Syria and Lebanon have agreed to resume the work of a committee to demarcate their common border, a joint statement by the two countries says.
The neighbours also agreed to examine another disputed issue, the fate of hundreds of people who have been missing "in the two countries" since the 1975-1990 civil war in Lebanon.
The statement was read at a news conference by each country's foreign minister, as Michel Sleiman, the Lebanese president, ended a landmark two-day visit.
Sleiman and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, agreed on Wednesday to start the first ever full diplomatic relations since independence 60 years ago.
The borders between the two countries are poorly delimited in certain places, particularly the Shebaa Farms, a mountainous sliver of land rich in water resources located at the junction of southeast Lebanon, southwest Syria and northern Israel.
The 25-square km tract of farming land was seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and is now claimed by Beirut, with the backing of Damascus. Israel says they are part of Syria.
Asked whether Thursday's agreement would include a redrawing of the Shebaa Farms, Walid al-Moualem, the Syrian foreign minister, said: "The definition of the Shebaa Farms cannot happen under occupation."
Lebanese and Syrian territories have also been in dispute over several areas of Bekaa and northern Lebanon since the creation in 1920 of greater Lebanon, an administrative district within the French mandate for Syria.
Human rights groups claim that around 650 people who went missing during the Lebanese civil war are being held in Syria, which dominated Lebanon politically and militarily for almost 30 years until April 2005.
Sleiman is the first Lebanese president to visit Damascus since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005, two months after the assassination in a massive Beirut bomb blast of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.
Damascus has denied any responsibility despite accusations by Lebanese anti-Syrian groups.
Saad Hariri, Rafik al-Hariri's son and political heir, welcomed the establishment of diplomatic ties, describing it as an accomplishment for the Lebanese people.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Ocean 'dead zones' expanding worldwide: study
Oceanic "dead zones" where marine life cannot survive have been steadily increasing over the past five decades and now encompass 400 coastal areas of the world, a US-Swedish study.
"The formation of dead zones has been exacerbated by the increase in (pollution) ... fueled by riverine runoff of fertilizers and the burning of fossil fuels," the study said.
The phenomenon, called eutrophication, is caused by industrial pollution as well as runoff of water containing phosphates and nitrates into the oceans.
Oceans react to the boost in pollution by growing more algae and vegetation in coastal areas.
When the algae dies and sinks to the bottom, it decreases the amount of oxygen available in the bottom waters, a process called hypoxia, eventually wiping out fish and crustaceans that live there, as well as the foods they eat.
Dead zones tend to creep up in calm waters that see lower water exchange, but have more recently been affecting major fishery areas in the Baltic, Kattegat, and Black Seas as well as the Gulf of Mexico and East China Sea, the study said.
The researchers said the expansion of dead zones in these areas threatens commercial fishing and shrimping near the coastlines.
The phenomenon was first noted along the Adriatic Coast in the 1950s.
Seasonal dead zones affect the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and Scandinavian waters.
It can take years to treat severe hypoxia in a coastal region, and only four percent of treated areas have shown any signs of improvement, though the trend is reversible, the study said.
"From 1970 to 1990, the hypoxic zone on the northwestern continental shelf of the Black Sea has expanded to 40,000 square kilometers (15,500 square miles)," the study noted.
"However, since 1989, the loss of fertilizer subsidies from the former Soviet Union reduced nutrient loading by a factor of two to four, with the result that by 1995 the hypoxic zone had gone.
"The study authors said the global warming trend alone was likely to increase oceanic dead zones by increasing temperature, causing changes in rainfall patterns and changing discharges of fresh water and agricultural nutrients into the oceans.
"Climate change also has the potential to expand naturally occurring OMZs (oxygen minimum zones) into shallower coastal waters, damaging fisheries and affecting energy flows in the same way that eutrophication-driven hypoxia does," the authors wrote.
The researchers noted that any return to preindustrial levels of nutrient input into global waters would be "unrealistic".
However, they said "an appropriate management goal would be to reduce nutrient inputs to levels that occurred in the middle of the past century, before eutrophication began to spread dead zones globally."
Source: New Straits Times, 16th August 2008
"The formation of dead zones has been exacerbated by the increase in (pollution) ... fueled by riverine runoff of fertilizers and the burning of fossil fuels," the study said.
The phenomenon, called eutrophication, is caused by industrial pollution as well as runoff of water containing phosphates and nitrates into the oceans.
Oceans react to the boost in pollution by growing more algae and vegetation in coastal areas.
When the algae dies and sinks to the bottom, it decreases the amount of oxygen available in the bottom waters, a process called hypoxia, eventually wiping out fish and crustaceans that live there, as well as the foods they eat.
Dead zones tend to creep up in calm waters that see lower water exchange, but have more recently been affecting major fishery areas in the Baltic, Kattegat, and Black Seas as well as the Gulf of Mexico and East China Sea, the study said.
The researchers said the expansion of dead zones in these areas threatens commercial fishing and shrimping near the coastlines.
