MOSCOW — A winter maximum temperature record for Moscow was set Friday, the capital’s weather bureau said Friday. Friday’s maximum of 8.6°C (47.48°F) is the highest winter temperature on record for the Russian capital, the spokesman said. The previous winter record for Moscow was 8.1 °C (46.5°F), set on February 17, 1989. Extreme deviations in weather patterns have been observed before, but over the past decade they have become more and more frequent, the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said. Following near-record low temperatures during last winter’s cold spell, which saw the mercury plummet to -31°C (-23.8°F) January 19 – one degree above the all-time low for Moscow – European Russia has experienced record warm temperatures this month. Forecasters believe the temperature may be even higher in coming days, possibly reaching 9°C (48.2 °F).
Teenagers do crazy things. They take drugs, have unprotected sex, ride with drunken drivers, and pretend to be asleep when it’s time to do the dishes. But it’s not that they don’t ponder the the potential consequences. In fact, a new study finds teens spend more time weighing risk than adults and in fact often overestimate the odds of a bad outcome. But the desire for acceptance among peers wins out in the decision-making process of a young mind. Cornell University researcher Valerie Reyna and Frank Farley of Temple University conducted a review of scientific studies on the topics. Compared to adults, teens take about 170 milliseconds more weighing the pros and cons of engaging in high-risk behavior, the researchers conclude. Adults scarcely think about risk, perhaps because they think they recognize risk intuitively. Teens, on the other hand, take time to mull the risk vs. benefit equation. ‘In other words, more experienced decision-makers tend to rely more on fuzzy reasoning, processing situations and problems as gists [the essence of their actions] rather than weighing multiple factors,’ Reyna said. Teens often decide that the benefits of risky behavior immediate gratification or peer acceptance-outweigh the risks, […]
Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries. The announcement was made by officials of the National Institutes of Health as they halted two clinical trials, in Kenya and Uganda, on the ground that not offering circumcision to all the men taking part would be unethical. The success of the trials confirmed a study done last year in South Africa. AIDS experts immediately hailed the finding. ‘This is very exciting news,’ said Daniel Halperin, an H.I.V. specialist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development, who has argued that circumcision slows the spread of AIDS in the parts of Africa where it is common. In an interview from Zimbabwe, he added, ‘I have no doubt that as word of this gets around, millions of African men will want to get circumcised, and that will save many lives.’ Uncircumcised men are thought to be more susceptible because the underside of the foreskin is rich in Langerhans cells, sentinel cells of the […]
Two-thirds of Americans believe that the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on privacy rights as part of terrorism investigations, but they remain divided over whether such tactics are justified, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday. The poll also showed that 52 percent of respondents favor congressional hearings on how the Bush administration has handled surveillance, detainees and other terrorism-related issues, compared with 45 percent who are opposed. That question was posed to half of the poll’s 1,005-person random sample. Overall, the poll — which includes questions that have been asked since 2002 and 2003 — showed a continued skepticism about whether the government is adequately protecting privacy rights as it conducts terrorism-related investigations. Compared with June 2002, for example, almost twice as many respondents say the need to respect privacy outranks the need to investigate terrorist threats. That shift was first evident in polling conducted in January 2006. That sentiment is still a minority view, however: Nearly two-thirds rank investigating threats as more important than guarding against intrusions on personal privacy, down from 79 percent in 2002. Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who is a professor in Georgetown University’s Security […]
With hindsight, we may see 2006 as the end of Pax Americana. Ever since World War II, the United States has used its military and economic superiority to promote a stable world order that has, on the whole, kept the peace and spread prosperity. But the United States increasingly lacks both the power and the will to play this role. It isn’t just Iraq, though Iraq has been profoundly destabilizing and demoralizing. Many other factors erode U.S. power: China’s rise; probable nuclear proliferation; shrinking support for open trade; higher spending for Social Security and Medicare that squeezes the military, and the weakness of traditional U.S. allies, Europe and Japan. By objective measures, Pax Americana’s legacy is enormous. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no nuclear device has been used in anger. In World War II, an estimated 60 million people died. Only four subsequent conflicts have had more than a million deaths (the Congo civil war, 3 million; Vietnam, 1.9 million; Korea, 1.3 million; China’s civil war, 1.2 million), reports the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland. Under the U.S. military umbrella, democracy flourished in Western Europe and Japan. It later spread to South Korea, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
