NDM-1 Update: "South Asian superbug claims first fatality" - INQUIRER.net

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A Belgian national was reported to have died from the so-called South Asian bug also known as NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-lactamase-1).This is the first known fatality from a pathogen containing the NDM-1 enzyme gene that is said to be resistant to most antibiotics that exists today.

This comes after the World Health Organization's (WHO) recent declaration regarding the H1N1 virus, bringing down its alert level to the post-pandemic stage. Now, the NDM-1 is not at this point in time a global concern. However, the gene is said to spread easily among different bacteria populations which could cause common strains to be drug-resistant.

Tip of the iceberg

Experts agree that the NDM-1 issue could be much larger than currently reported cases. With human migration and travel on the rise the situation may reach global proportions. In the meantime, the search for a solution is projected to come not until the next decade.


Visit Inquirer.net for the full story.

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• You: South Asian 'superbug' spreads to Australia (france24.com)
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• International travel increasing spread of new drug-resistant bacteria: Is this the end of antibiotics? (physorg.com)

Catch the Olympic Fever

With only less than 3 days left before the biggest and grandest sporting spectacle the world has ever seen, just about everybody on the Web is all in wild anticipation about the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Mark that date if you haven't yet, 08-08-08.

To get you sprinting off to everything Olympics here are some smashing sites that are right on target to pole vault your online experience of the Games of the 29th Olympiad.

www.olympic.org

If you want to dive right into what the Olympics is all about, this is the official website of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). When I first visited this site about a year ago, it was more of a corporate presentation. Although, it contained a very rich history about the Olympic games (and still does), it was back then somewhat in the doldrums.

Now, it is a very interactive resource for all things Olympic -- from an exhaustive database of all Olympic records and medalists since its 1896 beginnings, to the most current news about the Beijing 2008 Summer Games. There is a digital magazine called the Olympic Express that's very informative. Then if you want to learn more about the basic rules of the various Olympic events, browse over to the Sports Animations section and go over the games in a flash (pun intended; you will need Adobe Flash to watch the presentations).

Then if you want a taste of the competitive Olympic spirit, try out the Olympic Mini Games. Its a fun preview of the Sega video game Beijing 2008. You can rack up scores in three events -- archery, weightlifting and diving. Then see how you fared against the best mouse-clickers in the world. I tried my hand at the archery event (see accompanying image). Though I had a perfect 10/10, I only ranked 159. Not bad for a first try though.

There's more to explore at the Olympics.org website. Be sure to check out the stunning multimedia gallery and the Olympics quiz contest for a chance to win the Beijing 2008 video game.

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The Beijing 2008 Official Website

This is your ultimate web destination to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Know the news, view the sights, swim in the intricate details that surround this enigmatic event, the biggest ever Olympics in Asia.

Follow the footsteps of the most controversial Olympic torch relay in history, one that was marred by protests at every major city in its world route and even scaled the heights of the highest spot on Earth at Mt. Qomolangma (Everest). See blogs contributed by common folk at My Olympic Story, showcasing their interest and passion for the Olympics.

Discover the feats of engineering that transformed Beijing to become Olympics central this year. Enter the infamous National Stadium or "Bird's Nest", and the magical "Water Cube" that is the National Aquatics Center.

www.nbcolympics.com

Watch the 29th Olympiad online through NBCOlympics.com. This is the first live Web coverage of the Olympic games, thanks to the global growth of broadband Internet, and MSN/NBC got the exclusive go to broadcast the games online. The NBC Olympics site contains news and information about the games, the individual sporting events, key athletes, country profiles as well as photos and videos to give you a comprehensive ring side look at the Beijing Olympics.

Lastly, stay tuned here at Daily Dotventures for more Olympic updates.

The Domain Gold Rush Is On

Soon enough you can get your very own top-level domain (TLD) name on the Internet.

Domain regulator Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved unanimously a proposal to open up restrictions on top-level domain names. This means that Web addresses won't be limited to just the ".com", ".net", ".org" or some of the other popular TLDs in existence. With the new system anyone can apply for having a customized TLD like ".cars", ".paris" or ".blog". The news is eBay is already poised to take ".ebay".

Currently there are 21 top-level domain names, 7 of which may be used without restrictions - ".com", ".net", ".org", ".info", ".name", ".pro" and ".name". The other TLDs are either reserved for special purposes or otherwise considered sponsored and limited to select groups only.

The new ICANN gTLD Strategy will pave the way for a huge expansion of the Internet with thousands of new domains available for every conceivable industry and purpose. Global brand names are expected to lead in this virtual gold rush. Various industries will be competing for control over their respective fields, for example ".hotels" or ".shipping".

The other important innovation of the strategy involves allowing the use of non-Roman characters for Internet addressing. Thus, Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea as well as Arab nations and Eastern European nations that use different character sets may soon have Internet addresses in their own languages.

