lördag, december 26, 2015
Son Of Saul, Embrace Of The Serpent, A War among those on Oscar shortlist
The Academy unveiled on Thursday evening the nine films that advance in the foreign-language Oscar contest.
The films in alphabetical order by country are:
Belgium: The Brand New Testament, Jaco Van Dormael
Colombia: Embrace Of The Serpent, Ciro Guerra
Denmark: A War, Tobias Lindholm
Finland: The Fencer, Klaus Härö
France: Mustang, Deniz Gamze Ergüven
Germany: Labyrinth Of Lies, Giulio Ricciarelli
Hungary: Son Of Saul, László Nemes
Ireland: Viva, Paddy Breathnach
Jordan: Theeb, Naji Abu Nowar.
fredag, december 11, 2015
Malaria fanns i Sverige ända fram till 1930-talet och varför den försvann vet man inte riktigt; troligen tack vare en kombination av bättre bostäder, förbättrad djurhållning och förändringar i jordbruket som gjorde att färre mygglarver kläckte.
Själv glömmer jag aldrig en malariadrabbad kompis, en styrman under min tid till sjöss. Han var mycket sjuk och den viktiga snabba läkarvården fanns det ingen chans att få. Denne styrmans sjukdom blev också orsaken till min nyfikenhet på sjukdomen (numera väl tillgodosedd med Googles hjälp).
Själv glömmer jag aldrig en malariadrabbad kompis, en styrman under min tid till sjöss. Han var mycket sjuk och den viktiga snabba läkarvården fanns det ingen chans att få. Denne styrmans sjukdom blev också orsaken till min nyfikenhet på sjukdomen (numera väl tillgodosedd med Googles hjälp).
Årets Nobelpris i fysiologi eller medicin gick alltså till upptäcker om parasitmaskar och malaria. Ena hälften av priset gick till William C Campbell och Satoshi Ōmura för deras upptäckter kring en ny behandling mot infektioner orsakade av parasitmaskar. Den andra hälften gick till Youyou Tu för hennes upptäckter rörande artemisinin för behandling av malaria.
Parasitsjukdomar som flodblindhet, elefantiasis och malaria drabbar årligen flera hundra miljoner människor. De prisade upptäckterna, avermektin och artemisinin, har förändrat hur parasitsjukdomar behandlas enligt Nobelförsamlingen.
William C Campbell och Satoshi Ōmura har vidareutvecklat avermectin, vilket radikalt minskat förekomsten av flodblindhet och lymfatisk filariasis, elefantiasis. Dödligheten i malaria har avsevärt sänkts genom Youyou Tus utveckling av artemisinin.
William C Campbell kunde visa att en del av Satoshi Ōmuras Streptomyces-odlingar mycket effektivt kunde döda parasiter hos husdjur. Substansen renades och fick namnet avermektin. Det vidareutvecklades till en mer effektiv form, ivermektin.
Youyou Tu renade fram artemisinin ur växten Artemisia annua, kinesiskt sommarmalört (svesnk släkting Artemisia vulgaris, gråbo.
Källa bl.a. KI:s MV och Ny Teknik.
'Malaria' från italienska 'mal aria' (= 'dålig luft' [som man trodde var orsaken till sjukdomen])
torsdag, december 10, 2015
German leader Angela Merkel named Time’s Person of the Year
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named Time’s Person of the Year, praised Wednesday by the magazine for her leadership on everything from Syrian refugees to the Greek debt crisis.
Champions League
The UEFA Champions League round of 16 draw in Nyon will be streamed live on UEFA.com from 12.00CET on Monday 14 December, with holders Barcelona among seven past winners involved.
- Two seeding pots have been formed: one consisting of group winners and the other of runners-up.
- No team can play a club from their group or any side from their own association.
Group winners: Real Madrid (ESP), Wolfsburg (GER), Atlético Madrid (ESP), Manchester City (ENG), Barcelona (ESP, holders), Bayern München (GER), Chelsea (ENG), Zenit (RUS)
Group runners-up: Paris Saint-Germain (FRA), PSV Eindhoven (NED), Benfica (POR), Juventus (ITA), Roma (ITA), Arsenal (ENG), Dynamo Kyiv (UKR), Gent (BEL)
- Seeded group winners will be away in the round of 16 first legs on 16/17 and 23/24 February and at home in the return matches on 8/9 and 15/16 March.
