provided by AMD Company. This chapter provides a brief description based on the first volume . Pay attention that in official documentation this architecture is defined as AMD x86-64 what underlines its backward compatibility.
AMD x86-64 architecture is a simple but powerful backward-compatible extension of the obsolete industrial architecture x86 . It adds 64-bit address space and extends register resources for supporting more performance for recompiled 64-bit programs providing support of obsolete 16-bit and 32-bit code of applications and operational systems without modifying or recompiling them.
Necessity of 64-bit x86 architecture is explained by applications which need large address space. These are high-performance servers, data managers, CAD-systems and of course games. Such applications will gain an advantage due to 64-bit address space and more registers. Few registers available in obsolete x86 architecture limit computing-task performance. More registers provide sufficient performance for most applications.
x86-64 architecture introduces two new peculiarities:
1. Extended registers (Picture 1):
- 8 general-purpose registers;
- all 16 general-purpose registers are 64-bit;
- 8 new 128-bit XMM registers;
- a new command prefix (REX) for access to extended registers.
2. special mode "Long Mode" which is shown in Table 1:
- up to 64-bit virtual addresses;
- 64-bit command pointer (RIP);
- flat address space.
Picture 1. Set of x86-64 registers
Table 1. Processor operating modes.
Table 2 contains comparison of registers' and stack's resources available to an application in different modes. Left columns show resources provided by obsolete x86 architecture which are available only to compatibility. Right columns show resources available in 64-bit mode. The difference between the modes is marked grey.
Table 2. Registers and stack available in different modes
As shown in Table 2 obsolete x86 architecture (this mode is called legacy mode in x86-64) supports 8 general-purpose registers. But actually only 4 registers are usually used: EAX, EBX, ECX, EDX. Registers EBP, ESI, EDI, ESP have a special purpose. X86-64 architecture adds 8 general-purpose registers and enlarges the register range from 32 bits to 64 bits. It allows compilers to increase code performance. A 64-bit compiler can use registers for storing variables more efficiently. The compiler also allows you to minimize memory access by locating operation inside general-purpose registers.
- x86-64 architecture supports the whole set of x86 instructions and adds some new instructions for supporting long-mode. The commands are divided into several subsets:
- General-purpose commands. These are main x86 integer commands used in all programs. Most of them are intended for loading, saving and processing data located in general-purpose registers or memory. Some of these commands manage the command stream providing passage from one program section to another.
- 128-bit media-commands. These are SSE and SSE2 (streaming SIMD extension) commands intended for loading, saving or processing data located in 128-bit XMM registers. They perform integer or floating-point operations over vector (packed) and scalar data types. As vector commands can perform one operation over a data set independently they are called single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) commands. They are used for media- and science applications for processing data blocks.
- 64-bit media-commands. These are multimedia extension (MMX) and 3DNow! Commands. They save, restore and process data located in 64-bit MMX registers. Like 128-bit commands described before they perform integer and floating-point operations over vector (packed) and scalar data.
- x87 commands. They are intended for working with the floating point in obsolete x87 applications. They process data in x87 registers.
Some of these commands connect two or more subsets of the commands described above. For example, such are commands of data transmission between general-purpose registers and XMM or MMX registers.
Let's consider in detail the operating modes shown in Table 1 supported by x86-64. In most cases addresses' and operands' sizes can be overlayed by a command prefix.
Let's describe long-mode at first. This is an extension of the obsolete protected mode. Long-mode consists of two submodes: 64-bit mode and compatibility mode. 64-bit mode supports all the new possibilities and register extensions introduced into x86-64. Compatibility mode supports binary compatibility with existing 16-bit and 32-bit code. Long-mode doesn't support obsolete real mode or obsolete virtual-8086 mode and it also doesn't support hardware task switching.
As 64-bit mode supports 64-bit address space you need to use a new 64-bit operational system for its work. Meanwhile, the existing applications can be launched without recompiling in compatibility mode under the OS working in 64-bit mode. For 64-bit command addressing a 64-bit register (RIP) and a new addressing mode with single flat address space for code, stack and data are used.
