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friday :: june 24, 2005
   
 
'one world, one health' paradigm: emerging diseases require a global solution

The threat of potential pandemics such as Ebola, SARS, and avian influenza demands a more holistic approach to disease control, one that prevents diseases from crossing the divide between humans, their livestock, and wildlife, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in the most recent issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. This “One World, One Health” concept, as described by WCS veterinary staff, calls for the integration of efforts to deal proactively with disease threats to human and animal health before they reach crisis levels.

"As of yet, no single agency or organization focuses on the myriad diseases that move across the interface between people, their domestic animals and wildlife," said Dr. William Karesh, one of the co-authors of "One World, One Health" and the director of WCS' Field Veterinary Program. "There is only 'one health,' and future programs must factor in the complexity of how emerging diseases move among humans and other species."

Karesh and co-author Dr. Bob Cook—WCS vice president and chief veterinarian of the society’s Wildlife Health Center—developed the "One World, One Health" concept in response to the increased vulnerability of humanity and animals to a host of diseases that are capable of adapting to other species and moving across the globe through the rapid transportation of goods and people. Many of these diseases can move back and forth between species, mutating into more virulent, resistant forms. Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people.

On the local level, the communities that rely on wildlife for their protein are vulnerable to pathogens from the forest. The AIDS virus may have entered human communities through the consumption of non-human primates with a similar virus that mutated. In Central Africa, many subsistence hunters will take advantage of animal carcasses for protein, often infecting themselves and their families with deadly diseases in the process. Each human outbreak of Ebola in Central Africa during the late 1990’s and the first years of this century can be traced to humans handling infected apes. Estimates for the amount of wild, or “bush” meat consumed in Central Africa is over a billion kilograms a year, translating to an estimated 580 million individual animals alone. People in the Amazon basin consume between 67 and 164 million kilograms of wild meat a year, between 6.4 million and 15.8 million individual mammals.

On the global level, one of the biggest challenges to health organizations and agencies is the worldwide trade in wildlife. According to a variety of sources compiled by WCS, the annual global trade in live wild animals includes roughly 40,000 primates, 4 million birds, and 640,000 reptiles. These species and the diseases they carry are brought together into trading centers before being sold locally, or shipped to other regions of the world. Avian influenza—currently feared as one of the most likely candidates for a pandemic—was detected in two mountain eagles that were smuggled into Belgium to Thailand in carry-on baggage. Livestock movement can introduce diseases also. Tuberculosis—a disease afflicting domesticated cattle and humans—has now spread across continents, infecting wild bison in Canada, deer in Michigan, and Cape buffalo in South Africa.

The costs of reacting to these problems, say Karesh and Cook, are staggering. The rash of livestock pathogens that have spread around the world in the last decade—a list including mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease, avian flu, swine fever) have caused some $100 billion in losses. The recent outbreaks of SARS have cost the global community half that amount.

To address these problems, Karesh and Cook call for a number of steps to integrate human and animal disease prevention efforts in a coordinated manner. Recommendations include better surveillance of wildlife diseases to prevent outbreaks before they occur, shifting the cost of preventing and controlling outbreaks to animal traders, encouraging governments to improve the regulation of the animal trade and breaking down barriers among health disciplines.

"Diseases that afflict people, livestock and wildlife have severe economic and social consequences for all regions of the world," said Dr. Bob Cook. "Failing to implement a cross-species, planet wide approach to these emerging health issues will cost more than we can afford. The ‘One Health’ paradigm can serve as an ‘ounce of prevention’ for the 21st Century." >from *Emerging Diseases Require A Global Solution. Foreign Affairs and WCS Offer a "One World, One Health" Model*. June 17, 2005

related context
>
state of the world 2005. january 14, 2005
> hiv-immune mutant gene. october 22, 2004
> AIDS epidemic should be treated as a disaster. november 12, 2003
> apes: catastrophic decline. april 14, 2003
> earth 'will expire by 2050': living planet report. july 12, 2002

imago
>
mutation diseases,
signs of things to come?

| permaLink

 
friday :: june 17, 2005
   
 
fadaiat, an event dealing with freedom of movement and freedom of knowledge

From our personal perspective, fada'íat was a new attempt to implement a logical mechanism based on the universal language of symbols, allowing, in a few hours, the emergence of a spacial configuration emancipated from techtonic elements: architecture as hardware for the development of processes.

The departure from tectonics is part of what we consider the first phase of "solidification" of other communication options beyond the already corrupted nucleus of people/minds/happiness exchange that the network of networks is becoming as built by the new economy. In a first instance, the departure from tectonics is due to the need to work in the only contemporary framework providing for solid tools of counter-hegemonic action. It is just a new battle field.

