Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

New crime prediction software being rolled out in the nation's capital should reduce not only the murder rate, but the rate of many other crimes as well.

Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.

In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder.

If the software proves successful, it could influence sentencing recommendations and bail amounts.

"When a person goes on probation or parole they are supervised by an officer. The question that officer has to answer is 'what level of supervision do you provide?'" said Berk.

It used to be that parole officers used the person's criminal record, and their good judgment, to determine that level.

"This research replaces those seat-of-the-pants calculations," he said.

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Black workers in Guyana struggle against neocolonial State and foreign bosses

On Wednesday August 18, the GB&GWU in its continued pursuit to ensure the Bauxite Company of Guyana Inc (BCGI) and the Government of Guyana respect bauxite workers' rights to Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining made its case before the Black and Ethnic Advisory Committee of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) in London, United Kingdom.

In the symposium organized by RMT to address this issue, Norman Browne, the Union's UK representative made a presentation that highlighted the plight of the bauxite workers and the government's response to the transgressions.

In presenting the Union's position of the 10 months old dispute, Browne pointed out the evident transgression of Section 23 (1) of the Trade Union Recognition and Certification Act (1997) which expressly says "When a trade union obtains a certificate of recognition for workers comprised in a bargaining unit in accordance with this Part, the employer shall recognize the union, and the union and the employer shall bargain in good faith and enter into negotiations with each other for the purpose of collective bargaining."

He highlighted the violation of the rights of the 57 workers who were placed on the breadline without due process.

He also apprised the audience of the Minister of Labour's responsibility under the Labour Laws of Guyana,  Chapter 98:01 Section 4 (1) (a) (b) and (c)  and the concerns of the Union at the tardiness of the Ministry of Labour in resolving the dispute, a dispute that has now become the longest running in the history of Guyana.

Dr Rupert Roopnarine, of the Working Peoples' Alliance, was another main speaker at the event.  In addressing the gathering, he gave a historical perspective of the development of the trade union movement in Guyana and the political interference that saw a decline in the vibrancy of the Guyana Trades Union Congress and its umbrella unions.

Attendees at the symposium made known their concerns about the deterioration in Guyana and have given the commitment to the Union to stand by it in its struggle for the protection of rights and the upholding of the rule of law. Leaders and representatives from several organizations in the UK were in attendance; among them were Tongarara Danni of the Pan African Voice in London and Kwabena Gyakye of the UK's branch of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP).
 
On Friday August 13, the leadership of the Union, Messrs Leslie Gonsalves and Carlton Sinclair, along with Mr. Norris Witter, General Secretary (ag.), Guyana Trades Union Congress, met with Labour Minister, Mr. Manzoor Nadir.

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Repairing bikes for torture survivors wins woman McKnight award

Cynthia McArthur surrounds herself with bicycles she can't ride.

McArthur, 58, used to work as a bicycle mechanic and once spent months pedaling across Europe - until chronic fatigue syndrome left her unable to work or bike more than a few blocks.

Now she spends her time repairing bicycles in the garage of her St. Paul home and coordinating a volunteer program that donates the bicycles to torture survivors. The "Bikes for Clients" program at the Center for Victims of Torture provides about 50 bicycles each year to adults and children.

"I suppose you could say, 'Oh, it's a way of taking lemons and turning it into lemonade,' or something silly like that," McArthur said. "It's not that goofy, but it is ironic because sometimes it was depressing that I couldn't do what I was helping other people do."

The McKnight Foundation announced Wednesday that McArthur and five other Minnesotans will receive Virginia McKnight Binger Awards in Human Service. The nonprofit provides the $10,000 awards to Minnesota residents "who have demonstrated an exceptional personal commitment to helping others in their communities but who have received little or no public recognition."

McArthur said that when a McKnight official called to tell her the news, she couldn't believe it.

"I almost fell off the chair that I was sitting in," she said. "It was totally out of the blue for me."

Other award recipients include Somali youth advocate Abdi Ali, homeless outreach volunteer Jerry Fleischaker, affordable housing landlord Dan Hunt, early education advocate Peg Johnson, and Korean War veteran and longtime volunteer Berlyn Staska.

McArthur began volunteering at the Center for Victims of Torture in 1996, after learning that the agency needed bicycle helmets for clients. Agency staff had been buying used bicycles at rummage sales, but they didn't know how to repair or maintain them.

For McArthur, it was a perfect fit. She grew up with a passion for bicycling and had worked repairing bicycles in the 1970s, when it "was totally uncool for a girl to be a bike mechanic," she said.

The volunteer work also allowed McArthur to fulfill a childhood promise.

"I had a lot of things happen to me when I was young that weren't good," she said. And I just remember saying, 'I'll never treat anybody like I've been treated.' So it's just been a conduit for me to exercise that value."

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Italian right-wing minister backs French Rom expulsions

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni on Saturday praised France's crackdown on Roma and travellers, saying that President Nicolas Sarkozy's government is "simply copying Italy". French Interior Minsiter Brice Hortefeux defended the controversial deportations in a newspaper interview, claiming his critics are confined to the "billionaire left".

