Showing posts with label Advice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advice. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Touch-and-go tablet and computer screens
Touch-and-go tablet and computer screens
(Copyright: Getty Images)
The new iPad launched yesterday amid its usual fanfare. But could dwindling supplies of a crucial component make such events a thing of the past?
Another iPad launch, another event filled with intense anticipation and speculation. This time Apple’s CEO Tim Cook revealed that the latest iteration of iPad will feature a high-definition screen, and no doubt its competitors will rapidly follow suit.
But there is a problem looming on the horizon for fans of the latest tablet computers, not to mention smart phones and flatscreen TVs. Whether it is on the shiny new iPad, computer or phone, the chances are that you are reading this article through a screen laced with one of the rarest metals on Earth: indium. And analysts are warning that global supplies of indium could be exhausted as soon as 2017. So how will we live without the gadgets that we have come to depend on?
Such a prospect might not seem as alarming as running out of essential commodities, such as food or water. But over the past few decades digital displays have become so enmeshed in our lives that they are integral to our social interactions and livelihoods from rural East Africa to the offices of Wall Street. I have met Kenyan fisherwomen trading their wares via SMS to clients based hundreds of kilometres away – an opportunity that depends on indium just as much as my need to read these words I am typing on my computer monitor.
Wonder metal
Though it was discovered 150 years ago, indium’s remarkable qualities have been harnessed only recently to create wafer-thin electrodes. It is a very soft silvery metal that can be painted onto glass because unlike other soft metals, such as mercury, it wets the glass rather than forming beads. (Another curious property of indium is that when you bend a rod of the metal, it issues a high-pitched crackling sound, known as its “cry”.)
Indium is most useful, however, when it is manufactured into indium tin oxide, or ITO. The reason you cannot see it is because when indium reacts with oxygen, it becomes transparent. This, plus its tremendous ability to conduct electricity, allows our mobile phones to be smarter, our TV flatscreens to be larger and our tablet computers to be more sleek.
As a result, the price of indium has rocketed in recent years – it went from $60 per kilogramme in 2003 to $1,000 in just three years – giving rise to a whole new indium smuggling industry, primarily out of China. And there is no let up on our demand for hi-tech displays – there were more than 1.5 billion mobile phone handsets alone sold in 2011, one of which was to me.
But the supply of indium cannot meet our voracious demands. Indium is harvested as a byproduct of zinc mining because this so-called "hitchhiker" metal exists almost entirely in trace amounts inside deposits of other ores such as zinc and lead – sometimes as little as 1 part per million. And because indium is not mined in its own right, greater demand for it won't necessarily lead to more being mined, according to Robert Ayres, a physicist and economist at INSEAD business school in France. "Most of the indium is just single atoms stuck inside rock that can never be utilised," he says.
If the most gloomy predictions for indium are true, Ayres says the only solution is to increase recycling efforts. Because of its value, the indium recycling market is already bigger than primary production.
But a single monitor screen typically contains less than 0.5 g of ITO, so recovering such a tiny amount from electronic products is expensive and energy-intensive. "I call indium a “spice metal”, because it's sprinkled into products in a way that makes it almost impossible to recover," says Armin Reller, a materials physicist at the University of Augsburg in Germany.
So what other options do we have to indium? Finding a material that is transparent, light and conducts electricity as efficiently as ITO is a big challenge, but there are some candidates. So-called non-stochiometric tin oxides, which use the far more abundant aluminium, are one option that could be incorporated fairly easily into current manufacturing set-ups. The problem is that they do not perform as well as ITO and that tin is itself running out, with reserves estimated to last another 20-40 years.
Researchers in Germany and Japan are working on a flexible polymer-based material called PEDOT, which when doped with various chemicals becomes more transparent and a better conductor. Again, the polymer relies on non-renewable oil or coal supplies.
What’s desperately needed is a sustainable alternative, and the best solution could come in the shape of a remarkable material called graphene, the subject of a recent Nobel Prize. Like pencil-lead and diamonds, graphene is yet another form of carbon, one of the most abundant elements on Earth. Graphene's carbon atoms are arranged in a flat sheet of hexagons, like chicken wire, and this structure makes it the strongest known material and can conduct electricity as well as copper. And because graphene is just one atom thick, it is almost transparent.
Graphene may be one of the most versatile materials ever discovered – with an endless list of possibilities ranging from miniaturised computer chips to high-capacity batteries (and believe it or not for making extra-strong vodka). But one of its most-desired applications is to roll it up into carbon nanotubes and use it in touchscreens, as it offers several advantages over ITO. Graphene is more stable, so it will survive better in applications where the product will be subjected to constant physical force, such as regular finger-pounding. And graphene's superior flexibility means that it can be shaped in various configurations – you could create a spherical touchscreen, for example.
So why have we not already moved from ITO to carbon? Mark Hersam, a carbon nanotubes pioneer at Northwestern University in Illinois, believes we're waiting for an industry tipping point. "There's tremendous inertia in the electronics sector because the entire industry is modelled around ITO. Big companies like Apple are wedded to the ITO manufacturing processes and will need to invest substantially to start using carbon," he says. However, as the price of indium goes up and it becomes harder to get hold of, there is likely to be a switch."
With solar cells and electronics all competing for the same rare metal, industry is already under increasing pressure to start using a different material, whether that's another metal oxide or novel carbon chicken-wire. Looking through the breathless coverage of the iPad 3 launch on my phone, one thing is for sure: our unwavering enthusiasm for touchscreen/display-screen technologies means we desperately need to find alternatives soon.
Stem cells beat kidney rejection
Stem cells beat kidney rejection
The study involved eight patients
An injection of stem cells given alongside a kidney transplant could remove the need for a lifetime of drugs to suppress the immune system, say scientists.
Early tests of the technique at US hospitals were successful in a small number of patients.
The journal Science Translational Medicine reports how the majority no longer need anti-rejection medication.
Researchers said it could have a "major impact" on transplant science.
One of the key problems associated with organ transplantation is the risk that the body will "recognise" the new organ as a foreign invader and attack it.
To prevent this, patients take powerful drugs to suppress their immune systems, and will have to do this for life.
The drugs come at a price, preventing organ rejection but increasing the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and serious infection.
ChallengesThe study, carried out at the University of Louisville and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, involved eight patients.
Their transplant came from a live donor, who also underwent a procedure to draw stem cells, the building blocks of their immune system, from the blood.
