news20090905gc1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment >10:10 climate change camaign]
Lib Dems call for Westminster to sign 10:10 climate pledge
David Adam and Alok Jha
The Guardian, Saturday 5 September 2009 Article history

The 10:10 campaign to encourage Britons – and Britain – to cut carbon emissions reached the seat of governmenttoday, with a public call on the Palace of Westminster to sign up. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat energy and climate change spokesman, wrote to John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, to ask for his support.

Hughes wrote: "I am sure you will agree that taking action on climate change is not just about government policy. It is also about individuals, organisations and employers at all levels taking responsibility … Given the importance that Britain sets a global example on climate change, I believe it would be fitting if the Palace of Westminster and the parliamentary estate joined the campaign."

The Speaker's office confirmed that the letter had been received and Bercow said he would refer the request to the House of Commons commission, chaired by the Speaker, which makes decisions about matters relating to the house. "The house is aware of its obligations to cut carbon emissions," said Bercow.

The 10:10 campaign, which is supported by the Guardian, asks people, groups and businesses to cut their carbon emissions by 10% during 2010. It was launched this week ahead of the political countdown to key talks on global warming in Copenhagen in December. The organisers hope to pressure Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary, into a public pledge for Britain to cut its emissions by as close to 10% as possible in 2010.

Some climate experts have warned that such a move could be unhelpful, as it could encourage a rush of short-term policies that would have limited lasting benefit.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats also called last night on the coalition Plaid Cymru-Labour Welsh government to join the growing campaign. Mick Bates of the Welsh Liberal Democrats said: "The 10:10 campaign sends a clear message to the Welsh government that the One Wales target to reduce carbon emissions by 3% per year from 2011 is simply inadequate."

A Welsh assembly government spokesman said the assembly had already made a long term commitment to reduce greenhouse gasses. She said: "We welcome the 10:10 campaign and its efforts to get individuals to reduce their carbon footprint … The minister is supporting the campaign in a personal capacity and is encouraging all assembly members to do the same.

The number signed up for the campaign was approaching 11,000 last night. New sign-ups included major city law firm Slaughter and May, as well as the MumsRock website. Its founder, Gigi Eligoloff, said: "What we're going to do is come up with a user-friendly shopping list for mums on really easy and realistic ways to get their carbon footprint down."

Separately, Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party, told her party's annual conference yesterday that the government's failure to properly address the problem of climate change was "nothing less than a political crime".


[Environment >Activism]
Drax coal train hijackers sentenced
Judge orders fines, unpaid work and conditional discharges for group of activists including senior lecturer, teachers and preacher
Helen Carter
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009 17.57 BST Article history

Environmental protesters who hijacked a freight train carrying coal to one of Europe's largest power stations were today sentenced to community service and ordered to pay costs and compensation to Network Rail.

The group had taken part in a non-violent protest against climate change at the giant Drax power station near Selby, north Yorkshire, in June last year when they halted a train carrying 1,000 tonnes of coal.

Twenty nine people were convicted in July following a four-day jury trial at Leeds crown court. Today, at the same court, Judge James Spencer QC, ordered five, who had previous convictions, to do 60 hours unpaid work and three were ordered to pay £1,000 in costs and £500 compensation to Network Rail. The judge said the loss to the company had been almost £37,000. Twenty one members of the group were given conditional discharges for 12 months.

Judge Spencer told them: "You were involved in an elaborate plan to interfere with other people going about their lawful business. Each one of you were involved in this scheme to disrupt the influx of coal to Drax power station." He said they did it by criminal means.

The campaigners had hoped to repeat the Kingsnorth Six judgment a year ago, when activists who defaced a power station chimney were acquitted by a jury in Kent, after arguing that their act was necessary to prevent the greater crime represented by carbon pollution. But in the Drax case, the trial judge refused to admit similar arguments.

Beth Stratford, who was given a conditional discharge, said after the judgment: "If the same standards were applied to the Drax board members then they would have to serve several life term's worth of community service penalties to repay their debt to society. We have a duty to respect the law but we have an even great duty to protect human life from misery."

The trial had been told how the train was stopped by two men purporting to be Network Rail staff, wearing fluorescent orange jackets and hard hats and holding a red flag. Moments later the train and a nearby bridge were scaled by the protesters wearing white paper boiler suits and carrying banners.

The protest lasted 16 hours, causing delays to numerous freight and passenger services and a costly clean-up operation as they had shovelled coal off the train.

The defendants were convicted in July of obstructing an engine or carriage using a railway.

Among the group are a senior university lecturer, teachers a preacher and a film-maker. Most of the group receive only modest incomes and many had large student loans outstanding.

One of them, Grainne Gannon, 26, has a previous conviction for gluing herself to the Department of Transport.

The preacher, Reverend Malcolm Carroll, 53, from Stafford, has previous convictions for other political protests dating back five years. He was ordered to complete 60 hours unpaid work.

The court was told that none of the protesters had been violent and that the train driver did not feel threatened. He described the group as 'friendly and polite'.

Following the trial, chief crown prosecutor for Yorkshire Rob Turnbull said: "This was not a peaceful demonstration about the environment, but a well-planned and executed crime."

Speaking at the trial, protester Jonathan Stevenson, who was ordered to pay costs and compensation, said: "The prosecution have not challenged the facts we presented to you on oath about the consequences of burning coal at Drax: 180 human lives lost every year, species lost forever. There is a direct, unequivocal, proven link between the emissions of carbon dioxide at this power station and the appalling consequences of climate change."

Among those who were ordered to complete unpaid work were Rev Carroll, Robin Gillett, Paul Morozzo and Paul Mellett and Christopher Ward. Kristina Jones, Jasmine Karalis, Bryan Farrelly, Ellen Potts, Melanie Evans, Jonathan Stevenson, Sam Martingell, Amy Clancy, Paul Chatterton, Bertie Russell, Felix Wight, Elizabeth Whelan, Thomas Spencer, Matthew Fawcett, Thomas Johnstone, Graine Gannon and Clemmie James were given conditional discharges. So were Theo Bard, Theo Brown, Beth Stratford and Bryn Hoskins.

Of the group, Chatterton, Farrelly and Stevenson, were each ordered to pay £1,000 in court costs and compensation.