In our work we try to subvert the scheme imposed by the infoeconomy in which a swarm of machines, working minds and infocapital organised around a myriad of micro-processes determines the stabilisation of a global state of balance that strengthens hegemony and weakens communication.

This architecture has its principal pillar in the mental gap that can be stolen from the system for the non-production of infocapital: the generation of algorithms of free global communication. Its contribution consists in its potential to create specific spaces of human communication via the reconfiguration of the clouded plasma of data fluxes.

We consider that, for a few hours, in fada'íat we were able to deprogram the system of automatisms which we usually react to the reality of geography with. The flux of anonymous data generated by mediatic cooperation achieved to feed a geographic algorithm, free code produced and supported by multiple nodes that managed to fly over and across all directions of Europe Southern border. >from *Fadaiat site*.

related context
>
propuesta de observatorio del estrecho. 'presentamos como propuesta para el castillo de santa catalina su puesta en valor como el centro intercultural de nuevos medios 'observatorio del estrecho'. second half of 2004
> think tools for revolution > reclaim the streams!. 'video and audio streams from the think repository of riga, the toolkit of graz & the permanent revolution of barcelona are transmitted via gollum.artefacte.org, a tool for the new era. the fusion of the three events has to be total because politics is everywhere, because the new form that culture is acquiring in the barcelona mercalab is dangerous and spreading.' september 17, 2004
> fadaiat: a new kind of public space. 'the mix, local-global, physical-digital, of outgoing and incoming streams will produce a new kind of public space, which we have been experimenting with for some years.' june 18, 2004
> life-coditioning: jatorri irekiko arkitektura. [arquitectura hacia un código abierto] se propone observar / describir / autopresentar / interactuar con un conjunto de iniciativas que quieren 'volver' la arquitectura al usuario y por tanto intervienen en el lenguaje y la expresión al actuar / operar / raptar / subvertir el espacio e imaginario mayoritario.' april, 2004
> HighNoon: wsis? we seize!. 'agregation of video has already been experimentaly established in recent months by v2v project, using free software, open formats and standards to encode, store and syndicate production quality video in sustainable and managable way... an audiovisual protest that gathers objections against the wsis in geneva in order to assert our claims to the so called "information society".' december 8, 2003
> hackitecture and other data flow' architectures. 'times have changed and we need new words for the new realities, and new tools to operate within them. presentation on some proposals for new concepts related to architecture and urbanism.' march 28, 2003
> pure-data beta rave. 'in the present days of involution of civilisation from the summit, of techno-militarization of the borders and implementation of the society of control... wich is the role of the individual in front this situations? and more specifically, wich is the role of the scientist? and the role of the architect, and the role of the engineer?' january 18, 2003

imago
>
do we return to afrika their power lines?

| permaLink

 
friday :: june 10, 2005
   
 
can ricart + parc central, urban space of 21th century

“Barcelona, proud of its present, seems to have forgotten its origins, with risk of endangering its future. The metropolis of today, is inheriting the industrial world: without the factories, on which is constructed our modernity, not the economic raise, nor the modernism or the capacity to lay the foundations - in secrecy antifrancoist - of a society able to respond to the new challenges on a positive way. Recovering the democracy, the re-use of many manufacturing spaces can contributed decisively to the urban renovation. Nowadays, there is the risk of ending up with a 'tabula rasa' of the industrial landscapes of more interest than the city has left, in damage of their own renovation: the city of knowledge cannot become a banalized city. (...) If Ripoll would be the cradle of the millenarian-Catalunya, than Poblenou has been the cradle and the creation of contemporary Catalunya.

Can Ricart is a key piece of the Barcelonian industrial patrimony of the eight hundred, along with Can Batlló in Urgell street and Can Batlló de la Bordeta. (...) The disappearance of the Can Ricart industry complex, the greatest and oldest that in Poblenou has left, will not only affect the contemporary patrimony of Catalunya, but also means the loss of a decisive opportunity to give positive imput to a semi-industrial district, his complexity and integration in the city, and less understood by the real estate interest. The only belonging is capital in the future evolution of the Barcelona model. Can Ricart-Parc Central, vestibule of the patrimonial axis of Pere IV, halfway between the Glorias and the Forum, is a unique place to try out a new area of centralisation of another urban style, productivity, culture and citizen; a pole of activity and urban life for the city and the his visitors.” From the public letter to the president of the Catalonian Government 'A metropolis without history, a country without identity' by Fòrum de la Ribera del Besòs. April 14, 2005

