How the world really shapes up

by VICTORIA MOORE - Last updated at 10:12am on 1st March 2007

We all know what the world looks like. But a new series of extraordinary maps shows our planet in a very different light.

Rather than defining each country by size, these computer-generated modified maps - or cartograms - redraw the globe with each country's size proportionate to its strengths, or weaknesses, in a whole series of categories.

For instance, when it comes to military spending, the U.S. appears bloated, but Africa is huge when HIV prevalence is mapped.

The cartograms were produced in a unique collaboration between the universities of Michigan in the U.S. and Sheffield. Here are images and more details on some of the most fascinating...

Alcohol Consumption (2001)

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The average Western European drinks over a third more alcohol than the average person in any other area on earth. In some places there is practically no alcohol consumption, which is why many Middle Eastern countries are not visible on this map.

Ugandans drink the most alcohol per adult, closely followed by Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and Ireland.

The map shows the proportion of worldwide alcohol drunk in 2001. It does not take population density into account, so some countries, such as Australia, are unexpectedly shrivelled, while Britain is particularly bloated even though we not in the top ten.

HIV Prevalence

The map shows the distribution of all people aged 15-49 with HIV. In 2003, the highest HIV prevalence was in Swaziland, where almost four in every ten people, were HIV positive. All ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in central and southeastern Africa.

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House Prices

The most expensive housing stock per person in the world is in Europe, the cheapest in the African regions and Southern Asia - despite taking into account that money goes further in these territories. Britain, with its non-stop housing boom, looks disproportionately large.

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Military Spending

Aa the world's biggest military spender in 2002, the U.S. appears hugely bloated in this map, taking up 45 per cent of the world's land mass. It spent $353 billion on arms, out of a world total of $789 billion.

While America spent the money, it reaped hardly any of the consequences - the U.S. shrinks to almost nothing in the map of war deaths on the right...

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War and death

In 2002, there were an estimated 172,000 war deaths worldwide, across 80 territories. The Democratic Republic of Congo (dark red) bore the brunt - 26 per cent - of the total figure.

Nine territories accounted for 70 per cent of all deaths. Burundi had the highest death rate owing to war at 1.2 people per thousand of the population.

Toy Imports

The following two maps demonstrate the passage of the world's toys from east to west. The U.S. (blue) is the world's biggest net importer of toys, followed by the UK and Europe (red). The lowest importer of toys is Africa (orange).

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Toy Exports

As the world's biggest net exporter of toys, China appears on the map like a vivid green giant, attached to the paler green Hong Kong, the second largest net exporter. Britain's once-great toy export industry has all but disappeared.

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Wealth of Nations (1500)

The big difference between 1500 and 2002 (next map) is that all that time ago, the vast bulk of the world's wealth was contained in European and Asian countries. Measured by Gross Domestic Product per person, the wealthiest regions were Eastern and Southern Asia.

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Wealth of Nations (2002)

Today, 500 years on, the money has all moved west: 46 per cent of the wealth is in North America and Western Europe. Along with Japan, these are the regions with the most purchasing power per person, while the people with the lowest purchasing power are to be found in Africa.

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Pursue pleasure: it's the natural way to do good in the world

by A.C. Grayling

Reposted from the Sunday Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1529869.ece

Claims that only religion can make you moral are misguided, writes the philosopher AC Grayling.

Nobody can have failed to notice that there is a noisy quarrel going on between religion and its opponents. The success of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion has raised the stakes between those who think religion is an important part of life, and those who see it as a hindrance to progress and truth. The different faiths, for their part, have become increasingly assertive in recent years, wanting public funding for their faith-based schools and new laws to protect them from satire and criticism.

One of the most significant aspects of the quarrel between religious and nonreligious people concerns morality. Religious people think that morals are undermined if they are not securely based on a belief in God. The more austere among them think the pursuit of pleasure and the desire for possessions have promoted selfishness and frivolity at the expense of moral principle: "the good life" has, they say, supplanted "living a life of goodness".

