CFR launches Nigeria Security Tracker

New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an independent non-profit think tank has launched its Nigeria Security Tracker, an online project that documents and maps violence across Nigeria that are motivated by "political, economic, or social grievances.
"Different groups in Nigeria resort to violence. The militant Islamist movement Boko Haram is active in northern Nigeria. Violence among ethnic groups, farmers, and herdsmen sometimes acquires religious overtones," the group notes.

The project uses tableau to visually present statistics of the killings in the country by the Boko Haram sect and other militias.

Powered by Tableau

Apps to help achieve New Year's resolutions

Whether it is improving health or managing finances better, about 87 per cent of Americans will make resolutions for next year and there are plenty of apps to help them achieve their goals.
Nearly half of New Year's resolutions are about setting health-related goals, which is the most popular category, according to a recent survey by online broker TD Ameritrade.
Rather than jumping into a rigorous fitness routine, a new app called 5K Runner suggests it might be better to ease into things slowly and focus on building sustainable habits. The iPhone app helps couch potatoes ramp up their running distance to 5 kilometres over the course of eight weeks.
"You're slowly building this routine into your daily life with a lot of success and after eight weeks you're literally running 5K, which is pretty big if (initially) you're not running at all," said Mr David-Michel Davies, the executive director of The Webby Awards, an annual ceremony honouring Internet companies.

Trojan-horse therapy 'completely eliminates' cancer in mice

A hollow Trojan horse filled with soldiers was
supposedly used to enter Troy      (c) bbc.co.uk

An experimental "Trojan-horse" cancer therapy has completely eliminated prostate cancer in experiments on mice, according to UK researchers.
The team hid cancer killing viruses inside the immune system in order to sneak them into a tumour.
Once inside, a study in the journal Cancer Research showed, tens of thousands of viruses were released to kill the cancerous cells.
Experts labelled the study "exciting," but human tests are still needed.
Using viruses to destroy rapidly growing tumours is an emerging field in cancer therapy, however one of the challenges is getting the viruses deep inside the tumour where they can do the damage.
"There's a problem with getting enough virus into the tumour," Prof Claire Lewis from the University of Sheffield told the BBC.

She leads a team which uses white blood cells as 'Trojan horses' to deliver the viral punch.

Mayan Apocalypse: The world didn't end after all

 Thousands of people around the world anxiously awaiting the end of the world on Friday have seen the predicted time of the world's end come and go without incident.
The end of the Mayan 'Long Count' calendar on December 21st was thought by many to herald the apocalypse, with the end expected by many at 11.11 GMT. The date marks the end of an era that lasted over 5,000 years, or 13 "bak'tuns", according to the calendar.

Fears of mass suicides, power cuts, a magnetic shift in the poles, and a collision with a previously unsighted planet hurtling toward Earth circulated on the Internet in the run up to the day.

Events around the world to mark the date included gatherings at Mayan ruins, holy sites in southern Mexico, a sacred mountain in France, Stalin's bunker in Moscow, and Bugarach in the French Pyrenees, where doomsday believers waited for aliens to whisk them to safety.
But dawn broke in Mexico and the morning passed peacefully in France, where journalists outnumbered those seeking salvation and a party atmosphere prevailed.

Nutrition watchdog urges Beyoncé to drop $50m Pepsi deal

...Or donate proceeds to treat diabetes, obesity

A nutrition watchdog has urged Beyoncé Knowles to rethink her $50 million deal with Pepsi as the soft drink's "brand ambassador."
In a letter to the pop star, the Center for Science in the Public Interest told Beyoncé that by lending her name and image to the product, she is linking her "positive attributes with a product that is quite literally sickening Americans" and is associated with weight gain, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

"I imagine that it must be hard for anyone to turn away $50 million. But this endorsement deal strikes me as particularly inappropriate considering your popularity with America's young people and the extent to which Pepsi and other sugar drinks promote disease" 

Along with offering Beyoncé a raft of statistics linking sugary drinks to disease, the CSPI also made the argument that almost all of obesity-related health problems have a disproportionate impact on low-income, African-American and Hispanic communities.
If Beyoncé goes ahead with the deal (it is after all, a nice chunk of change), then Michael Jacobson, CSPI's executive director, suggested that she "consider donating your proceeds to a hospital, diabetes organization or another reputable charity involved in the prevention or treatment of soda-related diseases.

Who regulates the internet - the $100bn question

Hamadoun Touré is secretary-general of the ITU

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has always prided itself on being one of the most pragmatic organisations of the United Nations. Engineers, after all, speak a similar language, regardless where they come from. Even during the cold war they managed to overcome their differences and negotiate the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR), a binding global treaty that even today governs telecommunications between countries.
But the internet seems to be an even more divisive than cold-war ideology. The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, where the ITU met to renegotiate the ITR, ended in failure in the early hours of December 14th. After a majority of countries approved the new treaty, Terry Kramer, the head of the American delegation, announced that his country is “not able to sign the document in its current form.” Shortly thereafter, at least a dozen countries—including Britain, Sweden and Japan—signalled that they would not support the new treaty either. Of the 144 countries which had the right to sign the new treaty in Dubai, only 89 have done so.

America’s willingness to stand up for the internet should be welcomed. But it has to be said that in doing so it also defended its interests: no other country benefits as much from the status quo in the online world.

Adam Lanza: The medicalisation of evil

                                                                 (c) linaloves.com

Lindsey Fitzharris, a medical historian at Queen Mary, University of London, did a very interesting article on the recent massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.  Fitzharris worries why "we are so quick to assume that to commit such a crime Lanza must be 'sick'?"
Fitzharris' perspective is as thought-provoking as the blog posted recently by Liza Long, a mother of a mentally ill child in Idaho who recently wrote the article 'I am Adam Lanza's mother'.  Interestingly too it presents the other side in the debate.

"Anyone who has been watching the news over the past few days will have heard the gunman, Adam Lanza, described as "sick," "disturbed" and "defective". The perpetrator may indeed have suffered from mental conditions that led to his homicidal attack, but even before anything was known about Lanza (including his name), many people in the media assumed a crime of this magnitude could only be committed by a mentally unstable individual. Very little discussion – if any – was given to the role of personal responsibility in this tragic event. 

             Our concepts of deviant behaviour have changed over time, first being seen as a sin, then a crime and now a medical problem

It is an age-old question: what is evil? The answer, of course, is subjective. Many scholars have argued that our concepts of deviant behaviour have changed over time, first being seen as a sin, then a crime and now a medical problem.