Two other protesters will be sentenced next month and another woman who was too ill to attend court will also be sentenced on October 2.

news20090905gc2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
'Climate change is here, it is a reality'
As one devastating drought follows another, the future is bleak for millions in east Africa. John Vidal reports from Moyale, Kenya
John Vidal guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 3 September 2009 22.44 BST Article history

We met Isaac and Abdi, Alima and Muslima last week in the bone-dry, stony land close to the Ethiopia-Kenya border. They were with five nomad families who have watched all their animals die of star vation this year in a deep drought, and who have now decided their days of herding cattle are over.

After three years of disastrous rains, the families from the Borana tribe, who by custom travel thousands of miles a year in search of water and pasture, have unanimously decided to settle down. Back in April, they packed up their pots, pans and meagre belongings, deserted their mud and thatch homes at Bute and set off on their last trek, to Yaeblo, a village of near-destitute charcoal makers that has sprung up on the side of a dirt road near Moyale. Now they live in temporary "benders" – shelters made from branches covered with plastic sheeting. They look like survivors from an earthquake or a flood, but in fact these are some of the world's first climate-change refugees.

For all their deep pride in owning and tending animals in a harsh land, these deeply conservative people expressed no regrets about giving up centuries of traditional life when we spoke to them. Indeed, they seemed relieved: "This will be a much better life," said Isaac, a tribal leader in his 40s. "We will make charcoal and sell firewood. Our children will go to the army or become traders. We do not expect to ever go back to animals."

They are not alone. Droughts have affected millions in a vast area stretching across Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, and into Burkina Faso and Mali, and tens of thousands of nomadic herders have had to give up their animals. "[This recent drought] was the worst thing that had ever happened to us," said Alima, 24. "The whole land is drying up. We had nothing, not even drinking water. All our cattle died and we became hopeless. It had never happened before. So we have decided to live in one place, to change our lives and to educate our children."

Parched

Kenya, a land more than twice the size of Britain, is everywhere parched. Whole towns such as Moyale with more than 10,000 people are now desperate for water. The huge public reservoir in this regional centre has been empty for months and, according to Molu Duka Sora, local director of the government's Arid Lands programme, all the major boreholes in the vast semi-desert area are failing one by one. Earlier this year, more than 50 people died of cholera in Moyale. It is widely believed that it came from animals and humans sharing ever scarcer water.

Food prices have doubled across Kenya. A 20-litre jerrycan of poor quality water has quadrupled in price. Big game is dying in large numbers in national parks, and electricity has had to be rationed, affecting petrol and food supplies. For the first time in generations there are cows on the streets of Nairobi as nomads like Isaac come to the suburbs with their herds to feed on the verges of roads. Violence has increased around the country as people go hungry.

"The scarcity of water is becoming a nightmare. Rivers are drying up, and the way temperatures are changing we are likely to get into more problems," said Professor Richard Odingo, the Kenyan vice-chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"We passed emergency levels months ago," said Yves Horent, a European commission humanitarian officer in Nairobi. "Some families have had no crops in nearly seven years. People are trying to adapt but the nomads know they are in trouble."

Many people, in Kenya and elsewhere, cannot understand the scale and speed of what is happening. The east African country is on the equator, and has always experienced severe droughts and scorching temperatures. Nearly 80% of the land is officially classed as arid, and people have adapted over centuries to living with little water.

There are those who think this drought will finish in October with the coming of the long rains and everything will go back to normal.

Well, it may not. What has happened this year, says Leina Mpoke, a Maasai vet who now works as a climate change adviser with Ireland-based charity Concern Worldwide, is the latest of many interwoven ecological disasters which have resulted from deforestation, over-grazing, the extraction of far too much water, and massive population growth.

"In the past we used to have regular 10-year climatic cycles which were always followed by a major drought. In the 1970s we started having droughts every seven years; in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s we were getting droughts and dry spells almost every two or three years. Since 2000 we have had three major droughts and several dry spells. Now they are coming almost every year, right across the country," said Mpoke.

He reeled off the signs of climate change he and others have observed, all of which are confirmed by the Kenyan meteorological office and local governments. "The frequency of heatwaves is increasing. Temperatures are generally more extreme, water is evaporating faster, and the wells are drying. Larger areas are being affected by droughts, and flooding is now more serious.

"We are seeing that the seasons have changed. The cold months used to be only in June and July but now they start earlier and last longer. We have more unpredictable, extreme weather. It is hotter than it used to be and it stays hotter for longer. The rain has become more sporadic. It comes at different times of the year now and farmers cannot tell when to plant. There are more epidemics for people and animals."

'We have to change'

Mpoke said he did not understand how people in rich countries failed to understand the scale or urgency of the problem emerging in places such as Kenya. "Climate change is here. It's a reality. It's not in the imagination or a vision of the future. [And] climate change adds to the existing problems. It makes everything more complex. It's here now and we have to change."

The current drought is big, but the nomads and western charities helping people adapt say the problem is not the extreme lack of water so much as the fact that the land, the people and the animals have no time to recover from one drought to the next. "People now see that these droughts are coming more and more frequently. They know that they cannot restock. Breeding animals takes time. It take several years to recover. One major drought every 10 years is not a problem. But one good rainy season is not enough," said Horent.

Nor are traditional ways of predicting and adapting to drought much use. In the past, said Ibrahim Adan, director of Moyale-based development group Cifa, nomads would look for signs of coming drought or rain in the stars, in the entrails of slaughtered animals or in minute changes in vegetation. "When drought came, elders would be sent miles away to negotiate grazing rights in places not so seriously hit, and cattle would be sent to relatives in distant communities. People would reduce the size of their herds, selling some and slaughtering the best to preserve the best meat to see them through the hard times. None of that is working now."

Francis Murambi, a development worker in Moyale, said: "The land has changed a lot. Only 60 years ago, the land around Moyale was savannah with plenty of grass, big trees and elephants, lions and rhino." Today the grasses have all but gone, taken over by brush. Because there are fewer pastures, they are more heavily used. It's a vicious circle. In the past, a nomadic family could live on a few cows which would provide more than enough milk and food. Now the pasture is so poor that those who still herd cattle need more animals to survive. But having more cattle further degrades the soil. The environment can support fewer and fewer people, but the population has increased.

