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(03/30/10 1:40pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>GENEVA — The world’s largest atom smasher conducted its first experiments at conditions nearing those after the Big Bang, breaking its own record for high-energy collisions with proton beams crashing into each other Tuesday at three times more force than ever before.In a milestone for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, collided the beams and took measurements at a combined energy level of 7 trillion electron volts.The collisions herald a new era for researchers working on the machine in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.“That’s it! They’ve had a collision,” said Oliver Buchmueller from Imperial College in London as people closely watched monitors.In a control room, scientists erupted with applause when the first successful collisions were confirmed. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links to witness the new record, which surpasses the 2.36 TeV CERN recorded last year.Dubbed the world’s largest scientific experiment, researchers hope the machine can approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.Tuesday’s initial attempts at collisions were unsuccessful because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine. That meant the protons had to be “dumped” from the collider and new beams had to be injected.The atmosphere at CERN was tense considering the collider’s launch with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008. Nine days later, the project was sidetracked when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground.It cost $40 million to repair and improve the machine. Since its restart in November 2009, the collider has performed almost flawlessly and given scientists valuable data. It quickly eclipsed the next largest accelerator — the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the tunnel, the coldest place in the universe, at a couple of degrees above absolute zero. CERN used powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles.“Experiments are collecting their first physics data — historic moment here!” a scientist tweeted on CERN’s official Twitter account.“Nature does it all the time with cosmic rays (and with higher energy) but this is the first time this is done in Laboratory!” said another tweet.When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.The experiments will come over the objections of some people who fear they could eventually imperil Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people on it, saying that any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly without causing any damage.Bivek Sharma, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, said the images of the first crashed proton beams were beautiful.“It’s taken us 25 years to build,” he said. “This is what it’s for. Finally the baby is delivered. Now it has to grow.”
(03/22/06 4:58am)
GENEVA -- The human death toll from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu reached 103 after five people died from the disease in Azerbaijan, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.\nWHO said seven of 11 patients from Azerbaijan had tested positive for H5N1 in samples checked at a major laboratory in Britain. Five of those cases were fatal.\nThe sources of infection were still under investigation, but officials suspected a connection to the feathers of dead swans.\n"The majority of cases have occurred in females between the ages of 15 and 20 years," WHO said. "In this community, the defeathering of birds is a task usually undertaken by adolescent girls and young women."\nSo far, there was no indication of direct exposure to dead or diseased poultry in some of the cases. That has been the usual source of exposure for humans who caught bird flu.\nHealth officials fear the virus could mutate into a version that could easily be transmitted between people, potentially triggering a global pandemic.\nMeanwhile, tests confirmed that the H5N1 strain has spread to Pakistan, the government said.\nThe Agriculture Ministry said British lab tests were conducted on chickens from two farms in northwestern Pakistan. The deadly virus was detected in each, supporting Pakistani lab tests, the ministry said.\nThe H5N1 virus has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003. It has spread more recently with migrating birds to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
GENEVA -- U.N. relief workers along Afghanistan's borders are bracing for an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians if the United States begins a military assault, the top U.N. refugee official said Sunday. \n"We base our planning on a worst-case scenario, which would mean an additional flow of 1.5 million people going out of Afghanistan to Pakistan and Iran," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers told The Associated Press. \nThe United States suspects alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks, and has threatened to punish Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers for providing him sanctuary. \nFearing strikes, Afghans, who are already suffering from famine and civil war, have begun to leave. Pakistan and Iran, already overwhelmed by 3.5 million Afghan refugees over the past two decades, have closed their borders. Still, between 10,000 and 20,000 new refugees have managed to slip across the border by small roads and other remote paths, Lubbers said. The two governments "understand the humanitarian situation" and are talking to UNHCR about temporary provisions for a massive outflow as long as it is confined to the border area, preferably on the Afghan side, he said. U.N. officials also hope to persuade other countries to do more "burden sharing," the