Is this true? Is "the good life" incompatible with a good life? Most people want pleasure, achievement and material comfort in their lives, and yet also want to live a morally "good" life: hence the success of Nick Hornby's novel How to be Good, and our enthusiasm for saving the planet. On the face of it there seems little reason why these ambitions should be inconsistent yet the prevailing view, based on religion, has been that "the good life" cannot be morally good, on the grounds that pleasure and the desire for material possessions undermine one's moral fibre — a view dear to the more conservative groups of Muslims and Christian evangelicals.

As it happens, people who seek pleasure and material comforts have often enough given religious moralists cause for concern — think of Roman banquets, Renaissance feasts and Regency excesses — but do we need religion to tell us what goodness is? For most of history people believed that human beings are quite different from the rest of nature because they possess reason and language. They unquestioningly assumed that humanity was created by God, who gave each individual an immortal soul. In medieval times humanity was seen as the central point between earth and heaven, standing at the pivot of the great chain of being that extended from the lowliest worm to God himself.

Given this view, it is no surprise that what was regarded as good was whatever would save man from his beastly physical nature and its appetites, in order to prepare him for the felicity of life after death. Pleasures and possessions were therefore dangerous, because they distracted his attention from his heavenly goal.

There is a great difference between this view and one that sees humanity as part of nature. This was what the ancient Greeks like Aristotle thought. They praised friendship, the quest for knowledge, and the appreciation of beauty, as the greatest human pleasures. The focus of their attention was this world and its benefits, and they debated intelligently about how to make the most of them.

The central part of their enjoyment of this-worldly pleasures was of course not congenial to religious minds, so it had to wait for the Renaissance to be rediscovered. The Renaissance thinkers argued that man is a part of nature, and that it is natural to celebrate what pleases the five senses — colours and tastes, scents and sensations, music and the lover's touch.

Today's science has confirmed this Renaissance intuition. We know from biology and genetics how much we are part of nature, and how much all the things that were once thought to distinguish humankind from other animals are in fact widely shared by them.

The first full realisation of this truth came with Darwin, and has since been overwhelmingly attested from a thousand different proofs. It tells us that the range of this-worldly things people find to appreciate in life and the things that give them pleasure and satisfaction are as natural to them as the desire for food and drink.

This is why there is nothing wrong with the pleasures and possessions of "the good life"; they are what people naturally seek and even need (provided they are not enjoyed at the expense of someone else, and so long as the business of acquiring them does not become an obsessive end in itself).

Contrary to the religious anxiety about "the good life", then, it is arguable that pleasures and possessions not only make life enjoyable, but they make other positive things possible too. The better things are in one's own life, the more good one can do in other people's lives. One of the best things anyone can have is successful relationships with friends, family and community. That is quite different from the mistaken picture of "the good life" as something selfish or debauched.

Here then is a way of deciding between the religious and nonreligious view of morality. The rich tradition of thought stemming from ancient Greece teaches that there is no conflict between "the good life" and a life that is morally good. The opposite view disagrees with this because it says that mankind should avoid being too much part of nature. This is the key disagreement in the debate about morality, religion and the good life, a debate still raging between the devout and the rest of us today. The question we each need to ask is: which side am I on?

Against All Gods by Anthony Grayling is published by Oberon on March 26, £8.99
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Sea level rise uncertain

clipped from www.newscientist.com Ice sheet complexity leaves sea level rise uncertain Ice shed from the giant sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland is responsible for just 12% of the current rate of global sea level rise, according to a new review. The authors emphasise that it is now clear that the ice caps are losing ice faster than it is being replenished by snowfall. But exactly why this is happening remains unknown, making it difficult to predict the extent of future sea level rises. The remaining 88% of the current rise is due to the expansion of water as it warms, and melting from mountain glaciers and ice caps outside Greenland and Antarctica. Yet the shrinking of Greenland and Antarctica remains crucial because together they hold enough water to make sea levels rise by 70 metres, submerging vast swathes of land and displacing millions. The bases of the glaciers appear to be able to slip more easily at their basethan in the past, so they slide into the sea faster.

