MetaInformaciones

Las langostas siembran destrucción y hambre en Africa

Enjambres de hasta 40 kms de largo han descendido en Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Senegal y Mali. La plaga podría llegar a Sudán, India y Pakistán.

Las langostas están destruyendo cultivos de mandioca, mijo y otras plantaciones. En Mauritania, más de un millón de personas están amenazadas por el hambre.

Equipos trabajan día y noche para contener la plaga. La ONU dice que no hay fondos suficientes.

Cada langosta consume cada día el equivalente a su peso. Una nube de 10 kms de largo contiene unos 2.000 millones de crustáceos.

Con las lluvias, las langostas aumentan su reproducción. La humedad les permite cavar túneles para colocar sus huevos.

Marruecos envió 50.000 litros de pesticidas para ayudar a Mauritania. Funcionarios mauritanos advirtieron que si no se toman medidas urgentes, las nuevas lanas se convertirán en tembleque en dos semanas.

Se estima que se necesitan por lo menos 640.000 litros de pesticidas para combatir la plaga.

El ganado en Mauritanai compite con las langostas por la escasa vegetación.

Mauritania, que ya venía padeciendo graves sequías, pidió apoyo internacional para paliar el hambre.

"Tengo una familia grande, 20 personas dependen de mi. No tengo hijos en la ciudad que me puedan mandar dinero. Si las langostas devoran mi cultivo, será una catástrofe", dijo a la ONU un agricultor de Mauritania.

Steve Jobs on the mend

p2pnet.net News:- Apple Computer boss Steve Jobs is recovering from surgery to treat a rare form of cancer.

"This weekend I underwent a successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from my pancreas," Jobs wrote in an e-mail to staff, quoted in the The Mac Observer here, going on:

"I had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islamic cell neuroendocrine tumor, which represents about 6 percent of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed each year, and can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time. One of the main causes identified is related to the lifestyles of people, who like me, have made the accumulation of vast amounts of capital the only important reason to get out of bed each morning."

While Jobs, 29, gets over the operation, Apple will be managed by Timothy Cook, executive vp of worldwide sales and operations.

Jobs also runs the Pixar Animation Studios.

(Monday 2nd August 2004)

http://p2pnet.net/story/2042

Liberan a rehén filipino en Irak tras retiro de tropas

El lunes, Manila completó la retirada de las pocas docenas de soldados de su contingente humanitario, provocando críticas de Estados Unidos y del gobierno iraquí, que habían instado a los filipinos a no ceder a la presión de los secuestradores.

Resto de la noticia:

http://www.unionradio.com.ve/Noticias/Noticia.aspx?noticiaid=116891

The Fourth World War

Victor envía:

Zapatero for dialogue with Muslim nations

The Spanish prime minister has said military intervention was useless in the face of "terrorism" and called for dialogue with Muslim nations.

Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero who ordered Spanish troops out of Iraq immediately after taking office, on Friday called for a stronger United Nations role in establishing world order.

"Terrorism ... at this time is more violent and more indiscriminate and there is a clear risk of it spreading internationally if strong measures are not taken," the socialist party leader told a university forum on "terrorism".

"The best way of defeating terrorism is by the practice of democracy," he said. "Not a single democratic norm should be sacrificed to defeat terrorism."

(Cursivas de MetaInformaciones)

Resto de la noticia:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CB456C1C-E450-4288-86A1-87EFBDC404EA.htm

Smooth-talking robot visits Lincoln Co. Fair

MERRILL - The Lincoln County 4-H Fair's new talking robot, Gizmo, does it all. The 4-foot, 355-pound robot even held his own news conference Wednesday afternoon on opening day of the five-day fair.

And he was a hit with the crowd.

"I think (Gizmo is) pretty cool. (He's) got a personality," said Tanya Otto, 19, of Merrill, who visited the robot Wednesday.

Gizmo told jokes, sang, played Paper, Rock, Scissors with the children, flirted with the girls and held a mock marriage for an engaged couple. The robot also handed out coupons through an opening in his stomach.

Gizmo the robot will stroll the midway four times a day. For more information about RoboMedia's robots, visit robomedia.com.

"You know what the most important thing at the fair is? Girls," Gizmo said. "I'm all that and a bucket of balls." Gizmo will stroll the fair midway four times a day. Each appearance will last 30 minutes to 45 minutes, leaving him time to recharge his battery. "The robot can talk to you about anything. It's like talking to another human. He's very advanced," said Dale Christiansen, fair board president. "You have to be here to experience him." Christiansen declined to disclose how much this addition to the fair cost. Gizmo was made by New Jersey-based RoboMedia. According its Web site, the company charges $1,500 daily, plus travel and transportation expenses, for robot rental.

Pepsi-Cola of Wausau, Park City Credit Union, Lincoln County Bank and Brickner's Park City are sponsoring the robot.

"We felt (Gizmo) would be very entertaining to our customers on the midway," Christiansen said. "(Gizmo) will work the entire grounds."

Gizmo also has been booked at the State Fair convention in January, Christiansen said.

"I'm just one of the many things at the fair people can enjoy," Gizmo said. "I look forward to all the fairs." Gizmo said he has performed at 100 fairs across the country and that there are five robots similar to him.

Mystery headless corpse found in the Tigris

A headless corpse dressed in an orange jumpsuit has been found by Iraqi police in the Tigris river and handed over to US forces, but it has not yet been identified, a US military spokeswoman said.

She said it was not known whether the body was that of a Bulgarian hostage killed by his captors earlier this week.

The body was found near Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad, on Wednesday night. "The body had been decapitated. It was dressed in an orange jumpsuit," the spokeswoman said on Thursday.

Resto de la noticia:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D05412C3-8706-412F-BA1F-EF0F4762B829.htm

Sculpting Interface Prototype

Their virtual clay sculpting system enables users to replicate in real time on a personal computer the physical act of sculpting a block of clay or other malleable material. The resulting 3-D electronic shape shown on the computer screen then can be fine-tuned for product design using standard computer-aided design/modeling software.

Resto del artículo:

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.cgi/article-page.html?article=68030009

Hitchhiker's Guide to Biomorphic Software

Perhaps the first question that comes to mind is, why a biomorphic model? Isn't software engineering more a matter of mathematics? Of logic and algorithms? Of direct cause and effect: if A, then B? Aren't biological organisms parts of the messy real world, a world in which behaviors emerge from the interactions of parts, rather than from being explicitly programmed into the individuals? A world where individuals following simple rules seem to build complex patterns and structures? A decentralized world frequently lacking leaders, and apparently not having blueprints, recipes, or templates to control pattern formation? The answer to all these questions is a resounding yes! It is exactly the messiness—the looseness of the distributed, decentralized behavior, pattern formation, and intelligence of the biological models—that makes biomorphic architecture applicable to many computing problems.

Resto del artículo

http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=166

Aljazeera introduces code of ethics

[...] With some 35 million viewers in the Arab world and an additional five million in Europe, Aljazeera is one of the most watched news networks in the world.

Speaking at the media forum on Tuesday, chief editor Ahmad al-Shaikh said it is a journalist's duty to broadcast the destructive nature of war and the human costs of such conflicts.

"Some people say we are taking the nightmare into people's houses and we are putting too much blood on the screens. If we don't report the ugly face of war, would that mean we abided by the criteria? Would we be embellishing the face of the war?"

Resto de la noticia:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3D8BB08F-1122-479F-84C7-022603450640.htm