April 5, 2015

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

It is surprising to learn 99% of transocean data and voice traffic is carried in undersea cables. Scientific American reports on a visit to a cablesystem’s maintainence operation.

Today, 99 percent of our transoceanic data traffic—including phone calls, text and e-mail messages, Web sites, digital images and video, and even some television—travels across the oceans via undersea cables. These cable systems, as opposed to satellites, carry most of the intercontinental Internet traffic. In her new book, The Undersea Network, New York University assistant professor of media, culture and communication Nicole Starosielski tracks submarine systems as they thread together small islands and major urban hubs, conflicts at coastal landing points, and Cold-War–era cable stations.
 
In this excerpt Starosielski visits the network operations centers where global cable systems are monitored and maintained by a small group of elite engineers.

Entering the network operations center of a globe-spanning undersea cable system, I find what you might expect: a room dominated by computer screens, endless information feeds of network activity, and men carefully monitoring the links that carry Internet traffic in and out of the country. At first glance, it seems to be a place of mere supervision, where the humans sit around and watch machines do the work of international connection, waiting only for a moment of crisis, such as when a local fishing boat drops an anchor on the cable or a tsunami sweeps the system down into a trench.
 
This vision of autonomous networks is shaped more by Hollywood cinema than by actual cable operations. In reality, our global cable network is always in a sort of crisis and, at the same time, highly dependent on humans to power the steady flow of information transmissions. …

 

 

The Economist reports on a study that indicates animals may be able to sense impending earthquakes.

SEISMOLOGISTS tend to greet the idea that some animals know when an earthquake is coming with a sizeable degree of scepticism. Though reports of odd animal behaviour before a quake date back at least as far as ancient Greece, the data are all anecdotal. They are also subject to vagaries of the human psyche: “confirmation bias” ensures that strange behaviour not followed by earthquakes gets forgotten, and “flashbulb memory” can, should an earthquake strike, imbue quotidian animal antics with great import after the fact. The US Geological Survey—arguably the world’s authority on earthquakes—undertook studies in the 1970s to find out if animals really did predict them, but came up empty-handed. However, the latest data, just published in Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, are not just anecdotal.

Friedemann Freund of San JoseStateUniversity, in California, and his colleagues considered the earthquake of magnitude seven that hit north-eastern Peru in August 2011. They found that, by coincidence, the nearby YanachagaNational Park had in the month running up to the quake been using nine so-called camera traps. These are employed to track the movements of rare or skittish animals, silently snapping pictures (for example, that above, of a paca) when motion sensors are triggered. …

 

 

Remember when Sweet and Low was said to cause cancer. Turns out according to Futurity, it may fight cancer.

Labeled as a cancer-causing chemical for decades and declared safe about 15 years ago, saccharin may actually inhibit the growth of cancer cells, according to new research.

The artificial sweetener shows considerable promise for its ability to block an enzyme upregulated in many cancers that helps tumor cells survive and metastasize, researchers say.

After testing its effectiveness on cancer cells, scientists believe saccharin could eventually lead to the development of drugs that treat highly aggressive cancers affecting the breast, liver, prostate, kidney, and pancreas, says Robert McKenna, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at University of Florida. …

 

 

Smithsonian Magazine reports on the male bonding rituals of elephants. It does not say they sit around and burp.

I spoke with O’Connell about elephant bonding and getting to know the Mushara posse. (The following has been edited for length.)

Why did you choose to focus your new book on male elephants?

Most people don’t realize that male elephants are very social animals. Having company is important to them. They form close bonds and have overtly ritual relationships. When a dominant male arrives on the scene, for example, you have the second-, third-, fourth-ranking bulls back up and let him into the best position at the water hole. The younger bulls will stand in line and wait to be able to place their trunks in his mouth. They are waiting with anticipation to be able to do this. In time, all of the bulls will come and greet the dominant male in the same way. It is extremely organized, like lining up to kiss the ring of a pope or a Mafioso don.

The big, older bulls are targets of poaching. People think of lone bulls out there, and they might think, “What is it going to hurt a population if you cull a few of those elephants?” But these old males are similar to matriarchs. They are repositories of knowledge, and they teach the next generation. …

 

 

Bonding is also important if you’re thinking of having a stroke. The Economist says stroke victims with companions get faster treatment.

… Stroke victims arriving with someone were more than twice as likely to be correctly diagnosed by the triage nurse, and had their CT scans performed earlier. Patients eligible for clot-busting medication also received it much faster if accompanied, although their numbers were too few for the researchers to be sure it was because they had company. The differences were far from trivial. Patients with one companion had CT scans an average of 15 minutes sooner than those unaccompanied. A second companion shaved a further 20 minutes off the wait, although three or more companions did not confer any additional benefit.

Dr Ifergane did not record who the companions were, however, or how they were able to reduce delays. He believes that it is probably a combination of focusing the attention of clinical staff on their loved ones, and providing basic care such as helping to move patients into bed. …

 

 

NY Times reports on a Finish study that says old folks gotta exercise and get some vitamin D.

Exercise and vitamin D supplements may help prevent injurious falls in older adults, a randomized trial found.

Finnish researchers recruited 409 women ages 70 to 80 who were living at home. They randomly assigned them to one of four groups: a placebo without exercise, daily vitamin D supplements without exercise, placebo with exercise, and vitamin D supplements with exercise. The exercises, done regularly over two years, concentrated on balance, weight bearing, strength and agility. The study is online at JAMA Internal Medicine.

Neither vitamin D supplements nor exercise reduced the number of falls. But compared with the placebo without exercise group, those who took vitamin D alone were 16 percent less likely to be injured in a fall; the placebo and exercise group were 54 percent less likely to be injured; and those who exercised and took supplements were 62 percent less likely to be hurt.

The authors suggest that physical conditioning and vitamin D increase bone density, which could help prevent injury.

“It’s important to develop muscle power, because without muscle power, you can’t have good balance,” said the lead author, Kirsti Uusi-Rasi, a senior researcher at the UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research. As for vitamin D supplements, she said, “If you have low levels, supplements are important, but if you have sufficient levels, more is not better.”