64-bit mode implements support of extended registers through a new prefix group of REX commands.
In 64-bit mode addresses' size is 64 bits on default but implementations of x86-64 may have a smaller size. An operand's size is 32 bits on default. For most instructions the operand's size can be overlaid using a prefix of REX-type commands.
64-bit mode provides data addressing relative to the 64-bit register RIP. X86 architecture provided addressing relative to IP register only in control transfer commands. RIP-relative addressing increases efficiency of position-independent code and code addressing global data.
Some opcode commands were redefined to support extended registers and 64-bit addressing.
Compatibility mode is intended for executing existing 16-bit and 32-bit programs in a 64-bit OS. Applications are launched in compatibility mode with the use of 32- or 16-bit address space and can have access to 4Gb of virtual address space. Commands' prefixes can switch 16- and 32-bit addresses and operands' sizes.
From the application's viewpoint compatibility mode looks like the obsolete protected x86 mode but from the viewpoint of the OS (address translation, processing of interruptions and exceptions) 64-bit mechanisms are used.
Legacy mode provides binary compatibility not only with 16- and 32-bit applications but with 16- and 32-bit operational systems as well. It includes three modes:
- Protected mode. 16- and 32-bit programs with segmental memory organization, privilege and virtual memory support. Address space is 4Gb.
- Virtual-8086 mode. Supports 16-bit applications launched as tasks in protected mode. Address space is 1Mb.
- Real mode. Supports 16-bit programs with simple register addressing of segmented memory. Virtual memory and privileges are not supported. 1Mb of memory is available.
Legacy mode is used only when 16- and 32-bit OS are operating.
Let's outline the main advantages of AMD x86-64 architecture.
- 64-bit address space.
- Extended register set.
- Developer-habitual command set.
- Possibility of launching obsolete 32-bit applications in a 64-bit OS.
- Possibility of using a 32-bit OS.
The new architecture AMD x86-64 hasn't introduced crucial disadvantages into 32-bit architecture. We can point out only a bit increased programs' memory requirements because of the larger size of addresses and operands. But it won't influence however significantly the code size or the requirements to available main memory.
But the fact is that AMD x86-64 hasn't introduced anything significantly new. There is no performance gain. On the average, you can expect 5-15% performance gain after recompiling a program.
Nearly all modern OS now have versions for AMD64 architecture. Thus, Microsoft presents Windows XP 64-bit, Windows Server 2003 64bit, Windows Vista 64bit. The leading UNIX system developers also provide 64-bit versions, such as, for example, Linux Debian 3.1 x86-64. But it doesn't mean that the whole code of such a system is completely 64-bit. Some OS code and many applications still can remain 32-bit as AMD64 provides backward compatibility.
64-bit Windows version, for example, uses a special mode WoW (Windows-on-Windows 64) which translates 32-bit applications' calls to the resources of a 64-bit OS. Let's consider in detail AMD64 program model available to a programmer in 64-bit Windows [3, 4] shortly called Win64.
Let's begin with address space. Although a 64-bit processor can theoretically address 16 exabyte (2^64) Win64 now supports 16 terabytes (2^44). There are several reasons for this. Existing processors can provide access only to 1 terabyte (2^40) of actual storage. The architecture (but not the hardware part) can extend this space up to 4 petabytes. But anyway we need a great memory size for page tables representing memory. (see Table 3).
|32-bit mode||64-bit mode|
|Process's general address space||4Gb||16Tb|
|Address space available to a 32-bit process||2Gb (3Gb if the system is loaded with /3GB key)||4Gb if the application is compiled with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE key (2Gb otherwise)|
|Address space available to a 64-bit process||Impossible||8Tb|
|System Page Table (PTE)||660Mb - 900Mb||128Gb|
Table 3. Main memory limitations in Windows
Like in Win32 the addressed memory range is divided into user and system addresses. Each process receives 8Tb and 8Tb remain in the system (unlike 2Gb and 2Gb in Win32 correspondingly). Different Windows versions have different limitations shown in Table 4.
