Business| Rio Tinto , mining giant

Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has reported its profits have been hit by falling metals and minerals prices in the global economic downturn.

Its profits for the first six months of 2009 fell to $2.66bn, down 63.7% from $7.33bn a years ago.

Rio Tinto sold shares to its existing shareholders earlier in the year and said as a result it had reduced its debt of $39.1bn by $14.8bn.

Rio had already announced that it would not paying a half year dividend, but that it would pay a full year dividend if its result were good enough.

As part of its cost-cutting programme, the company announced it had cut 16,000 in the first half of the year, which was ahead of its target of 14,000. Rio Tino has also been selling parts of its business, especially units of the U.S. aluminium company Alcan, which it bought in 2007.

It made $3.7bn of divestments in the first half of the year and has since announced an agreement to sell the Alcan Packging business for $2.025bn.

Chief executive Mr. Albanese said:

"Despite difficult markets, our business are running smoothly."

He added that the company was on track to meet the cost-cutting commitments it had made in December.

One of the big factors in Rio's profitability is the ongoing talks with Chinese steel mills about how much they are prepared to pay for iron ore. It has offered a 33% price cut, but has said it is not prepared to sell at the slightly lower price set by Australia's Fortescue Metals Groups. But Rio's chairman Jan du Plessis said the firm remained "cautious about the recent rally in prices".

There is a degree of tension in the negotiations, because four of its staff have been arrested in Shanghia on suspicion of offering bribes.

第一個和第二個Rio Tinto是兩個不同的連結, 第二個連結有提到Rio Tinto在今年售出它的包裝業務的相關新聞。至於Australia's Fortescue Mwtals Groups是與它競爭的對手。

>>>我掛了。

Global warming sparked by ancient farming methods

Ancient man may have started global warming through massive deforestation and burning that could have permanently altered the planet's climate, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Virginal and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews and reported on the University of Virgina's Web site, says over thousands of years, farmer burned down so many forests on such a large scale that huge amounts of carbon dioxide were pumped into the atmosphere.

Ruddiman said that starting thousands of years ago, people would burn down a forest, poke a hole in the soil between the stumps, drop seeds in the holes and grow a crop on that land until the nutrients were tapped out of soil. Then they would move on.

The slashing and burning on such a large scale spewed enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and warmed the Earth.

Ruddiman has studied and researched the idea of ancient man contributing to climate change for years now. And his endured plenty of criticism over his theories. Ken Calderia, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in Standford, California, is among those who disagree with Ruddiman. He said Ruddiman is "exaggerating the importance of early man."

He said, "There are actually studies showing if you cut down forests for farmland, you actually cool the planet, because of the glare from the cleared land."

But Ruddiman said, "My argument is that even at the beginning, they just used much more land per person, so even though there weren't that many people, they used enough to start to push these greenhouse gas concentrations up."

Ruddiman's research also argues that the Earth was on its way to another ice age 10,000 years ago and that ice sheets were already forming in northern latitudes when ancient man started his slashing and burning method of farming.

搜尋中文關鍵字: REED , 碳交易

First Swine Flu Vaccinations Ready by Sep.

The WHO says vaccine manufacturers are on track to develop a vaccine for the H1N1 virus(針對H1N1的疫苗), commonly know as swine flu. It says 400 shipments of different viruses have been made to all manufacturers and some of the experimental vaccines are now being used in clinical trail(臨床試驗).

Director of WHO's Intuition of Vaccine Research, Marie-Paule Kieny, says some of the batches(多批次的) are likely to be used in future vaccination campaigns. She says clinical trails of vaccine candidates (候選疫苗)are going on in China, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the U.S.. Other expectly clinical trails of other vaccines will begin in other countries in the coming days.

"For the clinical trails who have started in July, already, we should have early result during September," Kieny said. "So, we will know after these clinical trails wheather one or two does will be needed. And, this will also give confirmation that the formulation that the vaccine manufacturers are using are indeed immunogenic (產生免疫性的)and likely to give protection againts the pandemic virus.(專:全球性病毒)"

Dr. Kieny says media rumors that the quick development of vaccines makes them unsafe, are unfounded. She says no vcaaine carries zero risk. (沒有疫苗是毫無風險的)Some minor side effects are to be expected. She says occasionally someone might have severe reaction to a vaccine. But, this occurs in very rare case. And She says, the vaccine might cause fever, (高燒)or pain, nausea(反胃), diarrhea(腹瀉) or fainting in(昏厥) some people, national regulatory authorities (國家監管當局)will closely monitor (監督)all sickness and adverse(detrimental) effects to see wheather these side effects are linked to the vaccine or are just concidental.

General Intelligence(一般智力)

Charles Spearman made "g" stand for a statistical measure of performance across a variety of test.

He found that the same people who did well in a variety of mental test tended to use a part in their brains that he termed "g".

The "g" laid the foundation for the notion of a single intelligence, allowing us to undertake everyday mental task.

A recent study seems to confirm C.Speraman's theory. Research has foun that a part of the brain called the " lateral prefrontal cortex" is the only area of the brain to increase in blood flow when volunteers tackle complicated puzzles.

(當某人在處理困難的問題時, 外側前額葉皮層是大腦區域裡唯一會加強血液流量的區塊)

※Charles Spearman利用統計方法推論人類智力理論的二種因素(two-factor theory), 一種是一般心裡能力, 也就是"g", 一種是特殊能力, 也就是"s", 而Spearman的重於強調"g", 因此將他的理論概念被稱單一智力(single intelligence)。