Reactions to the new Internet system are mixed. Many express a sigh of relief as this would allow registrants to take on a domain which may already have been taken mostly by so-called Web squatters and domain hoarders. It also means that the importance of ".com" will be diluted over time and websites will be more uniquely addressed. Many new TLDs have been applied to the ICANN body in the past due to the limitations of the handful of TLDs available to the Internet. Attempts at a similar multiple-root domain system have been proposed before most notably by the UnifiedRoot group.

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On the flipside, there are those who foresee a fallout of confusion as Internet users might have a difficult time distinguishing which website to go to after a search much like trying to figure out which John Smith to call up when looking at a telephone directory. Some brand owners are also concerned with an anticipated bedlam in registering their brands across an endless range of TLDs and how that will affect the protection of their respective intellectual property rights.

ICANN officials are dispelling the worries saying that they have taken all aspects of the strategy in consideration and are essentially prepared for any inevitability. The ICANN cites they are putting objection-based mechanisms in place to ensure viability of the new domain system. You can peruse the ICANN official statement from their website.

As a final note, it would take a while before domain buyers can place their stake at a brand-new top-level domain. ICANN estimates the infrastructure to be setup and functional by late 2009 with registrants required to shell out top-dollars in the 6-figure amounts.

Get Involved! Sign Up for Blog Action Day on October 15

With over 8,000 blogs and a reach of over 5.6 million audiences worldwide (as of writing), Blog Action Day is set to have the world know that the environment is the most important issue in the planet. Come October 15, millions of readers around the globe will read up on their subscribed blogs and, hopefully, come to terms about taking action on the environment towards "a better future".

Blogactionday.org was launched formally last August 16 and it had since grown in sign-ups to more than 7,000 blogs in a span of less than 2 months. With such popular blogs in the line-up such as DailyBlogTips, GigaOm, Copyblogger, and Lifehacker, the RSS readership of blogs registered with Blog Action Day grew from less than a million to 5,671,653 (and counting).

With only 5 days to go until October 15, can the reach of Blog Action Day blogs hit the 6 million mark or more? It's not impossible and it would certainly be a good thing. And you can be a part of it!

Go to blogactionday.org and register your blog. Commit today! On October 15, 2007 post a blog concerning the environment. Here are some websites to help you get some ideas - http://blogactionday.org/resources. Alternatively, you can donate a day's worth of earnings to official Blog Action Day charities which includes Greenpeace and The Nature Conservancy. Or if you want you can give to an environmental charity of your choosing.

Blog Action Day is also holding a contest just for fun (and a small incentive). Whoever can guess closest the number of registered participating blogs come October 15 wins a special prize package from GreenHome.com. My bet - 6,000,101 blogs.

Meanwhile, here's a video on Blog Action Day.


For more information and inspiration read up on Leo Babauta's "Why Bloggers Will Change The World And How You Can Help."

Technorati Tags: Blog Action Day, BlogActionDay

A Call to End Environmental Abuse

There is much debate these days regarding the infallibility of man-made climate change. Real or not, its significant enough to have heads of states, from countries known to be top contributors to earth's pollution, come together and discuss goals and scenarios regarding climate change (see Climate Change Talks). Political grandstanding? Perhaps.

Here's the thing though - there may be debate as to whether man's pollution absolutely causes global warming, but there's no debate that we can do something to end environmental abuse.

It starts with very simple questions.
In the first place, do we really want to live in a dirty environment?
Do we want the smell of industrial smoke choking our lungs day in and day out?
Do we want our children drinking and swimming in contaminated water?
Do we really want to take part in the extinction of entire species of wildlife?
Do we even care?

Its not easy to recognize the problem when you're living it up in a posh community. Nevertheless, there are people being inflicted with deadly disease brought about by environmental abuse. Death is sure to follow man-induced calamities such as mudslides and deliberate forest fires. Toxic wastes seep into lives of whole populations from Calcutta to California. These things do happen whether we acknowledge them squarely or simply ignore them, lounging about in the backyard soaking in the sun.

Enjoy your tan while you can. Maybe you haven't heard that there's a large hole in the ozone layer that wasn't there before the industrial revolution.

The degradation of the environment is global and you've got no one else to blame than the dominant species in the planet. And no it's not the bugs. Insects aren't largely responsible for denuded rainforests nor oceanic oil spills.

Modern man is left in charge of the planet. Go ask any corporate person and they will tell you, when a business is on a decline, the manager better shape up or ship out. That's us.

We don't need country leaders to talk behind our backs about what's next on the environment agenda. Earth management is about prioritizing the sustainability of the planet. We are all tasked to be stewards of the world.

