by Marvin Ramírez

From left-right: Oren Rubinstein (project manager), Vladimir Abramov (Parrilla Grill), and Alexander del Valle (traduciendo). (photo by Marvin J Ramirez)

Even as violence has recently hit hard one of the corners of the Latin quarters in San Francisco by shootings and gang activities, the merchants and residents have not given up. They are committed into transforming this wounded but vibrant neighborhood, into a prosperous and artistic community.

The advent of a new business owner to the heart of the Mission District Latino neighborhood brings that determination to bring that change; and for that he purchased a property that had been sitting empty for several years, to build something so good, that he promises it will transform 24th Street.

Purchased by Vladimir Abramov, an immigrant from Russia, is a well-educated entrepreneur who in arrive in the U.S. approximately 15 years ago with his girlfriend to San Francisco as a student, the former body shop building located at 3135 24th street, will no longer be a sore in the barrio – if the city approves his plan. This neighborhood with Latinos as the majority of its residents, taquerías, galleries, artisans and laundry mats will have another look that probably will he envy of other districts.

At a meeting at La Parrilla Grill, organized by the Latin Business Network, a network of Latino business and professionals whose goal is to provide support, held an event on Friday, Oct. 16, to unveil the master plan.

Oren Rubinstein, project manager contracted by Abramov, made the presentation and described the project before approximately 25 people, causing excitement and energy among the audience.

The proposed building structure, which will create a new family housing in the upper level of the structure, and a commercial retail space on the ground floor, still needs to be approved by the City of San Francisco.

“The idea is that local artists, designers and merchants will be offered space to operate a business and sell their products. This project will benefit the Mission as a whole,” said Robinstein, since it will be a key to find people, potential business owners who are artists.

“We want people who are going to get integrated with other community people who are already involved with such as Carnival SF and other cultural events and be the opportunity to the individual business owner, Rubinstein said.

According to their concept proposal, both the property owner and retailers will benefit mutually from this partnership, especially those who will share retail location to sell their merchandise in relatively competition-free environment.

This project offers a short-term micro-leases and opportunity open to those who do not have the financial ability to rent a storefront.

Each commercial space will be about 300 square feet, within the total amount of 1,700 square feet of the structure, a considerably very small space for each unit. The cost per square foot prices have not been yet determined.

Among those present were San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, members of the Latino media, merchants, and neighbors.

Awards were giving to several merchants fortheir effort to confront and overcome the current economic crisis and survive as a business. They were: Joel Campos (La Corneta Taquería), David Campos (S.F. Supervisor), Cony Prado (Partyland), Orquesta ­Najera, Jorge Saradia (El Delfín Restaurant) Tony Pérez (Pérez Auto Service), Juan Mora(Botas Mora), George’s Barbecue 24th Street.

by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — University of Michigan mathematicians and their British colleagues say they’ve identified the signal that the brain sends to the rest of the body to control biological rhythms, a finding that overturns a long-held theory about our internal clock.

Understanding how the human biological clock works is an essential step toward correcting sleep problems like insomnia and jet lag. New insights about the body’s central pacemaker might also, someday, advance efforts to treat diseases influenced by the internal clock, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorder, said University of Michigan mathematician Daniel Forger.

“Now that we know what the signal is, we should in the future be able to change it in order to help people,” said Forger, an associate professor of mathematics and a member of the U-M’s Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics.

The body’s main time-keeper resides in a region of the central brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei, or SCN. For decades, researchers have believed that it is the rate at which SCN cells fire electrical pulses – faster during the day and slower at night – that controls time-keeping throughout the body.

Imagine a metronome in the brain that ticks quickly throughout the day, then slows its pace at night. The rest of the body hears the ticking and adjusts its daily rhythms, also known as circadian rhythms, acSurcordingly.

That’s the idea that has prevailed for more than two decades.

But new evidence compiled by Forger and his colleagues shows that the old model is “completely wrong,” he said. The true signaling mechanism is very different: The timing signal sent from the SCN is encoded in a complex firing pattern that had previously been overlooked, he said.

“We have cracked the code for the circadian day, and that information could have a tremendous impact on all sorts of diseases that are affected by the clock,” Forger said.

Forger and U-M graduate student Casey Diekman, along with colleagues at the University of Manchester in England, report their findings

in the Oct. 9 edition of Science.

The British team collected data on firing patterns from more than 400 mouse SCN cells. Forger and Diekman plugged the experimental data into a mathematical model that helped test and verify the new theory.

Though the experimental work was done with mice, Forger said it’s likely that the same mechanism is at work in humans.

In mammals, the SCN contains both clock cells (which express a gene call per1) and non-clock cells.

For years, circadian-biology researchers have been recording electrical signals from a mix of both types of cells. That led to a misleading picture of the clock’s inner workings.

But Forger’s British colleagues were able to separate clock cells from ­non-clock cells by zeroing in on the ones that expressed the per1 gene. Then they recorded electrical signals produced exclusively by the clock cells. The pattern that emerged matched the predictions made by Forger’s model, bolstering the audacious new theory.

