Germany's development minister Dirk Niebel has said Berlin will fail to meet its development aid targets for 2010. He also expressed doubt whether Germany would be able to increase aid to 0.7 percent of GDP by 2015. Dirk Niebel said the recently presented 2010 federal budget was 3.5 billion euros short of meeting the country's commitments of providing 0.51 percent of GDP for development aid. 6.1 billion euros have been allocated towards development aid this year. That's an increase of 250 million euros on 2009. Germany's ruling coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats passed its first budget last Friday. It sees Berlin taking on a record 80.2 billion euros in new debt.Given the massive borrowings, any subsequent increases for development aid programs are unlikely.
Dirk Niebel said the recently presented 2010 federal budget was 3.5 billion euros short of meeting the country's commitments of providing 0.51 percent of GDP for development aid. 6.1 billion euros have been allocated towards development aid this year. That's an increase of 250 million euros on 2009.
Germany's ruling coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats passed its first budget last Friday. It sees Berlin taking on a record 80.2 billion euros in new debt.Given the massive borrowings, any subsequent increases for development aid programs are unlikely.
As Hollywood celebrates the Oscars with all the usual glitz and glamour, German movie "The White Ribbon" is a contender for best foreign language film. It's been a good year for German-speaking actors and filmmakers. As the cinema world gets ready to celebrate the Hollywood's biggest night of the year, the team behind German-made movie "The White Ribbon" is hoping for success. The film, known as "Das Weisse Band" in German, was among the front runners to pick up two Academy Awards; one for best foreign language film and the other for best cinematography. It has already picked up a Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival as well as a Golden Globe Award.A bleak, black and white drama by Munich-born director Michael Haneke, "The White Ribbon" tells the story of life in a rural German community in the years before World War One.
As the cinema world gets ready to celebrate the Hollywood's biggest night of the year, the team behind German-made movie "The White Ribbon" is hoping for success.
The film, known as "Das Weisse Band" in German, was among the front runners to pick up two Academy Awards; one for best foreign language film and the other for best cinematography.
It has already picked up a Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival as well as a Golden Globe Award.
A bleak, black and white drama by Munich-born director Michael Haneke, "The White Ribbon" tells the story of life in a rural German community in the years before World War One.
In little more than 170 years, Germany's Ruhr Valley saw the rise and fall of an entire industry. With high unemployment and idle factories, the region is now hoping culture can help it get back on track. When Joachim Seifert talks about his life, he begins in 1864, "Anno 1864," as he says. His concise, pithy sentences are peppered with anachronisms and the regional pronunciations of a bygone era. He pronounces the German word for "day" (Tag) as Tach, and the word for mountain (Berg) as Berch, and when he mentions the weather (Wetter), he refers to it as Wetta. "A helmet keeps you warmer than a cap," he says. As if to prove his point, this winter he is wearing a white miner's helmet with his parka. It's the same model that protected his head for 30 years, underground and above ground, and now, just as Seifert is about to turn 75, Germany's erstwhile industrial Ruhr region has been named Europe's Capital of Culture -- and the former life of this retired miner has become an item on the program. He has already explained to thousands of visitors how he and his fellow miners brought tons of coal out of the earth, from hundreds of meters below ground, until the Zollverein coal mine was finally closed. And when they ask why he chose such a difficult line of work, he replies that it all goes back to the year 1864. "That was when my wife's grandpa came here. He was the first member of the family to work at Zollverein." It is a first this year, that an entire region in Germany is being honored as a Capital of Culture. The jury also awarded the title to Istanbul and the Hungarian city of Pécs. When they were making their decision, the jurors were impressed by the way the Ruhr region has struggled and come to grips with its structural transformation -- from coal to culture.
In little more than 170 years, Germany's Ruhr Valley saw the rise and fall of an entire industry. With high unemployment and idle factories, the region is now hoping culture can help it get back on track.
When Joachim Seifert talks about his life, he begins in 1864, "Anno 1864," as he says. His concise, pithy sentences are peppered with anachronisms and the regional pronunciations of a bygone era. He pronounces the German word for "day" (Tag) as Tach, and the word for mountain (Berg) as Berch, and when he mentions the weather (Wetter), he refers to it as Wetta.