The transplant recipient's body was prepared using radiotherapy and chemotherapy to suppress their own immune system.
Then the transplant went ahead, with the stem cells put into their body a couple of days later.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Lindsay PorterIt's almost surreal when I think about it because I feel so healthy and normal”
The idea is that these will help generate a modified immune system that no longer attacks the organ or its new owner.
Although the patients started off with the same anti-rejection drugs, the aim was to reduce these slowly, hopefully withdrawing them completely over time.
Five out of the eight patients involved in the trial managed to do this within a year.
One of those is 47-year-old Lindsay Porter, from Chicago.
She said: "I hear about the challenges recipients have to face with their medications and it is significant.
"It's almost surreal when I think about it because I feel so healthy and normal."
Dr Joseph Leventhal, associate professor of surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said: "The preliminary results from this ongoing study are exciting and may have a major impact on organ transplantation in the future."
He said that, as well as kidney patients, the technique might improve the lives of those receiving other organs.
While stem cells from organ donors have been used before, this is the first time it has been used for "mismatched" transplants, in which donors and recipients do not have to be related and immunologically similar.
Can three minutes of exercise a week help make you fit?
Can three minutes of exercise a week help make you fit?
A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research, says Dr Michael Mosley. But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes.
When I first read studies which suggested that I could make significant and measurable changes to my fitness by doing just three minutes of exercise a week, I was incredulous.
But this apparently outrageous claim is supported by many years of research done in a number of different countries including the UK, so I decided to give it a go.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health”
My guide into the world of High Intensity Training (HIT), was Jamie Timmons, professor of ageing biology at Birmingham University.
Jamie assured me that by doing just three minutes of HIT a week for four weeks, I could expect to see significant changes in a number of important health indices.
The first, and the one I was most interested in, is insulin sensitivity. Insulin removes sugar from the blood, it controls fat and when it becomes ineffective you become diabetic.
My father was a diabetic and died from complications of that disease. Jamie assured me that research from a number of centres has shown that three minutes of HIT a week improves insulin sensitivity by an average of 24%.
The second improvement I was likely to see would be in my aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health. I asked Jamie why.
"The simple answer is we don't know," he replied. "What we do know is that it is a very, very powerful predictor of future health."
Genetic testSo if I could improve my insulin sensitivity and my aerobic fitness then that should improve my general health. But Jamie said there was a potential sting in the tail. There was a possibility that I wouldn't improve. Not because HIT doesn't work but because I've inherited the wrong genes.
Continue reading the main story 
FIND OUT MORE
- Michael Mosley presents Horizon: The Truth About Exercise on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012 or watch online via iplayer (UK only) afterwards at the above link
The fact is that people respond to exercise in very different ways. In one international study 1,000 people were asked to exercise four hours a week for 20 weeks. Their aerobic fitness was measured before and after starting this regime and the results were striking.
Although 15% of people made huge strides (so-called "super-responders"), 20% showed no real improvement at all ("non-responders").
There is no suggestion that the non-responders weren't exercising properly, it was simply that the exercise they were doing was not making them any aerobically fitter.
Jamie and his collaborators investigated the reasons for these variations and discovered that much of the difference could be traced to a small number of genes.
On the basis of this finding they have developed a genetic test to predict who is likely to be a responder, and who is not. Jamie offered me that test. But I would not be told the results until I had completed my HIT regime.
I agreed, had blood taken and went through some baseline tests to assess my starting point, fitness-wise. Then I began to do HIT.
Full throttleIt's actually very simple. You get on an exercise bike, warm up by doing gentle cycling for a couple of minutes, then go flat out for 20 seconds.
A couple of minutes to catch your breath, then another 20 seconds at full throttle. Another couple of minutes gentle cycling, then a final 20 seconds going hell for leather. And that's it.
So how does it work? According to Jamie, and other researchers I spoke to, part of the explanation is (probably) that HIT uses far more of our muscle tissue than classic aerobic exercise.
When you do HIT, you are using not just the leg muscles, but also the upper body including arms and shoulders, so that 80% of the body's muscle cells are activated, compared to 20-40% for walking or moderate intensity jogging or cycling.
Active exercise also seems to be needed to break down the body's stores of glucose, deposited in your muscles as a substance called glycogen. Smash up these glycogen stores and you create room for more glucose to be sucked out of the blood and stored.
Somewhat sceptical I went off and dutifully did my four weeks of HIT, making a grand total of 12 minutes of intense exercise and 36 minutes of gentle pedalling. I then went back to the lab to be retested.
Continue reading the main story
HEALTH AND EXERCISE
- Many kinds of exercise can provide a health benefit. Read tips on choosing exercise which may suit you.
- If you are worried about your weight, you can calculate your body mass index (BMI), and read more general advice about weight and diet.
The results were mixed. My insulin sensitivity had improved by a remarkable 24%, which was extremely satisfying, but my aerobic fitness had not improved at all.
I was crestfallen, but Jamie was not surprised. It turns out that the genetic test they had done on me had suggested I was a non-responder and however much exercise I had done, and of whatever form, my aerobic fitness would not have improved. My dreams of winning Olympic gold ended there and then.
I will continue doing HIT because I can see the benefits. It won't suit everyone, because although it is short, it is extremely intense. Like any new exercise regime if you have a pre-existing medical condition you should consult your doctor before trying it.
Michael Mosley presents Horizon: The Truth About Exercise is on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012 or watch online afterwards at the above link.
The myth of the eight-hour sleep
The myth of the eight-hour sleep
We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.
It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.
Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists.
In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks.
His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria.
Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep.
"It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says.
During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps.
And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex.
A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".
Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.
By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.
Continue reading the main story
When segmented sleep was the norm
- "He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream." Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840)
- "Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning." Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)
- "And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake." Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale
- The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" to refer to specific periods of the night
Source: Roger Ekirch
He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled.
In his new book, Evening's Empire, historian Craig Koslofsky puts forward an account of how this happened.
"Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks.
"Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night."
That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness.
This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes.
In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed.
London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night.
Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time.
A small city like Leipzig in central Germany employed 100 men to tend to 700 lamps "People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century," says Roger Ekirch. "But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds."
Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of a pattern of first and second sleep.
"If no disease or accident there intervene, they will need no further repose than that obtained in their first sleep, which custom will have caused to terminate by itself just at the usual hour.
"And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit."
Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light.
This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests.
The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th Century, at the same time as accounts of segmented sleep disappear.