"[Before] we did not need money. The pasture was good, the milk was good, and you could produce butter. Now it is poor, it is not possible," said Gurache Kate, a chief in Ossang Odana village near the Ethiopian border. "Yesterday I had a phone call from the man we sent our cattle away with. He is 250 miles away and he said they were all dying."

These shifts driven by climate change are bringing profound changes. Ibrahim Adan said: "The cow has always been your bank. Being a Borana means you must keep livestock. It's part of your identity and destiny. It gives you status. Traditionally livestock was central to life. The old people saw cattle as the centre of their culture. Pride, love and attachment to cattle was all celebrated in song. My father would never sell cattle. They were an extension of himself."

Now, for people like Isaac and Abdi, Alima and Muslima, all that is gone, and with it independence and self-sufficiency. "The money economy is creeping in, as is education and the settled life," said Adan. "Young people see the cow now as more of an economic necessity rather than the core of their culture."

The great unspoken fear among scientists and governments is that the present cycle of droughts continues and worsens, making the land uninhabitable. "This isn't something that will just affect Kenya. What is certain is that if climate change sets in and drought remains a frequent visitor, there will be far fewer people on the land in 20 years," said Adan. "The nomad will not go. But his life will be very different."

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Copenhagen climate change summit 2009]
Current economic growth model is 'immoral', says Prescott
With the world's population growing to nine million by 2050, the Britain's former deputy PM predicts far more crucial and complex talks in Copenhagen than in Kyoto
Jonathan Watts, Asia Environment Correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009 17.57 BST Article history

John Prescott, the former UK climate negotiator, called on developed nations today to accept a new model of economic growth that would create a more equitable spread of carbon emissions in the world. Speaking to the Guardian in Beijing, Prescott said talks at Copenhagen would probably not be decided until an 11th-hour crisis, but that no global consensus could be reached without a fairer spread of emissions.

Since helping to bang heads together to set the first targets on carbon in Kyoto in 1997, Prescott said the world had started to develop a new model of restraint.

"The reality is that the world has found a rationing process. It is not ... get growth as fast as you can and get the jobs and sod the rest," he said. "The world will have 9 billion people by 2050. If you still want growth and prosperity, do you keep on the model you have now? It's immoral."

Prescott has no say in the final decision this time but will attend the talks in Copenhagen as a rapporteur for the Council of Europe, allowing him to be a vocal observer. His remarks address a core issue: how to allow developing nations such as China and India to grow their economies and lift billions from poverty without generating enormous greenhouse gas emissions, as past growth in the developed world did.

But his experience as a former deputy prime minister and key figure in the Kyoto talks sheds light on some of the problems that are likely to lie ahead of negotiators in Denmark in December.

He said Kyoto was about setting a framework, whereas Copenhagen is an attempt to get every country involved. Although the US and China are now far more involved and the science is more widely accepted this time, he believed negotiations will be "10 times harder" than those of 1997 because more countries are taking part and the issues are more complex.

A deal will depend on a last minute display of political will, he predicted.

"The deal at Kyoto came when politicians sat down and faced the reality that we were we going to have a breakdown (of talks)," recalled Prescott. He said he and the Japanese, European and American negotiators huddled in the early hours to achieve a breakthrough. "We got together in a room. I rang Al Gore (the then US vice president) and said we were closing the hall soon because they are going to have a wedding. The Japanese said, 'We will go one point more, so long as it is less than America. And the Americans said we will go for one point more providing it is lower than Europe. At which point I said if we have to take the moral stand then we will."

Prescott has since been accused of giving too much ground at Kyoto, but he said compromise would probably be necessary again if a deal is to be secured. He also emphasised that any deal must be seen to be equitable.

"If we are deciding a global formula not to suffer consequences of climate change, we had better make it fair to achieve a consensus because that is the key at the end of day. "

Although, he said, none of the nations are showing their hands yet, he predicted politicians would have to find an agreement.

"The science is so clear. For policymakers to just walk away from that would be disastrous. I can't believe they will do it."

In line with many developing nations, Prescott says targets should be set according to emissions per person rather than percentage cuts from past levels, as was the case in Kyoto. If wealthy citizens try to maintain their high-polluting nations, he predicted a political crisis.

Although his time as UK transport secretary saw a massive expansion of car ownership, Prescott said he had called on China to do more to promote public transport and limit traffic congestion.

Tomorrow, Prescott will travel to the southern Chinese city of Xiamen, where he will receive an honour that runs against his UK reputation as a mangler of language. " I am a little bit embarrassed. I am going to Xiamen university, where they will make me an honorary professor, which will create a lot of comment in Britain."


[News > Media > BBC]
Public rejects Murdoch view of BBC, says ICM pol
lTrust in corporation grows despite attacks by Murdoch and politicians
Jonathan Freedland: We still love Auntie history
Julian Glover
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009 22.53 BST Article history

Viewers and listeners are rallying around the BBC, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows rising levels of trust in the broadcaster and increased public support for the licence fee.

The results challenge claims that the BBC's growth has a "chilling" effect on consumer choice, made last month in a speech by James Murdoch, European chief executive of News International. His comments opened up debate about the future of the corporation, which is protected by its guaranteed licence fee while some other media organisations are facing sharp falls in revenue.

Murdoch criticised what he called the "expansion of state-sponsored journalism" on the BBC's website, but today's poll suggests public respect for the BBC's output is growing.

An overwhelming majority, 77%, think the BBC is an institution people should be proud of – up from 68% in an equivalent ICM poll carried out five years ago. Most, 63%, also think it provides good value for money – up from 59% in 2004.

Since the previous poll the BBC has come under fire for the standards of its journalism, after the Hutton inquiry and during the scandal involving fake phone-in competitions on high-profile programmes and wrongly edited footage of the Queen.

But public confidence in the corporation's output has grown. Asked if the BBC is trustworthy, 69% now say yes, against 60% in 2004. Only 26% disagree.

Confidence in the BBC has also improved sharply since a Guardian/ICM poll in 2007. Then, a majority, 59%, said their trust in the corporation had fallen in the wake of the much-publicised TV fakery scandals, while only 37% said it was unchanged.

Now attitudes have reversed. A majority, 57% say their trust in the BBC has not faltered while 41% say it has fallen.

The BBC seems to have overcome criticism of the high salaries paid to some members of staff and stars such as Jonathan Ross. Only 49% think the BBC should declare what it pays people, against 50% who do not.

