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Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Science
Astronauts go spacewalking to hang station shields Associated Press Writer
hauled up by the now-retired space shuttles. Armor is needed to reinforce the Russian segment, which unlike the U.S. compartments, arrived without the proper protection already in place. Such shielding is crucial given the booming threat of space junk; even a tiny scrap can inflict damage. A 46-foot crane, meanwhile, needed to be moved from one spot on the Russian portion of the space station to another, in advance of the arrival of a new chamber a year or two from now. The astronauts used a companion crane for the job. And the 20-pound, 1.7-footdiameter research satellite hurled by Padalka will orbit for about three months before burning up in the atmosphere, allowing Russian engineers to track its movement as part of a study on space junk.
AP Photo/NASA
In this still image made from video provided by NASA, a Russian cosmonaut installs shields to protect against zooming pieces of junk to improve the safety of his orbiting home Monday, Aug. 20, 2012.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Agence France-Presse
DENPASAR - Australian drug trafficker Schapelle Corby is eligible to file for parole next month, after receiving another six-month remission of her jail term, Indonesian officials said. of Bali’s Kerobokan prison where Corby is imprisoned, said that Corby would be eligible to file for parole next month. “With the six-month cut Corby will have served two-thirds of her sentence by September. That is a condition to file for parole,” he told AFP, adding that his office would help submit the request to the justice ministry. “As far as I know, there is no significant obstacle for her to file for parole. Everything is running well. But it’s the Justice ministry which will decide whether or not she will be released on parole,” he said. If the ministry approves the request, Corby will still have to remain in the country until completing her sentence, Wiratna added.
FOTO: CORBY.JPG
Corby during her trial in Denpasar, Bali Island. Australian drug trafficker Schapelle Corby is eligible to file for parole next month, after receiving another six-month remission of her jail term, Indonesian officials said.
Visitors throng at zoo during Eid holiday Antara
Early heart death raises disease risk for family
Associated Press Writer
MILWAUKEE — Paul Ryan works out and watches his diet, but a new study shows that clean living can only go so far to help people like the vice presidential candidate overcome a strong family history of heart disease. The study of 4 million people — the largest ever on heart risks that run in families — found that having a close relative die young of cardiovascular disease doubles a person’s odds of developing it by age 50. This risk was independent of other factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes, and was even higher if more than one close family member had died young. Ryan has said his father, grandfather and great-grandfather all died of heart attacks in their 50s, and the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman has cited that as the reason for his devotion to exercise. “I’d sure like to see him in my clinic,” said Dr. Patrick McBride, a preventive cardiology specialist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Heart attacks can result from genetic factors, an abnormal heart rhythm or a heart muscle problem
— not just clogged arteries from poor health habits, said McBride, who had no role in this study but has published other work on the topic. “What’s important for anybody with that kind of story is that they sit down with their physician and get a very thorough, detailed family history and try to identify what factors may be present in the family — not just on their own think they can fix their problem,” McBride said. “Exercise alone won’t obviate this risk.” It’s not known if Ryan has had such an evaluation, although McBride noted that as a congressman, Ryan has excellent insurance and access to care. A Mitt Romney campaign spokesman said Ryan was not available for an interview on his health, and did not answer questions about whether Ryan is taking medicines for heart risk factors such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. In an email message, the spokesman, Brendan Buck, said Ryan has never smoked, “works out five times a week, eats healthy, gets regular checkups, avoids sweets and limits alcohol consumption.” The Wisconsin congressman joked “my veins run with cheese”
when he was named Romney’s running mate, but it is clear that he takes the health of his arteries seriously. NBC News correspondent Luke Russert recently described a January 2010 conversation when Ryan asked about Russert’s father, “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert, who died of heart disease at age 58 in 2008. Ryan urged Luke Russert to increase the cardiovascular level of his workouts and commiserated about the bad aftertaste of fish oil supplements, which some people take to try to ward off heart disease, the younger Russert wrote on an NBC blog. Ryan’s family history of heart disease “is dramatic,” and his efforts to modify whatever risks he can control is “very wise,” said the leader of the new study, Dr. Mattis Ranthe, a scientist at the Danish Ministry of Health. The study involved 4 million people from Denmark, which has detailed medical registries on families dating to 1949 because of universal health care. Researchers zeroed in on people who had developed cardiovascular disease, such as clogged arteries, heart failure, a rhythm problem or trouble with a valve, by age 50.
