2007 PC Magazine PC Upgrade

The PC Magazine 2007 Upgrade
12.20.06

In the last year and a half there have been several major advances in PC technology. But how can you get this new tech into your old system?

By Loyd Case

As you might assume, we get a great deal of e-mail at PC Magazine. Many of these missives ask a simple question, "What should I buy to improve my system?" This flood of e-mail, combined with the spate of recent technical advances, has convinced us to put together a handy upgrade guide to help you choose the components best suited to your needs. Though we'll discuss specific products, such as 3D graphics or CPUs, the real focus here is on a set of upgrade scenarios based on three different PC usage models.

The past year has seen significant changes in the PC landscape. As components have become faster and more capable, prices have decreased. Meanwhile, Windows Vista will be generally available by the end of January and is already forcing the evolution of the hardware ecosystem. Whatever your feelings about Vista—even if you plan on never touching it—it will have a substantial effect on the hardware you use in 2007 and beyond.

Determining whether you need to upgrade depends somewhat on your application scenarios. Some users may want—or need—to upgrade more often than others. We'll factor that into our discussion of the different usage models. Depending on the age of your system, you may be able to get by with replacing just a few components. Alternatively, you might be better off replacing an entire subsystem, or even the whole PC.

Before we dive into all of that, let's take a look at some key technological advances that have occurred recently. The past 18 months have seen a series of rapid advances in PC technology. We are going to focus our attention on those that either reduce cost or improve performance.

The PC Magazine 2007 Upgrade

The March to Multicore CPUs

The shift from single-core to dual-core and, soon, to quad-core CPUs has happened quickly—even by technological standards. The primary CPU manufacturers, AMD and Intel, have rapidly shifted their major product lines to dual-core processors. With Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processors at prices dipping below $160, there's no reason to avoid a dual-core processor. Even Intel's hot new Core 2 Duo CPU line has an entry-level model, the E6300, that can be found for under $180.

A dual-core CPU can bring benefits even to light-duty users. Fact is, modern operating systems tend to launch dozens of lightweight tasks. While each taken alone has a minor impact on CPU resources, together they add up. It's true that the operating system schedulers in Windows XP—the software that determines task priority and allocates CPU resources accordingly—aren't as efficient with multicore as they could be. (Windows Vista will be much more aware of multicore.) But even XP's Service Pack 2 benefits from having more than one processor core.

Memory: The DDR2 Inflection Point

Last summer, AMD launched its series of Socket AM2 processors, which support DDR2. With AM2-supporting chipsets from ATI, nVidia, and VIA, the industry is moving away from the older DDR memory (commonly called DDR1, though that's not an official moniker).

DDR2 doubles the bus frequency of DDR1 for the same clock rate and thus doubles the effective data rate. (A structural difference in the memory modules prevents you from placing either one in the other's slots.) The result has been a jump in demand for DDR2. DDR2 memory had approached price parity with DDR, but since the AM2 launch, DDR2 prices have climbed. Still, if you're in a position to move to a new processor, it makes sense to move to a DDR2 variant, since those will have a longer technological lifespan.

Meanwhile, Corsair and nVidia have taken unused parts of the SPD ROM on memory modules to enable enhanced performance profiles (EPPs). It's looking as if EPP may be the preferred term for this new memory type, rather than nVidia's term, SLI ready. For overclockers, EPP memory contains all the information needed to push the memory to its limit without their continually having to experiment and reset.

What's more, at the Intel Developer Forum, Intel announced support for system-level DDR3 RAM, and manufacturers are starting to sample DDR3 memory chips. But it will be the second half of 2007 before we need to worry about DDR3 in PC systems.

Storage Gets Perpendicular

This year, Seagate shipped desktop hard drives using perpendicular storage technology, which it used to produce the first 750GB hard drive. Hitachi, Samsung, and Western Digital have yet to ship perpendicular storage solutions on the desktop, though Western Digital did announce laptop drives using the new technology.

DVD recordable drives continue to plummet in price. With some DVD±RW dual-layer units dropping below $30, there's no reason to avoid DVD burners any more. Pioneer Electronics, I-O Data Device, and others have announced PC Blu-ray burners, but both the drives and the media are still exorbitantly expensive, with drive prices near $1,000. Meanwhile, flash memory prices have also plunged, allowing users to carry around 2GB or even 4GB of portable storage for under $100.

Graphics in a Holding Pattern

With Windows Vista on the horizon, both ATI and nVidia have been shipping more of the same, but cheaper: Both have reduced prices while increasing performance throughout their product lines. nVidia has just launched its next-generation DirectX 10-capable GPU (see our review on page 32). ATI seems to be a bit behind here, and we'll probably not see an ATI DirectX 10 GPU until early in 2007.

For most users, DirectX 10 is a nonevent. While DX10 will become very important over time, it will be at least a year or more before games using DX10 become commonplace. A high-performance DirectX 9 video card is perfectly capable of running the full Vista Aero Glass experience, plus all games that will likely ship within the next year. Certainly, we can expect those first ATI and nVidia DX10 cards to run DX9 games faster than anything currently on the market, but we also expect them to launch only in high-price models, with midrange and entry-level parts to follow in the spring.

Both ATI and nVidia have been pushing their dual graphics card technologies. Currently, nVidia's SLI seems more mature, with greater gains seen in SLI versus ATI's CrossFire, as noted in Extremetech's ATI X1950 Pro review (go.extremetech.com/ati). The X1950 Pro and ATI's future GPUs now no longer require the bulky pass-through cable or special master card, which will make life easier for ATI CrossFire users in the future.

Motherboards: More, More, More

Motherboard manufacturers continue to add features to their products. ASUS is probably the kitchen-sink champion here, adding 802.11g Wi-Fi and transparent SATA RAID backup to its top-end boards, including the P5W DH and the P5B Deluxe. Other manufacturers are adding features, too, particularly to give overclockers easier and more efficient ways to ramp up CPUs and memory. Meanwhile, Intel's BTX form factor seems at present to have fallen from favor with the DIY set, although you still find BTX-based systems from companies like Dell and Gateway.

If you don't need all the bells and whistles, consider getting a microATX motherboard. If you use one, you can build a relatively compact system that still offers more expandability than some of the tinier machines. If you don't need expandability beyond perhaps a second hard drive and external peripherals, consider a true small-form-factor system, such as the Shuttle SN27P2 for AMD's Socket AM2 CPUs.

Cases and Power Supplies

As processor manufacturers are delivering CPUs that generate less heat and require less power, GPU and hard drive vendors are turning out products that generate more heat. A modern, high-density 7,200-rpm hard drive gets surprisingly hot, and high-end graphics cards can run pretty hot, too.

If you want to build a high-end system, you need a case with adequate airflow. By the same token, you'll want an ATX 2.2 power supply unit capable of delivering steady current loads across all rails, especially if you're running dual video cards. Several PSUs now on the market can deliver 700W or more, and there are a surprising number of units that can pump out as much as a kilowatt. For those running a system with more sedate specs, there is an increasing selection of microATX cases, such as Silverstone's SG01B. You won't need as beefy a power supply, either.

Even as power supply wattages go up, they're becoming more efficient. This means better use of your electricity dollar, as more of the wall current is turned into useful DC current for the PC, thus generating less waste heat. Look for 80 PLUS power supplies, which are certified to offer at least an 80 percent efficiency rating.

Before You Buy . . .

Before you yank out your credit card and start buying hardware, perform a system assessment to make sure that your system is actually worth upgrading. Often upgrading the system you have can prove to be a headache, and it may not be worth the effort. We like to operate by the "PC Magazine Rule of Four," which goes like this: If you find yourself with a desktop that is four years old or more, or you're going to replace four or more components, it's time to get a new system.

There is a similar timetable involved when you are dealing with laptops. After about a year you should look into upgrading your RAM if you are not at 1GB already. Two years in, your battery should be starting to give out, and if you need a new hard drive, it's time to replace the laptop.

Recently, we received an e-mail from a reader looking to upgrade the memory on his older Pentium 4 system, which was still running on an Intel 850 chipset. That particular chipset supports only RDRAM, which current motherboards no longer use. Since the biggest RDRAM modules still available are 512MB RIMMs—and PC1066 versions cost $205 apiece—we suggested that it was time to move on. The $400 it would take this user to upgrade his RDRAM would nearly cover the combined cost of a new motherboard, CPU, and memory. Though that combination would still make for an entry-level system, it would almost certainly outperform his RDRAM-based system.