"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."
The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.
Continue reading the main story
Stages of sleep
Every 60-100 minutes we go through a cycle of four stages of sleep
- Stage 1 is a drowsy, relaxed state between being awake and sleeping - breathing slows, muscles relax, heart rate drops
- Stage 2 is slightly deeper sleep - you may feel awake and this means that, on many nights, you may be asleep and not know it
- Stage 3 and Stage 4, or Deep Sleep - it is very hard to wake up from Deep Sleep because this is when there is the lowest amount of activity in your body
- After Deep Sleep, we go back to Stage 2 for a few minutes, and then enter Dream Sleep - also called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - which, as its name suggests, is when you dream
In a full sleep cycle, a person goes through all the stages of sleep from one to four, then back down through stages three and two, before entering dream sleep
Source: Gregg Jacobs
Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.
"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."
But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural.
"Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says.
Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally.
In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams.
"Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up."
So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you.
DNA analysis shows huge genetic diversity in tumours
DNA analysis shows huge genetic diversity in tumours
Kidney cancer cells
Taking a sample from one part of a tumour may not reveal its full genetic identity, according to research by scientists from Cancer Research UK (CRUK).
They carried out the first genome-wide analysis of the genetic variation between different regions of the same tumour using samples of kidney cancer.
They found around two third of genetic faults were not repeated across other biopsies from the same tumour. The research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Lead author Professor Charles Swanton, based at CRUK's London Research Institute and the UCL Cancer Institute said:
"This has revealed an extraordinary amount of diversity, with more differences between biopsies from the same tumour at the genetic level than there are similarities. The next step will be to understand what's driving this diversity in different cancers and identify key driver mutations that are common throughout all parts of a tumour."
The tumour samples were donated by patients with advanced kidney cancer being treated at London's Royal Marsden Hospital.
The findings may explain why personalised cancer treatments based on biomarkers from tumour biopsies are not always successful.
The gene sequencing revealed that even samples next to each other in the tumour were not identical.
Professor Swanton said as a clinician the findings did not surprise him but they helped explain why cancers are so difficult to treat once they have spread.
He said cancers adapted as they grew, along 'Darwinian principles' of evolution: "We need to think of tumours like trees, with common mutations in the trunk but the more they spread into the branches the greater the genetic diversity."
Prof Swanton said the findings underlined the importance of early diagnosis of cancer before it had spread, and the need to target the common mutations in the 'trunk' of the cancer.
Google and Facebook in White House web privacy sights
Google and Facebook in White House web privacy sights
The Center for Digital Democracy filed a complaint this week over Google's privacy policy
The White House has called on internet firms to develop stronger privacy protections for consumers.
The move comes amid worries that browsing information is being tracked and given to advertisers.
State attorneys in 36 states recently sent a letter of concern over Google's plan to share personal information across its products.
As part of the announcement, the firms' ad networks said they would support a "Do Not Track" browser option.
The US has advocated since 2010 for "Do Not Track", a one-click option to prevent information gathered while web browsing being shared with third parties.
'Bill of rights'In a statement, President Barack Obama outlined a "consumer privacy bill of rights".
The White House said internet users should have the right to limit the context in which information was collected, should be allowed to correct information and should have the right to transparency in privacy policies.
Companies like Google and Facebook have signed on to develop guidelines based on the "bill of rights", enforceable by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
"American consumers can't wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online," Mr Obama said.
"As the internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy."
Privacy complaintsPrivacy advocates will be involved with the development of the new guidelines, but some remain concerned about the firms' ability to self-regulate.
"The real question is how much influence companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook will have in their inevitable attempt to water down the rules that are implemented and render them essentially meaningless," John Simpson, who works on privacy issues for Consumer Watchdog, told the New York Times.
Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the announcement "the clearest articulation of the right to privacy by a US president in history".
However, he told Reuters news agency there were "real concerns about implementation and enforcement".
The FTC has taken previous action against Facebook and Google over privacy complaints, both of which were settled in 2011.
While US legislators have argued that online tracking should be curtailed, little has been done.
Any guidelines developed by US officials in concert with internet firms would be enforceable by the FTC once agreed on, but would not necessarily apply to companies that did not sign on.
What can political donors learn from history?
What can political donors learn from history?
Adelson could probably finance an entire presidential campaign on his own, Forbes Magazine says A billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate has said he might donate $100m (£64m) to support Republican Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. He joins history's long list of great - and ignominious - political money men.
Sheldon Adelson, who is worth an estimated $25bn, is almost single-handedly responsible for keeping Mr Gingrich's bid for the Republican nomination afloat, analysts say.
He and his wife have already donated $10m to a nominally independent political fund that has bought adverts for the former House speaker's campaign.
"What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we've been experiencing for almost four years," Mr Adelson told Forbes Magazine.
"That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people's lives."
Mr Adelson's big contributions place him among a new generation of US political money men freed to donate millions by recent Supreme Court decisions that overturned campaign finance restrictions.
But he is part of a long tradition - stretching back into antiquity - of wealthy men who used their cash to buy political influence.
Here are some lessons he could heed:
Lesson 1: Patronage can yield profits
Crassus, seated, enabled Caesar's rise by backing his debts and funding his campaign for consul Known to historian Plutarch as "the richest of the Romans", Marcus Crassus got even richer by staking Julius Caesar's military career and his later election as Roman consul.
"We never would have heard of Caesar without Crassus," says Philip Freeman, chairman of the classics department at Luther College in the US state of Iowa and author of a recent biography of Caesar.
Born in a household of relatively modest means, Crassus aligned himself with Roman dictator Sulla and grew rich by taking property Sulla had expropriated from his own political enemies.
He made "the public calamities his greatest source of revenue", Plutarch wrote, and also made lots of money as a contract tax collector.
In 61BC, Caesar was named to a military post in Spain, but his creditors sought to prevent him from leaving Rome.
Crassus guaranteed his debts - to the sum of about $23m (£14.6m) in 2012 figures, by Prof Freeman's calculation.
Two years later, Caesar ran for election as consul, the highest political office in the Roman republic. Crassus funded his campaign, which depended on officially condemned but widespread vote-buying, Freeman says.
In return, Caesar pushed through legislation giving the contract tax collectors a break in the amount of money they had to return to the central government.
"It's like if Mr Gingrich got to be president and passed a bill making casinos tax exempt - for his benefactor back in Las Vegas," says Prof Freeman.