Ice shed from the giant sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland is responsible for just 12% of the current rate of global sea level rise, according to a new review. The authors emphasise that it is now clear that the ice caps are losing ice faster than it is being replenished by snowfall. But exactly why this is happening remains unknown, making it difficult to predict the extent of future sea level rises. The remaining 88% of the current rise is due to the expansion of water as it warms, and melting from mountain glaciers and ice caps outside Greenland and Antarctica. Yet the shrinking of Greenland and Antarctica remains crucial because together they hold enough water to make sea levels rise by 70 metres, submerging vast swathes of land and displacing millions. Over the past 10 years, satellite measurements have vastly improved the quality of data detailing changes in the ice sheets, say Duncan Wingham from University College London and Andrew Shepherd from the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK. Having reviewed the latest data, the pair conclude that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute 0.35 millimetres per year to the total rate of sea level rise, estimated at 3 mm per year. This contribution is close to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest estimate of 0.41 mm from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. According to the IPCC, measurements since 1993 show that the thermal expansion of water is responsible for 1.6 mm of the annual rise and other melting glaciers and ice caps for 0.77 mm. Ice flow The satellite data have revealed how the ice sheets are losing mass. "It has become very clear over the past five years that these sheets are not losing most of their mass through melting, they are losing it because the ice is flowing into the ocean faster than the snow is replacing it," Wingham told New Scientist (see Greenland's glaciers are speeding to the ocean). The bases of the glaciers appear to be able to slip more easily at their basethan in the past, so they slide into the sea faster. And this is where uncertainties arise. In Greenland, it is possible that water from melting ice at the surface of the glaciers is boring holes through the ice sheets and lubricating their base. "It is at least possible," says Wingham, that global warming is causing this to happen now more than before. But Antarctica is much colder than Greenland, so there is no such melt-water to travel down to the base of the glaciers. "Most people don't realise that Antarctica is so cold there isn't much melting going on," Wingham told New Scientist. Whatever is causing Antarctic glaciers to flow faster than before, he says, it is not melting of their surfaces. Increased snowfall Wingham and Shepherd's review of recent research on Antarctica did find that four Antarctic glaciers that are retreating in unison share a common feature: they are all in direct contact with the sea. "Our assessment confirms that just one type of glacier in Antarctica is retreating today – those that are seated in deep submarine basins and flow directly into the oceans," says Shepherd. "These glaciers are vulnerable to small changes in ocean temperature, such as those that have occurred over the 20th century and those predicted for the 21st century. A rise of less than 0.5 °C could have triggered the present imbalance." Climate modelling predicts that snowfall on the ice caps will increase over the 21st century. But the researchers warn that the processes that are causing ice sheets to shrink – with surface melting in Greenland and changes in sea temperatures in Antarctica as possible candidates – could in the 21st century rapidly counteract the ice gained from increased snowfall. They say continued observations by satellite and on the ground in both regions are essential to improve predictions of sea-level rises. In a separate review paper, also in Science on 15 March, David Vaughan and Robert Arthern of the British Antarctic Survey agree that there are two main obstacles to predicting the future of ice sheets: more needs to be known about what is going on underneath the ice sheets, and what happens at their edges where they meet ocean waters. Journal reference: Science (vol 315, p 1529, p 1503) Climate Change - Want to know more about global warming – the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.

clipped from: www.cosmosmagazine.com

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SYDNEY: Part of the human ear evolved from jaw bones of our reptilian ancestors, according to a new mammal fossil find.

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Three tiny bones found in the middle ear of all mammals are widely thought to have evolved from bones that in reptiles form part of the lower jaw. However, no fossil demonstrating the transition were known until now.

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Researchers reported today in the British journal Nature that Yanoconodon allini, a newly-unearthed ancient mammal from China, has ear bones that appear to be at an intermediate stage.

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"Now we have a definitive piece of evidence, in a beautifully-preserved fossil split on two rock slabs," said study author and evolutionary biologist Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural history in Pittsburgh.

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It is remarkable that such tiny bones as those in the ear have survived 125 million years, said the study authors.

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Humans ear bones began as reptile jaws

Friday, 16 March 2007

by Sarah Bartlett

Cosmos Online

Yancodon was found split in half onto two mirror-image siltstone slabs. The 15-cm-long fossil has middle ear anatomy intermediate between reptiles and mammals. Image: Zhe-Xi Luo/CMNH

SYDNEY: Part of the human ear evolved from jaw bones of our reptilian ancestors, according to a new mammal fossil find.

Three tiny bones found in the middle ear of all mammals are widely thought to have evolved from bones that in reptiles form part of the lower jaw. However, no fossil demonstrating the transition were known until now.

Researchers reported today in the British journal Nature that Yanoconodon allini, a newly-unearthed ancient mammal from China, has ear bones that appear to be at an intermediate stage.

"Now we have a definitive piece of evidence, in a beautifully-preserved fossil split on two rock slabs," said study author and evolutionary biologist Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural history in Pittsburgh.

"This fossil, some 125 million years old, [reveals] the last stage of this most interesting evolutionary process," said Luo. "The middle ear bones have already acquired similar proportion and size to the modern mammal middle ear, yet the ear structure is still connected to the jaw."

Reptiles today have a single bone (the stapes) in their middle ear, while mammals have three (stapes, incus and malleus). These tiny bones act to amplify sound waves and transfer them from the air to the liquid contained in the inner ear's spiral-shaped cochlea.

Painstaking anatomical studies in the early 1900s suggested that the middle ear bones of mammals and the jaws of reptiles share the same origin. "We can trace this developmental process in developing mammalian embryos," said Luo. "In the early embryonic stage of modern mammals, the middle ear was still attached to the jaw. Later, the middle ear becomes separated from the jaw, and … starts the adult function [of hearing]."

Because of these differences in ear anatomy, reptiles today are not as sensitive as mammals in the higher frequency range of sounds. The unique hearing adaptation is thought to have been critical for nocturnal mammals to succeed, helping them to compete in a world of limited visibility. Today mammals have the best hearing of any vertebrates.

"The reptilian middle ear connected to the jaw can pick up the ground vibration, whereas the middle ear fully separated from the jaw is certainly much better at receiving the air-borne sound," said Luo, who collaborated on the study with experts at the University of Nanjing in China.

He argues that the fact that Yancodon's middle ear bones were still connected to the jaw structure might have made the species capable of hearing vibrations in the air and in the ground - "although not developed to the same high-pitch sensitivity as the modern mammal ear."

"This early mammalian ear from China is a Rosetta Stone type of discovery which reinforces the idea that development of complex body parts can be explained by evolution, using exquisitely preserved fossils," said Richard Lane, an earth scientist at the U.S. National Science Foundation in Washington D.C.

It is remarkable that such tiny bones as those in the ear have survived 125 million years, said the study authors.

The fossil find is very interesting, commented Graeme Clark, auditory scientist and founder of the Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne. Though "the paper has perhaps drawn a few more conclusions than they should have" about how the fossil ear would have functioned in the living species, he said.

Yanoconodon - which would have been about 15 cm long – had a long body, short and sprawling limbs and claws that were ideal for either digging or living on the ground. It lived during the Mesozoic-era and likely fed on insects, worms and other small fauna.

More information:

Anatomy of the ear, Wikipedia

A new eutriconodont mammal and evolutionary development in early mammals, Nature

Zhe-Xi Luo, University of Pittsburgh

Are Americans the only insular nation?

An RSS News feed from the BBC should keep you up to date with whats going on in the world. eg BBC World

By Tony Long| 02:00 AM Mar, 15, 2007

The Luddite

A wire service story last week reported the results of a study that estimated the total amount of digital information floating around out there, adding ominously that we're running out of room to store it all.

The numbers, given in exabytes, aren't that important. The usual outlandish comparisons to tangible objects were intended as much to give you something to yak about around the water cooler as to provide any real perspective. My favorite: The amount of digital information out there is equal to 12 stacks of books, each reaching from the Earth to the sun. What Einstein dreamed that one up -- and what was he smoking when he did it?

Never mind. It doesn't matter, even if he miscalculated by a stack or two.

The point is taken. We have more information at our fingertips, by far, than at any time in history. And because of the internet we don't even have to stand up to go looking for most of it.

By digital information, the researchers were referring to everything from online videos to e-mail to instant messaging to web pages. I'd like to pay particular attention to this last one, especially those that focus on delivering the news.

Never before has so much news been within reach of li'l ol' you, tucked away there behind your keyboard. In an instant, you can be connected with news organizations the world over, soaking up the latest about the French presidential elections, or the price of tea in China. So how come you know so little of what's going on out there in the big, bad world?

Don't get huffy about it. You know what I'm talking about.

Americans have traditionally been ignorant of the world outside their own limited field of vision. It's a fact that drives other folks, especially Europeans, bonkers. It's also one of the reasons we get suckered into fighting wars in places like Vietnam and Iraq. I'd wager a month's salary that, four years in to our current unwinnable war, two-thirds of the people in this country still can't find Iraq on a map.

In any case, it's been two years since a presidential commission informed President Bush and the nation that there had never been any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet, as of January, fewer than 60 percent of us believed the Bush administration connived its way into war. Come on. You'd have had to have spent the last two years on a coroner's slab to still think we had any justification for invading a sovereign nation.

Is this willful ignorance or just plain stupidity on our part? Or is it just overweening arrogance? Whatever it is, it's a sure sign that we, the people, are still not paying attention. And in this day and age, that's especially unforgivable.

But there's another American tradition at play here as well: our historic aversion to facing bad news. In the land of milk and honey, where the streets are paved with gold, it's "annoying" (to use the current vernacular) to contemplate all the horror that surrounds us and, more and more, consumes us.

This is one of the aspects of news delivery in the digital age that really bothers me. Most news services, including this one, allow you to configure your RSS feeds and e-mail alerts to receive only the news that interests you. If you're an investor, for example, you can set up your feeds to deliver only financial news. If you swill Budweiser for a living, you may get no further than your digital sports section.

So, while you might be aware that the market took another dive, costing you a few bob, or that the Red Sox are pinning their hopes on a $160 million pitcher from Japan, you are, in effect, capable of shutting out the rest of the world. And why? Because you're too busy, or too uninterested, or too "annoyed" to deal with it.

Assuming you no longer read newspapers -- and studies suggest that more and more of you have dropped the habit -- you can actually go through life without having any idea at all what's going on in the wider world. (Watching TV news doesn't count, by the way. That's always been a joke, at least since Uncle Walter hung 'em up.)

Oh, the irony. All that information as close as your computer screen and there you sit, pondering the deeper meaning of Anna Nicole Smith's death because that's what your RSS feed has been told to deliver. The Chinese may be pouring across the Yalu River again, if that works as an economic metaphor, and the icecaps might be melting, but you'd never know. Or care.

Is it any wonder the world is in the process of blowing up, or burning up, or just plain giving up?

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Movies provide new view of Mars

clipped from: news.bbc.co.uk

Two animations released by Nasa allow viewers to "hang-glide" over the terrain currently being explored by the US space agency's Mars rovers.

The animations were created using pictures taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

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MRO used its HiRise camera to take images of the same site from different angles over several orbits.

This provided the 3D mapping data needed to animate a flypast over the Red Planet.

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The animations were created to support the twin robotic rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, in their ongoing explorations of the Red Planet.

The movies reveal in exquisite detail the geology of the Columbia Hills, which are being explored by Spirit, and Victoria Crater, where Opportunity is currently based.

And they provide an impressive display of MRO's capabilities, backed up by the most powerful camera ever sent to Mars.

Worldometer

Education / Environment / Food / Water / Energy / Health Stats.

Watch the figures change in Real Time!

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