- The draw for the quarter-finals will be held at 12.00CET on 18 March with the semi-final lineup drawn on 15 April, also at 12.00CET.
Vinterdepression är som vi vet en vanlig åkomma på våra breddgrader, något som har kopplats till minskad ljusexponering och störd inre dygnsrytm. Forskare vid Karolinska institutet har nu för första gången visat att hjärnans serotoninsystem genomgår årstidsbundna förändringar, vilket kan bidra till förståelsen av hur vinter-depressioner uppstår. Under långa ljusa dagar fanns fler mättade serotoninreceptorer än under korta mörka dagar i studiedeltagarnas hjärnor /KI:s tidskrift MV
Serotonin? Googla!
onsdag, december 09, 2015
Inget nytt för mig iaf
Relationer snarare än resurser är det som avgör hur nöjda äldre är med den omsorg de får, enligt en avhandling vid Göteborgs universitet /Text TV
The third largest giant sequoia in the world
Bild från: www.acidcow.com/pics/76597-very-interesting-photos-part-109-22-pics-video.html
Om sequoiaträdet: www.sequoiasolutions.se/sequoia-story/info-om-sequoiatraden
Chinese Glacier’s Retreat Signals Trouble for Asian Water Supply
The Mengke Glacier, one of China’s largest, retreated an average of 54 feet a year from 2005 to 2014. From 1993 to 2005, it retreated 26 feet a year.
tisdag, december 08, 2015
New Swedish TV Crime Series Targets Global Appetite for Nordic Noir
STOCKHOLM — A new Swedish crime saga, dubbed a Scandinavian version of the U.S. drama series "Breaking Bad", hopes to emulate the success of other Nordic TV exports such as "The Bridge" with a dark tale of marijuana, mafias and motherhood in suburban Stockholm.
"Gasmamman", or "Mother Goose", stars Alexandra Rapaport as a mother of three and accountant at a boat marina who takes over the family's illegal marijuana business after her husband is shot in a drug deal gone wrong.
The producers of Gasmamman hope the series will receive the kind of reception won by "The Bridge" and "The Killing", which led to millions of people around the world becoming fans of what is known as 'Nordic Noir' detective and crime stories.
Rapaport, who starred in the Oscar-nominated Danish film "The Hunt" and appeared in other crime series such as "The Sandhamn Murders", is also co-producer.
Like many Scandinavian series, it has a strong female lead reflecting a Nordic emphasis on gender equality.
"When we pitched this we talked about it being a kind of "Erin Brockovich" meets "Breaking Bad"," Rapaport told Reuters in an interview, referring respectively to a 2000 film starring Julia Roberts who fights against a powerful energy corporation and to the long-running TV crime series about a teacher who turns to selling crystal meth.
Gasmamman mixes light-heartedness - including some hippy-like gardeners who guard the hidden marijuana plantation - with scenes of water-boarding in a kitchen sink and the daily drudge of a mother dealing with children's school, and drug, issues.
The title "Mother Goose" refers both to the geese farm used to hide the marijuana plantation as well as the sense of a protective mother and her children, Rapaport said. Goose is also slang in Swedish for marijuana.
"The Bridge and the Killing, they were a big inspiration for us," Rapaport said. "But I think we also add some humor to it, which is why we compare it to "Breaking Bad"."
DRUGS
The series is close in plot to the U.S. series "Weeds", about a mother of two boys who begins dealing in marijuana to support her family after the death of her husband.
Despite its reputation for social tolerance, drugs are still a taboo issue in Sweden - marijuana, for example, is illegal. Rapaport's character Sonja is uncomfortable with drugs, not least when her son gets into trouble for taking ecstasy.
"Sweden is not liberal at all in terms of drugs," said Rapaport. "Drugs are not OK, even smoking joints."
Gasmamman has large footsteps to fill.
One of the best known Nordic successes was Stieg Larsson's Millennium series of novels, starting with 2005's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". They have sold more than 60 million copies and been made into Swedish and U.S. films.
But for Nordic TV drama, it perhaps began with "The Killing", first produced by Danish public broadcaster DR in 2007 and starring Sofie Grabol as Detective Inspector Sarah Lund.