Do we reuse, reduce and recycle?
Do we patronize alternative eco-friendly businesses instead of "brand" bigwigs?
Do we plant trees?
And why are we yet so dependent on fossil-fuel based cars when we can already switch to clean electric technology?
Do we even bother to read-up on developing and practicing environmental sustainability?

Do we even care?

Like a child's building blocks, it is so much easier to topple this beautiful planet to decay than it is to rebuild what has been destroyed. The challenge is for us to end environmental abuse and adopt an eco-friendly lifestyle. And the challenge starts now.

Google.org Earmarks $10M for Eco-Transport Solutions

In support of technologies aimed at solving global warming, Google.org - the philantrophic arm of Google - issued a $10 million request for investment proposals (RFP) with particular focus in the areas of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), Electric Vehicles (EVs), and Vehicle-to-Grid Solutions (V2G).

This news comes amidst new rounds of oil rate hikes and the OPECs intentions to raise global oil supply. Further serving as a backdrop is a seemingly growing discussion which purports man-made global warming as a mere hoax.

Bannered under Google's RechargeIT program, the RFP seeks to invest amounts ranging from $500,000 to $2,000,000. The funds are earmarked for corporations and similar for-profit enterprises worldwide whose initiatives have the capacity to fast track global commercialization of eco-transport solutions. The Google.org blog said, "This is a global challenge, and it will take all of us to solve it."

While $10 million is a fraction of the total investment needed to transform our transportation sector, we hope this RFP will help catalyze a broader response. We need the automakers to bring these cars to market, but plug-in vehicles also need an entire ecosystem of companies to flourish. (from blog.google.org)

On a personal note, global warming or not, this initiative I believe is long overdue. Technology is about finding a better way and our centuries-old dependence on fossil-fuel based transportation should already be transplanted by cleaner more efficient technologies.

Proposals need to be on the desk of the RechargeIT group no later than October 22, 2007. Details of the Google.org's RFP here.

Happy Blog Day!

August 31 is Blog Day 2007 according to the good folks at BlogDday.org. So Happy Blog Day to all!

And here's my Blog-Day-Five:
Slice-of-life - interesting posts on stuff you may never have known existed.
A little piece of me - a personal blog from an endearing "struggler".
Gaje Master Blogging - this blogger knows her blogging stuff!
RockStories - a rocker, a writer and a blogger.
Anne-thology - best performance in a dramatic blog - a very sincere writer

3l08 on people!
BlogDay2007

Bloggers Unite! - Blog Against Abuse on 9-27

On September 27, 2007, the blogging community at BlogCatalog.com is spearheading an initiative as part of its ongoing blogging challenge. Its called "Blog Against Abuse".

For the entire 24 hours of that Thursday, 9-27-07, bloggers worldwide are encouraged to blog about an important cause relating to an abuse issue. Its up to the blog author to determine which issue he or she would like to write about.

The goal of the originator is to rally the largest number of bloggers who will post about important issues for one day. While the exercise is certainly not unique, it has already merited the commitment of a few hundred BlogCatalog members.

Organizing a blog-about-something day has been done perhaps since the early days of blogging. Doing a specific search for the term "Blog Day" will yield over a million webpages off Google. There's a "Blogosphere Day" on July 19, another "Blog Day" on August 31, and a "Blog Action Day" on October 15.

Whether or not "Blog Against Abuse" Day becomes a continuing tradition is yet to be seen. Some comments on the related thread at Blog Catalog already shows some sentiments of taking the initiative as a joke or otherwise something that is to be taken lightly. Others have questioned whether the exercise would actually yield any discernible change. Still a few are willing to participate with the simple thought "what's in it for me?"

For me personally, it would be interesting to know what would be the relevant issues common among bloggers come September 27. Would it be domestic violence, child trafficking, unfair labor practices, drugs, environment? Or do blogists even care about any cause at all?

Mark it on your calendars, September 27, Blog Against Abuse Day.
Read about abuse, Blog about abuse, Stop all the abuse.

Naked Protesters Exposes Global Warming

Six hundred volunteers bared all last August 18 in a protest-slash-art-installation in the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland to raise the alarm on global warming. The controversial staging was a Greenpeace collaboration with American photographer Spencer Tunick who has a knack for drawing hundreds of volunteers to pose nude for his works.

According to the Greenpeace website, the shrinking of the Alpine glaciers is accelerating as a direct result of uncurbed global warming. They estimate that the icy land masses will completely dissapear by the year 2080. It furthermore states that the rate of global warming may become irreversible 8 years from now.

Greenpeace is actively advocating for alternative sources of energy in order to reverse the catastrophic effects of global warming. Visit www.greenpeace.org for more details and how to participate in their "Seven Steps Campaign".

This link may contain sensitive content. DO NOT CLICK if you object to nudity.