"A helmet keeps you warmer than a cap," he says. As if to prove his point, this winter he is wearing a white miner's helmet with his parka. It's the same model that protected his head for 30 years, underground and above ground, and now, just as Seifert is about to turn 75, Germany's erstwhile industrial Ruhr region has been named Europe's Capital of Culture -- and the former life of this retired miner has become an item on the program.
He has already explained to thousands of visitors how he and his fellow miners brought tons of coal out of the earth, from hundreds of meters below ground, until the Zollverein coal mine was finally closed. And when they ask why he chose such a difficult line of work, he replies that it all goes back to the year 1864. "That was when my wife's grandpa came here. He was the first member of the family to work at Zollverein."
It is a first this year, that an entire region in Germany is being honored as a Capital of Culture. The jury also awarded the title to Istanbul and the Hungarian city of Pécs. When they were making their decision, the jurors were impressed by the way the Ruhr region has struggled and come to grips with its structural transformation -- from coal to culture.
In Germany, it is not easy for women to reach top managerial positions - but Barbara Schock-Werner is one of those that did. Today, the fate of Cologne's most famous landmark lies in her hands. Being responsible for the state of a gigantic, 762-year-old building is no easy feat, but for Barbara Schock-Werner it is a day job. As the master builder of the Cologne Cathedral, she needs to make executive decisions about all the repair and restoration work that is needed to keep this imposing gothic structure - the world's third-tallest church - in top form. She divides her work time between her office and the cathedral itself, where she does regular inspections and gives instructions to the workers, ranging from painters and electricians to carpenters and bricklayers. And managing an annual budget of over six million euros ($8.1 million) also keeps this energetic 62-year-old on her toes. A woman who made it In the context of this year's International Women's Day, which aims to draw attention to equal rights and equal opportunities, women like Schock-Werner can be seen as a unique success story in a male-dominated society. Due to a persisting image of traditional gender roles, Germany's women still find it difficult to juggle work and motherhood, let alone rise to the top ranks of corporate hierarchies.
Being responsible for the state of a gigantic, 762-year-old building is no easy feat, but for Barbara Schock-Werner it is a day job. As the master builder of the Cologne Cathedral, she needs to make executive decisions about all the repair and restoration work that is needed to keep this imposing gothic structure - the world's third-tallest church - in top form.
She divides her work time between her office and the cathedral itself, where she does regular inspections and gives instructions to the workers, ranging from painters and electricians to carpenters and bricklayers. And managing an annual budget of over six million euros ($8.1 million) also keeps this energetic 62-year-old on her toes.
A woman who made it
In the context of this year's International Women's Day, which aims to draw attention to equal rights and equal opportunities, women like Schock-Werner can be seen as a unique success story in a male-dominated society. Due to a persisting image of traditional gender roles, Germany's women still find it difficult to juggle work and motherhood, let alone rise to the top ranks of corporate hierarchies.
