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Electric shocks to brain help students solve maths problems, scientists say

By Tribune On May 16, 2013 · Add Comment

This article titled “Electric shocks to brain help students solve maths problems, scientists say” was written by Ian Sample, science correspondent, for The Guardian on Thursday 16th May 2013 17.06 UTC

People who struggle with maths problems might fare better after a course of gentle electric shocks to the brain, scientists have claimed.

Psychologists at Oxford University found that students scored higher on mental arithmetic tasks after a five-day course of brain stimulation.

If future studies prove that it works – and is safe – the cheap and non-invasive procedure might be used routinely to boost the cognitive power of those who fall behind in maths, the scientists said. Researchers led by Roi Cohen Kadosh zapped students’ brains with a technique called transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS) while they performed simple calculations, or tried to remember mathematical facts by rote learning.

In the study published in Current Biology, 25 students had electrical pulses fired across their brains, while 26 others had a sham treatment, in which they thought they had brain stimulation, but the equipment was turned off.

In tests afterwards, the students who had their brains stimulated solved maths puzzles 27% faster than the control group, suggesting that their brains were working more efficiently.

“Our aim is to help those with poor numeracy, which is approximately 20% of the population,” Cohen Kadosh told the Guardian. “But we need to extend the results to the general population, and use more ecological settings, such as classrooms. There is of course more work to be done, but it is a promising direction.”

Cohen Kadosh said the improvement lasted for six months after the course of stimulation, but other scientists were dubious about the claim. The result was based on six students who received stimulation, and six controls, who returned to the lab six months later.

“The work is technically impressive and an elegant illustration of how brain stimulation can have immediate benefits for learning that are linked to changes in brain physiology,” said Chris Chambers, a psychologist at Cardiff University.

“At the same time, I’m sceptical about the conclusion that TRNS boosted maths ability even six months after it was applied. The claim is based on a very small sample and a one-tailed statistical analysis that would have been non-significant using a standard test.

“My worry is that the six-month effect, as intriguing as it appears, could be a false discovery. I would love to see this effect replicated in a sample that is larger and well-powered, because if true it could have important implications for basic neuroscience and the treatment of various clinical conditions. But until such data appears, the six-month claim remains weak in my view.”

Jon Simons, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University, had similar concerns, adding that only six students who had TRNS were assessed six months later. “The findings here seem weaker to me,” he said.

Amanda Ellison, who studies brain stimulation for rehabilitating patients at Durham University, said the procedure still looked promising.

“The next issue will be understanding the mechanism of this effect so that the technique can be applied to more functions. However, the impact for neuro-rehabilitation for example is hopeful,” she said.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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All sides in Syria have weapons ‘except the good guys’, says British official

By Tribune On May 15, 2013 · Add Comment

This article titled “All sides in Syria have weapons ‘except the good guys’, says British official” was written by Matthew Weaver, for The Guardian on Wednesday 15th May 2013 18.15 UTC

All sides in the Syrian conflict have access to weapons “except the good guys,” according to the official in charge of handling Britain’s response to the crisis in Syria.

Reza Afshar, head of the Syria team at the foreign office, publicly revealed for the first time how important weapons had become to Britain’s private bargaining with the Syrian opposition. Afshar suggested the opposition had insisted on getting access to arms before they agree to enter talks with the Assad regime.

Speaking at a meeting in the Commons, he said: “We are trying to get the opposition to get involved in a negotiation with people they really don’t want to negotiate with. The political reality is that in order to get them to the table we need to amend the arms embargo. It is that simple. They need an incentive.”

Afshar defended Britain’s attempts to lift an EU arms embargo against Syria by claiming that the current restrictions were pushing Syria towards extremism. On Tuesday a video showing a rebel commander apparently biting the heart or lung of a dead government soldier raised more doubts about western backing of the Syrian opposition.

Afshar suggested that arms could be delivered to groups vetted against extremism and such abuses. “Everyone is getting arms except the good guys … It means that people are becoming more and more radicalised,” he said.

“Those people who are on the extreme end of the spectrum are winning out. They are able to provide security and services in areas where there is a vacuum. And the good guys can’t. It is making the situation worse. I’m not saying that the answer to that is necessarily throwing a bunch of arms in there, but I am saying it is not as simple as saying, ‘You don’t want to add fuel to the fire.’”

Afshar was addressing a Commons briefing on the humanitarian crisis in Syria hosted by Islamic Relief and the Council for Arab-British Understanding. Oxfam’s Richard Stanforth said the relief agency was concerned that providing more arms to Syriawould worsen the humanitarian crisis and lead to more human rights abuses.

Responding to those concerns, Afshar said: “Why is it that the opposition want us to amend the embargo? It is so they feel that there is another alternative out there. So that maybe they can sit at the table knowing that they have some more levers.