The producers plan four seasons for Gasmamman, which has received positive reviews in the Swedish press.
"Our plans", said Rapaport, "are to reach out everywhere."
Avdelning människans vandalisering av vårt stackars jordklot.
För första gången någonsin utfärdas en röd
varning, den högsta nivån, för luftföroreningar i
Kinas huvudstad Peking. Detta tvingar skolor
att stänga och stora delar av trafiken får
körförbud.
måndag, december 07, 2015
President Obama Speech Obama Address to the Nation FULL Obama Oval Office speech to Nation. December 6, 2015
“Good evening. On Wednesday, 14 Americans were killed as they came together to celebrate the holidays. They were taken from family and friends who loved them deeply. They were white and black, Latino and Asian, immigrants, and American born, moms and dads, daughters and sons. Each of them served their fellow citizens. All of them were part of our American family.
“Tonight I want to talk with you about this tragedy, the broader threat of terrorism and how we can keep our country safe. The FBI is still gathering the facts about what happened in San Bernardino, but here’s what we know. The victims were brutally murdered and injured by one of their co-workers and his wife. So far, we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home. But it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West. They had stockpiled assault weapons, ammunition, and pipe bombs.
“So this was an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people. Our nation has been at war with terrorists since Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11. In the process, we’ve hardened our defenses, from airports, to financial centers, to other critical infrastructure. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies have disrupted countless plots here and overseas and worked around the clock to keep us safe.
Our military and counterterrorism professionals have relentlessly pursued terrorist networks overseas, disrupting safe havens in several different countries, killing Osama Bin Laden, and decimating Al Qaeda’s leadership.
“Over the last few years, however, the terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase. As we’ve become better at preventing complex multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turn to less complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society. It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009, in Chattanooga earlier this year, and now in San Bernardino.
“And as groups like ISIL grew stronger amidst the chaos of war in Iraq and then Syria, and as the Internet erases the distance between countries, we see growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino killers.
“For seven years, I’ve confronted this evolving threat each and every morning in my intelligence briefing, and since the day I took this office, I have authorized U.S. forces to take out terrorists abroad precisely because I know how real the danger is.
“As commander in chief, I have no greater responsibility than the security of the American people.
“As a father to two young daughters who are the most precious part of my life, I know that we see ourselves with friends and co-workers at a holiday party like the one in San Bernardino. I know we see our kids in the faces of the young people killed in Paris.
“And I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure.
“Well, here’s what I want you to know. The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it. We will destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us. Our success won’t depend on tough talk, or abandoning our values or giving into fear. That’s what groups like ISIL are hoping for. Instead, we will prevail by being strong and smart, resilient and relentless. And by drawing upon every aspect of American power.
“Here’s how. First, our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary. In Iraq and Syria, air strikes are taking out ISIL leaders, heavy weapons, oil tankers, infrastructure.
“And since attacks in Paris, our closest allies, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have ramped up their contributions to our military campaign which will help us accelerate our effort to destroy ISIL.
“Second, we will continue to provide training and equipment to tens of thousands of Iraqi and Syrian forces fighting ISIL on the ground so that we take away their safe havens.
“In both countries, we’re deploying special operations forces who can accelerate that offensive. We’ve stepped up this effort since the attacks in Paris, and will continue to invest more in approaches that are working on the ground.
“Third, we’re working with friends and allies to stop ISIL’s operations, to disrupt plots, cut off their financing, and prevent them from recruiting more fighters.
“Since the attacks in Paris, we’ve surged merged intelligence sharing with our European allies. We’re working with Turkey to seal its border with Syria, and we are cooperating with Muslim majority countries, and with our Muslim communities here at home, to counter the vicious ideology that ISIL promotes online.
“Fourth, with American leadership, the international community has begun to establish a process and timeline to pursue cease-fires and a political resolution to the Syrian war.
“Doing so will allow the Syrian people and every country, including our allies, but also countries like Russia, to focus on the common goal of destroying ISIL, a group that threatens us all.
“This is our strategy to destroy ISIL. It is designed and supported by our military commanders and counterterrorism experts, together with 65 countries that have joined an American-led coalition. And we constantly examine our strategy to determine when additional steps are needed to get the job done.
