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Thursday, August 18, 2005

“Total chaos” is how many described the melee that resulted from a sale of used Apple iBook laptop computers at the Richmond International Raceway (RIR) by the Henrico County, Virginia school system.

Officials estimated nearly 5,000 people thronged the sale for the $50, four-year-old computers. Among them were 17 injured, four requiring hospitalization – one for a leg injury, and three for heat-related illness, said Henrico County Police. Reports of trampling in the stampede were not uncommon, and one driver reportedly tried to drive through the throng of prospective buyers.

Alice Jemerson, an elderly customer said, “They bum rushed the gates and I was knocked over, fighting for my life. All these people were on top of me.”

Shortly after 7am EST officials opened the gates and many residents ran hysterically toward the building where the sale was to occur at 9am.

At a post sale press conference, Henrico County Police spokesman Lieutenant Doug Perry told reporters, “A few bad apples found their way inside. It looked worse than it was.”

Apple iBooks are the preferred computer for Henrico County schools, and Director of General Services of Henrico County Paul Proto, said changes were made to the event after tremendous interest was generated, some as far away as Europe and California. Officials closed and moved the sale from the Henrico county school warehouse to the RIR, after residents complained that their tax dollars were used to buy the computers, and they ought to have first right to repurchase them. The Henrico County Board of Supervisors voted to amend the County Code so that only residents could purchase the laptop computers.

Although officials had prohibited camping out and overnight parking, some in attendance reported that people began arriving at midnight.

Henrico Police Chief H.W. Stanley, Jr. said five patrol officers were originally planned for the event, a customary presence for an event the size authorities had estimated. But by 6 am, an enormous crowd was assembled at the front gate.

Officials present before opening told the crowd that automobiles would be allowed to enter first, which prompted many to run to their cars. But while some were running back to their cars, others rushed the gate. The resulting confusion created much anger, and guards closed the gates shortly thereafter.

Long lines encircling the sale building were commonplace, and one observer noted, “They’re going to see themselves on the news tonight, and see what fools they are.”

Some citizens, however, considered their wait worthwhile. Hairstylist and mother of two Sheress Blunt was one of the first hundred to buy one of the iBooks; she came with her mother and said they sneaked into the raceway through a side gate.

Tonya Vaughan arrived at 5:30 a.m., also bought one of the first iBooks and said three people offered to buy it from her for as much as $200. She declined however, saying, “I told them no way! I had worked too hard for it.”

Lt. Perry said many officers were complimented on the way they handled the crowd, adding that police were seen letting children who had been pushed aside, into the building.

Mr. Proto said, “There are no plans right now to have another iBook sale.”

Henrico County Battalion Police Chief Steve Wood said no arrests were made and the iBooks were sold out by 1pm EST.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.

Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Beaches—East York (Ward 32). Four candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Donna Braniff, Alan Burke, Sandra Bussin (incumbent), William Gallos, John Greer, John Lewis, Erica Maier, Luca Mele, and Matt Williams.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced its first national authority for scientific research (NASR) to coordinate and fund scientific research in the country.

The national authority for scientific research was announced on March 7 by Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE minister for higher education and scientific research. NASR will begin with an annual budget of AED100 million (approximately US$27.2 million). The authority hopes to receive additional contributions from the public and the private sector.

NASR will look to fund research projects in various fields, including engineering, technology, medicine, water and agriculture, proposing specific projects to be competed for by researchers at universities and private research institutes.

“Projects are going to be selected to help promote scientific research and the growth of UAE society and we will compare them with international scientific research criteria,” Gulf News quoted Al Nahyan as saying at the launch.

NASR will also train scientists and develop programmes for promoting public science awareness. It will also coordinate with government authorities on the issue of intellectual property rights, by providing advice on how companies and research centres should go about protecting their discoveries in the form of patents or licenses. It will also provide scholarships for researchers in the UAE to work on international research programmes, and organise national scientific conferences. NASR forms part of the UAE’s strategic plan to improve higher education and scientific research.