former Dutch prime minister said at his Geneva headquarters. \nBut not knowing where or how the United States might retaliate for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon makes preparations for the outflow of refugees extremely difficult, Lubbers said. He said he hoped any attacks will be kept proportional and "shaped in such a way that the humanitarian alliance is effective and we can provide what has to be provided." \nUNHCR has made contingency plans to remove its staff from Pakistan and Iran as well in case of reprisals following any U.S. attacks. Like other relief organizations, UNHCR has pulled all of its international staff out of Afghanistan and is trying to figure out how to help those too weak or too poor to flee. \n"You cannot afford to leave the very poor in Afghanistan without assistance, basically food," Lubbers said. "We have to find ways and means in that situation." \nHumanitarian donations from government have begun to come but much more will be needed, Lubbers said. \n"I trust money will come," he said. "It's a bit shameful that you need an attack on America to produce generosity"
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
GENEVA -- The United States accused Iraq, North Korea and four other countries on Monday of building germ-warfare arsenals, and said it worried one of them might be helping Osama bin Laden in his quest for biological weapons. \n"We are concerned that he (bin Laden) could have been trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability, possibly with support from a state," said John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control. \nThe existence of Iraq's program is "beyond dispute," he said, while stopping short of making a direct linkage to bin Laden. \nNor did he say whether any of the five other countries he cited as being at various stages of germ-warfare development, Libya, Syria, Iran and Sudan as well as North Korea, are suspected of trying to supply bin Laden. \nBolton spoke at the start of a three-week conference to review 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which has been ratified by 144 countries. \nIraq immediately rejected the allegation it was violating the global ban on germ warfare and said the United States was making the claim as a pretext for an attack on Baghdad. \nCondoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, left open the possibility that Iraq could become a target in Bush's war on terrorism. \n"We do not need the events of September 11 to tell us that (Saddam Hussein) is a very dangerous man who is a threat to his own people, a threat to the region and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction," she said. \nAnthrax-tainted letters that have led to the deaths of four people in the United States have focused attention on the threat of biological warfare. \nBolton said U.S. officials had yet to determine the source of the anthrax attacks but noted that bin Laden has said he wanted to obtain weapons of mass destruction and use them against the United States. \n"We are concerned that he could have been trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability, possibly with support from a state," Bolton said. \nBut he said the United States was "not prepared, at this time, to comment whether rogue states may have assisted" bin Laden, who is suspected of organizing the Sept. 11. attacks. \nBolton told reporters "an unfortunate number" of countries are violating the treaty and have operational biological weapons programs. \nAfter careful consideration the United States had decided to name only six and would "be contacting privately" the others, he said. \nAs well as Iraq, North Korea has an "extremely disturbing" biological weapons program, Bolton said. \nNorth Korea could likely "produce sufficient quantities of biological agents for military purposes within weeks of a decision to do so," he said. \nThe United States also is "quite concerned" about Syria, Iran, Libya and Sudan, Bolton said. \nIran's ambassador to the conference, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, called the U.S. allegations "baseless." The United States made the accusations to sow discord into attempts to strengthen the treaty, he said. \nLibya also denied having a biological weapons program. \nLast summer, the United States shocked other treaty countries by rejecting six years of negotiations on a verification system to strengthen the 1972 treaty. \nBolton said the proposed enforcement mechanism, described in 210-page document, was "hopelessly defective" and would not be resurrected. \nWashington says the system would fail to stop bioterrorism, could expose weaknesses in U.S. biodefense plans, would not prevent countries from obtaining "dual use" technology that could be applied to making biological weapons and could reveal legitimate commercial secrets of U.S. pharmaceutical companies. \nThe United States has the world's largest biotech industry. \nBolton said U.S. officials would rather set up a mechanism under which the U.N. secretary-general would order inspections when violations are suspected. \nHe said it was a "fact of life" if that meant the United States and four other Security Council countries with veto power could keep themselves from being inspected. \nHowever, other countries, including Japan and the 15-nation European Union, said a binding commitment would be necessary if the treaty is to be effective. \nChinese Ambassador Sha Zukang said strengthening the treaty was "one of the most effective ways to combat" bioterrorism. \nBolton said a better approach would be if each country adopted national legislation to make violations of the treaty a criminal offense. Individuals accused of such violations should be subject to extradition to other countries, he said.