"It was a great financial play for Crassus purely in monetary terms."
Lesson 2: Have an exit strategy
Sir William de la Pole of Hull was a 14th-Century wine importer, wool merchant and financier who lent staggering sums of money to King Edward III to finance his lavish lifestyle and his wars in France and Scotland.
"There's no doubt that Pole did acquire a great deal of wealth, and wealth brought him social status," says Jonathan Sumption, a historian and jurist who has written three volumes about The Hundred Years War.
"His sons went on to become Earls of Suffolk, noblemen, which nobody would have accused William of being. You couldn't do much better than that. This was simply the normal way in which money was converted into status."
Pole's involvement with the crown began in earnest in 1327, when he lent Edward III £2,001 (about £1.4m in today's money, according to Measuringworth.com, a calculator devised by economists at the University of Illinois at Chicago) to hire mercenaries to fight the Scots.
In 1336-1337, Edward III sought to exploit the wool industry to finance the start of the Hundred Years War with France.
Pole organised other wool growers into the Wool Company, in effect purchasing from Edward III the right to export wool on privileged terms, Mr Sumption says.
Between June 1338 and October 1339, he lent the crown £111,000 (more than £86m in 2012 figures).
For Pole himself, the story did not end well.
Edward III grew resentful at his dependence on Pole and imprisoned him for two years. He was released because the king again needed his help raising money.
Edward defaulted on his debts because the wars cost more than his tax revenue, Mr Sumption says, and Pole and his partners went bust.
"Lending to the king was a mug's game," Mr Sumption says. "The problem was that if you didn't you were likely to be ruined anyway."
Lesson 3: The stakes are high
When Seymour's political intrigue failed, he lost more than his shirt When Edward VI ascended to the throne in 1547 at the age nine, members of the Tudor court began jockeying for position and influence.
Two of the top intriguers were his uncles Edward and Thomas Seymour.
Edward Seymour managed to have himself declared Lord Protector of the Realm, Governor of the King's Person and later Duke of Somerset, making him the most powerful man in the court.
But Thomas Seymour, who had been well placed under Henry VII, found himself increasingly frozen out.
Among his several schemes to gain influence over the boy king, Seymour began supplying him with pocket money, telling him "you are a beggarly king, you have no money to play or to give".
Edward VI, who had reportedly complained to Seymour that Somerset "deals very hardly with me and keeps me so straight that I cannot have money at my will", wanted the cash to pay for musicians in his court and to reward his personal servants, says John Cooper, a lecturer in early modern history at the University of York.
Seymour gave the king £188 (about £70,400 in today's value), funnelled in part through Edward's personal servants and his tutor.
"It's a political gamble that fails very dramatically," Mr Cooper says.
When Somerset found out about that and other intrigues (Seymour also flirted with the teenaged Princess Elizabeth, whom he may have hoped to marry), he had him arrested and charged with treason.
He was beheaded at the Tower of London.
On hearing of his execution, Elizabeth said: "This day died a man with much wit, and very little judgment."
Lesson 4: Be prepared to lose big
Among the liberals incensed about the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and early 1970s was Stewart Mott, the black-sheep son of a wealthy Detroit car manufacturing family.
Mott, who described himself as an "avant-garde philanthropist", donated more than $200,000 to the 1968 presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, and about $400,000 in 1972 to George McGovern, the Democratic challenger to President Richard Nixon, according to Mr Corrado, the campaign finance expert.
His big contributions in part led Congress to enact strict limits on direct contributions to political campaigns that remain in effect to this day (though giving to independent committees are unlimited).
"He identified with their politics, and whatever one means by progressive, he was it," says Victor Navasky, professor of journalism at Columbia University.
"He cared about them, and he hoped to help them attain the White House."
Despite Mott's seed money, Mr McGovern suffered one of the greatest political defeats in American history, winning only the state of Massachusetts and Washington DC.
Mott's support for liberal candidates earned him a spot on Nixon's infamous enemies list. Nixon aide Chuck Colson listed him as "nothing but big money for radic-lib candidates".
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists
Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists
Recognising the rights of dolphins would end whaling and their captivity
Dolphins should be treated as non-human "persons", with their rights to life and liberty respected, scientists meeting in Canada have been told.
Experts in philosophy, conservation and animal behaviour want support for a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans.
They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethical considerations as humans.
Recognising their rights would mean an end to whaling and their captivity, or their use in entertainment.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Ethics Professor Tom White Loyola Marymount University of Los AngelesScience has shown that individuality - consciousness, self-awareness - is no longer a unique human property. That poses all kinds of challenges.”
The move was made at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada, the world's biggest science conference.
It is based on years of research that has shown dolphins and whales have large, complex brains and a human-like level of self-awareness.
This has led the experts to conclude that although non-human, dolphins and whales are "people" in a philosophical sense, which has far-reaching implications.
'Self-aware'Ethics expert Prof Tom White, from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, author of In Defence of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier, said dolphins were "non-human persons".
"A person needs to be an individual. If individuals count, then the deliberate killing of individuals of this sort is ethically the equivalent of deliberately killing a human being.
Continue reading the main story 
Intelligent cetacean behaviour
- A member of a group of orcas, or killer whales, in Patagonia had a damaged jaw and could not feed. The elderly whale was fed and kept alive by its companions.
- Dolphins taking part in an experiment had to press one of two levers to distinguish between sounds, some of which were very similar. By pressing a third lever, they were able to tell the researchers they wanted to "pass" on a particular test because it was too hard. "When you place dolphins in a situation like that they respond in exactly the same way humans do," said Dr Lori Marino. "They are accessing their own minds and thinking their own thoughts."
- A number of captive dolphins were rewarded with fish in return for tidying up their tank. One of them ripped up a large paper bag, hid away the pieces, and presented them one at a time to get multiple rewards.
- In Iceland, killer whales and fishermen have been known to work together. The whales show the fishermen where to lay their nets, and in return are allowed to feed on part of the catch. Then they lead the fleet to the next fishing ground.
"We're saying the science has shown that individuality - consciousness, self-awareness - is no longer a unique human property. That poses all kinds of challenges."
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Dr Lori Marino PsychologistThey can look in a mirror and say, 'Hey, that's me'”
The declaration, originally agreed in May 2010, contains the statements "every individual cetacean has the right to life", "no cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude, be subject to cruel treatment, or be removed from their natural environment", and "no cetacean is the property of any state, corporation, human group or individual".