“Today, neighbors of Poblenou, we return to go out to show our rejection and indignation towards the set of aggressions that are taking against the social weave, the historical patrimony and the identity of our district. The necessary modernization of the city cannot be done against the citizens. The present city-planning policy is very questionable and there is not a true industrial policy neither of cultural patrimony. Financiers, constructors, real estate, with the support of the administrations, are planning our future having exclusively in account their own economic interests, while they ignore the opinion and the necessities of the district and the city.” Out of the Manifest 'Defensem Poblenou, salvem Can Ricart'. April 28, 2005

“Because this new area of concentration as proposed, must also be new in his definition, the incorporating, mixture, activities of different ranks of attraction (local, municipal, metropolitan) and of different types (productive, commercial and services, cultural). We could say that we are speaking about a new center in Poblenou, of the century XXI, a new style of concentration that is made in time, diferent uses and history. Something that is impossible to create, and pretent with artificial comercial centers such as Glorias and Diagonal Mar (neighbors of Can Ricart).

(...) a suspension of any teardown and any rubbish or intervention in the set of Can Ricart is asked for, and to allow the institutions (City council of Barcelona, Generalitat de Catalunya) a careful study that takes into account the possibility of conciliating different objectives, all maintaining this great set of the century XIX, urban, economic, social and the future cultural capital for Poblenou and as a fundamental element of the industrial patrimony of Barcelona, of Catalunya and Europe.” Out of “Nou Projecte CAN RICART – PARC CENTRAL”, an alternative plan for the site Can Ricart. Translated by Tom


related context
>
shrinking cities. "a general pattern of our civilization." 2002 - 2005
> pervasive and locative arts network. january 28, 2005.
> the green into our urban open spaces. "ecological and social diversity of urban landscapes." december 10, 2004
> parc central park. "an emerging urban kitchen." may-september, 2004.
> creative cities: the rise of the creative class. "on the importance of place in the knowledge-driven economy." june 10, 2002.
> sub-cultural urban districts: cities and culture. "overlapping of the geographies of production and consumption." may 29, 2002.

imago
>
time, complexity and history
for a new millenium urban space

sonic flow
>
can ricart [stream]
can ricart [download]

| permaLink

 
friday :: june 3, 2005
   
 
voyager enters solar system's final frontier

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered the solar system's final frontier, a vast, turbulent expanse where the Sun's influence ends and the solar wind crashes into the thin gas between stars.

"Voyager has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space, as it begins exploring the solar system's final frontier," said Dr. Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which built and operates Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2.

In November 2003, the Voyager team announced it was seeing events unlike any encountered before in the mission's then 26-year history. The team believed the unusual events indicated Voyager 1 was approaching a strange region of space, likely the beginning of this new frontier called the termination shock region. There was controversy at that time over whether Voyager 1 had indeed encountered the termination shock or was just getting close.

"The consensus of the team now is that Voyager 1, at 8.7 billion miles from the Sun, has at last entered the heliosheath, the region beyond the termination shock," said Dr. John Richardson from MIT, Principal Investigator of the Voyager plasma science investigation.

The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the Sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from its average speed of 300 to 700 km per second (700,000 - 1,500,000 miles per hour) and becomes denser and hotter.

The strongest evidence that Voyager 1 has passed through the termination shock into the slower, denser wind beyond is its measurement of an increase in the strength of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind and the inferred decrease in its speed. Physically, this must happen whenever the solar wind slows down, as it does at the termination shock. Consider a highway with moderate traffic. If something makes the drivers slow down, say a puddle of water, the cars pile up - their density increases. In the same way, the density (intensity) of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind will increase if the solar wind slows down. In December 2004, Voyager 1 observed the magnetic field strength increasing by a factor of two and a half, as expected when the solar wind slows down. The magnetic field has remained at these high levels from December until now. An increase in the magnetic field intensity of about 1.7 times was seen at the time of the event announced in 2003.

"Voyager's observations over the past few years show that the termination shock is far more complicated than anyone thought," said Dr. Eric Christian, Discipline Scientist for the Sun-Solar System Connection research program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

For their original missions to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyagers were destined for regions of space far from the Sun, so each was equipped with three radioisotope thermoelectric generators to produce electrical power for the spacecraft systems and instruments. Still operating in remote, cold and dark conditions 27 years later, the Voyagers could last until 2020. >from *Voyager Enters Solar System's Final Frontier*. May 24, 2005

related context
>
world’s first solar sail spacecraft. launch set for june solstice, 2005
> birth of a black hole. for the first time, detected and pinned down the location of a short gamma-ray burst. may 11, 2005
> first image of a planet outside of our solar system. april 30, 2005
> amateurs publish the first images from the huygens probe. open source processing of images of titan, coordinated by anthony liekens. january, 2005.

imago
>
the final frontier as a new frontier?
[ original image ]


sonic flow
>
voyager [stream]
voyager [download]

| permaLink

 





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