“You have to look at the context around you and use those levers and press those buttons. It doesn’t sound nice, and you may not like it, but that’s the reality.

British and French attempts to lift the embargo have prompted a fierce debate within the EU. said arming the Syrian opposition would violate international law.

Afshar, who was previously head of the UK mission to the UN in the run-up to military intervention in Libya, also revealed the frustration among diplomats with Russia over Syria.

He said it was disingenuous of Russia to cite events in Libya as an excuse for inaction in Syria.

Afshar said: “Our aim is to galvanise the international community into finding a solution to the Syria crisis. That has eluded us until now because the international system broke down after Libya completely.

“We did what we did in Libya and we acted very fast and decisively. Post Libya we tried to move very quickly with an international response to the Syria crisis and it broke down – and the Russians won’t hide from the way they feel about this – because they wanted to insist that we never do what we did again in Libya.

“They created this sense that they somehow had the wool pulled over their eyes. I was there just before we all voted on Libya and I can tell you for a fact that we all explained precisely what was involved when we passed that resolution and the military action that would come after that. Everyone involved, including the Russians, knew full well what they were getting into. But they have used that since as a kind of geopolitical tool.

“Unfortunately that has meant that Syria has suffered as a result. The question since then has been how do you still influence the crisis when the international tools that you would usually use are broken? That’s what we are all struggling with.”

However, Afshar suggested a US-Russian deal to host an international conference on Syria could represent a turning point.

“In the last two weeks we have made a mini breakthrough,” he said, “but I wouldn’t suggest it is going to be the answer. It is going to be a long difficult process that is going to take a lot of effort.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Barbara Walters: ‘She was bigger than life to me’

By Tribune On May 13, 2013 · Add Comment

This article titled “Barbara Walters: ‘She was bigger than life to me’” was written by Jane Martinson, for The Guardian on Monday 13th May 2013 16.34 UTC

Tribute packages to Barbara Walters, the 83-year-old doyenne of American television who has confirmed her retirement, are like century-end potted histories of a nation. Since starting out reporting on the weather and “women’s interest stories” in 1961, Walters has interviewed every president from Richard Nixon onwards and famous people from Yassir Arafat to Vladimir Putin and Justin Bieber. She was the first woman to co-host both America’s biggest morning TV show and the evening news, and has won 12 Emmy awards.

Yet in an interview with the New York Times to confirm that she is going, she said that “she probably took most pride in the comments from other women in the television business who told her she inspired them”. Connie Hung, a rival news anchor and a relatively junior 66, says when she first met Walters, she was “bigger than life to me”.

Walters’ 50-year career was hardly without difficulty. As a “Today Girl” she once had to model a swimsuit when an expected model did not show up. When Frank McGee was named host of Today, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first four questions. She had to wait until his death in 1974 to become co-host.

In 1997 she went on to set up The View, in which four or five women talk about current affairs and which is now the fourth-longest-running national daytime talk show in history. One critic said: “The idea of women talking to one another on daytime television is not exactly radical. The idea that those women should be smart and accomplished is still odd enough to make The View seem wildly different. It actively defies the bubbleheads-’R'-us approach to women’s talkshows …” They talked about skinny models and admiring Hollywood’s latest hunk but also the latest political announcements.

Speculation about Walters’ retirement has been bubbling for years. “When I was turning 70 it was pretty old for television — to me now that’s a kid!” she says.

How different the situation is in the UK, where Fiona Bruce is so conscious of her status as one of our oldest high-profile female newsreaders at 48 that she has already “confessed” to dyeing her hair. Later this week a commission on older women in public life set up by Labour’s Harriet Harman will report back on a television industry where only men appear to be allowed to age in public. Miriam O’Reilly, who successfully sued the BBC for ageism in her 50s, and Arlene Phillips, pushed aside as a dance judge by a non-expert beauty half her age, are both on the commission. There is no female equivalent of David Dimbleby, is there? Or even Bruce Forsyth, god help us. A BBC report last year showed that viewers are conscious of the disappearance of women after a certain age.

In the UK, it appears that only unsackable women get to last generations. Asked if there was anyone she still wanted to interview in a final year set to include a last interview with President Obama Walters said without hesitation: “The Queen. My bosses at ABC said maybe I should tell her it’s my last year.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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How many saints are there?

By Tribune On May 13, 2013 · 1 Comment

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This article titled “How many saints are there?” was written by Peter Stanford, for The Guardian on Monday 13th May 2013 16.03 UTC

Catholicism has long liked to create saints in job lots – 40 English martyrs of the Reformation jointly canonised in 1970, or 117 Vietnamese martyrs in 1988. But Pope Francis broke new records on Sunday by handing out halos to 813 erstwhile citizens of Otranto, in southern Italy, who refused the demand of their Ottoman conquerors in 1480 to convert to Islam and were therefore beheaded.