It adds: "The rights, freedoms and norms set forth in this declaration should be protected under international and domestic law."
Psychologist Dr Lori Marino, from Emory University in Atlanta, told how scientific advances had changed the view of the cetacean brain.
She said: "We went from seeing the dolphin/whale brain as being a giant amorphous blob that doesn't carry a lot of intelligence and complexity to not only being an enormous brain but an enormous brain with an enormous amount of complexity, and a complexity that rivals our own."
Dolphins had a sense of self which could be tested by the way they recognise themselves in mirrors, she added.
"When you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and know that's you, you have a sense of 'you'," said Dr Marino.
"They have a similar sense. They can look in a mirror and say, 'Hey, that's me'."
10 radical solutions to binge drinking
10 radical solutions to binge drinking
Pressure to address the UK's binge drinking grows ever stronger, with a number of radical solutions being put forward to try to help people cut down.
David Cameron last week called binge drinking a "scandal" that costs the NHS £2.7bn a year. He pledged to introduce drunk tanks and booze buses, and there are plans for a minimum price for alcohol.
So what are the most radical solutions to the problem?
Subtly make drinks weaker
Continue reading the main story
Definition of binge drinking
- For men, more than eight units of alcohol - or about three pints of strong beer
- For women, more than six units of alcohol, equivalent to three small (175ml) glasses of wine
Food firms have recently moved to cut the amount of salt and saturated fat in their products, following government pressure. The British Medical Association wants to see the same thing happen in relation to beer. So, for example, a premium lager could gradually be reduced from 5.5% to 5%, while a bitter comes down from 4.5% to 4%.
But Roger Protz, editor of the Good Beer Guide, says beer in Britain is much weaker than in the rest of Europe. And to reduce it would affect its characteristic flavour. "London Pride [bitter] at 4.1% is a lovely malty, hoppy beer but if you reduce it to 3.5% it will be very different."
Another approach would be to use the tax system to target stronger drinks. The March 2011 budget saw a rise in the duty on strong beers (above 7.5% alcohol) of 25%, and the duty on weak beers (below 2.8%) cut by 50%. Alcohol Concern says this should be extended to wine, which is getting stronger.
The British Beer and Pub Association says the current focus on beer is wrong. "We should be encouraging people to drink more beer rather than stronger drinks, which have been gaining market share. Beer tax here is 12 times that of Germany."
Enforce a minimum price for alcohol
Many find it cheaper to drink at home A review of international research published last year by Bangor University found that pricing was the "key determinant" for how much people drank.
Alcohol Concern wants to see a minimum rate of 50p per unit of alcohol brought in. It would make a pint of beer at least £1.25 and a bottle of wine £5.
It would hit the low-cost retailers rather than bars and restaurants, says Andrew Misell, a spokesman for Alcohol Concern. "It won't affect pub prices. Where you will be hit hard is in the supermarkets where cider is on sale for as little as 13p a unit."
The drinks industry says such moves only encourage counterfeit and smuggled alcohol. And Tim Martin, founder of JD Wetherspoon, says consumers will simply go abroad. "It's an international industry. People can go to Calais and load up their car with as much alcohol as they want."
Jamie Bartlett, author of Under the Influence, a 2011 report on binge drinking for think tank Demos, says it would cut total alcohol consumption but not necessarily binges. "The problem is people going on benders and it's not clear it would have an impact on that."
Get people back into pubs
Pubs are dying out but are they a safer place to drink? One of the traditional roles of the pub landlord is to tell a drinker when they've had enough. No such authority figure exists in people's living rooms. And pubs are closing in great numbers across the country, as supermarket-bought booze now accounts for about half of what's being consumed.
So, one solution is to shift drinking back into the pub where it is typically more expensive, served in measurable quantities, and supervised by trained staff. Martin says this can be done by cutting VAT on food and alcohol in pubs to 5%, a proposal that has been successful in helping restaurants in France and Ireland. Supermarkets add no VAT on to the food they sell, whereas pubs have VAT of 20%. "Supermarkets are effectively cross subsidising alcohol sales with their food sales. It's a huge tax advantage that undermines pubs," Martin says.
The British Medical Association does not accept that pubs should be cheaper but agrees that shop-bought drink should be made more expensive - "thus encouraging alcohol to be consumed in pubs where there are more controls". Misell cautions against getting too nostalgic about a golden age of pub sobriety that never was. "Some people idolise the pub as this place where it's impossible to get drunk. And yet we all know it's perfectly possible to over-indulge there."
Raise the legal drinking age
In the US, the legal drinking age is 21. And there's an argument that by raising the minimum age, it makes it easier for retailers to police under-age drinking - most 21-year-olds look like adults. While raising the minimum age is not official BMA policy, the doctors' body argues that it is something that could be explored. A spokeswoman suggests: "Evidence from America clearly demonstrates that raising the legal drinking age has a significant positive effect on alcohol-related problems." Alcohol Concern agrees but says it would be politically impossible to raise the drinking age.
Tim Martin says that teenagers are going to try to drink, regardless of the law. The key thing is that they start by drinking beer in pubs, under the "watchful eye" of the landlord rather than vodka somewhere else. It's time the government stopped trying to entrap landlords by hiring 15 and 16-year-olds to try to get served.
Off-licences are rarely prosecuted for selling to under 18s, as it is, says Bartlett. So to raise the age limit even higher would not make sense. "Last year I think only one off-licence was fined for selling alcohol to a minor," says Bartlett.
The drinks industry says the issue of under-age drinking is already taken seriously in shops. For instance, under the Challenge 25 scheme shoppers are warned that if they look under 25 they may have to show ID, says Richard Dodd, spokesman for the British Retail Consortium. It raises the question of why this is not rolled out everywhere, as happens in countries like Sweden.
Nationalise off-licences
In some places - most of Canada, certain US States and Sweden - only certain state-owned shops can sell alcohol. The most rigorous is Sweden.
To buy a bottle of wine in Sweden, it's necessary to visit one of the country's network of Systembolaget shops, which close on Saturday afternoons and do not open on Sundays. The approach prevents impulse buys in the supermarket and the products are displayed in an atmosphere more akin to a chemist's than an off-licence. The Swedish model is based on the idea that by keeping control of price and availability, alcohol consumption is reduced.