"For years now, Italy has been using the technique of voluntary and assisted repatriation," Maroni told the Corriere della Sera.
 
Maroni is a member of the anti-immigration Northern League, the junior partner in Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing government. Critics of France's policy include the Vatican and the authors of a UN report on racism.
 
He added that he would like to be able to deport European Union citizens who do not meet hs requirements for income and housing and will raise the proposal at an EU ministers' meeting in Paris on 6 September.

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Are we beings of light?

From Does DNA Emit Light? by Dan Eden:

... Dr. Garjajev claims that this communication is not something that happens only inside the individual cells or between one cell and another. He claims organisms use this "light" to "talk" to other organisms and suggested that this could explain telepathy and ESP. It was like human beings already had their own wireless internet based on our DNA. Wow!

I tried to find a scientific journal that had this experiment. All I could find were blogs and other websites that carried the same story, word for word, without any references. That is until I stumbled on the work of Fritz-Albert Popp. Then everything I had just read seemed very plausible.

Fritz-Albert Popp thought he had discovered a cure for cancer. I'm not convinced that he didn't.

It was 1970, and Popp, a theoretical biophysicist at the University of Marburg in Germany, had been teaching radiology -- the interaction of electromagnetic (EM) radiation on biological systems. Popp was too early to worry about things like cellphones and microwave towers which are now commonly linked with cancers and leukemia. His world was much smaller.

He'd been examining two almost identical molecules: benzo[a]pyrene, a polycyclic hydrocarbon known to be one of the most lethal carcinogens to humans, and its twin (save for a tiny alteration in its molecular makeup), benzo[e]pyrene. He had illuminated both molecules with ultraviolet (UV) light in an attempt to find exactly what made these two almost identical molecules so different.

Why Ultra-violet light?

Popp chose to work specifically with UV light because of the experiments of a Russian biologist named Alexander Gurwitsch who, while working with onions in 1923, discovered that roots could stimulate a neighboring plant's roots if the two adjacent plants were in quartz glass pots but not if they were in silicon glass pots. The only difference being that the silicon filtered UV wavelengths of light while the quartz did not. Gurwitsch theorized that onion roots could communicate with each other by ultraviolet light.

All vibrations of energy are part of the electro-magnetic spectrum. These include electrical energy, heat, sound, light, radio waves and radioactive waves. UV light is merely a small portion of the spectrum of EM energy with a very short wavelength.

What Popp discovered was that benzo[a]pyrene (the cancer producing molecule) absorbed the UV light, then re-emitted it at a completely different frequency -- it was a light "scrambler". The benzo[e]pyrene (harmless to humans), allowed the UV light to pass through it unaltered.

Popp was puzzled by this difference, and continued to experiment with UV light and other compounds. He performed his test on 37 different chemicals, some cancer-causing, some not. After a while, he was able to predict which substances could cause cancer. In every instance, the compounds that were carcinogenic took the UV light, absorbed it and changed or scrambled the frequency.

There was another odd property of these compounds: each of the carcinogens reacted only to light at a specific frequency -- 380 nm (nanometres) in the ultra-violet range. Popp kept wondering why a cancer-causing substance would be a light scrambler. He began reading the scientific literature specifically about human biological reactions, and came across information about a phenomenon called 'photorepair'.

Photorepair

It is well known from biological laboratory experiments that if you blast a cell with UV light so that 99 per cent of the cell, including its DNA, is destroyed, you can almost entirely repair the damage in a single day just by illuminating the cell with the same wavelength at a much weaker intensity. To this day, scientists don't understand this phenomenon, called photorepair, but no one has disputed it.

Popp also knew that patients with xeroderma pigmentosum eventually die of skin cancer because their photorepair system can't repair solar damage. He was also struck by the fact that photorepair works most efficiently at 380 nm -- the same frequency that the cancer-causing compounds react to and scramble.

This was where Popp made his logical leap. If the carcinogens only react to this frequency, it must somehow be linked to photorepair. If so, this would mean that there must be some kind of light in the body responsible for photorepair. A compound must cause cancer because it permanently blocks this light and scrambles it, so photorepair can't work anymore. It seemed logical, but was it true?

Light inside the body

Popp was freaked out by this. He wrote about it in a paper and a prestigious medical journal agreed to publish it.

Not long after that, Popp was approached by a student named Bernhard Ruth, who asked Popp to supervise his work for his doctoral dissertation. Popp told Ruth he was prepared to do so if the student could show that light was emanating from the human body.

This meeting was fortuitous for Popp because Ruth happened to be an excellent experimental physicist. Ruth thought the idea was ridiculous, and immediately set to work building equipment to prove Popp's hypothesis wrong.

Within two years, Ruth had constructed a machine resembling a big X-ray detector which used a photomultiplier to count light, photon by photon. Even today, it is still one of the best pieces of equipment in the field. The machine had to be highly sensitive because it had to measure what Popp assumed would be extremely weak emissions. ...

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