Different usage models, however, necessitate different upgrade cycles. A light-duty office system may crank along for years, while a high-end gaming system may need a twice-yearly refresh. It all depends on your needs, your patience level, and your budget.

The Home PC Upgrade
12.20.06

The PC that the family uses for Web surfing is becoming old and slow. A few upgrades will give this system a jolt of power and speed.

When home users invest in the latest systems for gaming or media applications, their older systems are often relegated to light-duty office work and Web browsing. But Web browsing can place heavy demands on such systems: Anyone with a high school student at home recognizes the increasing sophistication of today's young PC user, particularly when it comes to Internet usage.

Light-duty office work, too, can strain a system more than you'd think. As document production, often with embedded artwork and charts, increasingly taxes resources, more responsive systems are needed.

The key here is the word responsive. Users of light-duty systems don't need bleeding-edge CPUs or graphics, but they are highly intolerant of poor response time. When you click a mouse, drag a document between folders, or save a file, you expect to see a result without delay. This doesn't mean that the actual task needs to be completed immediately. But if it does take some time, you should be able to get back your cursor and keyboard immediately after launching the task.

We found we can make even PCs with relatively anemic CPUs feel responsive just by increasing memory. This is particularly true for systems that use integrated graphics or video cards with HyperMemory (ATI) or TurboCache (nVidia). Graphics chips integrated into the motherboard chipset use system memory for all graphics, so 512MB of system RAM often translates to 448MB of RAM actually available to the system and 64MB reserved for graphics. Similarly, TurboCache and HyperMemory use some system memory for additional frame-buffer support. Hence a light-duty office system that seemed to struggle with 512MB of RAM suddenly seems much snappier with 1GB.

The next step after memory would be a CPU upgrade. For example, upgrading from a single-core to a dual-core processor can improve system responsiveness, particularly if you have lots of background tasks running. Spyware catchers, virus scanners, and desktop search can all suck in CPU cycles.

Finally, a newer hard drive can help speed up apparent responsiveness. Modern hard drives deliver data by offering very high data densities and larger buffers—up to 16MB on higher-capacity drives. A higher data density means that the head can read more data even though the linear speed of the media under the hard drive is the same as before.

Key Upgrades
1 Memory
2 CPU
3 Hard drive

Featured Components
A Memory: OCZ Gold 2GB DDR2 800.................$200
B CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600...................$345
C Hard drive: Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA.........$80

Peripheral Upgrade
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2 Why not use some of that big new hard drive to record some of your favorite shows? This TV tuner card connects over USB 2.0 and packs its own onboard hardware MPEG-2 decoder. It comes with a Windows MCE-compatible remote and receiver, an FM radio antenna, and an IR blaster. ($150 street, www.hauppauge.com)

The PC Gaming Upgrade
12.20.06

Being a PC gamer can be an expensive habit. A few choice upgrades will help you keep pace with the rest of the LAN party.

Gamers are obsessed with getting the best gaming performance from their systems. That's not to say that all of them have deep pockets and can rush out and buy the glitziest Falcon Northwest Mach V. But it does mean that they want to be able to run their games well, within their individual budget constraints.

Today, we seem to be at an interesting crossover point for PC games. Historically, you had times when games were either mostly CPU bound or mostly graphics bound. A game that consumed CPU cycles could benefit from a faster processor, while a graphics-intensive game would run smoother with a new video card.

For the moment, we seem to have entered an era of uneasy balance between the GPU and the CPU. Some games are almost purely CPU bound, like Microsoft's new Flight Simulator X. Others, like the real-time strategy game Company of Heroes, require both a decent video card and a CPU that can deliver good performance. There are also a few games that are heavily graphics-bound, like Prey.

In other words, today's gamer needs to consider balance. There's no point in buying a Core 2 Extreme X6800 if all you have is an ATI X1300 or an nVidia GeForce 7300. By the same token, dropping a GeForce 7950 GX2 into a Celeron- or Sempron-based system is just plain silly. So consider the idea of balance when you're upgrading. It may be better to split your $500 budget between a CPU and a graphics card, but the ratio of that split may depend on your gaming habits.

As with the previous scenario, more memory tends to be better, particularly with recent game titles. A number of games out now can benefit from having more than 1GB of RAM. Most games should run well in a 1GB footprint, however.

Finally, don't shortchange audio. A Creative X-Fi sound card, along with high-fidelity speakers or good headphones, can substantially intensify the immersive experience. If you can't afford a sound card, make sure your next motherboard upgrade uses one of the higher-quality HD codecs, like the Analog Devices AD1988B. You won't get full EAX 4.0 3D audio, but it's still a pretty good experience. Do get good speakers and headphones. What good is a game where stuff explodes if you can't hear it?

Peripheral Upgrade
Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard The G11 maintains the look and feel of your standard keyboard layout without compromising much space to make room for its extra keys. To the left of the main typing area are six rows of "G" macro keys, totaling 18 keys. Above these are 3 keys that switch between modes, bringing the grand total of macro keys to 54. ($70, www.logitech.com)

Key Upgrades
1 GPU
2 CPU
3 Sound card

Featured Components
A Graphics card: XFX GeForce 7900 GT...............$280
B Memory: Corsair TwinX 3500LL Pro (2x, 1GB)...............$325 ( www.corsair.com)
C CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600..................$305 (www.intel.com)

The Digital Media Home System
12.20.06

The focus of the home PC has changed from homework to storing ­pictures and music. Is all this digital media slowing down your PC?

Many home PC users are finding that the PC they bought to surf the Web has been transformed into a digital media hub. Whether you're simply an iTunes or Windows Media Player user, or dabble in digital photography and video editing, digital media is quickly becoming the main focus of a PC that wasn't built for it.

If this sounds like your PC, then the upgrades that might work best for you are capacious fast storage, lots of memory, and a fast CPU. Secondarily, a reasonably good graphics card may be useful for certain types of applications, such as rendering 3D transitions in some video-editing applications. Fortunately for most users, these upgrades, with the exception of the CPU, are some of the easiest to perform. You may find that you can easily upgrade your system in about a half hour.

Digital media requires storage—and lots of it. Professional videographers look to solutions such as large, striped arrays to boost capacity and performance. Home users, too, should seriously consider data integrity and safety before performance. Losing all your digital photos from the last two years will not engender peace and tranquility in your household.

What you might prefer is a single, fairly large drive for your primary drive and a pair of high-capacity drives set up as a RAID 1 redundant array, which works by replicating all data onto two different drives, even though it looks like a single volume. Store most of your "precious cargo" on the RAID 1 array.

Memory is another key upgrade item, particularly for digital photography and video editing. Having 2GB of RAM or more will help minimize swapping out to the hard drive during those intensive rendering or filtering operations. You may not think that you will ever do any photo editing of this magnitude, but a few years ago you probably never thought you'd turn your trusty SLR in for a digital camera, either.

Finally, a fast CPU is extremely useful when you're running those intensive filtering operations. Many video-encoding and editing apps are designed to take advantage of dual-core processors, so that's a worthy upgrade if your system can handle it.

Peripheral Upgrade
Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition The Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition's compactness and copious amount of storage space raise the bar for storage systems. Video editors, heavy downloaders, and any users needing a lot of capacity should be happy with the 1TB it provides in a RAID 0 configuration. Set up as a RAID 1, the system still offers 500GB and can keep the data safe even if one internal drives fails. ($750 street, www.maxtor.com)

Key Upgrades
1 Hard drive
2 Graphics card
3 CPU
4 Memory

Featured Products
A Memory: 1GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR400.............$80
B Graphics card: EVGA GeForce 7600 GT CO.......$180
C Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB......$160

Google 15 - The Day before Christmas

The day before Christmas.

Cervical Cancer vaccination costs £400 for 12 year old girls

Full article, my edits in bold

Row over cancer jab plan for all schoolgirls

· Mass vaccination 'will save lives'
· Parents fear rise in underage sex

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
Sunday December 24, 2006
The Observer

Schoolgirls as young as 12 are to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease linked to cervical cancer, under controversial plans being drawn up by the Department of Health.

Millions of girls would be immunised at school against human papilloma virus (HPV) before they become sexually active. Research has shown the virus is one of the key causes of cervical cancer, which kills around 1,000 women a year.

Routine injections against HPV have already been adopted in some US states and a handful of British parents have begun buying the £450 injection for their daughters through private clinics. The vaccine was licensed here earlier this year.

The government's expert advisory body on vaccination, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, is now studying proposals for an NHS-funded mass vaccination scheme which would eventually replace the current screening programme under which women are summoned for smear tests every three years to check for early signs of cancer. Senior Department of Health sources said the best age for immunisation was 12 or 13, before most children become sexually active. Ministers are said to be looking positively at the idea and planning is well advanced.

The move will be controversial with some parents, who fear the jabs will encourage unprotected sex or send confused messages about the right age for girls to lose their virginity. The new jab also adds to the long list of vaccines to which children's immune systems are subjected and which some parents worry put too high a burden on young bodies.

Research among parents conducted by the Department of Health showed that most had not heard of HPV, one strain of which causes genital warts but can be carried without causing symptoms, and they did not know of the cancer link. They were worried, though, about the implications of vaccinating so young, prompting the joint committee to conclude that 'information on impact of vaccination on sexual activity' would be necessary to address parental concerns.

Immunisation is strongly backed within the medical profession. Professor Alex Markham, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said vaccination could prevent almost three quarters of cases of the cancer, adding: 'The advent of a vaccine is a very exciting development. HPV vaccination holds the potential to prevent the majority of cervical cancer cases in the UK.'

He said the vaccine was 'most effective when given to women prior to any exposure to the virus', meaning before they started having sex.

However Hugh McKinney of the pressure group the National Family Campaign questioned the wisdom of immunising such young girls. 'Vaccination against cervical cancer makes full sense to bring down occurrences of this dreadful disease. The only question is at what age is this most appropriate, and many people will question whether 12 years is too young to be undertaking a vaccination programme that is important for when girls become sexually active,' he said.

'It could be seen as helping to promote or encourage sexual activity in girls before they are physically or mentally mature.'

The vaccine would be given in two to three doses by school nurses, with protection lasting about 10 years. As with all vaccinations, parents could refuse consent. The joint committee has also considered whether boys should be immunised to stop them passing on the virus, with some evidence it could help protect against rarer penile cancers. It concluded that vaccinating boys is 'only cost effective if both coverage and vaccine efficacy is low' among girls.

This summer Hollie Anderson, 13, became the first British girl to get the vaccine privately. Hollie's grandmother died of cervical cancer and her mother, Lisa Anderson, said she believed every mother and daughter should have the jab. She said: 'I've seen how awful the disease can be. I saw it as my role to protect Hollie.'

The main obstacle for the government could be financial - three doses cost the NHS £241.50, although there would be a discount for a universal programme and savings on treating the 2,800 women annually diagnosed with cervical cancer could be significant. Screening would have to continue for at least 15 years post-vaccination, to check it works.

Special reports
Medicine and health

Useful links
British Medical Association
Department of Health
General Medical Council
Health on the Net Foundation
Institute of Cancer Research
Medical Research Council
NHS Direct
Royal Institute of Public Health
World Health Organisation

The trouble with Rod Liddle's programme

I covered Rod Liddle programme here.

Unedited except for my highlights in bold.

Editorial by Terry Sanderson, National Securalists Society

The Rod Liddle programme The Trouble with Atheism on Channel 4 on Monday was, as we expected, biased, dishonest and about as profound as a pancake. We have to make allowances for the fact that it was a polemic, and that Mr Liddle had started out with a contention that he needed to support. So the programme proceeded from the idea that “militant” atheists are really just the mirror image of “fundamentalist” religious believers.

The first flaw in Mr Liddle’s approach was his use of terminology. He bandied about the words “atheist” and “secularist” as though they were interchangeable and synonymous. This is the favourite trick of the religious right, who love to sow confusion about secularism.

Mr Liddle then promoted atheism to the status of a full-blown ideology, with all kinds of sects and belief systems attached to it, and even with a holy book of its own. In fact, “atheism” simply means “without belief in entities called gods”. That’s all, no more.

Practically all atheists are happy to leave it at that and give it no further consideration. They don’t, as Mr Liddle was suggesting, have any desire to force others to abandon their religion, to suppress it or take it away from them by force (and if that doesn’t work, kill them).

There are those of us, though, who feel that religion’s malign influences far outweigh any good it does in the public sphere, and seek to keep it from casting its undesirable cloak over our lives. We are secularists. Some secularists are religious people, who also think “faith” is something that rightly belongs inside your head or in the church or the home. They, too, don’t think that organised religion has a place in parliament or shared institutions, for they know the havoc it can wreak when it seeks power.

Those of us who want to keep the public square a neutral space that all can inhabit without privilege or disadvantage are secularists. Most of us are also atheists, but by no means all. Mr Liddle -- and many others like him -- doesn’t seem to be able to make this distinction.

Mr Liddle suggests that all those who think that evolution is the most likely explanation for the existence of life as we know it on earth are also de facto “atheists”. Suddenly “atheists” have a holy book -- The Origin of Species -- which is beyond questioning, just like the Bible and the Koran are for true believers.

I know of no-one who declares themselves an atheist or a secularist who wants to eliminate religion by force -- although to hear Mr Liddle tell it, anyone who doesn’t believe in the supernatural is a nascent Stalin or Hitler.

Mr Liddle advised us that Stalin and Hitler ran atheistic regimes that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocents -- therefore, atheism is a lethal as fundamentalist religion. Despite being corrected by Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins (who told him that these were Marxist / fascist regimes, and atheism was incidental and not their moving force) Mr Liddle ploughed on (carefully editing the interviews to ensure that nobody could make a proper case in answer to any of the ludicrous claims he was making).

The atheists he interviewed were challenged and misrepresented and their interviews cut in such a way that they appeared unable to adequately answer Mr Liddle’s supposedly profoundly damaging accusations. Those who supported Mr Liddle’s arguments were, of course, given a clear run, without, in the main, interruption. If I had been interviewed for this programme and treated like that, I would be very annoyed.

The fact the Mr Liddle had carefully extracted the most extreme-sounding responses from the non-believers, (pulled out of context from what I expect were extensive interviews), transformed this programme from being an honest expression of an opinion into being plain distortion. Yes, Mr Liddle has a point of view to put over, and it’s legitimate that he should have the opportunity to do so, but this was a dissembling way to do it.

On the rare occasions that the atheists did manage to give a complete answer, they seemed perfectly reasonable. None of them sounded like the fundamentalist extremists that he was trying to paint them as.

I knew I wouldn’t agree with Mr Liddle’s contention before the programme began (mainly because I’ve heard it a thousand times in the past year from panicky Christian propagandists who are seeing their belief system being rejected by an increasing number of people who have come to the conclusion that it just isn’t sustainable in the modern world). I defend Rod’s right to say what he wants, but I also reserve the right to complain that this programme was so poorly made, badly argued and unfairly edited that it fell below the standards we have come to expect of British television.

See also: http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/talking_point_atheism.html

Does the future really belong to China?

Unedited except my highlights are in bold.

January 2007 | 130 » Debate » Does the future really belong to China? If China does not abandon one-party rule, will it stumble under the stresses of state capitalism? Or will it show that there can be a successful authoritarian road to modernity?

---

Will Hutton is author of “The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century,” published in January by Little, Brown

Meghnad Desai is a former director of the Centre for Global Governance and an emeritus professor of economics at the LSE. He is also a Labour peer

Dear Meghnad
29th November 2006

It is a commonplace to observe that the rise of China is transforming the world. Extrapolate from current growth rates and China will be the world's largest economy by the middle of this century, if not before. If it remains communist, the impact on the world system will be enormous and very damaging. Britain and the US are, for all their faults, democracies that accept the rule of law. This is not true of China. If an unreformed China takes its place at the top table, the global order will be kinder to despotism; the fragile emergence of an international system of governance based on the rule of law will be set back and the relations between states will depend even more nakedly on their relative power.

All that, however, is predicated on two very big "ifs"—if the current Chinese growth rate continues, and if the country remains communist. I think there are substantial doubts about each proposition. What is certain is that both cannot hold. China is reaching the limits of the sustainability of its current model, and to extrapolate from the past into the future as if nothing needs to change is a first-order mistake.

Our concern in the west should be to help China face its enormous challenges without damaging us in the process. If Chinese communism can transform itself, then China could, like Japan before it, smoothly integrate into the world power system. If not, severe convulsions lie ahead.

China's economic growth is based on the state channelling vast under-priced savings into huge investment projects driven by cheap labour. Some 200m of China's 760m workforce are migrant peasants employed in factories, construction sites and offices in its new towns and cities—the biggest migration in history. The Communist party has permitted free movement of prices, encourages profit-seeking and has sharply lowered tariffs on imports and obstacles to inward investment. Its success in creating annual growth of some 9.5 per cent for a generation, lifting 400m people out of poverty, is widely acknowledged. But the party keeps firm control of ownership, wages and company strategies—and of the state. In other words, China occupies an uneasy halfway house between socialism and capitalism; its private sector, although growing, is still puny. It is a system of Leninist corporatism—and it is this that is breaking down.

The breaches in the model are all around. How much longer can China's state-owned banks carry on directing billions of dollars of savings into investments that produce tiny or even negative returns and on which interest is irregularly paid? Poor peasants' ability to create the savings needed to fuel growth is reaching its limits. And in any case, for how long can a $2 trillion economy save at more than 40 per cent of GDP? It is reaching the limit of its capacity to increase exports (which in 2007 will surpass $1 trillion) by 25 per cent a year; at this rate of growth they will reach $5 trillion by 2020 or sooner, representing more than half of today's world trade. Is that likely? Are there sufficient ships and ports to move such volumes—and will western markets stay open without real reciprocity on trade? Every year China acquires $200bn of foreign exchange reserves, mainly dollars, as it rigs its currency to keep its exports competitive. It is absurd for a poor country like China to be lending to a rich one like the US; in fact, it is unsustainable, and the financial markets seem to agree.

China would like to lower the current feverish growth rates, but the tools available in the west—raising taxes, cutting spending and lifting interest rates—are not available to China. The party dare not trigger protests by raising taxes; officials in state enterprises and provincial governments ignore orders to lower spending because their careers depend on generating growth and jobs. And raising interest rates could create a credit crunch as loans go sour.

Nor are the limits solely economic. The 200m migrants resent seeing others grow rich as they languish in poverty. Inequality is soaring and corruption is endemic, infecting chief executives of banks, provincial governors and judges. About 400,000 people a year die of respiratory diseases caused by polluted air. China's GDP is a fifth of America's, but it releases nearly as much carbon dioxide into the air. To cap it all, the Communist party is in ideological crisis: it says the class war is over even while claiming monopoly power as the trustee of the 1949 revolution. Without continued economic growth, the party's legitimacy would be in question.

Behind all these problems lies China's only partial conversion to capitalism. Everything in China is subject to the party. Yet capitalism is much more than the profit motive and the freedom to set prices that China's reforms have permitted. The effective use of resources also depends upon a network of independent processes of scrutiny and accountability, undertaken by people in multiple centres of power and backed by rights and private property. A democratic election system is but the coping stone of this structure.

Judges who rule on evidence to deliver justice, newspapers reporting events and even corporate whistleblowers are crucial to the operation of western capitalism. It is the interaction of these hard and soft processes—what I call an "Enlightenment infrastructure"—that allows technological progress to be exploited efficiently and relatively honestly. China had markets, property and technology in the 18th century; it fell behind because it didn't have Enlightenment structures. It lacked the "trinity" of pluralism (multiple centres of political and economic power), capabilities (rights, education, private ownership) and justification (accountability, scrutiny, free expression).

The Chinese Communist party, despite local piecemeal experimentation, is repeating the mistake of the Confucian imperial system. It is the lack of independent scrutiny and accountability that lies behind the massive waste of investment and China's destruction of its environment. The reason so few people can name a great Chinese brand or company, despite the country's export success, is that there are none. China needs to build them, but doing that in an authoritarian state is impossible. In any case, more than 55 per cent of China's exports, especially high-tech ones, are made by foreign firms—another sign of China's weakness.

China needs to become a more normal economy. Chinese consumers need to save less and spend more, but people without property rights or state welfare are understandably cautious. Giving them more confidence would require secure property rights and taxation to fund a welfare system. That would mean creating an empowered middle class that would want to know how its taxes are spent. This is a political impossibility.

If this argument is right, the terms of debate about China must change. Instead of frightening ourselves about China's rise, we need to recognise our own strengths and its weaknesses. We need to be confident about so-called western values and processes—and strengthen them at home and abroad. The best way to meet the China challenge is not to close our markets and build our armies—a strong impulse in the US. It is to stay open, confident that China will only be able to truly compete with the west if it becomes more like us.

Yours
Will


Dear Will
1st December 2006

For a liberal pluralist, you sound oddly like a monist, if not a monotheist. For you, there is only one road to capitalism—the western one—and only one political system—ours.

China has achieved rapid growth with a policy of under-consumption and over-saving, and exports rather than domestic consumption. But this is not an unusual path, nor one that China is stuck on. Japan and South Korea used the same model and are now part of the OECD club of rich countries. Moving millions of peasants to urban manufacturing centres is neither totalitarian nor sinister. It was proposed as the standard development model by Arthur Lewis, a Nobel laureate, in 1954, and is indeed the classical model. (If it was less dramatic in parts of Europe, this is partly because a third of Europeans moved to North America in the second half of the 19th century.) There are no other ways of shaking off poverty. The services sector alone will not do it, and nor will a green revolution, as India is finding out.

China's very large numbers do not in themselves make its development unsustainable. If India can achieve 8 per cent growth on a 25 per cent savings rate, China (which now has 10.4 per cent growth on a 44 per cent savings rate) will surely manage the same. Moreover, China has been reforming its banking sector and the world has shown its approval by buying up the shares of Chinese banks.

China has a lot to learn about macroeconomic management, but its failings have nothing to do with totalitarianism. India is also shy about liberalising its capital account. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 taught China and India to keep a pool of liquidity handy, even at the cost of forgoing a better use for the money.

Yes, there is a Leninist party in power within a state capitalist system. But capitalism has no unique path, nor does it require a liberal democratic infrastructure to flourish. Japan's economic rise took place without a fully liberal infrastructure, and most European states, including Britain and Germany, were capitalist before they were democratic. What the most recent phase of globalisation has shown is that capitalism requires neither the Weberian Protestant ethic nor liberal democracy; any country with a decent savings rate, mass education and access to western markets can "do" capitalism. It is not a western Christian monopoly. Indeed, some Asians are proving better at it than the Europeans.

Many people simply find it hard to believe that countries like China and India, which were famine-stricken and miserable only 40 years ago, are now wiping out western industry. But this was the American complaint in the 1960s when facing European competition in the car market. How could these upstarts compete with Detroit? But compete they did, and they were soon followed by Japan and South Korea. Today the upstarts are China and India, and tomorrow they will be Ghana or Kenya.

Capitalism is not, as you say, about "much more than profit." It is first and foremost about profit and capital accumulation. It has accommodated a variety of institutional arrangements and only in the most recent phase of globalisation have we thought that an Anglo-Saxon-style liberal democracy is its sine qua non.

Let me now come to the political issue. The Chinese Communist party is at one level Leninist, but it is unlike the Russian Bolshevik party. The Chinese communists had to struggle to win the support of the peasantry for a decade and a half before they won power in 1949. They developed a philosophy of responding to popular needs within the confines of a single party. This is what they call people's democracy, and it is much more real than it was in eastern Europe. My colleague at LSE, Chun Lin, argues in The Transformation of Chinese Socialism that the Chinese concept of people's democracy is viable. In her view, the tradition has some strength left in it, although the party will have to become even more responsive. Deng Xiaoping encouraged inegalitarian capitalist growth for a period, but there may now be a reaction against it. At the recent People's Congress, Hu Jintao made some noises about the distress in the rural areas; the system can respond.

You fear that China's arrival at the top table will be harmful for the international liberal order. Yet the UN security council had the Soviet Union as well as China at the top table for decades. And I scarcely need to remind you of the many times since 1945 that the US and Britain have deviated from liberalism and multilateralism. We do need a liberal multilateral order, but not one based on western hegemony. The arrival of China and India will compel the west to learn to be truly plural and multilateral rather than a liberal bully.

Your rendering of history is the old Whig account. Everything we do is progressive and liberal and has always been so; all our cruelties as colonial powers are forgotten. Yet your trinity of pluralism, capabilities and justification is both very recent and very Anglo-Saxon. Rights have been established only recently; ask any black or Native American or a Catholic living in Ulster. (And a large minority in the US, including its president, believe in the literal truth of the Book of Revelation about Jewish rights to Palestine.)

It would be nice if individualism, liberty and pluralism were necessary for capitalism. But the fact is that it can manage without those things. Capitalism does release forces that undermine authoritarian regimes, but unevenly and never inevitably. China may yet move towards liberal individualism. But it does not have to, and it would be unwise to bet on any imminent move in that direction.

Sincerely
Meghnad


Dear Meghnad
3rd December 2006

You have failed to address most of my points about Chinese weakness. Instead you suspend your critical faculties when it comes to China—dazzled by its growth and keen to show how China's strength is proof of the frailties of western capitalism and liberal democracy. But it isn't.

China requires ever more investment to secure the same growth rate. Qu Hongbin and Ma Xiaoping of HSBC calculate that the additional output produced by every extra dollar of investment is now below what it was in the late Mao years. Outside the foreign-owned private sector, China's productivity is lamentable. In agriculture, the latest figures show that Chinese value-added is $490 per year per head compared with $1,040 in the Philippines and $4,851 in Malaysia. The labour productivity of China's state-owned enterprises, still constituting a third of GDP, is 4 per cent of US levels; one third of their workforce is only semi-employed.

You liken China's experience to the rest of Asia. But China is far more reliant on foreign direct investment (FDI) to deliver its export growth. Only 20 per cent of Taiwanese manufacturing exports and 29 per cent of Indonesia's were made by foreign companies at parallel stages in their development; in 2005, 55 per cent of China's exports were made by foreigners—and over 80 per cent of its telecommunication and electronic exports. China needs FDI to make good the deficiencies of its indigenous institutional infrastructure. China set itself a target of 50 companies in the world's top 500 by 2010. It will do well to have one.

Capitalism is far more subtle than either free market fundamentalists or Marxists accept. Of course, China has to move its peasants to its cities in order to develop. But capital still has to be allocated efficiently. And if an economy is to produce self-sustaining productivity growth, its companies must do more than exploit cheap labour. They must develop the "soft" processes that spur productivity and innovation. China's have not.

The political inequities in the way China handles migration—every worker has to have a licence to migrate and most migrants do not, thus rendering them illegal—and the frequent confiscation of peasant land have the same roots as the weaknesses in the enterprise system. China lacks the Enlightenment trinity.

The growing peasant and worker protests (4m protesters and 800,000 strikers in 2005) suggest that many Chinese want enforceable property rights and the legal right to strike—these are not western idiosyncrasies. You are right to say that Hu is raising the issue of social justice—but efforts in this direction are tiny. The tax burden on peasants was reduced by 0.1 per cent of GDP in 2005. Hu dare not increase the tax burden in cities. Why? Because there would be a demand for accountability.

Amartya Sen argues that many third world intellectuals are unable to get past the experience of colonialism to see the value of western institutions and values—and the parallels they have with the best of their own traditions. You conform to Sen's model. Why don't you include China's 18th-century imperial land grab of central Eurasia—nearly doubling China's land area—and the subsequent ethnic cleansing as part of your list of past robbery and state crime? Because it wasn't western?

The paradox is that the best way to challenge the west is to beat it at its own game. Japan's response to its economic crisis, the growth of democratic institutions in Taiwan and South Korea and the increasing success of an open India (sadly held back by caste and sexism, especially in the countryside) support my thesis. But I am not complacent about the west: the last third of my new book is about how the US, Britain and others fail to practise what we preach.

Best
Will

Dear Will
4th December 2006

Whatever else I may be, I am not a third world intellectual, having spent two thirds of my life in Britain! Nor am I a postcolonial postmodernist. I have a simple position: no nation, no region, no empire has any monopoly on virtue. East and west have both indulged in ethnic cleansing. China's imperial past is like any other country's, except the Chinese do not suffer from western amnesia.

Back to economics. Chinese agriculture is not as bad as your figures imply. It has been concentrating on grains (it had a terrible famine 40 years ago) while Malaysia and the Philippines have been commercial crop growers for a long time. The latter are higher value-added items.

China doubled its manufacturing labour force between 1983 and 2003, to number slightly over 100m. But China's rural economy, like India's, still suffers from scarce land and surplus labour, and this is why many more millions need to be taken off the land—something only achievable by rapid manufacturing growth. Public enterprise in China, as in India, is capital-intensive and inefficient. But the private sector is not as puny as you imply. If productivity is low in public sector manufacturing and agriculture, town and village enterprises and the genuine private sector, plus the foreign-owned sector, must conversely be productive. China exports low-tech products where there are few brand names, but that is where its expanding market is.

China has chosen to invest in infrastructure, unlike India (or the USSR when it was growing fast). This is a slow process. When you go to China you see new airports and empty highways and the Shanghai maglev. In India, the airports are slums.

China is also less centralised than it seems. It has large regional centres which run their own economic policies, with regional party bosses often disobeying the centre. Beneath the Leninist façade, China is making a transition to an economy where the centre is nominally in charge of certain things—foreign exchange policy or defence—while the people do whatever they think will make them better off. And, yes, protests arise out of inequities, as they do in India. But the fact that they occur and that China has an active "new left" (see Chaohua Wang's One China, Many Paths) tells me that China is not monolithic. It is just not a liberal democracy along Anglo-Saxon lines.

I do not defend the inequities or brutalities thrown up by China's growth. But I don't think they are a sign of weakness. Despite similar problems in most other economies in the past, none collapsed because of excessive growth. The USSR died because of stagnation.

You do not think China can repeat Asian success. But I recall when Americans didn't believe Japan could compete with them. They said that the Japanese could only copy and not innovate, because Japanese culture was too conformist. Yet China filed 130,000 patents in 2004, the fourth highest in the world (after Japan, the US, and South Korea), three times more than Britain. This represents a growth of 517 per cent since 1995, and equal proportions of residents and non-residents were responsible.

You see the inequities and brutalities of China's growth as unique to China's communist system, and it offends your liberal sensibilities. You want these inequities and brutalities to be swept away. I see them as part of the historic path of rapid accumulation that many economies pass through. This is how income growth occurs in capitalism. What's new?

Good wishes
Meghnad


Dear Meghnad
4th December 2006

China's model may have served it well in mobilising the saving for industrialisation, but it is now reaching the limits of its possibilities. Your own figures show that half China's patent applications come from foreign-owned companies. China's own resident patents place it 17th in the world league table, and only 30 per cent are for new inventions. Most of China's new jobs since 1980 have come from services, not manufacturing as you imply, and productivity in services is nearly as poor as in agriculture and state enterprises.

I am not predicting China's collapse. What I am saying is that it faces a profoundly difficult transition to a more normal economy with normal levels of savings, investment and consumption and less dependence on exports. My argument is that the direction of change has to be the same as that emerging in the rest of Asia. This means China needs to incorporate my three-cornered cluster of Enlightenment processes—pluralism, capabilities, justification—into its internal workings. They will look very Chinese and not western, but their function will be the same.

It is in our interests for this change to happen—both to allow China to carry on growing and for it to have a greater vested interest in maintaining a rules-based international system. China's indifference to Africa's authoritarian despots, as it courts the continent for energy and raw materials, is a foretaste of what an unchanged China will be like.

You contrast the west's amnesia about its past with China. But nobody in China knows about the doubling of China's land area under the Qing, any more than they know about China's war against Vietnam in 1979, or even Tiananmen. They are written out of the history books; the websites are blocked. It is shocking that a leading British intellectual like yourself can excuse such manipulation of the truth while being so ready to criticise the open society of which you have been part for most of your life. This debate would have been impossible in China. Until it changes, it will be condemned to a colossally inefficient and socially cruel form of development, because it is disdainful of human dignities and the imperative of accountability.

Yours
Will


Dear Will
4th December 2006

So anything China does which is good is foreign and everything else is sinister. So China is exploiting Africa's resources, and this is an indicator of China's authoritarianism. How unlike the Belgians and the French and the British, with their Enlightenment trinity and liberal freedoms, who nurtured Africa lovingly, never coveted its resources and cured its poverty!

You say services are generating more jobs in China than manufacturing. Perhaps, but the same is true of India and Britain. So what?

Non-residents filed 50 per cent of China's patents, 47 per cent of EU patents and 81 per cent of US patents. So what? China has just surpassed Japan in spending on R&D but you will no doubt say that is all foreign. If China is weak in every sector—agriculture, manufacturing, services, innovation—why do you fear it will rise inexorably and pollute the global top table where only virtuous western powers should rule?

You say China must join a rules-based international system. Yet when it joins the WTO and exports bras and shoes to the EU, they are locked up in warehouses while Peter Mandelson soothes the Italian and French producers, telling them why they don't have to obey the rules.

China is going through a fascinating experiment of growth at rates never achieved by any other country for such a sustained period. It needs to go on doing so. It has the second or third largest GDP, yet it is desperately poor in per capita terms. It solved the problems of mass illiteracy and extreme poverty with a dictatorship. I am curious to see if it can achieve this impossible combination of capitalism with a Leninist party. No one else has tried. It may fail, but why not let it go through the experiment and leave it to the Chinese people to revolt if they want a different regime?

In the 18th century, Voltaire thought China was enlightened compared to France. Now you say China is benighted because it is not like us. It is easy to forget how we got from there to here. It is a bit like the environmental damage caused by development. We rich countries tell the latecomers that they cannot do what we did when we were poor: you must behave like us now, even if it condemns you to remain poor. We shall see.

Merry Xmas
Meghnad

Don't feel guilty if you don't read a book from cover to cover

Nigel Warburton recommends buying loads of books:-

• but don't feel guilty if you don't read books cover to cover. Pick out the best bits. "I usually skim, dip, and focus on small sections. Then I come back to it perhaps years later, and often find something different."
• Buying books of living authors motivates them to write more (profit motive)
• Buy books by dead authors from charity shops (promotes charity) or borrow from the library (reduces deforestation)
  

Restricting Methionine might add years to life?

Article edited, my highlights in bold.

Can Ageing be stopped?
Gerontologists consider the maximum lifespan for humans to be about 120 years. But with rising evidence for a genetic "death programme," which in principle could be amended, some researchers are starting to believe the limit could be extended

Philip Hunter, The author is a science writer, specialising in biology and medicine

---

Old age hardly exists in wild animals. Accident, illness or predation usually kill long before the potential lifespan has been reached. Humans, though, especially in the developed world, are pushing in ever larger numbers towards the maximum lifespan, thought by most gerontologists to be around 120. (The world longevity record is held by the Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days.)

In Britain in 1901, life expectancy at birth was 49 for women and 45 for men. By 2002, this had risen to 81 and 76 respectively. This rapid increase in longevity has created hopes among gerontologists not just of an extended "quality of lifespan" well into the nineties, but of lifting the 120-year limit.

Recent experiments have extended the life expectancy of mice from around two years to three, with some reports of up to five. Such progress is unlikely in humans, for whom evolution has already boosted maximum lifespan well beyond comparably sized mammals—including great apes—but the work sheds valuable light on some of the mechanisms involved. The recent progress in mice was made by the application of the discovery, dating back to the 1930s, that lifespan could be increased dramatically in almost all animals by a diet low in calories but comprising all vital nutrients. This remains the one proven strategy for boosting life expectancy and slowing down ageing across a wide range of species.

Ageing is also closely linked to growth. Small members of mammalian species tend to live longer, as has been observed in dogs, mice and horses. It seems that retarded growth is associated with an overall slowdown in the processes that lead to ageing. It should certainly delay the process of cellular senescence, or apoptosis, the point at which cells stop dividing. Each time a cell divides, the DNA of the daughter cells is usually slightly shorter than the DNA of the parent, as a result of deficiencies in the copying process. Evolution has added disposable buffers called telomeres to the DNA to allow for some shortening. However, after a certain number of divisions, these buffers are spent, after which further copying eats into the active DNA sequence. Put simply, some cells can only divide a certain number of times before they die, and so if the time intervals between divisions are increased by slower growth, this aspect of ageing will be delayed.

It turns out that a low-calorie diet is not the only way to extend the lifespan of a mouse. The same effect can be obtained on a diet with normal calories but reduced protein. Moreover, it seems that it is not the protein that matters, but one specific component: the amino acid methionine. The finding is surprising because methionine is one of the nine essential amino acids. A diet totally deficient in methionine would kill a mouse in a few weeks. Yet the optimum level for longevity seems to be lower than is taken in a normal diet.

It is not known exactly how methionine restriction extends lifespan, but the answer could be linked to the oxidative or free radical theory of ageing. This states that the primary cause of ageing lies in the toxic by-products of energy metabolism within our mitochondria (the sub-units of the cell that produce energy). These by-products—chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide—oxidise parts of nearby cellular components, in particular proteins and DNA. The process is akin to the rusting of metals upon exposure to air. Many of these toxic, oxidising substances are called free radicals because they are electrically neutral and therefore stable, but also highly reactive because they have an unpaired electron seeking a mate from any neighbouring molecule.

Methionine is the amino acid most prone to losing electrons through oxidation, and so perhaps in some way restricting it within the diet persuades the organism to use another amino acid where possible, thus reducing its overall susceptibility to oxidation. Whether this is true or not, a recent Spanish study found that methionine restriction decreases oxidative damage to crucial mitochondrial DNA and proteins.

Is there a death programme?

But even this may not be the final answer to the methionine riddle, for some researchers argue that free radicals are merely mediators of ageing rather than the underlying cause, with their role ultimately controlled by genes orchestrating a "death programme."

There is some evidence that free radicals are manipulated by death programmes in those animals where ageing kicks in suddenly. One of the best studied examples is the salmon, many varieties of which appear to age suddenly and die aged about three, after one glorious orgy of reproduction. Free radicals increase rapidly during this period, but the fact that they seem to be held at bay until the salmon has done its reproducing suggests that there is an underlying programme at work. Perhaps the effect of methionine restriction might be to "edit" such an ageing programme in mammals, postponing its instructions.

Not all gerontologists agree with the death programme theory. Tom Kirkwood, one of the leading figures in the field, argues that the sudden post-reproductive death of the Atlantic salmon is not evidence of programmed ageing but the natural consequence of an extreme evolutionary phenomenon called "semelparity," meaning having all your offspring at once. The argument is that semelparous organisms invest all their life energy in a single reproductive event, after which there is no point being able to resist ageing.

But a finding in 2005 appears to have swung the argument decisively in favour of an ageing programme. A study at the Russian Academy of Sciences found that salmon can live much longer and continue reproducing when infected by pearl mussel larvae. In some cases, infection by this parasite extends life fourfold, to 13 years. It seems that the parasite has evolved a mechanism to avert the salmon's abrupt death so it can continue providing shelter and food for the parasite's development and reproduction. For a parasite dependent on the survival of its host, this is a sensible strategy. While the mechanism for this effect is not yet fully understood, it seems that the larvae produce a small protein that helps to mop up free radicals.

The study more or less confirms the existence of some form of death programme. If there were no programme, the salmon's abrupt death after reproduction could only be the inevitable result of wear and tear, in which case there would be limited scope for the mussel larvae to intervene. The fact that the larvae can increase the salmon's lifespan by such a huge factor by release of particular compounds indicates that there must normally be some mechanism hastening the ageing process.

This raises the question of why the salmon has evolved this type of ageing programme. One explanation is that it reproduces in rivers where food is scarce, and that therefore it is in the interests of the species for individuals to die and cease competing for resources once their reproductive energies are spent. The dead parents may even provide food for the fish upon which their young feed.

Immortal animals

But other questions remain. Although ageing is kept slow in the salmon until reproduction occurs, it still takes place. As in many animals, including humans, the ageing process starts at birth, but is kept in check until reproductive life is over. So can ageing ever be stopped altogether? At first sight this might seem unlikely, but all animals have immortal germlines—sequences of sex cells, like the sperm or ova—and we do not pass on the artefacts of ageing to our offspring. Evolution brought this about because any animal whose offspring were born old would soon become extinct. Immortal reproductive cells are kept separate from the body's somatic cells, which only need to survive one reproductive generation.

So the question arises: has any animal exploited the immortality of its germline to resist ageing indefinitely? The answer is yes. A few examples have been found among simpler organisms, one of the best studied being the hydra, a small freshwater animal up to 20mm long. Hydra appear to be able to regenerate endlessly with none of the recognised signs of ageing. This is possible because their bodies are permeated by germ cells whose primary purpose is to form buds that break off to yield offspring. These germ cells also create new tissue within the body, which in effect is the offspring of itself, constantly forming new cells to replace old ones. The line between reproduction and regeneration is blurred.

Although higher animals lack such regenerative powers, there are plenty of examples of individual organs being replaced in this way. Some sharks replace their teeth several times over their lifespan in order to continue feeding and to prolong their reproductive lives.

So why has evolution not used regeneration more ambitiously to extend reproductive lifespan? The answer lies in the high risk of death by accident or predation. In an animal such as the mouse, death by misadventure becomes almost inevitable after a few years, so there is little selective pressure in favour of long-lived individuals. Instead, evolution selects those organisms that are highly reproductive during their short lives.

But the equation changes abruptly for animals that have evolved the power of flight. When predators can be left on the ground, it becomes reproductively advantageous to live significantly longer. This is almost certainly why flying birds and bats live between four and ten times longer than non-flying mammals and birds of the same size. Flight itself, with its huge energy demands, may also have led to the development of efficient respiration and metabolism that, as a side-effect, reduces the production of damaging free radicals.

Research on birds and bats is shedding light on the genes involved in extending maximum lifespan as well as the biochemical mechanisms that bring it about. Along with research in non-flying mammals such as mice, this is helping to identify candidates for intervening in the ageing process. In particular, there is growing hope that aspects of ageing can be tackled by targeting specific metabolic pathways with therapies that mediate hormonal or other factors known to be involved. Work in mice over the last three years has also shown that lifespan can be extended by directing antioxidants specifically at mitochondria.

It has also been shown, in some animals, that the effects of calorie or protein restriction can be obtained via drugs without actually dieting. The effects of diet on ageing appear to operate particularly through the production of insulin and related enzymes with their role in growth and maintenance of correct blood glucose levels. The primary metabolic pathway involved, IGF-1, is known to be involved in ageing, and decreasing the activity of the protein receptor involved in IGF-1 has been shown to extend lifespan in mice. The case is still unproven for humans, but a number of studies are assessing whether there is reduced insulin signalling in long-lived people.

Human ageing has a separate dimension that becomes ever more relevant as people live longer. In animals, the various ageing processes seem to progress in tandem. For humans, there is evidence that ageing of the brain is partly uncoupled from the other organs. The evidence for this comes from observations of people suffering from premature ageing conditions, such as Werner's syndrome.

The implication is that if it becomes possible to extend human lifespan, it cannot be assumed that mental deterioration will automatically be postponed. So it is important to continue the distinct study of brain ageing, including factors such as accumulation of tangled protein, or plaques, associated with some forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's.

Extending lifespan and quality of life

Ageing in humans, as in other mammals, appears to be a co-ordinated process orchestrated by a relatively small number of genes. If this is the case, then it makes sense to tackle many age-related diseases through this genetic core rather than treating each one as a separate case—with the possible exception of some brain conditions.

There is potential for humans to mimic the biologically immortal hydra, by exploiting our stem cells in the regeneration of organs damaged by age-related diseases. The ability of adult stem cells, which remain in the body throughout life, to regenerate heart muscle cells has already been demonstrated in mice. Organs regenerated this way would in effect be brand new, and "younger" than all the other tissues and organs. Such regeneration might not immediately boost life's span, but should greatly improve its quality in old age.

Indeed, for humans the principal target should be quality of lifespan rather than absolute longevity. For now at least, few of us want to live beyond 120, but we would like to continue enjoying the good life for as long as possible within that ultimate span.

Can masturbating each day reduce prostrate cancer?

An apple a day can make you obese. So can masturbating each day keep the doctor away? Apparently it can reduce prostrate cancer by upto a third!

• 19 July 2003
• NewScientist.com news service
• Douglas Fox

Masturbation wILL make you go blind. It will make your palms grow hairy. Thankfully, such myths about masturbation are largely a thing of the past. But the latest research has even better news for young men: frequent self-pleasuring could protect against the most common kind of cancer.

A team in Australia led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne asked 1079 men with prostate cancer to fill in a questionnaire detailing their sexual habits, and compared their responses with those of 1259 healthy men of the same age. The team concludes that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer.

The protective effect is greatest while men are in their twenties: those who had ejaculated more than five times per week in their twenties, for instance, were one-third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life (BJU International, vol 92, p 211).

The results contradict those of previous studies, which have suggested that having had many sexual partners, or a high frequency of sexual activity, increases the risk of prostate cancer by up to 40 per cent. The key difference is that these earlier studies defined sexual activity as sexual intercourse, whereas the latest study focused on the number of ejaculations, whether or not intercourse was involved.

The team speculates that infections caused by intercourse may increase the risk of prostate cancer. "Had we been able to remove ejaculations associated with sexual intercourse, there should have been an even stronger protective effect of other ejaculations," they suggest. "Men have many ways of using their prostate which don't involve women or other men," Giles adds.

Giles accepts the possibility that the men who completed the questionnaires could have lied about their habits. But he doubts this skewed the results, since questions about masturbation are unlikely to evoke the same macho exaggeration as questions about, say, number of sexual partners.

But why should ejaculating more often cut the risk of prostate cancer? The team speculates that ejaculation prevents carcinogens building up in the gland. The prostate, together with the seminal vesicles, secretes the bulk of the fluid in semen, which is rich in substances such as potassium, zinc, fructose and citric acid. Generating the fluid involves concentrating these components from the bloodstream up to 600-fold - and this could be where the trouble starts. Studies in dogs show that carcinogens such as 3-methylcholanthrene, found in cigarette smoke, are also concentrated in prostate fluid. "It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis," says Giles. "The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them."

His findings suggest an intriguing parallel between prostate cancer and breast cancer, as recent studies indicate that lactating reduces a woman's risk of breast cancer, perhaps because this also flushes out carcinogens. Alternatively, ejaculation might induce prostate cells to mature fully, making them less susceptible to carcinogens. "All these mechanisms are totally speculative," cautions breast cancer expert Loren Lipworth of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Maryland.

But if the finding is confirmed, future health advice from doctors may no longer be restricted to diet and exercise. "Masturbation is part of people's sexual repertoire," says Anthony Smith, deputy director of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Melbourne. "If these findings hold up, then it's perfectly reasonable that men should be encouraged to masturbate."

From issue 2404 of New Scientist magazine, 19 July 2003, page 15

Britain is not a religious country - BHA comments on Guardian / ICM poll

I covered this poll here.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed the results of an ICM poll published today by the Guardian which demonstrates that Britain is not a religious country.

Andrew Copson, responsible for education and public affairs at the BHA, said:

‘This is the evidence for what most people are increasingly accepting as common sense. Britain is far from being a Christian country and the churches, in spite of their continuing privileges and increasingly shrill insistences to the contrary, have lost the right to speak for Britain . Nor is it possible to claim that Britain can be defined instead as “multi-faith”, when such clear majorities disown religion. The fact that the Government does not accept this fact, but continue to define the communities of Britain in faith terms, continue to promote faith schools, and to pay unjustified attention to unrepresentative religious “leaders” must be a source of increasing frustration for many.

‘Time and again religious groups get their way against overwhelmingly public opinion. They killed off the Assisted Dying Bill, which 4 out of 5 people supported; they have won wide exemptions from equality legislation so they can continue to discriminate against gay people and those who do not share their beliefs; and they will be doing their utmost to defend their 26 unelected members of Parliament when the Government tackles Lords reform this session. Instead of promoting a false image of modern Britain, Government should instead accept the real nature of contemporary society and we should move towards a secular state in this country – a state neutral on matters of religion and belief where there are no special privileges for any belief system, and public debate can be genuinely shared by citizens of whatever religion or belief.’

Religion does more harm than good - poll

Bold emphasis is mine, otherwise unedited.

82% say faith causes tension in country where two thirds are not religious

Julian Glover and Alexandra Topping
Saturday December 23, 2006
The Guardian


Girls from St Marylebone school in London attend a multi-faith assembly in church. Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian

More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good.

The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints a picture of a sceptical nation with massive doubts about the effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of many faith communities.

Most people have no personal faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian.

Older people and women are the most likely to believe in a god, with 37% of women saying they are religious, compared with 29% of men.

The findings come at the end of a year in which multiculturalism and the role of different faiths in society has been at the heart of a divisive political debate.

But a spokesman for the Church of England denied yesterday that mainstream religion was the source of tension. He also insisted that the "impression of secularism in this country is overrated".

"You also have to bear in mind how society has changed. It is more difficult to go to church now than it was. Communities are displaced, people work longer hours - it's harder to fit it in. It doesn't alter the fact that the Church of England will get 1 million people in church every Sunday, which is larger than any other gathering in the country."

The Right Rev Bishop Dunn, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, added: "The perception that faith is a cause of division can often be because faith is misused for other uses and other agendas."

The poll suggests, however, that in modern Britain religious observance has become a habit reserved for special occasions. Only 13% of those questioned claimed to visit a place of worship at least once a week, with 43% saying they never attended religious services.

Non-Christians are the most regular attenders - 29% say they attend a religious service at least weekly. Yet Christmas remains a religious festival for many people, with 54% of Christians questioned saying they intended to go to a religious service over the holiday period.

Well-off people are more likely to plan to visit a church at Christmas: 64% of those in the highest economic categories expect to attend, compared with 43% of those in the bottom group.

Britain's generally tolerant attitude to religion is underlined by the small proportion who say the country is best described as a Christian one. Only 17% think this. The clear majority, 62%, agree Britain is better described as "a religious country of many faiths".

ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,006 adults aged 18+ by telephone between December 12 and 13. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

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How many calories usage to burn 1 pound fat?

food component	energy density
	kcal/g	kJ/g
fat	9	37
ethanol (alcohol)	7	29
proteins	4	17
carbohydrates	4	17
organic acids	3	13
polyols (sugar-free sweeteners)	2.4	10

Human fat tissue contains about 87% lipids, so that 1 kg of body-fat tissue has roughly the caloric energy of 870 g of pure fat, or 7800 kcal (9kcal/g x1000 x 0.87). Therefore one has to create a −7800 kcal deficit between energy intake and use to lose 1 kg of body-fat. In U.S. customary units, that is about 3500 kcal per pound. [2]

An Apple a Day for 10 years could add 3.5 stone weight

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, so the rhyme goes. But it could make you put on 3.5 stone over 10 years!

I worked out the maths today:-

• A small 100g eating apple has 47 calories.
• One pound of body weight is equivalent to 3500 calories.
  
• So if you eat 74 apples (3500/47) you could add a pound weight.
  
• An apple a day for a year could add 4.9 pounds (365/74) weight.
  
• In 10 years thats 49 pounds or 3st 7 pounds!

Twenty years ago I was 9st 13 pounds. In August 2006 I was 13st 7 pounds. So since 1986 I've eaten the equivalent of an apple every OTHER day - too much!

Isn't it amazing that everyone is not overweight!!

Genetics of eye colour unlocked

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

Eye colour has always intrigued geneticists

Scientists have made a breakthrough in their understanding of the genetics behind human eye colour. (wiki)

They found that just a few "letters" out of the six billion that make up the genetic code are responsible for most of the variation in human eye colour.

The research, by a team of scientists from Queensland, Australia, appear in an issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The findings are based on a genetic study of nearly 4,000 individuals.

One of the changes is like switching the light on and off, while the other is like changing the light bulb from brown to green Richard Sturm, University of Queensland

Differences in eye colour are largely down to "single nucleotide polymorphisms" (SNPs - pronounced "snips"); variations in the sequence of letters that make up a single strand of human DNA.

SNPs represent a change of just one letter in the genetic sequence. These changes, or mutations, in our DNA can have important consequences for how the gene gets physically expressed.

All the SNPs are located near a gene called OCA2. This gene produces a protein that helps give hair, skin and eyes their colour. And mutations in OCA2 cause the most common type of albinism.

Brown and blue

The study, which focused on twins, their siblings and parents, shows - conclusively - that there is no "gene" for eye colour.

THE DNA MOLECULE The double-stranded DNA molecule is held together by chemical components called bases Adenine (A) bonds with thymine (T); cytosine(C) bonds with guanine (G) Groupings of these "letters" form "code of life"; there are about 2.9 billion base-pairs in the human genome wound into 24 distinct bundles, or chromosomes Written in the DNA are about 20-25,000 genes which human cells use as starting templates to make proteins; these sophisticated molecules build and maintain our bodies

Everyone has two copies of a SNP. So there are several possible combinations, some of which are more heavily associated with, for example, blue eyes, than with brown eyes.

In short, these combinations strongly influence the colour of a person's eyes, but they are not the final word.

Dr Richard Sturm and his colleagues found three SNPs near the start of the OCA2 gene that were linked to blue eye colour.

"The SNPs we've identified in themselves are not functionally causing the eye colour change, but they are linked very, very closely to something that is," Dr Sturm, from the University of Queensland, told BBC News.

"When OCA2 is knocked out, there is a loss of pigmentation. The position of these SNPs right at the start of the gene means it is possible we're looking at a change in the regulation of the gene in people with blue eye colour."

Functional change

So these SNPs, at the start of OCA2, probably regulate how much of the pigmentation protein is produced by the gene. People with brown eyes might have a lot of this protein, while people with blue eyes have less.

However, the single letter changes involved in green eyes may actually produce functional changes in the pigmentation protein.

The researchers found SNPs at another position in the OCA2 region - linked to green eyes - that resulted in changes to amino acids (the building blocks of a protein).

"To use an analogy, one of the changes is like switching the light on and off, while the other is like changing the light bulb from brown to green," said Dr Sturm.

Altogether, the single letter changes identified in the study accounted for 74% of total variation in eye colour, the researchers said.

The study was a collaboration between researchers at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and the University of Queensland, both in Brisbane.

Overweight? Change you gut bacteria!

Your gut reaction influences your weight

• 18:00 20 December 2006
• NewScientist.com news service
• Roxanne Khamsi

The amount of weight an animal gains from eating depends partly on the types of microbes found in its gut, a new mouse study reveals.

Mice with microbes that are better at extracting energy from food end up fatter, researchers say. And when obese people diet, they lose some of these fattening microbes from their guts, according to a related report.

The new findings could help nutritionists develop new ways of preventing and treating weight problems.

People, like mice, are born without any bacteria in their gut. But within the first few years of life a wide range of microbes colonise their intestine and help them to breakdown and digest food.

To explore the influence of these bacteria, Jeffrey Gordon at the University of Washington in St Louis, Missouri, US, and colleagues turned to a special “germ-free” breed of laboratory mice that lack the trillions of microbes that normally reside in the rodent gut.

Previous studies have shown that these mice stay slim if kept inside a sterile, microbe-free environment (see Slimming for slackers).

Grossly obese

The team inoculated these animals with a sample of gut microbes from either normal mice or mice that have a mutation in the “obese” gene. This gene controls the expression of an appetite-regulating hormone – animals that carry a mutated copy are grossly obese because they overeat excessively.

The germ-free mice that received bacteria from normal mice subsequently experienced a 25% increase in body fat. Those that received microbes from obese mice, on the other hand, experienced a 45% increase in body fat.

To explain why injections from obese mice caused a greater weight gain, scientists compared the microbial makeup of these mice with their normal counterparts. They found that, compared with normal mice, the obese rodents had more microbes from the bacterial group known as Firmicutes and fewer of those belonging to the group Bacteroidetes.

Compared with Bacteroidetes bacteria, Firmicutes bacteria might have a wider range of enzymes for breaking down complex carbohydrates, the researchers say. This could make them more efficient at extracting energy from food, which our bodies ultimately convert into fat.

"Striking result"

In a related study, Gordon’s team determined the microbial makeup of 12 obese people by conducting a genetic analysis of their faeces. This revealed that these individuals had a higher ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes bugs than lean people involved in the study. For example, Bacteroidetes microbes constituted 5% of the obese people’s gut flora, but 20% of the lean subjects’.

After a year of either a carbohydrate- or fat-restricted diet, the obese individuals lost weight and the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes bugs shifted towards that of their lean counterparts. In the end, Bacteroidetes made up about 15% of their gut flora.

“It’s a striking result and it’s constant across all of these different people,” comments David Relman at Stanford University in California, US, who did an earlier, landmark genetic analysis of human gut bugs (Science, vol 308, p 1635). “It’s not just having microbes, it’s the particular makeup that might matter,” he adds.

Journal: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature4441022a) and (DOI: 10.1038/nature05414)