A study carried out by international alcohol researchers in 2010 concluded that scrapping Sweden's state shops would lead to a 14% rise if sales were limited to private liquor stores. And allowing any grocery store to sell alcohol would result in a 29% rise in alcohol consumption.
However, such a proposal is unlikely to go down well with voters. Even Alcohol Concern warns of the dangers of "stockpiling".
And Dodd says it is absurd to crack down on supermarkets which would be most influenced by the change. "Supermarkets are already the most responsible alcohol outlets that there are and I can't see that preventing them from selling alcohol would improve things."
Discourage rounds
Buying rounds can create a social pressure to keep buying drinks because it's your turn. Last year the Sun reported that Prof Richard Thaler, an adviser to David Cameron on "nudge" - a form of behavioural economics, said buying rounds makes people drink more. He recommended that large groups set up a tab to be split at the end of an evening's drinking.
However bizarre, the idea of forbidding rounds is not new. During World War I, buying rounds - "treating" as it was known - was banned after fears that the war effort was being damaged by drunkenness.
Misell says it would be impractical to institute such a ban. But he supports the idea of improving public awareness on the perils of rounds. "My experience of rounds on a night out is that you very easily drink more than intended. My one piece of advice is - don't drink in rounds."
Ban alcohol marketing
Critics of the drinks industry say that cut price deals and cheeky advertising makes people drink more than they otherwise would.
Research in 2008 by the Royal College of Physicians found a link between sports sponsorship by alcohol firms and binge drinking. At the time half of all Premier League football teams and all 12 of the Guinness Premier League rugby clubs had alcohol firms as a sponsor. Today, Everton has a brewer - Chang - as its shirt sponsor and, until recently, Liverpool shirts carried the name of Carlsberg.
Alcohol Concern wants to see alcohol advertising banned from sport, television, and in cinemas for films aimed at those under 18. In theory, advertising is forbidden from associating alcohol with social or sexual success.
Continue reading the main story
Official advice on drinking
- Introduced in 1987, updated in 1995
- Men: 21 units a week max, with no more than three or four units a day
- Women: 14 units a week max, with no more than two or three units a day
- After heavy drinking, no alcohol for 48 hours to allow body to recover
"But in practice few ads don't include those two things," says Misell. By way of example he points to the beer advert featuring Holly Valance flirting with two Australian comedians. He is also in favour of renaming the large glass of wine (250ml) extra large - it equals a third of a bottle of wine. The small (175ml) glass could then be renamed medium, with a new small size(125ml) available.
Alcohol promotions such as three bottles of wine for £10, or trays of beer tied into the World Cup, are still common in England. However they've been banned in Scotland. Financial Times wine critic Jancis Robinson says banning such deals makes sense. "Cut price wine deals are killing wine suppliers, too."
But Sarah Hanratty, a spokeswoman for the Portman Group, which represents the drinks industry, says banning sports sponsorship and other forms of marketing would punish the sensible majority. "It's a competitive market and the role of marketing is to help consumers choose between brands based on their lifestyle."
Target middle-class professionals
Much of the media attention to do with binge drinking is focused on public drunkenness. But it's arguable that the greater problem is the health impact of drinking too much.
Liver disease is the only major cause of death in Britain that is on the increase. Hospital admissions for alcoholic liver disease among people in their early 30s in north-east England have increased by more than 400% in the past eight years.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Tony Blair on his drinking habits in officeI was at the outer limit - stiff whisky or G&T before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it”
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spokesman, has recently pointed out that middle-class professionals are now the most frequent drinkers in the country. According to the Office for National Statistics 41% of professional men drink more than their daily limit at least once a week. But instead of targeting the Rioja-drinking classes, the focus of much rhetoric was on the damage done by public drunkenness. For many commentators, the government is pointing at the wrong group.
Nicholas Lezard wrote in the Guardian that Cameron is "trying to make us think of the proletariat getting smashed on cut-price lager". Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times agrees. "He [Cameron] doesn't mean someone who has spent the evening with a really nice Sancerre". He means the poor but "the poor, do not, on the whole, binge drink".
But is it really feasible to target the middle-class professional with their trusty gin and tonic or bottle of pinot noir? Jancis Robinson says it's all unworkable. "I really can't see how the government can effectively control what we drink in our own homes."
Not in front of the children
When - and how - to introduce a child to alcohol? Parents who drink a lot in front of their children may normalise the idea of heavy drinking. The Demos report, Under the Influence, argued that the government should consider issuing advice to parents about drinking in front of their children.
"This evidence, although limited, fits with what we know about behaviour - that steady exposure to norms and habits tacitly builds attitudes. Therefore more consideration needs to be given to advice that is given to parents about drinking in front of children."
Carrie Longton, co-founder of Mumsnet, says parents need to be aware how they're seen by the children. "You need to teach by example. What you drink is important." So careful about drinking that second glass of wine in front of the children.
Frank Furedi, author of Paranoid Parenting, agrees that parents have an important role to play. But far from avoiding alcohol in front of the kids, parents should allow teenagers to drink a little with a meal.
It removes the mystique of "an illegal drug" and makes it part of food culture, he argues. His view goes against official advice. In 2009, Sir Liam Donaldson, England's chief medical officer at the time, said that children aged under 15 should never drink alcohol.
Stop exaggerating the problem
Continue reading the main story 
Traditional social lubricant
The British believe alcohol is a disinhibitor, that it makes people amorous or aggressive.
But it is possible to change our drinking culture. Cultural shifts happen all the time, and there is extensive evidence to show it doesn't take much to effect dramatic changes in how people behave when they drink.
These show that even when people are very drunk, if they are given an incentive - either financial reward or social approval - they are perfectly capable of remaining in complete control of their behaviour.
Figures from 2006 show that the UK was not even among the top 10 per capita alcohol consumers in Europe. And alcohol consumption has been falling here for the past decade. Beer consumption has been declining for decades. And last year for the first time, wine sales fell. Even the worry about youth drinking may be overdone. 2010 NHS statistics showed that 55% of 11 to 15-year-olds have never drunk alcohol, an increase on previous years. Longton says these figures should give parents the confidence to be firm: "My children will say 'mummy everyone's doing it' but the statistics don't bear that out."
Bartlett says that exaggerating the problem can have negative effects. It leads to false "social norming" - people thinking that everyone else is binge drinking so why shouldn't they. "One reason university students go on a bender is because they overestimate the amount all their peers are drinking." But publishing the facts can challenge this. Some student unions have begun putting up posters giving the real drinking statistics for students, which are on average often far lower than expected. Once the true figure is displayed, students tailor their drinking accordingly. In other words, it doesn't do any good to hype up the problem.