|Actual storage and number of processors||32-bit models||64-bit models|
|Windows XP Home||4 Gb, 1 CPU||Not present|
|Windows XP Professional||4 Gb, 1-2 CPU||128 Gb, 1-2 CPU|
|Windows Server 2003, Standard||4 Gb, 1-4 CPU||32 Gb, 1-4 CPU|
|Windows Server 2003, Enterprise||64 Gb, 1-8 CPU||1 Tb, 1-8 CPU|
|Windows Server 2003, Datacenter||64 Gb, 8-32 CPU||1 Tb, 8-64 CPU|
|Windows Server 2008, Datacenter||64 Gb, 2-64 CPU||2 Tb, 2-64 CPU|
|Windows Server 2008, Enterprise||64 Gb, 1-8 CPU||2 Tb, 1-8 CPU|
|Windows Server 2008, Standard||4 Gb, 1-4 CPU||32 Gb, 1-4 CPU|
|Windows Server 2008, Web Server||4 Gb, 1-4 CPU||32 Gb, 1-4 CPU|
|Vista Home Basic||4 Gb, 1 CPU||8 Gb, 1 CPU|
|Vista Home Premium||4 Gb, 1-2 CPU||16 Gb, 1-2 CPU|
|Vista Business||4 Gb, 1-2 CPU||128 Gb, 1-2 CPU|
|Vista Enterprise||4 Gb, 1-2 CPU||128 Gb, 1-2 CPU|
|Vista Ultimate||4 Gb, 1-2 CPU||128 Gb, 1-2 CPU|
Table 4. Limitations of different Windows versions
Like in Win32 a page's size is 4Kb. First 4Kb of address space are never shown, i.e. the least true address is 0x10000. Unlike Win32 system DLL are loaded exceeding 4Gb.
All the processors implementing AMD64 have support for "CPU No Execution" bit which is used by Windows for implementing the hardware technology "Data Execution Protection" (DEP) which forbids execution of user data instead of code. It allows you to increase programs' safety excluding influence of such errors as execution of the buffer with data as code.
The peculiarity of AMD64 compilers is that they can most efficiently implement registers for passing parameters into functions instead of using the stack. It allowed Win64 architecture developers to get rid off such a notion as calling convention. In Win32 you can use different conventions (ways of passing parameters): __stdcall, __cdecl, __fastcall etc. In Win64 there is only one calling convention. Let's consider an example of how four arguments of integer-type are passed in registers:
- RCX: first argument
- RDX: second argument
- R8: third argument
- R9: fourth argument
Arguments after the first four integers are passed on the stack. For float arguments XMM0-XMM3 both the registers and the stack are used.
The difference in calling conventions leads to that you cannot use both 64-bit and 32-bit code in one program. In other words, if an application is compiled for 64-bit mode all the used DLL libraries must be 64-bit too.
While writing 64-bit code you can get additional performance gain thanks to special optimization. This question is considered in detail in optimizing instructions .
One of the purposes of high-level languages is to reduce as far as possible the binding of program code to the architecture and provide the most possible portability between hardware platforms. For example, C++ programs written correctly are theoretically independent from the hardware platform. And, ideally, to compile the corresponding 32-bit applications for AMD64 platform it is enough only to change the compiler  and just recompile the program. But in practice everything is more complicated.
Software using Assembler code for 32-bit processors still exists. Many programs written in high-level languages contain Assembler blocks. That's why it is often impossible just to recompile a large project. The solution of this problem is clear. Firstly, you can refuse porting an application on a new platform. It can be a very reasonable solution because, for example, Windows-family OS provide good backward compatibility due to Wow64 technology. The second variant is to rewrite the program code. Moreover, it seems reasonable to rewrite it using high-level languages. By the way, pay attention that Visual C++ compiler doesn't support compilation of Assembler blocks in 64-bit compilation mode anymore .
Presence of Assembler program code is not the only obstacle we face while mastering 64-bit systems. While porting programs on 64-bit systems different errors occur relating to changing of the data model (type size). What's more, some errors become apparent only while using large memory size which was unavailable in 32-bit systems. Such errors are well described in the article "20 issues of porting C++ code on the 64-bit platform" .