The phenomenon was first noted along the Adriatic Coast in the 1950s.
Seasonal dead zones affect the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and Scandinavian waters.
It can take years to treat severe hypoxia in a coastal region, and only four percent of treated areas have shown any signs of improvement, though the trend is reversible, the study said.
"From 1970 to 1990, the hypoxic zone on the northwestern continental shelf of the Black Sea has expanded to 40,000 square kilometers (15,500 square miles)," the study noted.
"However, since 1989, the loss of fertilizer subsidies from the former Soviet Union reduced nutrient loading by a factor of two to four, with the result that by 1995 the hypoxic zone had gone.
"The study authors said the global warming trend alone was likely to increase oceanic dead zones by increasing temperature, causing changes in rainfall patterns and changing discharges of fresh water and agricultural nutrients into the oceans.
"Climate change also has the potential to expand naturally occurring OMZs (oxygen minimum zones) into shallower coastal waters, damaging fisheries and affecting energy flows in the same way that eutrophication-driven hypoxia does," the authors wrote.
The researchers noted that any return to preindustrial levels of nutrient input into global waters would be "unrealistic".
However, they said "an appropriate management goal would be to reduce nutrient inputs to levels that occurred in the middle of the past century, before eutrophication began to spread dead zones globally."
Source: New Straits Times, 16th August 2008
Bisexuality passed on by 'hyper-heterosexuals'
Bisexual men might have their "hyper-heterosexual" female relatives to thank for their orientation.
Previous work has suggested that genes influencing sexual orientation in men also make women more likely to reproduce. Andrea Camperio Ciani and colleagues at the University of Padua, Italy, showed that the female relatives of homosexual men tend to have more children, suggesting that genes on the X chromosome are responsible. Now the team have shown that the same is true for bisexuality.
"It helps to answer a perplexing question - how can there be 'gay genes' given that gay sex doesn't lead to procreation?" says Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the work. "The answer is remarkably simple: the same gene that causes men to like men also causes women to like men, and as a result to have more children."
Sexual attraction
The researchers asked 239 men to fill out questionnaires about their families and their past sexual experiences. On the basis of their answers, the men were classified as heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. The results showed that the maternal aunts, grandmothers and mothers of both bisexual men and homosexuals had more children than those of heterosexual men.
Camperio Ciani emphasises that, rather than being a "gay gene", this unidentified genetic factor is likely to promote sexual attraction to men in both men and women. This would influence a woman's attitude rather than actually increasing her fertility, making her likely to have more children.
Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist and writer based in West Hollywood, California, describes this as a sort of "hyper-heterosexuality" and explains how it would help to ensure that homosexual behaviour was passed on through the generations. "The positive effect of an X-linked gene on female fecundity tends to outweigh the negative effect of the gene on male fecundity."
According to Camperio Ciani and colleagues, the same genetic factor appearing to be present in both bisexual and homosexual men provides further support for the idea that sexuality is determined by a complex mix of genes and experience.
"We understand that the genetic component has to interact with something to produce different phenotypes," says Camperio Ciani.
"Genetics is not determining the sexual orientation, it's only influencing it."
Source: NewScientist
15:45 15 August 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Tamsin Osborne
Previous work has suggested that genes influencing sexual orientation in men also make women more likely to reproduce. Andrea Camperio Ciani and colleagues at the University of Padua, Italy, showed that the female relatives of homosexual men tend to have more children, suggesting that genes on the X chromosome are responsible. Now the team have shown that the same is true for bisexuality.
"It helps to answer a perplexing question - how can there be 'gay genes' given that gay sex doesn't lead to procreation?" says Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the work. "The answer is remarkably simple: the same gene that causes men to like men also causes women to like men, and as a result to have more children."
Sexual attraction
The researchers asked 239 men to fill out questionnaires about their families and their past sexual experiences. On the basis of their answers, the men were classified as heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. The results showed that the maternal aunts, grandmothers and mothers of both bisexual men and homosexuals had more children than those of heterosexual men.
Camperio Ciani emphasises that, rather than being a "gay gene", this unidentified genetic factor is likely to promote sexual attraction to men in both men and women. This would influence a woman's attitude rather than actually increasing her fertility, making her likely to have more children.
Simon LeVay, a neuroscientist and writer based in West Hollywood, California, describes this as a sort of "hyper-heterosexuality" and explains how it would help to ensure that homosexual behaviour was passed on through the generations. "The positive effect of an X-linked gene on female fecundity tends to outweigh the negative effect of the gene on male fecundity."
According to Camperio Ciani and colleagues, the same genetic factor appearing to be present in both bisexual and homosexual men provides further support for the idea that sexuality is determined by a complex mix of genes and experience.
"We understand that the genetic component has to interact with something to produce different phenotypes," says Camperio Ciani.
"Genetics is not determining the sexual orientation, it's only influencing it."
Source: NewScientist
15:45 15 August 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Tamsin Osborne
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