Misell accepts that the UK is by no means at the top of the drinking league. But he argues that people are still drinking too much. "There's a big gap between the perception and reality of light drinking. For many it's three or four pints. But the advice from the Chief Medical officer is 3-4 units a day for a man and 2-3 for a woman. In some cases two pints would put you over the recommended limit."
How do you become fluent in 11 languages?
How do you become fluent in 11 languages?
Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings has won a national competition to find the UK's most multi-lingual student.
The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian.
Entrants in the competition run by the publishers Collins had to be aged between 16 and 22 and conversant in multiple languages.
Alex drew on all his skills to tell BBC News about his passion for learning languages and how he came to speak so many.
Male Y chromosome extinction theory challenged
Male Y chromosome extinction theory challenged
Human cells carry 23 pairs of chromosomes, including one pair which determine gender
Men may not become extinct after all, according to a new study.
Previous research has suggested the Y sex chromosome, which only men carry, is decaying genetically so fast that it will be extinct in five million years' time.
A gene within the chromosome is the switch which leads to testes development and the secretion of male hormones.
But a new US study in Nature suggests the genetic decay has all but ended.
Professor Jennifer Graves of Australian National University has previously suggested the Y chromosome may become extinct in as little as five million years' time, based on the rate at which genes are disappearing from the chromosome.
Genetics professor Brian Sykes predicted the demise of the Y chromosome, and of men, in as little as 100,000 years in his 2003 book Adam's Curse: A Future without Men.
The predictions were based on comparisons between the human X and Y sex chromosomes. While these chromosomes were once thought to be identical far back in the early history of mammals, the Y chromosome now has about 78 genes, compared with about 800 in the X chromosome.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Dr Jennifer Hughes Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, MassachusettsThe Y is not going anywhere and gene loss has probably come to a halt”
Jennifer Hughes and colleagues at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have sought to determine whether rumours of the Y chromosome's demise have been exaggerated.
In a previous Nature paper in 2005, they compared the human Y chromosome with that of the chimpanzee, whose lineage diverged from that of humans about six million years ago.
They have now sequenced the Y chromosome of the rhesus monkey, which is separated from humans by 25 million years of evolution.
The conclusion from these comparative studies is that genetic decay has in recent history been minimal, with the human chromosome having lost no further genes in the last six million years, and only one in the last 25 million years.
"The Y is not going anywhere and gene loss has probably come to a halt," Ms Hughes told BBC News. "We can't rule out the possibility it could happen another time, but the genes which are left on the Y are here to stay.
"They apparently serve some critical function which we don't know much about yet, but the genes are being preserved pretty well by natural selection."
X-Y crossingMost humans cells contain 23 sets of chromosomes, including one pair of sex chromosomes. In women, this sex pair consist of two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y chromosome. It is a gene within the Y chromosome which triggers the development in the embryo of male testes and the secretion of male hormones.
Genetic deterioration of the Y chromosome has occurred because unlike with the two X chromosomes in women, there is very little swapping of genetic material between the Y and X chromosome during reproduction. This means mutations and deletions in the Y chromosome are preserved between (male) generations.
"The X is fine because in females it gets to recombine with the other X but the Y never gets to recombine over almost its entire length, and shutting down that recombination has left the Y vulnerable to all these degenerative forces," said Dr Hughes, "which is why we're left with the Y we have today."
Commenting on the paper, Professor Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading and author of Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind, said that while there might be some squabbling in academic circles over the timings of the events, the paper told us there was a future for males in the very long term.
"It's a very nice piece of work, showing that gene loss in the male-specific region of the Y chromosome proceeds rapidly at first - exponentially in fact - but then reaches a point at which purifying selection brings this process to a halt."
New York police 'spied on' New Jersey Muslims
New York police 'spied on' New Jersey Muslims
New York's police commissioner has come under fire for appearing in a documentary about Muslims
New York City police secretly collected information on Muslim communities in nearby Newark, New Jersey, police records have shown.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker said he was not informed of the surveillance, revealed by the Associated Press.
"This raises a number of concerns," Mr Booker said, promising to investigate. "It's just very, very sobering."
Earlier this week university officials in the US north-east protested against NYPD monitoring of Muslim students.
Administrators at Yale and Columbia protested about the police department's activities, which the NYPD said were justified in an effort to identify possible campus radicalisation.
Earlier this month, civic groups from around the US called for a legal investigation into intelligence-gathering on Shia Muslims in New York.
NYPD's demographic unit compiled information on mosques and Muslim-owned businesses in Newark in 2007, AP reported.
The secret police report obtained by the news agency mentions no evidence of terrorism or criminal behaviour.
"These locations provide the maximum ability to assess the general opinions and general activity of these communities," the report said.
Similar reports were prepared for two counties in Long Island, in New York state.
Jersey unsureIn a statement, the NYPD told the BBC that they had informed Newark officials of their operations.
Newark's former police director, Garry McCarthy, told the Associated Press that the NYPD had contacted his police department "as a courtesy" before sending the officers.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
The police department goes where there are allegations. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight”
No Newark police officers were involved in the surveillance, according to Mr McCarthy.
But New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he had knowledge of the operation, which he called "disturbing".
Newark Mayor Cory Booker said the extent of the reported surveillance came as a surprise to him.
"If anyone in my police department had known this was a blanket investigation of individuals based on nothing but their religion, that strikes at the core of our beliefs and my beliefs very personally, and it would have merited a far sterner response,'' he said.
"We're going to get to the bottom of this."
The report notes Newark's large Portuguese and Brazilian communities, but says that only information about "Islamic religious centers" and Muslim-owned businesses were gathered.
However, polls show that most New Yorkers strongly support the NYPD's counter-terrorism efforts.
On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg strongly defended the city's police department after university leaders protested over campus monitoring.
"The police department goes where there are allegations," Mr Bloomberg said.
"And they look to see whether those allegations are true. That's what you'd expect them to do. That's what you'd want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight."
Is English or Mandarin the language of the future?
Is English or Mandarin the language of the future?
English has been the dominant global language for a century, but is it the language of the future? If Mandarin Chinese is to challenge English globally, then it first has to conquer its own backyard, South East Asia.
In Malaysia's southernmost city of Johor Bahru, the desire to speak good English has driven some children to make a remarkable two-hour journey to school every day.