This show of public support comes during a difficult year for the BBC, in which it has faced concerted criticism from politicians, sections of the national press and rival media companies over levels of executive and talent pay. The BBC responded in June by revealing the pay and expenses of senior executives, but has been fighting a rearguard action against mounting pressure to publish more details of the pay of top presenters such as Jonathan Ross.

The BBC is also involved in a political tussle over the future of the licence fee. The government's Digital Britain report in June recommended that a portion of the licence fee be set aside for funding a replacement for ITV's regional TV news service and children's programmes on Channel 4, a move that the BBC is fighting vigorously to prevent.

Support for the BBC sits alongside strong continued respect for other broadcasters, including Sky, part-owned by News International.

Asked whether they think the BBC is more likely to tell the truth than its rivals, only 38% agree. A clear majority of viewers and listeners – 58% – said they think there is no difference between news on the BBC and other channels. Those figures are almost identical to results from 2007.

Most people also question the continued need for the licence fee – although support for it has risen over the last five years. Asked to pick from a range of ways of funding the BBC, including the licence fee, a subscription service and selling advertising, more people back the licence fee than any alternative.

But supporters remain in the minority. The fee is backed by 43%, against 24% who think advertising should foot the bill and 30% who think people should pay to subscribe if they want to see BBC programmes. In 2004, only 31% backed the licence fee, 12 points lower than today.

In other areas, opinions are contradictory. Most people – 81% – think the BBC should stay impartial in return for its right to raise money.

But there is also public support for Murdoch's call for the easing of tight restrictions on what broadcasters can say: 61% agree the BBC and other broadcasters should be free to hold political positions, against 37% who disagree.

Nor is there any demand for the BBC to ease pressure on commercial rivals by charging for its website. Only 16% think this should happen, against 79% who do not.

However many people think that the BBC has dumbed down since its heyday. While 57% think it has gone downmarket, 40% do not.

ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1001 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 2-3 September. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

news20090905gc4

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > Politics > Dfence policy]
Brown may send more troops to Afghanistan
Patrick Wintour, political editor
The Guardian, Saturday 5 September 2009 Article history

Britain is considering a further short-term increase in its 9,000 troop strength in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown said ­yesterday in a speech seeking to prop up waning public support for the war.

The extra troops would help to train the Afghan security forces, a move designed to accelerate the date of a British exit from the country. The speech, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, took place on the day a Nato strike in northern Afghanistan killed up to 130 people, including many civilians, and the day after the resignation of a parliamentary aide to the defence secretary.

Brown revealed he had held talks on British troop levels with the chief of the defence staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, and the head of the British army, Sir David ­Richards, as well as with Barack Obama. The US is also considering an increase in troop numbers as part of a strategic review completed by General Stanley McChrystal.

Yesterday's speech was made against a backdrop of mounting concern over the number of military and civilian casualties, and just hours after the Nato airstrike, which was aimed at two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban.

Nato said many Taliban insurgents were killed in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, but admitted it had received reports of many civilian casualties. The Nato-led forces said they regretted "any unnecessary loss of human life".

Speaking as the bodies of two more soldiers were brought back to Britain yesterday and a teenage soldier killed in Helmand on Thursday morning was named as Private Gavin Elliott, 19, The 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment, Brown said: "We have got to look in the next few weeks at the number of troops necessary for Afghanistan," describing this as "the next stage of the exercise". He made clear that beefing up the Afghan army was now a key objective, with the aim of increasing its total strength to 134,000 by November 2010, a year earlier than Nato's previous target announced earlier this year.

The scale of any increased British involvement may depend on whether other Nato forces are willing to increase their commitment, and whether the ­presidential election in Afghanistan requires a second round of voting in October, as seems likely.

Brown repeatedly pleaded with other Nato forces to do more – remarks likely to have been aimed at France and Germany, although neither country was named. "Each country must look over the next few weeks at the contribution it is making to this project and at the level of burden-sharing they should be considering for themselves. I think it is right to say that other countries should make a bigger contribution in the future."

On the eve of the speech, Brown was rocked by the resignation of Eric Joyce, the parliamentary aide to the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, who said the public wanted a timetable by which British troops will have left the country.

But Brown refused to give a commitment that British troops will have left the country in the lifetime of the next ­parliament, although he said he intended to take on the critics of the war.

Using the speech to restate the purpose of the mission in Afghanistan, Brown insisted it was vital to minimise the threat of terrorism facing Britain.

Turning to the question of an exit strategy – eight years after troops first went into the country – he said that success could be measured at the moment when troops were coming home because Afghan forces were able to do the job of quelling the Taliban alone.

"If, as I say, Afghan forces can take more responsibility for the functions of security in the different parts of Afghanistan, and if perhaps we consider transfers of responsibility of government district by district or province by province, then it is possible to envisage that, as the number of Afghans taking responsibility grows and the quality of their leadership grows, we can reduce the numbers of our forces.

"That is the basis of our strategy and it is the basis of the American strategy as well."


[News > UK news > Trevor Phillios]
Yes, equality watchdog had 'serious' issues – Trevor Phillips
Caroline Davies
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009 20.57 BST Article history

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the troubled Equality and Human Rights Commission, today breaks his silence following strong criticism of his leadership and admits there were "serious managerial oversights" in setting up the controversial watchdog and "painful lessons" learned.

In the wake of calls for him to step down and following a number of high-level resignations, Phillips says he "deeply" regrets the departure of key people, but pledges the commission will fight on to "propel equality from the margins to the mainstream".

Writing in the Guardian, he hits back at claims of conflict between his £110,000-a-year part-time role and his private race consultancy work, though admits he may have been "naive" for failing to see how it could be "made to appear improper by a hostile media".

And he denies accusations he advised Channel 4 over the notorious Big Brother race row involving Jade Goody.

His comments are his first in public following a febrile summer for the EHRC which saw him branded an "ecocentric", accused of "poor leadership" and charged with alienating commissioners by failing to consult before making questionable on-the-hoof remarks.

The former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, he was appointed chair of the £70m a year super-quango when it was launched two years ago to bring together equality bodies for gender, race and disability discrimination, as well as sexuality, age, religion and human rights.

Critics said it was impossible to reconcile so many uncompromising interest groups, with the equality minister Harriet Harman recently admitting everything had been put "into one melting pot".

