| Stranded whale to be blown up in harbour Authorities will this afternoon use an explosive charge to euthanase a 9.5-metre humpback whale stranded on Western Australia's south coast. abc.net.au |
The invisible casualties of Afghanistan | Clancy Sigal Improvised explosive devices – IEDs – are the Taliban's weapon of choice. But many victims don't even know they're maimed"This is a new beast." – Dr Alisa Gean, a traumatic brain injury specialist in treating soldiersThe IRA tried to murder me on three separate occasions. Nothing personal, just that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Provos' deadly "mainland campaign" against Brits took the form of planting IEDs, improvised homemade bombs, in central London where I lived. In Picadilly, shrapnel from a device inside a letter box grazed my head; the same month, a McDonald's I walked past on Oxford Street blew up; and still later, outside a Sloane Square pub, glass shattered at my feet after an explosion. Despite my fellow Londoners' show of sang-froid ("Oh I say, is that briefcase under the bar stool for the past hour untended?"), such an intense level of exposure and vulnerability left me shaken.  The Provos had resorted to the "poor man's artillery" of IEDs because they were outnumbered and outgunned by the British army and Ulster constabulary. How else were they to achieve their political agenda other than by indiscriminately killing British civilians? IEDs are made by people who don't care who they murder.  I read Afghanistan casualty lists almost every night, and my rough calculation seems to agree with the Pentagon's: that IEDs – jerry-built, cleverly-disguised roadside bombs – cost way more American (and Afghan) lives than snipers, mortars or RPGs. According to Nato and the department of defence, despite General Petraeus's soothing assertion that the incidents are "flattening out", since 2007, the number of Taliban IEDs has increased nearly 400%, and IED kills by that same 400% and IED-crippled troops by 700%. At least 30% of combat soldiers, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from IED blast waves – without suffering a scratch.   But percentages don't bleed. For yourself, look up the casualty lists from your own state or district, add up the IED "kinetic events", and study, really look at, the names and photographs of the dead soldiers who suddenly seem part of our own families. The harsh lesson is that no foreign invading army like ours can beat a "backward" native people who, for a few dollars and in five minutes, can build a dish pan, copper wire, a left-over 155mm Soviet shell and a bit of Semtex or C-4 and fertiliser into a killer IED hidden in potholes, among garbage and even inside animals.    It's terrifyingly easy for a soldier to get blasted apart by these devices. You don't even have to step on a pressure plate any more, just walk by an innocent-looking rock and – bang! – you're shredded by remote control. Increasingly, these things are set off by text messages from afar. Jihadists may be typecast as primitive "ragheads" on TV news, but they have learned to be thoughtful and high-tech assassins. There are over 5,000 jihadist websites where killers can share information – they refine their techniques faster than we can counteract them. In his latest Oval Office speech, President Obama, in paying anodyne tribute to the troops, glancingly referred to "the signature wounds of today's wars, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI)". Let's pause a moment on TBI, where a visible wound may not show but the person's brain has been shaken as in a Mixmaster by the faster-than-speed-of-sound blast of an IED explosion. No helmet or body armour yet invented can protect from its peculiar one-two punch that causes, on the battlefield or much later, microscopic cellular and metabolic damage, leading to blindness, deafness, memory loss, premature ageing and destruction of neurons that cannot be replaced. As the pediatric surgeon and Vietnam veteran Ronald Glasser says, "the symbol (of the new IED-dominated battles) is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward" and neurological unit. Strangely, army commanders are extremely reluctant to award Purple Hearts for IED wounds, which can be hard for combat medics to diagnose in the heat of battle. Even skilled field-hospital emergency doctors may miss the insidious danger signs. If a soldier looks unscratched, just a little dazed, military culture demands he or she be shipped back to fight again. Troopers themselves may be reluctant to report symptoms, fearing career damage or being seen as a goof-off.   Once back home, soldiers very often have to struggle for treatment. Congress is eager to vote the Pentagon $20bn for JIEDDO, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Organisation – who thinks up these names? – whose own boss, general Michael Oates, confesses is only marginally useful. But when it comes to money for medical research into the little-known effects of TBI, the government drags its feet. At the moment, despite evidence that 30% of our battlefield casualties are bomb-concussion cases, the military and the veterans administration make it as hard as possible to get help. President Obama boasts that "because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to go on the offence" in a deteriorating Afghanistan, which translates into more visible and invisible wounded. Soldiers lose their lives, arms, legs, eyes, even faces. We can see those terrible wounds. But concussed, TBI-suffering soldiers also lose parts of their minds sometimes without even knowing it. Until they get home and can't remember their daughter's name.US militaryAfghanistanHealthNeuroscienceUnited StatesTalibanMiddle EastClancy Sigalguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
NZealand rescuers save 14 whales from stranded pod By 2010-09-25T00:51:12ZWELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Rescuers who battled exhaustion and darkness succeeded in saving 14 pilot whales from a pod of 74 that stranded on a remote New Zealand beach.... hosted.ap.org |
US, China blame each other for slow climate talks By TINI TRAN 2010-10-09T12:47:02ZTIANJIN, China (AP) -- Modest progress at U.N. climate talks Saturday was overshadowed by a continuing deadlock between China and the United States, clouding prospects for a major climate conference in Mexico in less than two months' time.... hosted.ap.org |
Life through a high powered lens: the Nikon Small World awards Every year, scientists enter their pictures in Nikon's Small World competition for photography on a microscopic scale. The results are never less than stunning, writes Robin McKieSmall but perfectly formed, some of the titchiest wonders of the natural world have been revealed in their full glory by groups of chemists, biologists, materials researchers and botanists working in laboratories round the world. These are the winners, and short-listed finalists, of one of science's longest-running imaging competitions: the Nikon Small World awards. This year, scientists from 63 countries sent in entries for the competition which this year is celebrating its 35th anniversary. These microscopic submissions are not merely judged for their informational content and their technical proficiency but for their visual impact. A selection of some of the most striking are displayed here.These works, selected by competition judges, include close-up photographs of iridescent crystals of the mineral cacoxenite; a starfish embryo; an extinct marine diatom; a butterfly egg nestling among the buds of a flower; trout alevin; and a caddis fly larva head. This year's first prize went to the image, shown at the centre of this article, of a close-up view of the heart of a mosquito. Taken by Jonas King, of the biological sciences department of Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, the image involved the use of a technique known as fluorescence microscopy which exploits the fact that certain substances can be made to emit one kind of light while being bathed in a different form of radiation. Typically the emitted radiation is of longer wavelength than that of the light shone on the specimen. For example, many minerals, crystals, resins and organic compounds emit light when bathed in ultraviolet radiation. By carefully tailoring the radiation shone on their sample, the Vanderbilt team were able to create a photograph that shows the delicate traceries of tissue inside a mosquito's heart.http://www.nikonsmallworld.com/gallery/year/2010/83PhotographyRobin McKieguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |