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thursday, 10 september, 2015
arts
‘can you imagine? cotton supplied by Islamic state’ PARIS
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AGENCIES
slamic state (is) militants have got their hands on syrian cotton production, worrying some manufacturers even though there appears little risk for now that is-linked clothes could end up on the catwalk or in someone’s closet in Paris. after seizing oil and grain fields to fund their offensive, is jihadists have also taken control of “three-quarters of the production of cotton” in syria, which was a relatively important exporter before the war, said Jean-charles Brisard, a specialist on the financing of extremist groups. syrian cotton is an issue at the vaunted fashion houses in Paris. a buyer for haute couture collections at a top label said on condition of anonymity that they have become very vigilant over the origin of their fabrics. “Our regular supplier sent
us bolts of cloth without a tag of origin, and we asked our workshops not to touch them until we had all the required certificates,” said the buyer. “can you imagine? cotton supplied by Daesh,” she added, using an arabic acronym for the is group. companies are keenly aware of the impact of a PR disaster in the clothing in-
dustry after the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1,138 people. Foreign labels that had sub-contracted work were accused of failing to push for safe labour conditions. The key concern with syrian conflict cotton is that it could make its way to international markets via Turkish whole-
salers buying it at cut-rate prices from is fighters desperate for cash. is-controlled parts of syria are located close to Turkey, the EU’s number two supplier of fabric and third for clothing, according to data compiled by the UiT, a French textile trade association. Turkey, a net importer of cotton for clothes manufacturing, includes among its main suppliers “the United states, Greece, Uzbekistan, Egypt ... and historically syria,” said Emmanuelle Butaudstubbs, head of the UiT. syrian cotton exports to Turkey rose in the 1990s and early 2000s, but have fallen since 2008. according to industry insiders questioned by aFP, is has until just recently been sending to Turkey raw cotton grown in the Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor regions that account for a third of syrian output. IS SellIng raw cotton: But Turkey has now officially refused to accept this cotton ─ for undisclosed reasons
but possibly due to pressure from Washington, according to these industry sources. is militants have begun to sell the raw cotton to intermediaries who transport it to processing centres located in areas under the control of syrian President Bashar al-assad’s regime. Processing and export of cotton has long been a state monopoly in syria. Due to the conflict “the situation in syria is very fluid and it is difficult to have a precise picture of what is actually happening on the ground,” said Jose sette, executive director of the international cotton advisory committee (icac), a group that brings together cotton producing and consuming countries. The four-year conflict has certainly led to a drop in cotton production. if before the war syria was producing around 600,000 tonnes per year, that has dropped to 70,000, of which 3,000 is officially exported, according to icac estimates.
Your mood can affect your ability to see color COURTESY IFL SCIENCE
TWO BOYS ESCAPE KINDERGARTEN TO GO BUY A JAGUAR COURTESY UNILAND Two five-year-old Russian lads formulated a great escape from kindy yesterday and set off on a mission to buy a luxury Jaguar. During a supervised walk around the grounds of the prison, i mean kindergarten, the two boys broke off from the pack of tiny tots and used an elaborate tunnel system to help them escape and go on to freely roam the city of magnitogorsk. it is unknown if the boys previously watched The shawshank Redemption, but it is confirmed that they had prepared their escape for several days by using sandpit spades to dig under a fence. i am curious as to whether or not morgan Freeman, the guy who knows how to get stuff in shawshank, provided said spades. Kindergarten staff noticed the boys were missing and discovered their tunnel after half an hour. The boys walked a mile to a car showroom selling luxury cars. a female driver noticed them and asked what they were up to. The lads buckled and truthfully told her they busted out of kindy to come and buy a Jaguar. instead of financing the mission, the female driver responsibly got the police involved. in all seriousness now the head of the preschool has said that this is considered a very serious violation and the supervisor in charge has been fired. The children’s parents did not submit any complaint against the kindergarten.
There is an irony to referring to low moods as “the blues”, a new study has found, because sadness actually interferes with our ability to see color, particularly shades of blue. Our emotions are known to be able to affect our processing of visual information, including contrast sensitivity. The University of Rochester’s christopher Thorstenson wondered if this would influence our color perception. “We were already deeply familiar with how often people use color terms to describe common phenomena, like mood, even when these concepts seem unrelated,” said Thorstenson, who led the study, in a statement. “We thought that maybe a reason these metaphors emerge was because there really was a connection between mood and perceiving colors in a different way.” Thorstenson had 127 undergraduate students watch a randomly assigned film clip, and then shown 48 faintly colored patches and asked to classify them as red, yellow, green or blue. The film had no affect on red-green perception, but those assigned a clip previously verified to induce sadness were less able to identify colors on the blue-yellow axis than those shown a funny film. Thorstenson conducted a second study, this time with 130 subjects, comparing the effect of the sad clip to a neutral test film. Not only did this show that it was the sadness that affects color perception, rather than amusement enhancing it, but it added support to the initial study’s
reliability, valuable in the light of recent findings on the replicability of psychology papers. The findings from both experiments were published in Psychological science. The fact that effect was only observed for certain colors also gave Thorstenson confidence that the results are not a result of sad participants being less motivated to engage with the experiment. “We were surprised by how specific the effect was, that color was only impaired along the blue-yellow axis,” he added in the statement. in a quest to explain the finding, the researchers turned to work showing that blue color perception relies on dopamine, the neurotransmitter well known for its importance in our reward systems. The nervous system uses dopamine in a wide variety of roles, which is why the shortage induced by Parkinson’s disease has such widespread effects. The neurotransmitter is involved in
signalling in the retina of the eye. it seems possible that at least part of the reason for this is to transmit observations of color. “We did not predict this specific finding, although it might give us a clue to the reason for the effect in neurotransmitter functioning,” said Thorstenson in the statement. The link to dopamine could explain other circumstances where blue-yellow perception is affected, including aDHD and depression of a more sustained form than that produced by watching sad bits from the lion King. it has only recently been revealed how words for blue are relatively new in human languages compared to other colors, with indications that previously people did not perceive those things we now see as blue the same way we do. Whether this is connected to these findings provides an intriguing avenue for future research.
‘The man with ears of steel’ sets Guinness World Record for pulling airplane with his lugholes COURTESY MIRROR some might say Johnny strange is living up to his last name - because he has just entered the Guinnes Book of Records for pulling a huge airplane with his ears. Johnny, 26, used chains through pierced holes in his ears to drag a cessna 172-P weighing 677.8kg for 20.4 metres at North Weald airfield, Essex. No wonder he is been dubbed ‘The man with the ears of steel’. He will appear in the 2016 Guinness Book of Records, released tomorrow. But being featured in the book is nothing new for Johnny, an escapologist and sideshow performer who now has eight Guinness World Records to his name. He said, “i started off at the age of ten in Blackburn, lancashire. at first i juggled balls, then clubs and went on to knives, fire sticks
and now its chainsaws. Preparing for the plane pull was tough. i am not going into detail but i have to stretch my ears and create tough scar tissue so they don’t rip. i am always delighted when i get another Guinness World Record and being featured in the book never gets old for me, the only problem is i am starting to run out of places to hang up my certificates now. i am a believer of the impossible; i have always been interested in the unusual and the bizarre. it is the obscure things that skew the perception of normality that really fascinate me.” simon lowman, of The North Weald Flying Group, said, “in all my years flying i have seen some extraordinary things but i have never seen an airplane moved like that. i am surprised he didn’t rip his ears off. These planes aren’t easy to move at the best of times
with the engine running. i was fully expecting to have to get the super glue out afterwards to stick his ears back on.” Johnny’S other guInneSS world recordS are: 1. Heaviest weight lifted by pierced ears; he lifted 14.9kg (32 lb 13.5 oz) off the floor using piercings in his ear lobes. 2. most apples held in the mouth and chainsawed in 30 secs; he cut eight apples out of his own mouth with a petrol chainsaw in one minute. 3. most apples chainsawed in someone else’s mouth in 1 min; he cut 12 apples out of his assistants mouth with a petrol
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chainsaw in one minute. 4. Time to break 16 concrete blocks on the body in 1 min; he managed to individually break 16 concrete blocks with a sledge hammer on the stomach of his assistant in 30.4 seconds. 5. most animal traps released on the body in 1 min; he managed to release 6 animal traps onto his hands and arms in one minute. 6. most melons chopped in half on somebody’s stomach; he managed to individually chop 10 watermelons in half on the stomach of his assistant in 30 seconds. He used a samurai sword while they lay on a bed of nails.
EngInEErIng studEnt wakEs up to dIscovEr hE dEsIgnEd EntIrE planE whIlE drunk COURTESY UNILAND We have done some pretty crazy things while under the influence but one student in the U.S. has taken drunken shenanigans to a whole new level. Mark, a mechanical engineering student from Michigan Tech University, reportedly managed to design an entire aircraft while smashed. He has no recollection of the incident but, luckily for us, his roommate and fellow student, Keith Fraley was there to witness the whole incredible episode. On Sunday, he tweeted a picture of Mark’s designs, with the caption, “So my roommate came back last night and doesn’t remember designing an entire fucking airplane”. The tweet has since gone viral, but Mark has chosen to keep his identity a secret so as not to jeopardise his future career prospects. Keith, however, opened up about the bizarre evening in an interview with the Guardian, explaining how Mark returned home in a drunken sway at around 11.30pm after necking a ton of rum and vodka-mixed drinks. Apparently he made a beeline for his textbooks and, a couple of hours later, he re-emerged to tell Keith all about his designed ekranoplan craft (a high speed aircraft that floats above the water) and the calculations behind it, sounding a bit like “a slurred robot”. “He fell asleep in his chair and woke up about an hour later basically questioning his sanity because of the immense amount of work that was in front of him, with no memory of his motivation to do it.” added Keith Oh, and even though he does not have any recollection of coming up with the idea, after reading over his designs in a sober state, Mark confirmed that it looks as though his invention would work, so he is now going to try and put it into practice! This puts us all to shame. When we come home drunk, we just eat fast food and watch Family Guy. At this rate, this lad will down some whisky and figure out the cure for cancer!