Carter Center gets $40M to eradicate Guinea worm (AP)

ATLANTA ? The Carter Center on Monday announced it received $40 million in donations to help fuel its mission to eradicate Guinea worm disease, a debilitating parasite that once plagued millions of people across the developing world.

The Atlanta-based center said the funding comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates. It said the grants, along with $31 million committed last year by the United Kingdom, will help eradicate the disease by 2015.

"Millions of people in Africa and Asia will no longer risk suffering one of the most horrific human diseases ever known thanks to the generosity and global health leadership" of the donors, said former President Jimmy Carter.

There were about 3.5 million reported cases of the disease in 20 nations when the Carter Center's eradication program began in 1986. On Monday, the center said an early tally showed that only 1,060 cases of the disease occurred worldwide in 2011.

Most of the cases occurred in the African nations of South Sudan, Mali and Ethiopia. There was also an isolated outbreak in Chad.

Guinea worm disease occurs when people drink water contaminated with worm larvae. Over a year, the worm can grow to the size of a 3-foot long spaghetti noodle. Then they very slowly emerge through the skin, often causing searing, debilitating pain for months. The disease, however, is usually not fatal.

There is no vaccine or medicine for the parasite. Infection is prevented by filtering water and educating people how to avoid the disease.

The Carter Center has worked to stem the spread of Guinea worm in part by handing out millions of pipe filters and educating residents about the dangers of drinking tainted water. The former president has also has used his political bully pulpit to encourage local politicians to devote time and resources to fighting the disease.

The center said it would use the funding to pay for programs aimed at stamping out the disease and to fund surveillance by the World Health Organization to certify eradication over three years.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contributed $23.3 million of Monday's pledge. Nahyan pledged $10 million and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation gave an additional $6.7 million.

"The last cases of any disease are the most challenging to wipe out," said Carter. "But we know that with the international community's support, Guinea worm disease soon will be relegated to the history books."

___

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Iconic skier's death points out US health gap

Doug Pensinger / Getty Images

Skier Maddie Bowman wears a band on her arm and a purple ribbon in rememberance of Canadian skier Sarah Burke during Winter X Games 2012 at Buttermilk Mountain on Saturday. Burke died Jan 19 from injuries she sustained in a training accident.

By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

Since the death of Canadian skier Sarah Burke in January, fans and supporters from around the world have donated over $300,000 ? more than enough to cover the massive U.S. medical bill generated by efforts to save her.

The outpouring of grief for Burke and the influx of funds are a tribute to a young woman who was a pioneer and legend in her sport. The need for a fundraiser ? to help her grieving family avert bankruptcy ? was viewed by some Canadians and?U.S. observers?as a condemnation of the U.S. health care system.

"The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada? her care would have been covered because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage," wrote Wendell Potter, an insurance executive-turned-whistleblower who writes for iWatch at the Center for Public Integrity. "No one in Canada finds themselves in that predicament, nor do they face losing their homes as many Americans do when they become critically ill or suffer an injury..."

---

Burke, who died at 30, was on skis by age five, and pursuing a professional skiing career before she left high school. She pioneered women?s halfpipe skiing and was instrumental in getting the event included in the X-Games, according to a profile in Sportsnet magazine of Canada.

"She was to freeskiing what Wayne Gretzky was to hockey or Michael Jordan was to basketball ? the iconic face of a sport,? wrote Sportsnet reporter Dan Robson. "She built her world by conquering limits, both on the hill and off it."

After Burke?s crash while training on the Eagle Superpipe at Park City Mountain Resort in Utah on Jan 10, doctors fought to save her for nine days. She died Jan. 19, from a torn vertebral artery in her neck that caused bleeding in her brain,

Burke?s contribution to sport ? not to mention her youth, beauty, charisma and fame ? has no doubt helped the effort to generate donations?to cover an operation, countless tests, care and hospitalization. The fundraising page on GiveForward.com late Monday showed that $302,535 had been raised. Burke?s publicist said that medical costs were expected to be about $200,000.