All said above relates mostly to C/C++ applications. It is better with managed code (C#) although we can face some small problems here as well. Unfortunately, large program complexes are often built using libraries written in C/C++. And that's why in case of a large C# project it most likely contains C/C++ modules or libraries which can be unsafe and contain vulnerabilities.
For testing and checking program code ported on a 64-bit platform you can use different special methods and tools . For example, such static analyzers as Viva64 (for Windows systems) and PC-Lint (for Unix systems) can provide good results. To learn more about this toolkit read the article "Comparison of analyzers' diagnostic abilities while testing 64-bit code" .
Undoubtedly, AMD64 architecture offered by AMD Company turned out to be needed on market. AMD64's advantage is that it allows you to smoothly switch to 64-bit programs without losing compatibility with obsolete 32-bit applications. But there is nothing revolutionary in AMD64.
Migration of 32-bit programs on AMD64, as experiments demonstrate, allows you, firstly, to solve tasks which are much more memory-demanding and, secondly, get about 10% performance gain "just so" without changing code due to optimization of an application by the compiler for the new architecture.
We may conclude that AMD64 architecture postponed the problem of limited available main-memory size for many years but didn't solve the problem of modern personal computers' performance gain. The future is still with multi-core and multi-processor systems.
- Intel Software Developer's Manual. Volume 1: Basic Architecture. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=212
- AMD x86-64 Architecture Programmer's Manual. Volume 1: Application Programming. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=213
- Mike Wall. Tricks for Porting Applications to 64-Bit Windows on AMD64 Architecture. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=214
- Matt Pietrek. Everything You Need To Know To Start Programming 64-Bit Windows Systems. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=215
- Software Optimization Guide for AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Opteron Processors. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=59
- Compiler Usage Guidelines for 64-Bit Operating Systems on AMD64 Platforms. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=216
- Daniel Pistelli. Moving to Windows Vista x64. http://www.viva64.com/go.php?url=217
- Andrey Karpov, Evgeniy Ryzhkov. 20 issues of porting C++ code on the 64-bit platform. http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0004/
- Andrey Karpov. Problems of testing 64-bit applications. http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0006/
- Andrey Karpov. Comparison of analyzers' diagnostic abilities while testing 64-bit code. http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0024/


Recent acts of violence alongside pending legislation and international pressure have brought to light the pressing need for lawmaking in support of LGBT rights in Chile. Together with protests for reforms in the education system, the public seems to be increasingly impatient about what the government is doing to protect LGBT rights. These demands are important beyond the scope of gay rights, because they have brought attention to the need for Chile to recognize, accept and protect the human rights of an evolving, heterogeneous culture as a fundamental prerequisite for continued prosperity.
The passage of an antidiscrimination law, which remained unresolved for over seven years, by a close 58-56 vote in the Chamber of Deputies this month was a basic necessity for the country. The Chilean Movement for Sexual Minorities (MOVILH) notes that in 2011 gay, lesbian and transgender Chileans were increasingly outspoken in reporting abuse and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. However, this recently passed antidiscrimination law does not deal with hate crimes per se, but rather defines illegal discrimination. Furthermore, certain passages have yet to be finalized in a mixed commission of Senators and Deputies on May 2. The recent death of gay youth Daniel Zamudio points to precisely why legislating solely on discrimination does not suffice in this case, serving as an exceptionally violent example as to why hate crimes require specific punishment under the law.
Zamudio received not only the public’s sympathy, but also worldwide attention including a briefing note from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ spokesman, Rupert Colville, urging Chile to enact hate crime legislation. In this regard, the MOVILH also argues that Chilean society is not opposed to legislating on issues of gay rights and antidiscrimination in its entirety, but there is a lack of bravery and willingness within Congress to approach these pending issues. The recent Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ overturning of a Chilean court ruling against lesbian Judge Karen Atala, who lost custody of her children because of her same-sex relationship, is further international pressure for Chile to meet requirements stipulated by international agreements it has signed onto.