Today Phillips, who describes himself as an "old school equality warrior", writes: "Much ink has been spilt on our internal organisation.

"As non-executive chair I do not run the commission's operations. I do accept that there were some serious managerial oversights during our set-up phase. But against the background of a complex (and broadly successful) merger of fiercely independent organisations with different cultures and financial systems, some of the criticisms of our executive team seem grossly unfair."

He adds that the commission's troubles had been "creatively amplified" by some commentators. Four of 16 non-executive commissioners had stood down prematurely "not seven, as widely implied".

Of the "dark innuendo" about his non-commission activities, he says: "For the record, it is simply not true that I advised Channel 4 about the Big Brother debacle. I did produce a research report for the whole TV industry about the emerging 'superdiversity' of TV audiences."

Most part-time quango chairs undertook similar professional work in their own time, says the former television executive and presenter.

"Perhaps I was naive not to see how easily this could be made to appear improper by a hostile media; a self-inflicted wound I won't make again," he says.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights charity, Stonewall, and the fourth commissioner to resign during one week in July, called for Phillips to go, claiming his staying would do "more harm than good".

The rash of resignations followed Phillip's re-appointment as chair by Harman, when there had been intense speculation he would be replaced.

His public remarks that the police were no longer institutionally racist, his U-turn on multiculturalism and claims it could lead Britain to "sleepwalk towards segregation", and his pre-election musing that Barack Obama as president might "postpone the arrival of a post-racial America" have all caused controversy.

news20090905sn

[SN Today] from [ScienceNews]

[SN Tosay]
Tetris players are not block heads
Playing the computer game boosted brain’s gray matter
By Laura Sanders eb edition : Friday, September 4th, 2009 Text Size

Sinking blocks and clearing lines in Tetris may pay off with more than just a high score. Playing the classic shape-fitting computer game, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, for just three months may boost the size and efficiency of parts of the brain, a study published September 1 in BMC Research Notes finds.

“This is a fascinating result,” comments Pascale Michelon of Washington University in St. Louis. “It confirms how plastic the brain is.”

Brain scans revealed that certain regions of gray matter — an information-processing mix of brain cells and capillaries — grew thicker in 15 adolescent girls who had played Tetris for three months. On average, these participants played for just 1.5 hours per week. “Brain structure is much more dynamic than had been appreciated,” says Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine, who coauthored the report with collaborators from McGill University in Montreal and the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque.

Brains of 11 girls who had not played the game showed no such increase. (Girls were chosen because they were less likely than boys to have extensive video game–playing experience, which might have thrown off the results, Haier says.)

In another test, the researchers used functional MRI to monitor brain activity during Tetris play. For the girls who had played Tetris, researchers found that some parts of the brain showed less activity than three months earlier, when the girls were Tetris novices. Brain activity of girls who had not played Tetris stayed the same over the three months.

Researchers aren’t sure why Tetris experience would lead to reduced neural activity in some regions, but one possibility is that the brain becomes more efficient. “We’re not sure, but we think the brain is learning which areas not to use,” says Haier. “As you learn the game, it becomes more automatic.”

Surprisingly, the brain regions that got bigger over the three months of Tetris play were not the same regions that showed a drop in activity, ruling out the simple explanation that as brain regions get bigger, they become more efficient. But understanding how the brain works is never straightforward, Haier says. It could be that some brain areas begin communicating with different areas, making the brain’s efforts more streamlined, he says.

Among the regions showing gray matter increases were portions of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain thought to be important for planning complex movements and integrating information from the senses.

Haier and colleagues don’t know whether these Tetris-induced brain changes have any real benefits in tasks like memory, spatial reasoning and problem-solving ability. “We know Tetris changes the brain,” Haier says. “We don’t know if it’s good for you.”

news20090905nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 4 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.886
News
Nations commit to share climate information
But proposed international service will face scientific and political hurdles.
Olive Heffernan

A global framework to supply on-demand climate predictions to governments, businesses or individuals is moving closer to reality.

Delegates representing 155 nations at the World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, agreed on 3 September that a body should be established to supply these 'climate services' to users ranging from national governments to individual farmers. The service would particularly help developing nations, for example, many of which lack access to the weather and climate observations needed to plan their global-warming adaptation strategies.

Over the next four months, an independent task force set up by World Meteorological Organization, which convened the conference, will work out how to make this vision a reality. An arduous 12-month consultation process with signatory nations will then follow.

"It's about time we got serious," says climatologist Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "We can save wealth and properties if we get climate information into the hands of decision-makers."

Big challenges

But a global climate service will face a host of scientific and political hurdles. Negotiating data collection and sharing among member states will be a big challenge, for example. "It has been a huge issue in the past to ensure that data are as fully as accessible as possible," says Tom Karl, director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

Some countries are already baulking at the suggestion that they will need to supply the service with data, citing issues such as national security or commercial interests that would prevent disclosure. Martin Visbeck of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel in Germany, who chaired the conference's programme committee, explains that one option would be to allow "data of convenience tailored for specific purposes [to] be commercialized", while allowing "fundamental information to be freely available".

Climate scientists will also have to improve the quality of the climate projections that the service could provide. Today's global climate models predict how climate variables, such as temperature and rainfall, will change over the coming century at scales of several hundred kilometres. But scientists are hopeful that with further research they could bring that down to just tens of kilometres, covering timescales of a decade or less.

No guarantees

"In 10-15 years we may have climate forecasts like we now have weather forecasts," says Guy Brasseur, associate director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Earth and Sun System's Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. But others remain cautious. "People are experimenting in lots of different ways to improve seasonal to decadal predictions but there's no guarantee that it will be possible," says Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

Delegates also expressed concern that a global climate service could risk fostering unrealistic expectations in the end-users of the climate information. "We'll never be able to produce absolute predictions of what will happen," says Vicky Pope, head of climate-change advice at Britain's Met Office. "We are nervous about the uncertainties and errors associated with the models we are using — and that needs to be part of the message that gets out with climate services," adds climatologist Gerald Meehl, also of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

In the meantime, individual nations are charging ahead with their own climate-services centres. In July, Germany opened a centre in Hamburg, and the United States is also discussing plans for a national climate service (see 'US considers a national climate service').