Zakaria Maamar, associate professor at the College of Information Technology at Zayed University, UAE, told Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) that, “This initiative is another boost to the research and development activities that are carried out in the UAE. It will definitely provide researchers with the appropriate funds to sustain such activities and promote best practices in the community.”

Said Elnaffar, assistant professor at the college of information technology at the United Arab Emirates University, told SciDev.Net that, with this initiative, the UAE is taking the lead and setting a good example by building a strong development infrastructure founded on knowledge discovery and research.

This article is based on UAE launches national authority for scientific research by scidev.net (Wagdy Sawahel) which has a copyright policy compatible with our CC-BY 2.5. Specifically “CC-BY-2.0 UK“

Monday, October 30, 2006

On November 13, Torontoians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Etobicoke Centre (Ward 3). One candidate responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Doug Holyday (incumbent), Peter Kudryk, Lillian Lança, and Ross Vaughan.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Last Thursday, British sensory biologist Dominic Clarke and other authors published research about detection of floral electric fields by bees in journal Science. The research involved studying bees’ reaction to flowers with different electric fields. The researches concluded that bees can choose flowers based on their electric fields, and remember them as they do with color and other characteristics of flowers.

This Friday Wikinews interviewed Dominic Clarke about the research.

((Wikinews)) What caused your initial interest in electric fields of flowers?

Dominic Clarke: There has been a considerable amount of speculation in the scientific literature since the 60s about the role of electric fields in pollination. It has been suggested that the electric field that arises between a charged bee and a grounded flower may be responsible for increasing the efficiency of pollen transfer between the two. We looked at this literature as sensory biologists and naturally formed the question ‘can bees sense these fields?’. Since we couldn’t find any answers to that question in the literature, we decided to find out for ourselves.

((WN)) How was the new phenomenon discovered?

DC: We use what’s called ‘differential conditioning’, where bees are trained to find a sucrose reward from an array of flowers, where only half of the flowers contain the reward. In our experiment, the flowers that were rewarded (with a sugary solution) were marked with a small electric field (about the same strength as around a flower in the wild). The ones that were not rewarded were not marked with fields. Since the electric field is the only thing that differs between the two flowers, we know that if the bees can learn to tell them apart, they can sense the electric field. Our bees were able to pick the rewarded flower 80% of the time when the electric field was present as a cue. When the electric field was switched off, they could only get it right half the time, which is the same as if they were just picking flowers at random.

((WN)) How many species of flowers and bees did you study during your research?

DC: We focus on one species of bee, the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. And we look mainly at Petunia flowers (P. integrifolia). These two species provide the bulk of our data, but we do consider other flowers like geraniums, daisies, clematis and foxglove, and other species of bee (particularly the honeybee Apis mellifera).

((WN)) Do you have diagrams, sketches, or drawings of electric field around a bee and a flower?

DC: I have attached a picture of a computer model of the electric field around a flower called “Flower Potentials and Fields”.

((WN)) Was it known that bees have a charge before?

DC: Yes, reports as early as the 70s have measured electrical charge on bees, but it was not known before whether or not they could sense such charges.

((WN)) What environment did you study the flowers and bees in? A laboratory? A garden? Natural environment?

DC: The behavioural tests were carried out in a laboratory because we needed to be able to precisely control the environment in which the bees were tested. Future work will be aimed at trying to get out into the bees’ natural environment and trying to figure out exactly what role(s) this sense plays in their lives.

((WN)) What equipment was used during the research? How did you measure the charge?

DC: Charge was measured using a device called a “Faraday Pail”. It is basically an electrically shielded metal cup, the voltage of which changes according to how much charge is inside it. We can measure this voltage when a bee flies in and so measure its charge. We did this with 51 individual bees.

((WN)) What were the roles of the people involved in the research? What activity was most time-consuming?

DC: It was very collaborative in all aspects of the research. I carried out the bulk of the experimental work and data analysis, but the process of designing the experiment, figuring out how to do the analysis, choosing which ideas to follow and which to put on the shelf etc., that is highly collaborative. Then of course comes the long period of writing, re-writing, re-re-writing, sending out to colleagues for feedback, re-re-re-writing, submission, peer-review, editing re-submission etc. which is also a collaboration between all the authors. A large part of doing science is talking as well; meeting, planning brainstorming. It feels to me like putting together the paper took the longest, but perhaps that’s just because it’s the most fresh in my mind.