“That’s why I’ve ordered the Departments of State and Homeland Security to review the visa waiver program under which the female terrorist in San Bernardino originally came to this country. And that’s why I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.
“Now, here at home, we have to work together to address the challenge. There are several steps that Congress should take right away. To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no- fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon? This is a matter of national security.
“We also need to make it harder for people to buy powerful assault weapons, like the ones that were used in San Bernardino. I know there are some who reject any gun-safety measures, but the fact is that our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, no matter how effective they are, cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual was motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology.
“What we can do, and must do, is make it harder for them to kill.
“Next, we should put in place stronger screening for those who come to America without a visa so that we can take a hard look at whether they’ve traveled to war zones. And we’re working with members of both parties in Congress to do exactly that.
“Finally, if Congress believes, as I do, that we are at war with ISIL, it should go ahead and vote to authorize the continued use of military force against these terrorists.
“For over a year, I have ordered our military to take thousands of air strikes against ISIL targets. I think it’s time for Congress to vote to demonstrate that the American people are united and committed to this fight.
“My fellow Americans, these are the steps that we can take together to defeat the terrorist threat.
“Let me now say a word about what we should not do. We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria. That’s what groups like ISIL want. They know they can’t defeat us on the battlefield. ISIL fighters were part of the insurgency that we faced in Iraq. But they also know that if we occupy foreign lands, they can maintain insurgencies for years, killing thousands of our troops and draining our resources, and using our presence to draw new recruits.
“The strategy that we are using now — air strikes, special forces, and working with local forces who are fighting to regain control of their own country — that is how we’ll achieve a more sustainable victory, and it won’t require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil.
“Here’s what else we cannot do. We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want.
“ISIL does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death. And they account for a tiny fraction of a more than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic Muslim-Americans who reject their hateful ideology.
“Moreover, the vast majority of terrorist victims around the world are Muslim.
“If we’re to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist Muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than push them away through suspicion and hate.
“That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities. It’s a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse.
“Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote, to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity.
“But just as it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americans, of every faith, to reject discrimination. It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country. It’s our responsibility to reject proposals that Muslim-Americans should somehow be treated differently. Because when we travel down that road, we lose. That kind of divisiveness, that betrayal of our values plays into the hands of groups like ISIL.
“Muslim-Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co- workers, our sports heroes. And, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country. We have to remember that.
“My fellow Americans, I am confident we will succeed in this mission because we are on the right side of history. We were founded upon a belief in human dignity that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like or what religion you practice, you are equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law. Even in this political season, even as we properly debate what steps I and future presidents must take to keep our country safe. Let’s make sure we never forget what makes us exceptional. Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear. That we have always met challenges, whether war or depression, natural disasters or terrorist attacks, by coming together around our common ideals as one nation and one people.
“So long as we stay true to that tradition, I have no doubt that America will prevail.
“Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”
Julmånaden verkar bli något alldeles extra detta år
Se Norrköping Astronomiska Klubbs förnämliga hemsida:
www.nak.se/
www.nak.se/
söndag, december 06, 2015
President Obama Addresses the Nation on Keeping the American People Safe
lördag, december 05, 2015
SHARE The 10 Best Books of 2015 (?)
- FICTIONThe DoorBy Magda Szabo. Translated by Len Rix.
In Szabo’s haunting novel, a writer’s intense relationship with her servant — an older woman who veers from aloof indifference to inexplicable generosity to fervent, implacable rage — teaches her more about people and the world than her long days spent alone, in front of her typewriter. Szabo, who died in 2007, first published her novel in 1987, in the last years of Communist rule; this supple translation shows how a story about two women in 20th-century Hungary can resonate in a very different time and place. With a mix of dark humor and an almost uncanny sense of the absurd, she traces the treacherous course of a country’s history, and the tragic course of a life.New York Review Books. Paper, $16.95.
Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected StoriesBy Lucia Berlin. Edited by Stephen Emerson.Berlin, who died in 2004, left behind a substantial but little-known trove of stories that in her lifetime appeared mostly in literary journals and small-press books. This revelatory collection gathers 43 of them, introducing her to a wider audience as an uncompromising and largehearted observer of life whose sympathies favor smart, mouthy women struggling to get by much as Berlin herself — an alcoholic who raised four sons on her own — frequently did. With their maximalist emotions and sparse, unadorned language, Berlin’s stories are the kind a woman in a Tom Waits song might tell a man she’s just met during a long humid night spent drinking in a parking lot.Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
James Nieves/The New York Times OutlineBy Rachel CuskCusk’s subtle, unconventional and lethally intelligent novel, “Outline,” her eighth, is a string of one-sided conversations. A divorced woman traveling in Greece, our narrator, talks — or rather listens — to the people she meets, absorbing their stories of love and loss, deception, pride and folly. Well-worn subjects — adultery, divorce, ennui — become freshly menacing under Cusk’s gaze, and her mental clarity can seem so penetrating, a reader might fear the same risk of invasion and exposure.Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times The SelloutBy Paul BeattyThis year’s most cheerfully outrageous satire takes as its subject a young black man’s desire to segregate his local school and to reinstate slavery in his home — before careening off to consider almost 400 years of black survival in America, puncturing every available piety. Sharp-minded and fabulously profane, Beatty’s novel is a fearless, metaphorical multicultural pot almost too hot to touch.Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times The Story of the Lost Child: Book 4, The Neapolitan Novels: “Maturity, Old Age”By Elena Ferrante. Translated by Ann Goldstein.Like the three books that precede it in Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, this brilliant conclusion offers a clamorous, headlong exploration of female friendship set against a backdrop of poverty, ambition, violence and political struggle. As Elena and Lila, the girlhood rivals whose relationship spans the series, enter the middle terrain of marriage and motherhood, Ferrante’s preoccupations remain with the inherent radicalism of modern female identity — especially, and strikingly, with the struggles of the female artist against her biological and social destiny.Europa Editions. Paper, $18
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times NONFICTIONBetween the World and MeBy Ta-Nehisi CoatesForget, for a moment, the ubiquitous comparisons to James Baldwin: Though fitting in many ways, they can distract us from how original Coates’s book truly is. Structured as a letter to his teenage son, this slender, urgent volume — a searching exploration of what it is to grow up black in a country built on slave labor and “the destruction of black bodies” — rejects fanciful abstractions in favor of the irreducible and particular. Coates writes to his son with a cleareyed realism about the beautiful and terrible struggle that inheres in flesh and bone.Spiegel & Grau. $24.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times Empire of Cotton: A Global HistoryBy Sven BeckertIf sugar was the defining commodity of the 18th century and oil of the 20th, then surely cotton was king in the 19th century. In this sweeping, ambitious and disturbing survey, Beckert takes us through every phase of a global industry that has relied on millions of miserably treated slaves, sharecroppers and millworkers to turn out its product. The industrialization of cotton rested on violence, Beckert tells us, and its story is that of the development of the modern world itself. Even today, he reports, an industry that is always looking for cheaper labor is engaged in a “giant race to the bottom.”Alfred A. Knopf. $35.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times H Is for HawkBy Helen MacdonaldMacdonald, a poet, historian and falconer, renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence — and her own — in this breathtaking memoir. Unmoored after the death of her father, she retreats from the world, deciding to raise and train a young goshawk, a brutal predator, in solitude. The hawk accompanies her into the wildest reaches of grief and her own nature, a place of darkness and surprising light, evoked in prose that mingles poetry and science, conjuring and evidence.Grove Press. $26.
Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New WorldBy Andrea WulfAlexander von Humboldt may have been the pre-eminent scientist of his era, second in fame only to Napoleon, but outside his native Germany his reputation has faded. Wulf does much to revive our appreciation of this ecological visionary through herlively, impressively researched account of his travels and exploits, reminding us of the lasting influence of his primary insight: that the Earth is a single, interconnected organism, one that can be catastrophically damaged by our own destructive actions.Alfred A. Knopf. $30.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in NorwayBy Asne Seierstad. Translated by Sarah Death.In this masterpiece of reportage, Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, explores the dark side of Scandinavia through the life and crimes of Anders Behring Breivik, who, on July 22, 2011, killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, as a protest against women’s rights, cultural diversity and the growing influence of Islam. As she weaves the stories of the teenagers with the central narrative about Breivik and his disturbing, alienated childhood, the book attains an almost unbearable weight. This tragedy isn’t literary and symbolic; it’s the real thing.
