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The National People's Congress (Chinese Legislature) amended a law to compel schools in China to improve its standards of construction, a reform that occurs in the wake of the earthquake in Wenchuan, last May 12, 14,000 schools were destroyed or suffer damage.

The amendment of the law on earthquake safety and disaster attention was approved yesterday, Saturday, at the last annual session of the assembly, reported today the state agency Xinhua.

It stipulates that schools must have standards of construction even higher than the houses and other buildings, especially in case of earthquake, and also bind to carry out improvement works and strengthening of existing schools.

In addition, the law will introduce courses of action in case of earthquake for the students, which until now did not exist despite the fact that many areas of China have a high seismic activity.

The Chinese government refuses to provide figures on how many students died in schools collapsed in the earthquake of May, although it is known that they were an important part of the nearly 90,000 victims totals.

There was relatively remote villages to the epicenter of the earthquake, as Juyú (Sichuan province), where most of the houses resisted the earthquake of 8 degrees of magnitude but the local school collapsed.

The earthquake brought to light the poor quality of the materials with which many schools are built in China and aroused the suspicions of embezzlement and corruption in local governments to grant projects to construction of schools.

According to the agency Xinhua, the poor quality of construction in Chinese schools, especially in rural areas, "has long been a concern for many," but it had to happen an earthquake to show the seriousness of the issue.

The legal amendment, which comes into force on May 1 2009, also requires raising the standards of construction of public buildings such as hospitals, shopping centers and communications hubs.

The facial expressions of emotions are set in the genes and are innate rather than a result of cultural learning, according to a study published today the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Since the birth of blind individuals can not be learned behavior at moments of pride or embarrassment of looking at others, their expressions of victory or defeat are probably an innate biological propensity to humans, rather than a learned behavior," said Jessica Tracy, of the University of British Columbia.

Tracy and his collaborator, David Matsumoto of the State University of San Francisco-both are professors of psychology, originally published his study of expressions of blind athletes and non-blind, last August in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Matsumoto and Tracy compared the facial expressions of blind and partially sighted Judo at the Olympic and Paralympic games of 2004 with an analysis of more than 4,800 photographs of athletes from 23 countries.

The researchers found that individuals who are or who are blind, handled their expressions of emotion in the same manner in accordance with the social context.

For example, because of the public nature of the handover ceremony of Olympic medals, 85 percent of the winners of silver-dams that are the ones who lost the competition for the gold-showed "social smiles" during the ceremony.

The "social smiles" you only use the muscles around the mouth, while the genuine smile that makes his eyes shine and entrecierren and cheeks rise.

"The losers stretched upward by the lower lip, as if seeking to control the emotion in their faces, and many have achieved social smile," said Matsumoto.

"But the individuals who are blind from birth could not have learned to control his emotions in this way so visual, so there must be another mechanism," he added.

"The statistical correlation between facial expressions of individuals who can see and those who are blind was almost perfect," said the researcher. "This suggests that something which lies in our genes is the source of the facial expressions of emotion."

"Maybe our emotions and the systems that regulate traces of our ancestors are," said the researcher.

He added "it is possible that in response to negative emotions humans have developed a system that shuts the mouth so that they can not scream, bite or throw insults."

In an earlier study on this subject, published in 2005 by the National Geographic magazine, Matsumoto was the view of some 50,000 people who observed 12 different facial expressions on the internet.

Each represents a different level of anger. It was the first comprehensive study that tested the recognition of expressions in different cultures, and although women were slightly better than men in their view of emotions, most participants did not recognize subtle nuances of expressions.

"Most people can not distinguish the subtle nuances in facial expressions," said Matsumoto. "And in tense situations that can be extremely important 'reading' of facial expressions, when you have a few seconds to alleviate a potentially dangerous encounter."

The year 2009 officially begin a second later after the world's clocks adjust to the increasingly slow rotation of the Earth's axis, today announced the U.S. Naval Observatory.

In this way, when the clocks mark the time 23:59:59 on Wednesday the so-called "universal time", better known as the meridian of Greenwich, was officially added a second.

The observatory, which is responsible for maintaining the "master clock" of the Pentagon, said that the pace of change in the rotation of the earth "occurs at rates affected by changing tides and other factors."

"This is the twenty-fourth extra second is added to the universal time, a uniform scale for measuring the time kept by atomic clocks around the world since 1972," the communique added Observatory.

"Historically the measurement of hourly time was related to half the rotation of the Earth in relation to celestial bodies and the second was defined in this frame of reference," explained the institution.

The invention of atomic clocks defined an "atomic time" much more precise scale and a second that is independent of the rotation of the planet.

In 1970 an international agreement established two scales of measurement of time: one related to the rotation of the Earth and the other in the atomic time.

"The problem is that the rotation of the Earth is becoming more slowly in a very gradual, requiring periodic insertion of a second of extra time scale atomic scales to maintain both a second of each other," said Naval Observatory.

Recently, Todd Pierce made a risky gamble that could have put at risk even their jobs.

To meet the computing needs of 16,300 employees and contractors in Genentech Inc., Pierce ran the risk and decided not to depend entirely on entrepreneurship programs from Microsoft, IBM or other traditional supplier, a conventional model in which the purchasing company becomes the owner of licenses for use.



Instead, Pierce, who is chief technology officer of Genentech Inc., Decided to lease these products are essential to Google Inc.

Google, the search giant of the information and advertising on the Internet, would arrange the e-mail system for Genentech, as well as the programs used in the office, as the word processor, spreadsheet and calendar , And would do all that through a connection "online", a novel called "cloud computing."

The decision has turned Genentech, a pioneer in biotechnology, in a guinea pig for Google and other alternative services software, trying to convince skeptical corporate executives that the "cloud" is a valid and appropriate.

In the process, Google Inc. Downplay expects revenue to Microsoft Corp. And exceed its fierce rival in the struggle to seize control of the programs most commonly used in computation.

The CEO of Genentech, Arthur Levinson, is part of Google's board of directors, but Pierce insists that such links were not the main reason for the transition to cloud computing.

After lengthy internal tests, Pierce became convinced that Google was reliable to provide crucial Genentech software, with such precision as it shows that company to decode the search requests made on the Web and annex them ads.

"You do not want to stay trapped in the past," said Pierce, managing director of informatics at Genentech. "I think we are at the forefront of this trend respect."

Cloud computing has grown into a market of approximately 36,000 million dollars this year, or approximately 13% of the sales of software in the world. The big question now is whether this can become a major technological trend to re obsolete business models of Microsoft and other companies for computer programs.

Despite the uproar that has caused this mode, it will be difficult to break old habits, especially since the powers of enterprise software _ Microsoft, IBM Corp., Oracle Corp.. _ And SAP have reacted to protect their existing business and lucrative software while creating their own online services to compete against emerging companies.

Not even Genentech, the biggest company so far has bought the package of software applications from Google, is poised to leave entirely to Microsoft. Still acquire licenses to use programs such as word processor Word and Excel to create spreadsheets.

Typically, companies are masters of software licenses, which require installing any software on each computer, which are still years of costly maintenance for the technology to continue operating.

In contrast, cloud computing allows someone else to take care of business programs, distance and in exchange for a monthly or annual fee. Users enter the program through connections to the Internet.

The idea was pleased the owners of small businesses, government agencies and schools. Now, the larger companies are beginning to show interest, particularly in the midst of the recession, while looking for ways to save money.

"Almost everyone has a good part of his personal life on the internet and there is no doubt that the future enterprise programs will also be there," said Zachary Nelson, NetSuite Inc. chief. Specialist in computer science. "I just have to see when companies are ready to make this move."

The economics persuaded Genentech. Based on the number of employees who have accounts with Google software, the company's South San Francisco pays at least 800,000 U.S. dollars annually by using the packet based on the internet.

The purchase and maintenance of a similar system from Microsoft, Oracle or IBM would have cost much more, although Genentech declined to say how much has been saved by subscribing to the office suite of Google.

Whatever the figure, the savings do not stop there. Pierce believes that the company would invest between 70 and the final $ 80 million to build a data center full of servers, so that their software worked, and would have had to hire more engineers and technology specialists.

"It's a huge cost that will not generate a million dollars in sales for my company," reasoned Pierce.

The construction of a Nicaragua Canal will be run by investors whether guarantees that the transit of the ships do not pollute the Great Lake of Granada and the San Juan River, said the president Daniel Ortega.

In statements broadcast by the radio station today the very first, Ortega noted that the project of building the channel for this country will be carried out if investors also provide resources to reforest the basins of the Great Lake of Nicaragua and the river San Juan.

"We have to take care of the Great Lake (or Lake of Granada) and we can not risk (with) the draft of the Grand Canal," said Ortega.

The president said that he is willing to "listen to proposals and showing me where he is guaranteed not to jeopardize the (Great) Lake" or the San Juan River, located near the border with Costa Rica.

Ortega said that the canal project, whose cost is approximately 30,000 million dollars, he said, "would generate enough resources" to reforest the banks of these bodies of freshwater.

He gave the example of the Panama Canal, which carries scored almost 100 years of operation, and "there have been no problems" of pollution.

"Rather, the resources it has generated (the Panama Canal) has enabled them to achieve sustainable and have immense forests everywhere," he said.

Ortega also denied that he is seeking a new path to build the canal, which would build a Nicaragua from south to north, but would run on the same route used by U.S. investors in their studies.

That route starts in San Juan del Norte (Caribbean south), passing through San Juan River, then through the Great Lake and crosses the Isthmus of the province of Rivas, until leaving on the beaches of Tola, in the Pacific south of Nicaragua, said.

"There is going to affect the Lake of Nicaragua," reaffirmed the Sandinista leader, who reiterated that it will be "open to listen to offers and approaches" on that project.

Ortega and the president of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, signed in Moscow on December 18 a joint statement, a cooperation agreement and seven memorandums of understanding.

Managua official sources indicated that among the matters discussed Ortega and Medvedev in the Kremlin contains the proposed construction of a Canal by Nicaragua. EFE

* The credit crisis cybernetics: the cyber-criminals are taking advantage of the anxiety of consumers to benefit from online fraud known type of get rich quick. People are registering on websites to add malicious code to other Web sites, lured by the promise of easy money. At the same time, was recruited as mules for money to job seekers desperately to wash the earnings of cyber criminals in the guise of international sales representatives or managers of traffic. Due to the economic slowdown is pushing more people to use the Web in search of better transactions, the chances of attack by cyber criminals are on the rise since it is easier to attract people.

* Governments are distracted: because governments are concentrating on the economic slowdown, the fight against cyber crime is not a priority in its agenda, thus creating an opportunity for cyber crime in severity scale.

* Shortage of cyber police: the police forces of the first line of defense often lack the specialized skills that are needed to effectively combat cyber crime. The absence of dedicated training and steady income sufficient or a career plan makes clear that the cyber police are recruited by the private sector or lured into underground economies.

* Crime hidden: Russia and China have become safe havens key to cyber criminals. Brazil has become one of the fastest growing countries as a scapegoat for the cyber crime, where traffic often changes its route as a decoy, which is a great help to significantly mislead the origin of the attacks.

* Isolated silos of information: the problems are expanding exponentially: the application of the law is limited by physical borders of the countries, while cyber criminals operate rapidly across borders. The communication between the countries remains limited and inconsistent. The problems and priorities take precedence over the global efforts and international laws are implemented with regional variations that impede the ability to negotiate jurisdiction and extradition between countries.

Become the only benchmark for high-definition discs, the Blu-ray, the successor of DVD, has failed to become the star of this Christmas gift, slowed by the crisis and its price still very high.

On February 18, Toshiba threw in the towel in the battle that he faced from months ago to impose a Sony format of high-definition discs, abandoning its HD-DVD, with the Blu-ray from Sony went as single format throughout the world.



But nearly a year after the invasion of Blu-ray that presaged some, has not taken place.

"It is still a small market," he said Michael Mathieu, analyst GfK research institute, who added that the conversion to this format will be "longer than what we met in 1995-1997 with the passage of the VHS video cassette disc DVD ".

Sales of readers living room Blu-ray, excluding the PlayStation 3 video game consoles, yet off: they expect sales of four million in 2008, according to figures from Strategy Analytics, far from the traditional readers (111 million ). The sale of Blu-ray only account for 2% of the securities market.

"The public is not the same" when it appeared on DVD, according to Mathieu: "Then we were going to homes with TV. Now we need to have a high definition screen to access, which reduces the public (potential) to a third. "

Moreover, according to recent scientific research, the technological leap from DVD to Blu-ray is less perceptible to the public that it marked the transition from video to DVD.

Another factor that hampers the development of this technology is the current economic crisis. "We believe that the economic climate will slow the transition to Blu-ray," said Helen Davis, in charge of the department's video cabinet British Screen DIGESA.

"People will delay the purchase unless the DVD were damaged, and even in that case, prefer to spend 50 euros in a classic reader," he explained.

Blu-ray readers, who are also capable of reading the "old" DVD, are still very expensive: cost Europe at an average of 300 euros, more than double what they cost in the United States.

According to analysts, by 2009, the first since the supremacy of the Blu-ray, should be decisive for the future of this technology.

"The market should more than double," predicted the secretary general of the association Blu-ray Partners France, Arnaud Brunet: "Already we see an acceleration, especially in the U.S.," where titles like 'Iron Man' and 'The dark knight 'And recorded record sales.

As for the new means of distributing movies, such as video pre-payment, do not, according to Brunet, an immediate threat. "Consumers are still very attached to hardware," he said.

However, according to Toshiba, big loser of the war of the formats for high definition and, therefore, compelled to make a radical turn in its strategy, this "dematerialization" is an inevitable trend.

"My impression (of the Blu-ray) is just a phase," predicted the general manager of Toshiba in France, François Séguineau, convinced that the boxes and DVD players will soon be relics of the past.

A new market is booming thanks to the Internet, where citizens eager to know more about themselves can purchase tests for predisposition to various diseases, paternity tests and genetic testing.

The emerging market for genetic testing on open access has increased significantly, responding to increasing demands for autonomy of individuals.

However, this raises many problems, particularly with respect to reliability, its secrecy, its usefulness, its impact on the user and their ability to correctly interpret the results.

The number of genetic tests available - more than 1,000 now - was multiplied by three between 2001 and 2007. Its scope is broad, ranging from identification of a suspect until predictive medicine through the establishment of a pedigree.

The legal framework varies from country to country, but the Internet allows easily overcome the barriers imposed by states.

Since late 2007, several start-up "(under construction companies) were launched for sale online testing kits on the genome that allow, paying between 640 and 1,600 euros, to know his ancestry or his predisposition for certain ills : Alzheimer's, cancer of the breast, colon, prostate, glaucoma or diabetes. All this, without going through a doctor.

Google has invested four million dollars in each of the two U.S. companies 23andMe and Navigenics, the best known along with DecodeMe offshoot of the company DeCode Genetics.

Some 30 Internet sites, mostly American, currently offer tests of susceptibility to diseases, according to a recent French parliamentary report.

Many of the diseases for which there are these tests, according to the experts, put into play simultaneously several genes and environmental factors. That requires great caution in the interpretation of which depends on the "probability".

It also raises ethical questions when it comes to "predict" the emergence of a disease is not known neither prevent nor cure. Or when it is used for research data of individual customers.



Do you need then a regulation of the commercial offer on the Internet at international level? In an article published in November in the scientific journal Nature, Barbara Prainsack (Center for Biomedicine and Society, King's College, London) recognized the need for regulation, but warned against an "overreaction."

Dra. Prainsack explained in the text that genetic testing on the Internet destroy the traditional boundaries (between doctors and those who are not among the experts and the "profane"). "We must go into these waters with open eyes, but without fear mojarnos," he concluded.

Internet in 2008 became the second largest source of information for the Americans, beyond the traditional print media, but television remains by far the preferred means of communication, according to a survey by the Pew study center.

About 40% of Americans reported using the internet to be informed, against 35% who prefer to read the newspaper.

The study, revealed on Tuesday, shows an increase in Internet use between 2007 and 2008, an increase of 16 points, while the newspapers show a growing decline in readership in recent years.

Television remains the main source of information for about 70% of Americans. However, among people younger than 30 years, the number of people who prefer television fell to 59%, equivalent to 9 points less than an earlier study published in September 2007.

The poll was conducted among 1489 people between 3 and Dec. 7. The margin of error was not specified.

The team record Warner has ordered YouTube to remove all videos of its artists on your page, following the failure of talks between both sides. The measure could affect hundreds of thousands of videos, because it includes not just the singers but the songs published by the subsidiary Warner-Chappell.

Warner was the first company authorized by the vision of its videos on YouTube, following an agreement signed in 2006 but decided not to renew the contract when it expired. The record company was looking to receive a larger share of potential earnings by traffic on the Internet site, which receives nearly one million hits per month just in the U.S..



The music companies are, in general, a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their videos and a small amount for every time that these images are on the Internet. Warner had hoped that the total volume of these amounts was important, but according to his version, the figures have been minimal.

A month after the initial agreement with Warner, YouTube was acquired by Internet giant Google, which paid for the site 1650 million dollars.