Outnumbering our human cells by about 10 to one, the many minuscule microbes that live in and on our bodies are a big part of crucial everyday functions. The lion's share live in the intestinal tract, where they help fend off bad bacteria and aid in digesting our dinners. But as scientists use genetics to uncover what microbes are actually present and what they're doing in there, they are discovering that the bugs play an even larger role in human health than previously suspected--and perhaps at times exerting more influence than human genes themselves. One team of researchers recently completed a catalogue of some 3.3 million human gut microbe genes. Their work, led by Junjie Qin of BGI-Shenzhen (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) and published in the March 4 edition of Nature, adds to the expanding--but nowhere near complete--census of species that reside in the intestinal tract. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Another group turned its attention to a particular host gene that seems to impact these inhabitants of the intestines. They found that in mice, a loss of one key gene led to a shift in microbiota communities and an increase in insulin resistance, obesity and other symptoms of metabolic syndrome (a cluster of these conditions). Their results were published online March 4 in Science.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2010) -- In a leap toward making stem cell therapy widely available, researchers at the Ansary Stem Cell Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered that endothelial cells, the most basic building blocks of the vascular system, produce growth factors that can grow copious amounts of adult stem cells and their progeny over the course of weeks. Until now, adult stem cell cultures would die within four or five days despite best efforts to grow them. "This is groundbreaking research with potential application for regeneration of organs and inhibition of cancer cell growth," said Dr. Antonio M. Gotto Jr., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University. This new finding sets forth the innovative concept that blood vessels are not just passive conduits for delivery of oxygen and nutrients, but are also programmed to maintain and proliferate stem cells and their mature forms in adult organs. Using a novel approach to harness the potential of endothelial cells by "co-culturing" them with stem cells, the researchers discovered the means to manufacture an unlimited supply of blood-related stem cells that may eventually ensure that anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant can get one. The vascular-cell model established in this study could also be used to grow abundant functional stem cells from other organs such as the brain, heart, skin and lungs. An article detailing these findings appears in the March 5 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell. In adult organs, there are few naturally occurring stem cells, so using them for organ regeneration is impractical. Until now, strategies to expand cultures of adult stem cells, which invariably used animal-based growth factors, serum, and genetically manipulated feeder cells, have only been marginally successful. This study, which employs endothelial cells to propagate stem cells without added growth factors and serum, will likely revolutionize the use of adult stem cells for organ regeneration, as well as decipher the complex physiology of the adult stem cells.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2010) -- In a leap toward making stem cell therapy widely available, researchers at the Ansary Stem Cell Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered that endothelial cells, the most basic building blocks of the vascular system, produce growth factors that can grow copious amounts of adult stem cells and their progeny over the course of weeks. Until now, adult stem cell cultures would die within four or five days despite best efforts to grow them.
"This is groundbreaking research with potential application for regeneration of organs and inhibition of cancer cell growth," said Dr. Antonio M. Gotto Jr., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University.
This new finding sets forth the innovative concept that blood vessels are not just passive conduits for delivery of oxygen and nutrients, but are also programmed to maintain and proliferate stem cells and their mature forms in adult organs. Using a novel approach to harness the potential of endothelial cells by "co-culturing" them with stem cells, the researchers discovered the means to manufacture an unlimited supply of blood-related stem cells that may eventually ensure that anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant can get one.
The vascular-cell model established in this study could also be used to grow abundant functional stem cells from other organs such as the brain, heart, skin and lungs. An article detailing these findings appears in the March 5 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell.
In adult organs, there are few naturally occurring stem cells, so using them for organ regeneration is impractical. Until now, strategies to expand cultures of adult stem cells, which invariably used animal-based growth factors, serum, and genetically manipulated feeder cells, have only been marginally successful. This study, which employs endothelial cells to propagate stem cells without added growth factors and serum, will likely revolutionize the use of adult stem cells for organ regeneration, as well as decipher the complex physiology of the adult stem cells.
We often talk about the new news ecosystem -- the network of traditional outlets, new startups, nonprofits, and individuals who are creating and filtering the news. But how is the work of reporting divvied up among the members of that ecosystem? To try to build a datapoint on that question, I chose a single big story and read every single version listed on Google News to see who was doing the work. Out of the 121 distinct versions of last week's story about tracing Google's recent attackers to two schools in China, 13 (11 percent) included at least some original reporting. And just seven organizations (six percent) really got the full story independently. But as usual, things are a little more subtle than that. I chose the Google-China story because it's complex, international, sensitive, and important. It's the sort of big story that requires substantial investigative effort, perhaps including inside sources and foreign-language reporting. Call it a stress test for our reporting infrastructure, a real-life worst case. The New York Times broke the story last Thursday, writing that unnamed sources involved in the investigation of last year's hacking of a number of American companies had traced the attacks to a prestigious technical university and a vocational college in mainland China. The article included comment from representatives of the schools and, while it had a San Francisco dateline, credited contributions from Shanghai staff. Immediately, the story was everywhere. Just about every major American newspaper and all the wires covered it.
