Impact of Earthquake on the Chinese Economy Is Seen as Minimal

The powerful earthquake that devastated southwestern China three weeks
ago seems to have had only a limited effect on China's overall
economy. Only 1 percent of China's population lives in the hardest hit
quake-affected area, in northern Sichuan Province. Those residents
account for an even smaller share of China's economic output, because
many of them are impoverished farmers.

Inflation was already a serious problem in China, running at nearly 9
percent a year, and government spending to rebuild the quake-affected
region is driving up prices for some goods, like tents for the
homeless. But to limit the broader effect on inflation, the Chinese
government has already planned to offset spending on quake relief by
slowing the growth rate in government spending elsewhere.

Many economists conclude that the economic harm of the earthquake
will, as a result, be limited. I don't see any huge effect, said
Oded Shenkar, a professor at Ohio State University's Fisher College of
Business. You're going to lose some economic activity, but pretty
quickly you're going to see new economic activity: construction,
redevelopment and so forth.

Earthquakes elsewhere have sometimes caused financial crises. The San
Francisco earthquake in 1906, which shook the ground with roughly the
same force as the Sichuan earthquake, was so costly for insurers that
it contributed to a national financial panic in the United States the
following year.

But the Sichuan earthquake appears unlikely to have a similar effect.

The China Banking Regulatory Commission has ordered banks to write off
many loans to residents of the quake-affected region. Chinese
insurance companies face claims on property and casualty policies and
life insurance. But lending and insurance in the quake region were so
meager before the earthquake that bank and insurance analysts say the
effect will be negligible.

Add together all the bank loans outstanding in the three provinces in
the area hit by the quake Sichuan and neighboring Gansu and Shaanxi
and the total is less than in Shanghai alone, said Richard Lung, a
specialist in Chinese financial institutions at Moody's Investors
Service.

Yet the earthquake could still have some effects on the economy,
according to economists.

The main inflation problem for China over the past year has been high
food prices. Most farmers' fields in the earthquake area appear to
have been spared. But the earthquake has disrupted road and rail links
from Sichuan Province, a big producer of pork and grain.

The transportation bottlenecks will make the inflation situation
worse, at least for the May inflation statistics to be released soon,
said Jing Ulrich, the chairwoman of China equities at JP Morgan in
Hong Kong. But she added that the government was unlikely to raise
interest rates in response, limiting longer-term effects.

The earthquake's effect on electricity generation in China, through
the disruption of coal supplies and the temporary shutdown of power
generation at some hydroelectric dams, remains unclear.

Rapid factory construction, combined with soaring sales of household
appliances like air-conditioners, has left China chronically short of
electricity since 2000. In some provinces, utilities have sometimes
shut off electricity to factories for up to three days a week to avoid
blackouts in residential neighborhoods prompting factories to buy
their own, heavily polluting diesel generators.

A spate of power plant construction since 2004, mostly coal-fired, has
relieved the worst of the shortages. But in the past two years,
another problem has appeared: China is struggling to mine enough coal
to satisfy all the coal-fired plants.

Even before the earthquake, China faced the threat of serious power
shortages this summer. Some power plants ran down their stockpiles to
less than a week of coal; power plants in the United States are
typically required by lenders to hold at least two months' coal in
reserve.

Though Sichuan Province mines less than 1 percent of China's coal, one
of the country's main rail arteries for distributing coal runs through
the quake-affected area and was temporarily blocked by quake debris,
Xinhua, the official news agency, reported on Monday.  More Articles
in World.


Is US Greatest Nation on Earth?

was reading an editorial written by Daniel S. Wheeler, executive
director of the American Legion. It was about why we need laws to
criminalize flag desecration.

He related a story about how, at a baseball game in the 1970s, a man
from the crowd jumped on the field to rip the flag from a protester
who was burning it. The crowd spontaneously burst into a rendition of
"God Bless America".

Why would they do that, he wondered. They weren't born with the
instinct to be patriotic.

He wrote, "Throughout their lives, (kids had) been taught that America
was a good nation, in fact, the greatest nation on earth." And so,
people feel compelled to sing its praises and to fight and die for
their country.

Yes, many people are taught that America is great as children. But as
freethinking adults, sometimes we realize that that is but one opinion
among many. Perhaps America is not the "greatest nation on earth."

America is a free country, so to speak. But it is no freer than most
Westernized nations of the world, including Canada, the UK, the
Scandinavian countries, Japan, and in fact, most countries other than
the remaining communist nations and those that have a theocracy in
place.

America is the greatest nation on earth only because most Americans
say it is. And by making it a crime to burn the flag, a symbol of the
nation, not the nation itself, we lose one more of those freedoms that
make us one of the great nations.

We have already lost a number of freedoms. Thanks to the knee-jerk
reaction of the present administration, we have been under increased
government scrutiny since 2002. The Department of Homeland Security
sees to that, as Congress moves to extend the powers of that
department into the future.

On top of that, the scruples of our president, which he has seen fit
to force upon the masses, have hindered this nation's scientific
progress in the fields of medicine and genetics. So our freedoms have
already been abridged.

I certainly believe that America's weapons technology is far superior
to any other country's. So if that makes us the greatest nation on
earth, so be it. It certainly makes us the strongest.