Nine-year-old Aw Yee Han hops on a yellow mini van at 04:30. His passport is tucked inside a small pouch hung around his neck.
This makes it easier for him to show it to immigration officials when he reaches the Malaysian border.
His school is located on the other side, in Singapore, where unlike in Malaysia, English is the main language.
It's not your typical school run, but his mother, Shirley Chua thinks it's worth it.
"Science and maths are all written in English so it's essential for my son to be fluent in the language," she says.
Continue reading the main story
The assumption that Mandarin will grow with China's economic rise may be flawed. Consider Japan which, after spectacular post-war economic growth, became the world's second-biggest economy. The Japanese language saw no comparable rise in power and prestige.
The same may prove true of Mandarin. The character-based writing system requires years of hard work for even native speakers to learn, and poses a formidable obstacle to foreigners. In Asia, where China's influence is thousands of years old, this may pose less of a problem. But in the West, even dedicated students labour for years before they can confidently read a text of normal difficulty on a random topic.
Finally, many languages in Asia, Africa and the Amazon use "tones" (rising, falling, flat or dipping pitch contours) to distinguish different words. For speakers of tonal languages (like Vietnamese) learning the tones of Mandarin poses no particular difficulty. But speakers of non-tonal languages struggle to learn tones in adulthood - just ask any adult Mandarin-learner for their funniest story about using a word with the wrong tone.
An estimated 15,000 students from southern Johor state make the same bus journey across the border every day. It may seem like a drastic measure, but some parents don't trust the education system in Malaysia - they worry that the value of English is declining in the country.
Since independence from the British in 1957, the country has phased out schools that teach in English. By the early 1980s, most students were learning in the national language of Malay.
As a result, analysts say Malaysian graduates became less employable in the IT sector.
"We've seen a drastic reduction in the standard of English in our country, not just among the students but I think among the teachers as well," says political commentator Ong Kian Ming.
Those who believe that English is important for their children's future either send their kids to expensive private schools or to Singapore, where the government has been credited as being far-sighted for adopting the language of its former colonial master.
Nearly three-quarters of the population in Singapore are ethnic Chinese but English is the national language.
Many believe that this has helped the city state earn the title of being the easiest place to do business, by the World Bank.
Continue reading the main story 
Lost in translation
- Up to 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world
- Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French are world's most widely spoken languages, according to UNESCO
- Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry
- English is related to German and Dutch, and all are part of Indo-European family of languages
- Also includes French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin
- 2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260
Source: BBC Languages
However, the dominance of English is now being challenged by the rise of China in Singapore.
The Singapore Chinese Chamber Institute of Business has added Chinese classes for business use in recent years.
Students are being taught in Mandarin rather than the Hokkien dialect spoken by the older Chinese immigrants.
These courses have proved popular, ever since the government began providing subsidies for Singaporeans to learn Chinese in 2009 during the global financial crisis.
"The government pushed to provide them with an opportunity to upgrade themselves so as to prepare themselves for the economic upturn," says chamber spokesperson Alwyn Chia.
Some businesses are already desperate for Chinese speakers.
Lee Han Shih, who runs a multimedia company, says English is becoming less important to him financially because he is taking western clients to do business in China.
"So obviously you need to learn English but you also need to know Chinese," says Mr Lee.
As China's economic power grows, Mr Lee believes that Mandarin will overtake English. In fact, he has already been seeing hints of this.
"The decline of the English language probably follows the decline of the US dollar.
"If the renminbi is becoming the next reserve currency then you have to learn Chinese."
More and more, he says, places like Brazil and China are doing business in the renminbi, not the US dollar, so there is less of a need to use English.
BilingualismIndeed, China's clout is growing in South East Asia, becoming the region's top trading partner.
But to say that Mandarin will rival English is a "bit of a stretch", says Manoj Vohra, Asia director at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Continue reading the main story
Find out more
- Listen to Jennifer Pak's two part documentary English in the East on the BBC World Service
Even companies in China, who prefer to operate in Chinese, are looking for managers who speak both Mandarin and English if they want to expand abroad, he says.
"They tend to act as their bridges."
So the future of English is not a question of whether it will be overtaken by Mandarin, but whether it will co-exist with Chinese, says Vohra.
He believes bilingualism will triumph in South East Asia.
It is a sound economic argument, but in Vietnam's case, there is resistance to learning Mandarin.
The country may share a border with China, but the Vietnamese government's choice to not emphasise Mandarin is an emotional one, says leading economist Le Dang Doanh.
Shirley Chua fears her son's English will suffer in the Malaysian school system "All the streets in Vietnam are named according to generals and emperors that have been fighting against the Chinese invasion for 2000 years," he says.
Tensions flared up again last May over the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
Anti-Chinese sentiment means that young Vietnamese are choosing to embrace English - the language of a defeated enemy. Many families still bear the psychological scars from the Vietnam War with the United States.
Yet there is no animosity towards English because the founding father of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, made a clear distinction between the so-called American imperialists who were bombarding Vietnam and the American people, says Le Dang Doanh.
Many Vietnamese who have lost family members during the war are now studying in America, he says.
"We never forget any victim in the past but in order to industrialise and normalise a country, Vietnam needs to speak English."
The Vietnamese government has an ambitious goal to ensure all young people leaving school by 2020 will have a good grasp of the English language.
Vietnamese Ngoc Tu only listens to music in English But it's not hard for young Vietnamese to accept English. For some, the language offers a sense of freedom in Vietnam, where the one-party communist state retains a tight grip on all media.
In a public square in central Hanoi, a group of young men are break-dancing to the pulsing beats of western hip hop. Ngoc Tu, 20, says he only listens to English music.
"The Ministry of Culture has banned a lot of [Vietnamese] songs and any cultural publications that refer to freedom or rebellion but... English songs are not censored."
It is debatable whether English or Mandarin will dominate in South East Asia in the future. There are arguments for both on the economic front.
But culturally, there is no dispute.
Even Mandarin language enthusiasts like Singaporean businessman Mr Lee, says that English will remain popular so long as Hollywood exists.
The success of movies such as Kung Fu Panda, an American production about a Chinese animal, has caused a lot of anxiety in China, he says.
There have been many cartoons in China about pandas before, but none had reached commercial success, says Mr Lee.
"The moment Kung Fu Panda hit the cinemas everybody watched it. They bought the merchandise and they learned English."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)