Sainthood, in Catholic terms, is always posthumous. And a 500-plus year gap between death and final recognition isn’t that unusual, allowing time for the dust to settle. Or at least that is how it has traditionally been seen, since the Vatican took control of saint-making in the 13th century.

For centuries, the company of saints was one of the most exclusive clubs known to humankind. Then along came Pope John Paul II in 1978 and created 483 new saints over the course of his 27-year reign, exceeding the collective tally of all his predecessors over the previous half a millennium. And that industrial scale of production is now continuing under his successors.

Why? Because our leaders believe that we Catholics are always in need of more role models, people to inspire us in the faith as we struggle to lead a halfway good life. That’s not such bad psychology, especially with so many of our flesh-and-blood leaders shown of late in the abuse scandal to have feet of clay.

Yet the criteria for a halo remain unchanged from medieval times: that the candidate has to be responsible for one miracle from beyond the grave to qualify for beatification, and then a second to be declared a saint. In the case of the Otranto martyrs, number two was the 1981 cure of Sister Francesca Levote from ovarian cancer after her fellow nuns prayed to them.

Yet the advance of science makes the “proof” offered for such miracles sound ever more spurious. Indeed, one of the doctors who treated Sister Francesca has gone on the record as saying her survival was down to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The benchmark for sainthood now seems to be more wish-fulfilment than evidence. And that risks becoming yet another scandal. With 10,000 existing saints – or one per every 100,000 of the 1.2 billion global Catholics – surely we already have our fill.

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Canadian mobsters killed in ‘old-fashioned’ Sicilian mafia hit

By Tribune On May 10, 2013 · Add Comment

This article titled “Canadian mobsters killed in ‘old-fashioned’ Sicilian mafia hit” was written by Tom Kington in Rome, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 10th May 2013 17.58 UTC

Two senior members of the Canadian mafia have been murdered in Sicily and their bodies incinerated, victims of what police suspect is a vicious turf war in Canada which has spilled over into the Cosa Nostra’s Italian heartland.

After an anonymous tip-off, the bodies of Juan Ramon Paz Fernandez and Fernando Pimentel were discovered near a rubbish dump in the countryside outside Palermo on Thursday. Police described the double killing as an “old-fashioned” gangland hit.

Spanish-born Fernandez, 57, a notoriously tough enforcer for Montreal’s Rizzuto clan, was expelled from Canada last year for the third time after serving a 10-year sentence for conspiracy to murder a fellow mobster. He resurfaced in Palermo, where he was suspected of teaming up with the Cosa Nostra to build drug-trafficking links between Sicily and Canada.

Pimentel arrived in Palermo a few weeks ago to join Fernandez, who was allegedly working as a martial arts instructor as cover for his mob activities.

Nicknamed Joey Bravo in Canada, Fernandez was a feared right-hand man of Sicily-born Vito Rizzuto, who allied with New York’s Bonanno family to build an unrivalled mafia empire in Canada in the 1980s, handling drugs, loan sharking, gambling and contract killing.

In the midst of a turf war allegedly pitting the clan with a breakaway faction, Rizzuto was jailed while rivals murdered his father and son, the latter buried in a gold coffin which was paraded through Montreal’s Little Italy.

Fernandez stayed loyal to Rizzuto while he served his own time in jail in Canada, and was suspected by police of continuing to run operations through criminal associates. He was also suspected of being behind the murder of drug dealer Constantin “Big Gus” Alevizos in 2008.

Fernandez bolstered his tough reputation in 2011 when he was refused parole after threatening to kill a prison guard and boasting of his underworld connections.

Police suspicions that Fernandez’s murder in Sicily was ordered by his enemies back in Canada were strengthened after they arrested Pietro and Salvatore Scadutoon suspicion of being part of the hit squad that fired 30 shots at Fernandez and Pimentel and incinerated their corpses.

The Scaduto brothers have strong ties with the Canadian underworld. Following the murder of their own father in a mafia turf war in Sicily, the brothers moved to Canada in 1989, where Pietro Scaduto allegedly worked for the Rizzuto clan before they both returned to Sicily.

The discovery of both victims followed a police round-up on Wednesday of 21 mobsters linked to the Bagheria clan, based on the outskirts of Palermo, that Fernandez was working with.

A warrant had also been issued for Fernandez, who had been believed to have fled the city before his corpse was found.

Assets worth €30m were seized in the raids, which police said showed that the Cosa Nostra was “returning in a significant way” to the South American drugs trade after losing ground to the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta mafia, which has overtaken Sicily’s Cosa Nostra to become Italy’s most feared mafia.

As part of their operation, police are also investigating the mayor of a small Sicilian town who had stood for election with the Italian Northern League party, which has long railed against the mafia influence in southern Italy, for alleged mob ties.

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