[naturenews]
Published online 4 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/461157a
News
Ethics scrutiny needed for Chinese–European projects
Panel calls for joint advisory body to monitor research.
Daniel Cressey

Biomedical research collaborations between Europe and China need greater ethical oversight to combat unregulated stem-cell therapies and prevent the exploitation of clinical-trial participants. That's the message from a group of bioethics experts who are part of the Chinese–European BIONET project, a partnership set up to examine scientific collaborations between the regions. Over the past three years, it has run a series of workshops in China to produce a set of best-practice guidelines for scientists working in fields such as reproductive and regenerative medicine, stem-cell research and human-tissue biobanking.

The group's draft recommendations, presented at the final BIONET meeting in London on 2–4 September, include a call for a joint advisory body made up of experts from participating countries, to offer advice and monitor research practices. The body could be financed by funding agencies, research institutions and state authorities, BIONET suggests.

"We have no police force," says BIONET member Ole Döring, an ethicist at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg. "We are proposing that if you install a body that would supervise and provide guidance, just the fact it exists will help create transparency."

{“China is not the ‘Wild East’, it is not an ethics-free zone.”}

The BIONET expert group warns that legal, political, social and cultural differences between European nations and China can lead to "multiple standards and even to gaps in between governance regimes". BIONET coordinator Nikolas Rose, a sociologist at the BIOS centre at the London School of Economics, says that there is a pressing need to address such issues because "the number of Chinese scientists who are collaborating with European scientists is growing at a massive rate". A 2006 study by the consultancy Evidence, based in Leeds, UK, shows that the number of publications co-authored by researchers in China and the European Union rose from 1,320 to 4,568 between 1996 and 2005.

But Rose insists that the BIONET recommendations are not an attempt to force China to adopt Western research standards. "China is not the 'Wild East', it is not an ethics-free zone," he says.

The recommendations come less than a month after the China–UK Research Ethics (CURE) committee of the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) produced its own report on the subject, concluding that there is "comparatively little" inspection or review of compliance with research regulations in China. Qi Guoming, vice-chairman of the Chinese Medical Association and chairman of the medical ethics committee at the Chinese Ministry of Health, told the conference that the ministry was trying to come up with "more concrete regulations" for medical research, and that BIONET's recommendations could guide that process.

In May, for example, China toughened up its regulation of stem-cell therapies (see Nature 459, 146–147; 2009). But there are still more than 100 institutions in China that continue to charge patients thousands of dollars for unproven stem-cell treatments, says Qiu Renzong, a bioethicist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and co-chairman of the BIONET expert group.

BIONET's list of 30 recommendations includes establishing protocols to ensure that clinical trials of unproven therapies, such as stem-cell treatments, are not presented to patients as a cure. Research subjects should not be coerced into taking part in clinical trials, and all trial data should be published. BIONET also proposes that international ethical standards should be reflected by national regulation where possible, and that biobanks should ensure that any donors are fully informed about how their tissue will be used. The group adds that patients involved in clinical trials must have access to any beneficial therapies after the trials finish.

"Many of these recommendations reflect standards we would set for funding international collaboration," says Catherine Elliott, the MRC's head of clinical research support and ethics who coordinated the CURE report. "Some, however, would require much wider action and implementation than a single funder can provide." The new recommendations, she says, will trigger that wider discussion.

news20090905nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 4 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.880
News
Cells go fractal
Mathematical patterns rule the behaviour of molecules in the nucleus.
Claire Ainsworth

The maths behind the rugged beauty of a coastline may help to keep cell biology in order, say researchers in Germany. Fractals — rough shapes that look the same at all scales — could explain how the cell's nucleus holds molecules that manage our DNA in the right location.

In new experiments, Sebastien Huet and Aurélien Bancaud of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, tracked the movement of molecules within cells in a lab dish, then compared the pattern of movement against mathematical models. Large molecules, they found, moved according to the same rules as small molecules — suggesting that their environment was truly fractal. The team reported their findings this week at the EMBO meeting in Amsterdam.

"It's a really interesting approach," says Angus Lamond, a cell biologist at the University of Dundee, UK. "It's very promising that the fractal model appears to be able to describe the [molecular] behaviour in this way."

Crowd control

To stop important biochemical reactions going awry, cells must make sure that the correct molecules meet and interact with each other at the right time and in the right place. Cells mostly achieve this by corralling molecules into cellular compartments bound by fatty membranes. However, such membrane barriers do not occur in the cell nucleus, which instead contains several distinct regions, each with different properties.

One example is the structure of chromatin, the combination of DNA, RNA and proteins that forms chromosomes. Some areas of the nucleus contain heterochromatin, in which DNA is packed tightly around proteins called histones. Other nuclear areas contain euchromatin, which is more loosely packed. Genes in euchromatin tend to be active, whereas those in heterochromatin are usually inactive. The mystery is how the cell maintains these distinct compartments of gene activity, despite the highly dynamic behaviour of the proteins that regulate DNA.

Previous work by other researchers had suggested that the sheer concentration of molecules crowded together in different areas of the nucleus can change the way they interact with each other. Chromatin itself is responsible for most of the crowding, and researchers have imagined it as a sponge, with holes allowing or blocking access to the different-sized molecules that regulate DNA. Until now, however, no one knew if this actually happened in living cells.

By tracking fluorescent molecules injected into live mouse cells in a lab dish, Huet and Bancaud found that the molecules did indeed move as if they were having to navigate obstacles. Surprisingly, when the team looked at the behaviour of different-sized molecules, they saw that large molecules were obstructed to the same degree as small ones. The result suggested that these molecules were 'seeing' the same crowded environment, regardless of scale. In other words, the environment seemed to be fractal: a system of branched channels resembling a coastline, says lab head Jan Ellenberg.

Fractal dimensions

The team then watched how different kinds of proteins moved around and bound to euchromatin and heterochromatin. Intriguingly, this suggested that the two forms of chromatin were fractal in different ways. Euchromatin seems to have a higher fractal dimension, which means it takes up more three-dimensional space, exposing a large and rough surface to the molecules interacting with it. Heterochromatin's low fractal dimension makes it flatter and smoother, with a smaller surface area.