((WN)) What do you see as possible directions for future research in this field? What do you think possible applications of the discovery can be?

DC: The two big questions now are “how do the bees do this?” and “why do they do this?”. The first is a case of pinning down the sensory mechanism used by the bees to detect the fields, and the second will involve a great deal of field-based experiments. We need to get out of the laboratory and understand the role this phenomenon plays in the lives of bees in the wild.

((WN)) Thank you for sharing your insight and details. Have a good time.

Thursday, June 9, 2005

Canada’s top court has struck down Quebec’s bans on private health care insurance, citing an increased risk to the life and health of Canadians. [1]

The Supreme Court of Canada ruling looked into a patient’s right to pay for faster service in a system that currently treats patients on the basis of equal access to medical care, regardless of income. [2]

Quebec patient George Zeliotis, a chemical salesman who waited in pain for more than a year in 1997 to have his hip replaced, said he should have had the right to pay for surgery.

Under public health care, it’s forbidden to pay for services covered under the system.

Despite free medical treatment, there are often long waiting lists for operations and services with current public health care.[3]

Together with physician, Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, Mr. Zeliotis launched a challenge to the Supreme Court of Canada, after losing their fight in Quebec’s lower courts, arguing that having to wait for surgery violates a patient’s constitutional right to life, liberty, and security of the person. [4]

Mr. Zeliotis and Dr. Chaoulli argued that being able to pay for private medical services wouldn’t be detrimental to the public health care system.

The Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal had dismissed the case, ruling that the provincial law’s intent was not to discriminate among patients and to provide health care based on need rather than a patient’s ability to pay.

The Canadian Medical Association said the Superior Court of Canada ruling could “fundamentally change the health-care system in Canada as we now know it” but declined to comment any further until it had time to study the decision. [5]

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A man missing from a camping ground in southern Utah in the Western US since July 30 was found in Australia. His automobile was found in a campground of Dixie National Forest with a note that he would be back in a few hours. An extensive search and rescue operation was conducted to try to locate this hiker by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah.

Investigators in the Sheriff’s Office were able to track him down to Cairns, Queensland. Apparently before he was “missing”, he bought a one-way ticket to Australia. Bryan Butas, the missing hiker, apparently had been under a great deal of stress and “got sick of it all”, according to a telephone interview by the Associated Press.

Butas has been charged with insurance fraud, a second-degree felony, by Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap. This was because Butas plotted to obtain a $250,000 life insurance policy before faking his own disappearance. He has also been given a bill for $20,000 by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for their search and rescue operations on his behalf.

His wife and children have since his disappearance moved to the wife’s parent’s home in Ohio. Butas’s parents came to Southern Utah to help in the search and were “embarrassed and shocked” to learn their son had merely run away from marital and financial difficulties, Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said.

Washington County Sheriff Sgt. Jake Adams said his investigation included tracing an application Butas made for a passport, his purchase of a one-way airline ticket to Australia, and the life insurance policy that names his wife and children as beneficiaries. On August 18, Adams said Butas’s mother called him to say her son had called home the evening of August 11, several days after the search was officially called off for the missing man. Butas asked his mother for money and an airline ticket home, which she sent.

Butas has since been checked into the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Brecksville, Ohio, according to Adams, but will shortly return to Utah.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

George Lucas has announced that there will be one last Star Wars movie to end the saga, but it won’t have any actors visible.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an animated film is scheduled to be released into theaters on August 15 of this year.

“I felt there were a lot more ‘Star Wars’ stories left to tell. I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward,” said Lucas in a statement to the media.

Lucas says that although the film is animated, people can expect the same kind of galactic space battles and action that all the other Star Wars films have. The approximate running time of the film is 100 minutes.

The film is produced by Warner Brothers and Lucasfilm LTD. The new movie is also set to continue as an animated, 30 minute “mini-movie” series this autumn. The show can be seen on the Cartoon Network.