But the whole concept of nationality is archaic. It does nothing but
promote divisiveness among nations.

In this day and age of instant communication and global markets, we
need to start eliminating national boundaries altogether. That's what
Europe is trying to do, and when they succeed, it may be the Europeans
who can claim to have the "greatest nation on earth."

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-American. And I believe the
sacrifices that have been made by patriots past and present are
commendable.

But realistically, there is little threat from any nation. Who would
invade us? Yes, terrorists might, so fighting a war on terrorism is
necessary. But that's a war that should be fought by all nations,
since all nations are vulnerable.

The "patriotic" wars of the past are over. We are simply a member of
the world of nations. We have taken on a leading role, but that
doesn't make us any better.

At any rate, we have far more important things to worry about than
passing laws or constitutional amendments against those few protesters
who burn the flag.

Wheeler's point in his editorial was that if we don't pass such laws,
our children might grow up with the notion that the flag is just
another symbol among many.

Well, what's wrong with that? It's a more realistic view than the
bloated idealistic notion that we are the greatest nation on earth.




Changing water quality in Swiss Lakes

Cyanobacteria, which are oxygenic photosynthetic prokaryotes, can be
found in all aquatic ecosystems within particular "bandwidths" of
temperature, light intensity and nutrient levels. Under certain
conditions, in particular as a direct or indirect consequence of water
temperature increase, these micro-organisms can proliferate in what is
known as cyanobacterial blooms. This may lead to some water quality
problems that are detrimental to human health, either because
contaminated water may enter into drinking-water supply systems or by
direct contact through recreational activities. According to the level
of contamination, pathologies may range from mild skin allergies to
severe problems of the liver and digestive tracts, respiratory
ailments, muscular paralysis and even death. Cyanobacterial blooms
generally occur towards the end of summer, when slow-moving waters
such as encountered in lakes have warmed during the season, and exceed
the temperature threshold beyond which growth explodes. While summer
is often the privileged period for bloom outbreaks, they can occur at
other times of the year and even be perennial.

This project is based on the hypothesis that a warmer climate may lead
to more frequent episodes of algal bloom outbreaks in many parts of
Switzerland, resulting in enhanced health risks, particularly when
water withdrawal facilities are located in shallow waters or in rivers
that flow out of contaminated lakes and thereby transport the
cyanobacteria downstream, a situation that has been documented several
times in the recent past, notably in France to give an example of a
neighboring country. The project proposes to investigate the possible
changes in algal bloom outbreaks in a future climate under enhanced
atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations. The focus will primarily be
on the physical aspects of surface water warming through the coupling
of a simple lake model (that will include motion in the vertical
plane, advection of temperature and changes in the depth of the
thermocline) with a Regional Climate Model that will provide the
appropriate atmospheric boundary conditions for driving the lake
model. Cyanobacteria growth will be modeled through empirical
relationships based on water temperature, daylight duration and
intensity, as well as different levels of dissolved nutrients. In this
manner, the bacterial concentrations will be determined as a function
of time during the summer season, in order to determine the depths to
which they may proliferate and whether the projected levels of
bacteria may significantly enhance health-related risks. Health
hazards will be assessed on the basis of current knowledge of the
exposure of human populations to various levels of cyanobacterial
contamination.

The coupled model system will first be tested against observed data,
where cases of cyanobacteria contamination have been documented in the
recent past, prior to applying the methodology to future climatic
conditions. These will be based on a high-emissions scenario leading
to strong global warming by the end of the 21st century developed by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for different
geographical locations, ranging from deep water bodies such as the
Lake of Geneva, to shallow lakes at different elevations that feed
into rivers whose waters are used for drinking water. This will enable
an assessment of the depths at which cyanobacteria may proliferate in
the future, and the altitudes of mountain lakes above which the risk
of contamination becomes small. Throughout the project, contacts will
be maintained with water quality specialists and the medical community
in order to jointly develop an appropriate set of adaptation options
aimed at reducing the risk of infection.



The Source Filter Model of Speech

The components of speech are the words and the voice.  Every phrase is
a union of these two components - they are the foundations of the
spoken language. One or the other does not mean much without its
conterpart.  Words without voice lack intonation, so they have no
meaning. Voice without words is devoid of structure and cannot
possibly transfer information. Only the fusion of the two can claim to
be such a thing as speech.

In biology, the components of speech are produced in different
organs. To speak, air is first released over the vocal cords, which
expand and contract to give the air column structure. This is the
biological concept of words. The words are then passed through the
vocal tract where they are shaped, giving them intonation. This
shaping of the words is the biological concept of voice. Such a
biological process can be easily modeled.

So far, we have determined that speech is a collection of words shaped
by voice.  Here, we present a model of this. In this model, the words
are called the source. Since the words are modified by voice, we say
the source passes through a filter.  This brings us to the source
filter model of speech.

Definition 1: Source Filter Model

The source filter model is a model of speech where the spoken word is
comprised of a source component originating from the vocal cords which
is then shaped by a filter immitating the effect of the vocal tract.
This model has possibility for application in many different
fields. We will focus on the topic of signal processing here.