This could help to explain how the cell tweaks the behaviour of the proteins that control DNA, says Huet. The proteins that activate a gene do so by binding to particular DNA sequences that are scattered sparsely along chromosomes. The bulky fractal structure of euchromatin could encourage proteins to hop around over large stretches of DNA, making it easier for them to scan for their target sequences. Proteins that help to keep genes inactive, by contrast, often do so by altering histones — and because histones are plentiful, the inactivating proteins need to move more systematically. The flatter fractal structure of heterochromatin should encourage them to stick close to be able to do this.

So the nucleus might be able to switch the behaviour of different areas of DNA simply by altering the fractal structure of chromatin. "This would be an indication that you can tune the way you search for these targets," says Huet, "by changing the structure of these targets."

news20090905bbc1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 05:10 GMT, Saturday, 5 September 2009 06:10 UK
Police patrol after China unrest
Riot police have been deployed again on the streets of the western Chinese city of Urumqi, to try to prevent further protests over a spate of stabbings.

Several roads have been blocked to cars after days of demonstrations by thousands of residents from the majority Han Chinese community.

The biggest protests about the syringe stabbings were on Thursday when five people died and 14 were injured.

Local officials have blamed Uighur Muslim separatists for the attacks.

They accused them of trying to damage ethnic unity.

China's top security official, Meng Jianzhu, has arrived in the city to try to restore order.

On his arrival he was quoted by state-run news agency Xinhua as saying the syringe attacks were a continuation of the July unrest in which 200 people - mostly Han Chinese - were killed in ethnic riots.

Zhang Hong, vice-mayor of Urumqi, confirmed to reporters that there had been casualties in the latest unrest, but did not explain how they died.

"On Thursday, 14 people were injured and sent to hospital and five people were killed in the incidents including two innocent people," he said.

Xinjiang's population is evenly split between Uighurs and Han Chinese - the country's majority ethnic group. But Hans make up three-quarters of Urumqi's population.

Tension between Xinjiang's Uighur and Han communities has been simmering for many years, but July's ethnic unrest was the worst in China for decades.

It began when crowds of Uighurs took the streets to protest about mistreatment - but their rally spiralled out of control and days of violent clashes followed.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 18:08 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 19:08 UK
US 'concern' over N Korea uranium
The US says it is "very concerned" at reports that North Korea has entered the final phase of uranium enrichment.

The White House said it would "strongly implement" tougher sanctions passed by the United Nations after a nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang in May.

The US said it wanted a denuclearised Korean peninsula.

Uranium enrichment would give Pyongyang a second way to make a nuclear bomb. The North says it is also continuing to weaponise plutonium.

US state department spokesman Ian Kelly said it was unclear how true the latest statements from North Korea were.

But he added: "In general, we are very concerned by these claims that they're moving closer to the weaponisation of nuclear materials."

'Extra drive'

Earlier, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "We continue to be committed to ensuring that North Korea upholds its international obligations and we continue to strongly implement the sanctions that were approved."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said there needed to be a unified international response to North Korea's moves.

He said: "It shows that 2009 and 2010 are the years when the Non-Proliferation Treaty is being tested as never before and when there needs to be extra drive from all of us."

The two tests carried out by the North - in May and in 2006 - were understood to have been carried out with plutonium.

The BBC's John Sudworth in South Korea says the worry is that uranium enrichment is a process that can be easily hidden, and in addition, North Korea has ample natural reserves of the raw material.

The North's KCNA state media said Pyongyang's delegation at the UN had written to the Security Council on the issue.

"If some permanent members of the UN Security Council wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue," the delegation wrote.

South Korea's foreign ministry condemned what it calls "threats and provocative acts".

North Korea's plutonium programme is based on the Yongbyon reactor, which is under US satellite observation.

Observers say the US has long suspected the existence of a secret uranium enrichment programme in the North, though experts say it remains little-developed.


[Asia-Pcific]
Page last updated at 00:53 GMT, Saturday, 5 September 2009 01:53 UK
Delays hit Aboriginal homes plan
A report into an ambitious housing scheme for Australia's Aboriginals has found that not one dwelling has been built in the year since it began.
By Phil Mercer
BBC News, Sydney

The A$660m (US$562m; £342m) scheme is designed to address chronic housing problems in Aboriginal communities.

The project aims to construct 750 homes in the Northern Territory and refurbish hundreds of others.

Officials blamed "administration problems" for the delays - which prompted one minister to quit.

The slow pace of this ambitious programme to help Aboriginal families almost brought down the Northern Territory government when a former minister quit in disgust at the lack of progress.

A review has recommended that federal agencies take more control of the scheme and that administration costs be reduced.

{Our First Australians deserve better than a cubby house or a dog house
Nigel Scullion
Senator}

It has all been an embarrassment to the government of Kevin Rudd in Canberra and his indigenous affairs minister, Jenny Macklin, who has insisted that the building work will be completed within budget and on time by 2013.

Critics, though, are not convinced.

Nigel Scullion, a conservative senator for the Northern Territory, says the whole affair has been a disaster.

"The minister has taken absolutely no responsibility for this.

"This was a fundamental of Kevin Rudd's undertaking and promises to indigenous people of Australia and he has failed and it has failed under the leadership of Jenny Macklin.

"And I cannot understand why Mr Rudd would allow her to stay and preside over the second stage of this complete and unmitigated disaster.

"Our First Australians deserve better than a cubby house or a dog house."

The delays mean that the amount of money earmarked for each new dwelling has been cut by 20%.

For generations, poor housing has blighted many Aboriginal communities.

Australia's original inhabitants often suffer squalid and over-cramped living conditions which contribute to the 17-year gap in life expectancy between them and their non-indigenous counterparts.


[Science , Environment & Technology]
Page last updated at 16:28 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 17:28 UK
Google trick tracks extinctions
Google's algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, say researchers.
By Judith Burns
Science and Environment Producer BBC News

According to a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, "PageRank" can be applied to the study of food webs.

These are the complex networks of who eats whom in an ecosystem.

The scientists say their version of PageRank could be a simple way of working out which extinctions would lead to ecosystem collapse.

Every species is embedded in a complex network of relationships with others. So a single extinction can cascade into the loss of seemingly unrelated species.

Investigating when this might happen using more conventional methods is complicated as even in simple ecosystems, the number of combinations exceeds the number of atoms in the universe. So it would be impossible to try them all.

Co-author Dr Stefano Allesina realised he could apply PageRank to the problem when he stumbled across an article in a journal of applied mathematics describing the Google algorithm.