To try to build a datapoint on that question, I chose a single big story and read every single version listed on Google News to see who was doing the work. Out of the 121 distinct versions of last week's story about tracing Google's recent attackers to two schools in China, 13 (11 percent) included at least some original reporting. And just seven organizations (six percent) really got the full story independently.
But as usual, things are a little more subtle than that. I chose the Google-China story because it's complex, international, sensitive, and important. It's the sort of big story that requires substantial investigative effort, perhaps including inside sources and foreign-language reporting. Call it a stress test for our reporting infrastructure, a real-life worst case.
The New York Times broke the story last Thursday, writing that unnamed sources involved in the investigation of last year's hacking of a number of American companies had traced the attacks to a prestigious technical university and a vocational college in mainland China. The article included comment from representatives of the schools and, while it had a San Francisco dateline, credited contributions from Shanghai staff. Immediately, the story was everywhere. Just about every major American newspaper and all the wires covered it.
all smooth again now... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
... In 1976, my Cornell colleague John Hubbard began looking at the dynamics of Newton's method, a powerful algorithm for finding roots of equations in the complex plane. The method takes a starting point (an approximation to the root) and does a certain computation that improves it. By doing this repeatedly, always using the previous point to generate a better one, the method bootstraps its way forward and rapidly homes in on a root. Hubbard was interested in problems with multiple roots. In that case, which root would the method find? He proved that if there were just two roots, the closer one would always win. But if there were three or more roots, he was baffled. His earlier proof no longer applied. So Hubbard did an experiment. A numerical experiment. He programmed a computer to run Newton's method, and told it to color-code millions of different starting points according to which root they approached, and to shade them according to how fast they got there. Before he peeked at the results, he anticipated that the roots would most quickly attract the points nearby, and thus should appear as bright spots in a solid patch of color. But what about the boundaries between the patches? Those he couldn't picture, at least not in his mind's eye. The computer's answer was astonishing. The borderlands looked like psychedelic hallucinations. The colors intermingled there in an almost impossibly promiscuous manner, touching each other at infinitely many points, and always in a three-way. In other words, wherever two colors met, the third would always insert itself and join them. Magnifying the boundaries revealed patterns within patterns. The structure was a "fractal" -- an intricate shape whose inner structure repeated at finer and finer scales, as shown in this continuous zoom: Furthermore, chaos reigned near the boundary. Two points might start very close together, bouncing side by side for a while, and then veer off to different roots. The winning root was as unpredictable as a game of roulette. Little things -- tiny, imperceptible changes in the initial conditions -- could make all the difference. ...
... In 1976, my Cornell colleague John Hubbard began looking at the dynamics of Newton's method, a powerful algorithm for finding roots of equations in the complex plane. The method takes a starting point (an approximation to the root) and does a certain computation that improves it. By doing this repeatedly, always using the previous point to generate a better one, the method bootstraps its way forward and rapidly homes in on a root.
Hubbard was interested in problems with multiple roots. In that case, which root would the method find? He proved that if there were just two roots, the closer one would always win. But if there were three or more roots, he was baffled. His earlier proof no longer applied.
So Hubbard did an experiment. A numerical experiment.
He programmed a computer to run Newton's method, and told it to color-code millions of different starting points according to which root they approached, and to shade them according to how fast they got there.
Before he peeked at the results, he anticipated that the roots would most quickly attract the points nearby, and thus should appear as bright spots in a solid patch of color. But what about the boundaries between the patches? Those he couldn't picture, at least not in his mind's eye.
The computer's answer was astonishing.
The borderlands looked like psychedelic hallucinations. The colors intermingled there in an almost impossibly promiscuous manner, touching each other at infinitely many points, and always in a three-way. In other words, wherever two colors met, the third would always insert itself and join them.
Magnifying the boundaries revealed patterns within patterns.
The structure was a "fractal" -- an intricate shape whose inner structure repeated at finer and finer scales, as shown in this continuous zoom:
Furthermore, chaos reigned near the boundary. Two points might start very close together, bouncing side by side for a while, and then veer off to different roots. The winning root was as unpredictable as a game of roulette. Little things -- tiny, imperceptible changes in the initial conditions -- could make all the difference. ...