Toddlers Show Less Sympathy for Whiners
Toddlers seem to know the difference between a whiner and somebody who is justifiably upset, and the young children often show less sympathy for crybabies, a new study shows. For the research, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, studied 24 girls and 24 boys, ages 36 months to 39 months, as they each interacted with two adults. During the interactions, one of the adults would show he was upset by frowning, whimpering or pouting. In each case, the adult was either reacting to something that would cause reasonable distress or overreacting to something much less serious. These situations included one adult dropping a toy-box lid on another adult’s hand (causing justified distress) or one adult getting his sleeve caught on the
toy-box lid (causing an unjustified tantrum). In another pair of situations, one adult found extra marbles and did not share them with the other adult or one adult shared six marbles equally. The researchers found that the children showed concern for the adults who got upset over a real harm or injustice. The kids even showed some concern for those adults later when they got upset over an unknown cause, the American Psychological Association (APA) explained in a statement. “The study provides the first evidence that 3-year-olds can evaluate just how reasonable another person’s distressed reaction is to a particular incident or situation, and this influences whether they are concerned enough to try to do something to help,” Max Planck Institute researcher Robert Hepach said in the APA statement.
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Corby can file for parole next month
Corby, who received a 20-year jail sentence in 2005 for smuggling 4.1 kilos (nine pounds) of marijuana into the holiday island of Bali, was given a six-month remission as part of Indonesia’s Independence Day celebrations on Friday, justice minister Amir Syamsuddin said. “The Justice and Human Rights ministry has approved a six-month sentence cut for Corby today,” the minister told AFP. Corby has received several remissions that are given out annually to prisoners for good behaviour, including five years of jail time slashed in May after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono approved her request for clemency. I Gusti Ngurah Wiratna, head
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Spacewalking astronauts improved the safety of their orbiting home Monday by installing shields to protect against zooming pieces of junk. Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko hung the panels on the Russian side of the International Space Station, after moving a bulky crane and tossing overboard a small spherical satellite. The Russian spacewalking powerhouse — the two have 14 spacewalks between them — kept going even after Mission Control in Moscow advised them to take a break 3½ hours into their six-hour excursion. They surged ahead despite a late start to Monday’s spacewalk, the first at the space station in six months. A leaky valve somewhere on the Russian side forced the crew to reopen the air lock and check the seals to ensure a tight fit, before Padalka and Malenchenko could go out. Padalka assured flight controllers they were in no rush, but admitted it was “kind of boring” to wait an extra hour. The five 1-inch-thick micrometeorite debris panels were supposed to be installed during a previous spacewalk in February, but got put on hold when other work ran long. The pieces were
Bali News
International
International
FOTO ANTARA/Andika Wahyu
People spending their holiday at the zoo during Eid holiday. Around 3,000 people visited the Bali Zoo during this year’s Eid holiday, which is considerably more than the numbers of tourists who flocked to the zoo in 2011, its spokesperson Emma Kristiana Chandra said on Tuesday.
DENPASAR - Around 3,000 people visited the Bali Zoo during this year’s Eid holiday, which is considerably more than the numbers of tourists who flocked to the zoo in 2011, its spokesperson Emma Kristiana Chandra said on Tuesday. “In addition to foreign tourists, we also saw the number of domestic visitors growing sizably,” she said. Data indicates that around 3,000 domestic tourists dropped in at the zoo located in Singapadu in the Gianyar district on Sunday and Monday, which was a 25 percent jump from the 2,400 visitors that the zoo had during the same period in 2011. Most of the domestic visitors coming to the zoo were from Jakarta and Surabaya, Chandra pointed out. The zoo management had organized several outdoor activities to entertain visitors, such as feeding lions, riding elephants around the zoo and a bird show held at periodic intervals. Visitors were also excited to pose for pictures with the several wild animals that inhabit the zoo, including crocodiles, white tigers and binturongs, she noted. The zoo charges local residents US $6.3 or Rp60 thousand per person, while non-Bali dwellers are expected to pay US $7.9 or Rp75 thousand per adult and US $3.9 or Rp37 thousand per child. Meanwhile, foreign tourists are charged US $24 for adults and US $12 for children. Chandra said she expects the number of visiting tourists to swell in wake of the holiday, which has been extended to Tuesday and Wednesday.