(07/25/02 8:23pm)
GENEVA - Extreme poverty has been declining in Asia over the past 25 years but has grown steadily in Africa's poorest countries, where nearly 65 percent of the people now live on less than a dollar a day, a U.N. report said Tuesday.\nAsian countries have been able to improve the lot of many of their citizens by economic growth, but the poorest African countries find themselves "caught in an international poverty trap," said the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.\nThe agency's 285-page Least Developed Countries Report is the most comprehensive study yet of poverty in the world's 49 poorest countries, said UNCTAD Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero.\n"We have seen the number of people living on less than one dollar a day in those countries doubling over the last 30 years to reach 307 million people," he said.\nThe agency examined poverty in the poorest countries, adjusting prices to the buying power of a U.S. dollar in 1985.\nIn the African countries studied, 55.8 percent of the population lived below the line in the 1960s. The percentage grew until it was 64.9 percent in the period 1995-9, the annual study said.\nIn Asia, however, the percentage dropped from 35.5 percent in the 1965-9 period to 23 percent by the end of the 1990s.\nCongo fares the worst, with 90.5 percent below the line. In Asia, Myanmar, also known as Burma, was much the worst, at 52.3 percent.\nPoverty is so widespread in some countries that there is little margin for investment to stimulate the growth that could benefit many of the poorest, Ricupero said.\nThe study found that even people earning minuscule amounts are often able to save something, but it is so little that the savings can easily be wiped out by disasters or setbacks.\nFurthermore, Ricupero said, many of the countries classed by the United Nations as "least developed" rely heavily on the export of commodities whose values been in a long decline.\n"Globalization," which lowers national barriers to trade and investment and makes corporate takeovers easier, "is tightening the international poverty trap" partly because of the way it is has dramatically reduced the number of firms in world commodity markets, the report said.\nHarvard economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, a U.N. adviser on development, said in New York that the report underscores the need for an international partnership of trade and aid.\n"Too many of the impoverished countries are stuck in a trap of poverty that they will not get out with their own resources," said Sachs, who will shortly become the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.\nSachs praised the report.\n"The weight of what is in here is wonderful when it says we need a comprehensive strategy that is aid and trade, not this rhetoric that it's trade not aid."\nPrevious international attempts to force belt-tightening on poor countries failed "and it left hundreds of millions of people extremely vulnerable," he said.\nSachs was also critical of the policy direction of the richest countries, the United States in particular, which he said had targeted its aid since Cold War days to allies.\n"In general the least developed countries get a very small share of aid, which is amazing because they are the ones who really need it," Sachs said.\nThe goal should be "targeted assistance" in education, against AIDS, and promoting clean water, he said.
(10/31/01 4:23am)
GENEVA -- The U.N. health agency said Tuesday that it fears there may be an outbreak of a deadly form of malaria in eastern Afghanistan. \nThere have been an increased number of cases of falciparum malaria, one of the most dangerous forms of the disease because it can infect the brain, said Gregory Hartl, spokesman for the World Health Organization. \nThough no outbreak has yet been confirmed, "there are higher numbers than usual compared with last year," Loretta Hieber-Girardet of WHO's emergency and humanitarian unit said. \nOctober-November typically is the seasonal high point for malaria in the region, Hartl said. The cases have been found in the Nangrahar province near the eastern city of Jalalabad, he said. \nWHO has been sending anti-malarial supplies to two hospitals in Jalalabad. Hieber-Girardet said it appeared there was sufficient medicine on hand unless there is a widespread outbreak. \nHartl said 269 children were hospitalized during September in the pediatric ward of Jalalabad Public Health Hospital, more than half with serious conditions, including malaria in the brain. Patients have already died of malaria in Jalalabad.