Pair of dogs hunt movie pirates

During a six month-stint in Indonesia, two black labradors, Lucky and Flo, uncovered 1.6 million illegal movie discs, three DVD replicators and 97 CD burners, worth $6 million. They were specially trained by the MPA (Motion Picture Association) to sniff out chemicals found on optical discs, and were so successful that Malaysian movie pirates were said to have placed a $29,000 bounty on the dogs.

More optical disc sniffing dogs are being trained, and Lucky and Flo are bound for New York to fight piracy there.

Source: "Malaysia's DVD Dogs Get Hero's Send-Off", Vijay Joshi, Associated Press

Bacteria day: acne and cholera

First: Did you know that light may be used to treat acne?

It appears that light in the 405nm-420nm range (it looks violet) activates a specific molecule (coproporphyrin III) that is found in the acne-causing bacterium Propionibacterium acnes. The molecule responds to the light by emitting free oxygen radicals, which then quickly destroy the bacteria. Because coproporphyrin III isn't found in human skin, this technique seems to be very safe. Concentrated amounts of this light in three-month treatments seem to have success, though no large-scale trials have been conducted yet.

Sources / More Reading:

• Wikipedia's two entries on the subject


• AcneNet | Are laser and light treatments really light years ahead of conventional acne therapy?
  

Second: Can something as simple as a folded piece of cloth can help stop cholera?

Rita Colwell... discovered if the [very common cotton sari] is folded about 10 times and dipped in the river when villagers gather water, it filters out -- among other things -- plankton containing a bacteria that causes cholera, a disease responsible for about 10,000 deaths a year in Third World countries... After more than 25 years of research and a three-year study in Matlab, Bangladesh, Colwell's filtration method reduced the number of cholera cases among villagers by half, she said.¹

Rita Colwell was just awarded a National Medal of Science for her extensive research into marine microbes, one of which being Vibrio cholerae, the cause of cholera.

J.B. Dill, a 19-year-old from Wisconsin, expanded upon this idea and invented a simple water filter that uses only cotton fabric and charcoal for use in Africa. He won a Net Aid Global Action Award for his work. Pretty cool.

Sources / More Reading:

• Wikipedia | Cloth Filter
  
• BBC News | Cloth filter could cut cholera deaths
  
• ¹Salem News | Nation honors scientist for lifesaving discovery
  
• National Science Foundation | President to Award 2005-2006 National Medals of Science and National Medals of Technology Honoring Nation's Leading Researchers, Inventors and Innovators
  
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Teen's goal is crystal clear
  
• Net Aid | Global Action Award Nominees: 2007

Who knew that trees were such responsible citizens?

By expanding the urban forest by some 20 percent to cover more than one - third of the city, leaders hope to reap a range of benefits, including... increased psychological well-being among residents.

Increased psychological well-being? That's something I haven't heard of before. I looked into it on Google and found:

The conventional wisdom has been that trees and other vegetation have a negative impact on crime because they provide cover for criminals and reduce opportunities for casual surveillance.

Research in a particularly deprived area of inner city Chicago has suggested that this is in fact not the case and that appropriate vegetation cover can lead to reduced crime rates (Kuo and Sullivan, 2001(a)). The study dealt largely with mown grass and high canopy trees, which do not provide cover in the same way as, for example, shrub planting. It looked at an area with relatively homogenous architecture and a relatively homogenous population but with differing levels of vegetation. Areas with higher vegetation cover were found to have lower rates of crime, as measured by reports to the police.

Crime-fighting trees? That's interesting. There's even a website that helps people reduce crime by strategic landscaping. What's more, the International Herald Tribune sources the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service to say, "for every dollar invested in planting one, there's a more than $5 return" in property value, air quality, storm water management, energy savings, and carbon dioxide removal.

City greening projects seem to abound: in Boston, New York City, Kansas City, and Toronto, to name the few examples I could find. The US Forestry Service has developed a new tool to determine how many trees there are in a given city, giving rise to an "urban tree canopy cover" percentage (Boston's is 29%, New York City 24%, Baltimore 20%, Annapolis 41%).

Of course, you can't just go planting trees willy-nilly. You have to consider biodiversity, how the trees are planted, proper care, etc. Boston hired arborists to help them.

With so many benefits and such a high rate of return, I hope other cities take a look into this.