The fundraising page said that future contributions would go to a foundation ?to honor Sarah's legacy and promote the ideals she valued and embodied."

The loss of Sarah Burke is no less painful for her loved ones, but with medical care covered through donations, the aftermath will not bring them additional hardship.

For?many Americans, the hardship persists.

On Monday, Potter pointed to the plight of a 13-year-old Caroline Richmond on life support in Alabama after collapsing from a stroke, which turned out to be caused by leukemia. Her self-employed parents do not have health coverage.

?As it turns out, Caroline is one of more than 50 million men, women and children who do not have health insurance in the United States, which is why her family is in the same predicament as Sarah Burke?s,? Potter wrote.

The community has launched a multi-pronged effort to raise money to cover mounting medical costs for Carolyn ? car washes, a bake sale, a fish fry and so on ? but like most people who have life threatening medical conditions, she is not famous.

An estimated 700,000 American families file for bankruptcy every year because of medical debt, Potter said.

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Power paradox: Clean might not be green forever

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As energy demand grows, even alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear fusion could begin to affect the climate

"A better, richer and happier life for all our citizens." That's the American dream. In practice, it means living in a spacious, air-conditioned house, owning a car or three and maybe a boat or a holiday home, not to mention flying off to exotic destinations.

The trouble with this lifestyle is that it consumes a lot of power. If everyone in the world started living like wealthy Americans, we'd need to generate more than 10 times as much energy each year. And if, in a century or three, we all expect to be looked after by an army of robots and zoom up into space on holidays, we are going to need a vast amount more. Where are we going to get so much power from?

It is clear that continuing to rely on fossil fuels will have catastrophic results, because of the dramatic warming effect of carbon dioxide. But alternative power sources will affect the climate too. For now, the climatic effects of "clean energy" sources are trivial compared with those that spew out greenhouse gases, but if we keep on using ever more power over the coming centuries, they will become ever more significant.

While this kind of work is still at an early stage, some startling conclusions are already beginning to emerge. Nuclear power - including fusion - is not the long-term answer to our energy problems. Even renewable energies such as wind power will have to be used with caution, because large-scale extraction could have both local and global effects. These effects are not necessarily a bad thing, though. We might be able to exploit them to geoengineer the climate and combat global warming.

There is a fundamental problem facing any planet-bound civilisation, as Eric Chaisson of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, points out. Whatever you use energy for, it almost all ends up as waste heat.

Much of the electrical energy that powers your mobile phone or computer ends up heating the circuitry, for instance. The rest gets turned into radio waves or light, which turn into heat when they are absorbed by other surfaces. The same is true when you use a mixer in the kitchen, or a drill, or turn on a fan - unless you're trying to beam radio signals to aliens, pretty much all of the energy you use will end up heating the Earth.

We humans use a little over 16 terawatts (TW) of power at any one moment, which is nothing compared with the 120,000 TW of solar power absorbed by the Earth at the same time. What matters, though, is the balance between how much heat arrives and how much leaves (see "Earth's energy budget"). If as much heat leaves the top of the atmosphere as enters, a planet's temperature remains the same. If more heat arrives, or less is lost, the planet will warm. As it does so, it will begin to emit more and more heat until equilibrium is re-established at a higher temperature.

See diagramm: "Earth's energy budget"

Over the past few thousand years, Earth was roughly in equilibrium and the climate changed little. Now levels of greenhouse gases are rising, and roughly 380 TW less heat is escaping. Result: the planet is warming.

The warming due to the 16 TW or so of waste heat produced by humans is tiny in comparison. However, if humanity manages to thrive despite the immense challenges we face, and keeps on using more and more power, waste heat will become a huge problem in the future. If the demand for power grew to 5000 TW, Chaisson has calculated, it would warm the planet by 3 ?C.

This waste-heat warming would be in addition to the warming due to rising CO₂ levels. What's more, since this calculation does not take into account any of the feedbacks likely to amplify the effect, well under 5000 TW may produce this degree of warming.

Such colossal power use might seem implausible. Yet if our consumption continues to grow exponentially - it has been increasing by around 2 per cent per year this century despite rising prices - we could reach this point around 2300.

Chaisson describes his work as a "back of the envelope" calculation done in the hope someone would prove him wrong. So far no one has. On the contrary, preliminary modelling by Mark Flanner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, suggests that waste heat would cause large industrialised regions to warm by between 0.4 ?C and 0.9 ?C by 2100, in agreement with Chaisson's estimates (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 36, p L02801). Normal climate models do not include the waste-heat effect.

Does this mean human civilisation has to restrict itself to using no more than a few hundred terawatts of energy? Not necessarily. It depends on where the energy comes from. If you turn the sun's energy into electricity and use it to boil your kettle, it won't make the planet any warmer than if that same energy had instead gone into heating up the tiles on your roof. But if you boil your kettle using energy from fossil fuels or a nuclear power plant, you are adding extra heat. "The only energy that is not going to additionally heat the Earth is solar and its derivatives," says Chaisson, referring to sources driven by the sun's heat - wind, hydro and waves.

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Feisty Gingrich stakes campaign on ability to beat Obama, but some doubt that claim (Star Tribune)

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AZZA Fusion 4000

Calling the AZZA Fusion 4000 a gaming case is like calling the Empire State Building an office complex: technically correct, but woefully inadequate. So big is this case, in fact, that it can hold not only an ATX motherboard and all the trimmings, but also a separate Mini ITX motherboard and all of its trimmings?in both instances, including the power supply. Die-hard DIYers will undoubtedly love all the options the case gives them, and at $259.99 (list) the price is even sensible. But the Fusion 4000 is, unsurprisingly, difficult to carry and bulky enough to defeat some typical work habits, so unless you have a specific need for its unusual offerings, you're better off setting your sights elsewhere.

Assuming, that is, you can even see over the top of the Fusion 4000. Measuring a dizzying 30.7 by 10.2 by 24 inches (HWD), this is, by quite a margin, the tallest case we've ever seen. It dwarfs the Thermaltake Level 10, and even hulking full-system behemoths we?ve seen from boutique desktop manufacturers, like the Maingear Shift or the BFG Phobos (which also housed a smaller computer), tremble under its mighty shadow. And with a weight of 42 pounds empty, it's also one of the heaviest. Though these qualities are imposing, neither would present much of a problem were it easy to transport. But no: There's no handle, whether a detachable one or even an indentation on the exterior bottom panel. That makes carrying it around both a figurative and literal pain; we recommend placing the shipping box where you'll want the case to stay forever before unpacking it. (And, remember, chances are that this monster will fit only under the most Brobdingnagian of desks.)

At least the Fusion 4000 is decent on the equipment front. Its dual PC-nality, for one thing, is well addressed. The components for the Mini ITX system are installed in the uppermost of the case's two chambers, which opens (on either side) when you push two locking switches and lower a hinged door. Inside you'll find two internal 3.5-inch drive bays (which, thanks to two preinstalled SATA backplanes, are hot-swappable), two external 5.25-inch bays, and a single expansion slot. There isn't room up here for a full-size power supply, but you won't need one for most Mini ITX builds anyway. If you decide you don't want to install another computer in this area, you can use included replacement rear-panel plates to instead add a vent (for another fan) or a second full-size power supply (a special Y-cable, for linking both power supplies' output to the motherboard's 24-pin input, is included for this purpose).