The researchers say they had to make minor changes to it to adapt it for ecology.

Dr Allesina, of the University of Chicago's department of ecology and Evolution, told BBC News: "First of all we had to reverse the definition of the algorithm.

"In PageRank, a web page is important if important pages point to it. In our approach a species is important if it points to important species."

Cyclical element

They also had to design in a cyclical element into the food web system in order to make it applicable to the algorithm.


They did this by including what Dr Allesina terms the "detritus pool". He said: "When an organism dies it goes into the detritus pool and in turn gets cycled back into the food web through the primary producers, the plants.

"Each species points to the detritus and the detritus points only to the plants. This makes the web circular and therefore leads to the application of the algorithm."

Dr Allesina and co-author Dr Mercedes Pascual of University of Michigan have tested their method against published food webs, using it to rank species according to the damage they would cause if they were removed from the ecosystem.

They also tested algorithms already in use in computational biology to find a solution to the same problem.

They found that PageRank gave them exactly the same solution as these much more complicated algorithms.

Dr Glyn Davies, director of programmes at WWF-UK, welcomed the work. He said: "As the rate of species extinction increases, conservation organisations strive to build political support for maintaining healthy and productive ecosystems which hold a full complement of species.

"Any research that strengthens our understanding of the complex web of ecological processes that bind us all is welcome."

news20090905bbc2

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Science , Environment & Technology]
Page last updated at 20:29 GMT, Thursday, 3 September 2009 21:29 UK
Arctic 'warmest in 2,000 years'
Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals.
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals.

Changes to the Earth's orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose.

Scientists took evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments.

Writing in the journal Science, they say this confirms that the Arctic is very sensitive both to changes in solar heating and to greenhouse warming.

The 23 sites sampled were good enough to provide a decade-by-decade picture of temperatures across the region.

How much energy we're getting from the Sun is no longer the most important thing governing the temperature of the Arctic

Nicholas McKay, University of Arizona, Tucson
The result is a "hockey stick"-like curve in which the last decade - 1998-2008 - stands out as the warmest in the entire series.

"The most pervasive signal in the reconstruction, the most prominent trend, is the overall cooling that took place for the first 1,900 years [of the record]," said study leader Darrell Kaufman from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, US.

"The 20th Century stands out in strong contrast to the cooling that should have continued. The last half-century was the warmest of the 2,000-year temperature record, and the last 10 years have been especially dramatic," he told BBC News.

On average, the region cooled at a rate of 0.2C per millennium until about 1900. Since then, it has warmed by about 1.2C.

Much debate on climate change has centred on the Mediaeval Warm Period, or Mediaeval Climate Anomaly - a period about 1,000 years ago when, historical records suggest, Vikings colonised Greenland and may have grown grapes in Newfoundland.

The new analysis shows that temperatures were indeed warmer in this region 1,000 years ago than they were 100 years ago - but not as warm as they are now, or 1,000 years previously.

"It shows that the Mediaeval Warm Period is real, and is... an exception from the general trend of cooling," commented Eystein Jansen from Bergen University in Norway, who was not involved in the research.

"It also shows there's lots of variability on the 100-year timescale, and that's probably more so in the Arctic than elsewhere."

Professor Jansen was a co-ordinating lead author on the palaeoclimate (ancient climate) chapter of the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment.

Arctic wobbles

The root cause of the slow cooling was the orbital "wobble" that slowly varies, over thousands of years, the month in which the Earth approaches closest to the Sun.

This wobble slowly decreased the total amount of solar energy arriving in the Arctic region in summertime, and the temperature responded - until greenhouse warming took over.

"The 20th Century is the first century for which how much energy we're getting from the Sun is no longer the most important thing governing the temperature of the Arctic," said another of the study team, Nicholas McKay from the University of Arizona.

The recent warming of the Arctic has manifested itself most clearly in the drastic shrinkage in summer sea-ice extent, with the smallest area in the satellite era documented in 2007.

As the Science study emerged, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was telling the World Climate Conference in Geneva that many of the "more distant scenarios" forecast by climate scientists were "happening now".
Earlier this week, Mr Ban visited the Arctic in an attempt to gain first-hand experience of how the region is changing.

"Scientists have been accused for years of scaremongering. But the real scaremongers are those who say we cannot afford climate action," he said in his Geneva speech, calling for world leaders to make bigger pledges of action in the run-up to December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

[Science , Environment & Technology]
Page last updated at 11:12 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 12:12 UK
Quantum computer slips onto chips
Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor's algorithm - a well-known quantum approach - to solve a maths problem.

The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.

This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes.

The work, reported in Science, is rudimentary but could easily be scaled up to handle more complex computing.

Shor's algorithm and the factoring of large numbers has been a particular case used to illustrate the power of quantum computing.

Quantum computers exploit the counterintuitive fact that photons or trapped atoms can exist in multiple states or "superpositions" at the same time.

For certain types of calculations, that "quantum indeterminacy" gives quantum computers a significant edge.

While traditional or "classical" computers find factoring large numbers impracticably time-consuming, for example, quantum computers can in principle crack the problem with ease.

That has important implications for encryption methods based on factoring, such as the "RSA" method that is used to make transactions on the internet more secure.

'Important step'

Optical computing has been touted as a potential future for information processing, by using packets of light instead of electrons as the information carrier.

But these packets, called photons, are also endowed with the indeterminate properties that make them quantum objects - so an optical computer can also be a quantum computer.

In fact just this kind of photon-based quantum factoring has been accomplished before, but the ability to put the heart of the machine on a standard chip is promising for future applications of the idea.

"The way people used to make this kind of circuit consumed square metres of laboratory space and took graduate students many months to align," said Jeremy O'Brien, the University of Bristol researcher who led the work.

"Doubling the complexity of the circuit often times turns it from being a difficult task to a practically impossible one, whereas for us to double the complexity it's really straightforward," he told BBC News.

The Bristol team's approach makes use of waveguides - channels etched into the chips that provide a path for the photons around the chips like the minuscule wires in conventional electronics.

While Professor O'Brien said he is confident that such waveguides are the logical choice for future optical quantum computers, he added that there is still a significant amount of work to do before they make it out of the laboratory.

"To get a useful computer it needs to be probably a million times more complex, so a full-scale useful factoring machine is still at least two decades away," he said.

"But this is one important step in that direction."