Chile’s gay rights deficit is worrying as the country continues to be viewed as an example for continued economic growth despite global market volatility. President Sebastian Piñera’s administration is cautious about giving into all public demands, as Chile’s Minister of Finance Felipe Larraín recently said: “If we surrender to the temptation of appeasing demands by giving in to all of them, we will never get to our final goal [development].” However, most gay rights issues rely merely on political willingness rather than investment for social welfare. Furthermore, acting on gay rights is not the investment equivalent of reforming a public education system.
On the contrary, the lack of legislative initiative to protect gay Chileans is hindering the business community’s business opportunities. Private initiatives have been taken to reach out to gay customers, like for example the granting of access to mortgages and family insurance plans to Banco de Chile customers in same-sex relationships, proving how it is not only the public that is restless, but also the private sector that recognizes the positive effects of social inclusion in business. What could potentially prove threatening to Chile’s continued economic success might just be the lack of recognition given to the longstanding need for social inclusion of minorities in the country’s legal framework. In contrast, Chile’s neighbor Argentina has clearly reaped the benefits of gay tourism and investment since legislating on gay marriage, while Chile continues to turn a blind eye to opportunity.
This is not to say that Piñera’s administration has not taken basic steps to promote the rights of gay couples, like for example Piñera’s public presentation of a civil unions bill in August 2011. However, this legislative project was not only perceived as a political tool in the midst of cabinet discussions with student protest leaders, but is also minimal when considering the prominent use of gay couples in campaign ads for Sebastian Piñera during his presidential campaign. For this reason, the inclusion of a question in the 2012 census that allows gay couples to state whether they live with a same-sex partner may become an important, confidential and unbiased figure that current and future administrations could use to advocate for legislation on gay unions.
This paradox persists despite the heightened quality of life of Chileans. Economic growth is creating an increasingly obvious deficit in basic human rights the country has yet to attain. In spite of continued development and well-regarded fiscal policy through the recession and into today’s administration, Chile continues to be in debt to not only its citizens and the country’s business community, but also to international human rights agreements on sexual orientation and gender identity. These international standards continue to be well above those demonstrated by the current state of gay rights legislation in Chile.
Eduardo Ayala is a guest blogger to AQ Online. He is Chilean-American and works at the Council of the Americas in New York. He graduated from The George Washington University, during which time he also completed coursework at The University of Chile and The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago.


Book Chapter, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa, pages 166-203
Author: Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development; Director, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project; Principal Investigator, Agricultural Innovation in Africa
Other Chapters in The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa:
- The Growing Economy
- Advances in Science, Technology, and Engineering
- Agricultural Innovation Systems
- Enabling Infrastructure
- Human Capacity
- Conclusions and the Way Ahead
African countries are increasingly focusing on promoting regional economic integration as a way to stimulate economic growth and expand local markets. Considerable progress has been made in expanding regional trade through regional bodies such as the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC). There are six other such Regional Economic Communities (RECs) that are recognized by the African Union as building blocks for pan-African economic integration. So far, regional cooperation in agriculture is in its infancy and major challenges lie ahead. This chapter will explore the prospects of using regional bodies as agents of agricultural innovation through measures such as regional specialization. The chapter will examine ways to strengthen the role of the RECs in promoting innovation. It adopts the view that effective regional integration is a learning process that involves continuous institutional adaptation.
Through extensive examples of initiatives at the national or cross-border levels, this chapter provides cases for regional collaboration or scaling up national programs to regional programs. Africa's RECs have convening powers that position them as valuable vehicles. That is, they convene meetings of political leaders at the highest level, and these leaders take decisions that are binding on the member states; the member states then regularly report on their performance regarding these decisions. Such meetings provide good platforms for sharing information and best practices. Africa's RECs have established and continue to designate centers of excellence in various areas. COMESA, for instance, has established reference laboratories for animal and plant research in Kenya and Zambia. Designation of centers of excellence for specific aspects of agricultural research will greatly assist specialization within the RECs and put to common use the knowledge from the expertise identified in the region....
The entire chapter may be downloaded below.
- Full text of "Governing Innovation" (121K PDF)
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