The lower chamber is accessed in the traditional manner: by removing two thumbscrews and pulling off the side panel. In addition to the four 5.25-inch and six 3.5-inch drive bays down here, you'll also find two bays designed specifically for 2.5-inch drives (most likely of the solid-state variety); all of these are externally accessible from behind a front-panel door containing two 140mm intake fans. Because this is a truly hard-core case, there are ten expansion slots, so you can install one of the few XL-ATX gaming motherboards on the market, such as the Gigabyte G1.Assassin or the EVGA X79 Classified (though, of course, E-ATX and standard ATX form factors are fine as well). Grommeted openings allow for easy routing of wires and cables throughout the case, and there?s plenty of room beneath the motherboard for running cables; and a large rectangular hole facilitates adding mounting plates for aftermarket CPU coolers.

There's decent front-panel connectivity, too, from two adjacent collections of ports on the front of the top panel?ostensibly one set for each of the two computers you may want to install. In total there are three USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports (which connect to a header on your compatible motherboard), two headphone and two microphone jacks, and two power and reset buttons. It can be intuited (correctly) that the upper set is for the Mini ITX system and the lower set for the ATX system, but there's no direct indication of this anywhere near the controls themselves.

There are a few other examples of a lack of polish as well. In addition to the potentially confusing controls and the lack of a carrying handle, the front-panel drive door scrapes along the floor if you try to open it; you can alleviate this problem by using the included stand (which will add another 1.5 inches to the case?s height), but preinstalled feet don?t seem to be a lot to ask on a case that?s this skyscrapingly unwieldy. We were also disappointed in how relatively few fans were included. In addition to the aforementioned intake fans, there's a single 140mm exhaust fan in the ATX chamber?and that's it. There's room for two more fans (either 120mm or 140mm, or one measuring 230mm) in both the filtered side panel and up to four more fans (120mm, or three 140mm, or two 230mm) in the top panel, but none of these is included. Perhaps AZZA assumed that anyone choosing a case this extravagant would default to liquid cooling (there are plenty of grommeted rear-panel openings for routing piping into and out of the case, and the company boasts it can fit three such coolers at once), but this is too big of a case to be cooled so casually out of the box.

Worse is that there's no convenient way to work in the Fusion 4000. We normally advise laying cases horizontally on a flat surface, but doing so with this case could easily eat up more real estate on most workbenches or dinner tables than you may have to spend. If ever a case in modern times cried out for a removable motherboard tray, this is the one?but such a feature is sadly absent. You could remove the Mini ITX "case," but that's a relatively involved and cumbersome procedure that shouldn?t be necessary. We also found both the top panel, which consists mostly of louvered vents, and the Mini ITX chamber's side door flimsy; we frequently had difficulty snapping them back into place when we were done, and more than once inadvertently opened the side panels just by touching them the wrong way.

The good news is that once you solve (or look past) these shortcomings, installing components is not much of a chore. The Mini ITX chamber is a bit cramped, true, but if you install as much as you can on the motherboard before putting it in, the process isn't too bad. (We recommend doing that anyway.) Tool-free construction on almost all of the drive bays and expansion slots means you won't need your Phillips screwdriver for much beyond attaching the motherboard. (The one curious exception? The Mini ITX chamber?s single expansion slot.) And you certainly don?t have to worry about having enough space for, well, everything, even extra-long video cards like the AMD Radeon HD 6990.

Attractive as the AZZA Fusion 4000 may be, with its stylish matte black and red accenting inside and out, for all regular intents and purposes the case simply isn't practical. Other extra-tall cases, like the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D are more manageable; and more still, whether the original Level 10 or its Level 10 GT offshoot (both of which are Editors' Choices and, we feel obliged to mention, have handles), are more "fun" and more engagingly designed. The Fusion 4000 is novel only for its two-systems-in-one gimmick, which will appeal to only a small minority of even the most adventurous DIYers. If you know you need this case's unique features, you won't be too disappointed in what you get; but for everyone else the Fusion 4000 is neither compelling nor reasonable enough.

More PC Case Reviews:
??? AZZA Fusion 4000
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