“This is a really clear example of a model making a prediction that’s completely at odds with what the biologists are saying, yet turns out to be dead-on,” Forger said. “We have a very solid case here, and it would be very hard for anyone to argue against it.”

The researchers found that during the day, SCN cells containing per1 sustain an electrically excited state but do not fire. They fire for a brief period around dusk, then remain quiet throughout the night before releasing another burst of activity around dawn. This fi ring pattern is the signal, or code, the brain sends to the rest of the body so it can keep time.

“The old theory was that the cells in the SCN which contain the clock are fi ring fast during the day but slow at night. But now we’ve shown that the cells that actually contain the clock mechanism are silent during the day, when everybody thought they were firing fast,” Diekman said.

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Evo Morales

Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean have agreed during a summit in Bolivia on creation of a regional currency aimed at reducing the use of the US dollar.

The decision came shortly after members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (Alba) gathered in the central city of Cochabamba for the start of the two-day summit, the AFP news agency reported.

Top on the agenda for the left-leaning regional trade group, which includes Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, were talks to implement the new currency, known as the sucre, for use among Alba nations.

“The document is approved,” Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president and summit host, said on Friday.

Earlier, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, described the new currency as a “revolution of paradigms”.

“The sucre is born in the Alba,” Chavez said ahead of the meeting.

“The sucre – an autonomous and sovereign monetary system that will be agreed upon today so that it can be implemented in 2010.”

Colombia and Ecuador move swiftly towards restoring diplomatic ties

Colombia and Ecuador aim to re-establish diplomatic relations at the level of chargés d’affaires by the end of October. This was one key advance made by Colombia’s foreign minister, Jaime Bermúdez, and his Ecuadorean peer Fander Falconí in the Colombian border town of Ipiales on Oct. 9.

The Colombian government will also provide Quito with information on two camps of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) in Ecuador at another meeting, scheduled for Oct. 16 in the Ecuadorean border city of Ibarra, when both countries plan to reactivate the binational border commission (Combifron). Tension over two judicial processes in Ecuador affecting Colombia, however, could jeopardise progress.

Leftist Latin American bloc rejects Honduras election

OCHABAMBA (Bolivia): Leaders of a bloc of leftist Latin American governments urged the international community on Saturday to reject the presidential election planned by Honduras’ interim government next month.

The leaders of the Boliviarian Alternative group also denounced Colombia’s plan to give the US military expanded use of bases in that South American nation, calling it a threat to the region’s security.

In a joint statement issued at the end of the two-day ALBA meeting, the leaders criticized the coup-installed government in Honduras and urged the world’s nations to continue pressing for the reinstate- ment of ousted President Manuel Zelaya HYPERLINK “http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Leftist-LatinAmerican-bloc-rejects-Honduras-election/articleshow/5135566.cms” .

“No electoral process held under the coup-installed government, or the authorities that emerge from it, can be recognized by the international community,’’ the statement said. It added that “it is fundamental to drive a diplomatic offensive and to promote forceful actions for the total re-establishment of the constitutional’’ order in Honduras.

On Friday, the nine-nation ALBA bloc — formed by socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — approved more economic sanctions against Honduras to punish the interim government led by RobertoMicheletti HYPERLINK “­http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Leftist-Latin-American-bloc-rejects-Honduras-election/articleshow/5135566.cms” .

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the bloc urged Zelaya’s supporters to peacefully resist the coup-installed government. But Chavez several times argued that people have a right to rebel.

The ALBA leaders also said they rejected the “installation of military bases of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean,’’ saying they “endanger the peace, threaten democracy and facilitate the hegemonic interference’’ of the US in the region’s affairs.

“The government of Colombia must reconsider the installation of these military bases,’’ the statement said.

Chavez called the bases a “threat to all of us.’’ The ALBA leaders also called for an “International Tribunal of Climate Justice’’ that would presumably seek to oblige rich countries to pay “damages’’ for their disproportionate consumption of fossil fuels.

by Camila Rodríguez Campo

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Adjusting to civilian life can be a daunting task for war veterans. It can be even more so if the war you have been fighting for the past several years has been against your own government. In Colombia, the streamlined process is being viewed as a prototype for dealing with these once-embittered rebels.

Colombia’s high commissioner for peace and high counselor for social and economic reintegration Frank Pearl, based in Bogotá, described the process to Weekly Report and other invited guests, including that nation’s ambassador to the United States, Carolina Barco, on a recent visit here.

In a “conversation” led by Center for American Progress senior fellow Louis Caldera, Pearl detailed the reintegration process that the Colombian government has implemented to demobilize former rebel group combatants in the South American country through persuasion rather than combat.

It is an essential step in establishing peace in the country, which has been plagued for years by armed conflicts, Pearl explained.

He broke down the First: The former revolutionaries have to pass through a process based on the Justice and Peace Law.

Second: To facilitate their adaptation to civil life, the ex-combatants’ families, most of whom have been violently separated, receive orientation while being monitored during the process.

Third: The Colombian government works on building useful skills in ex-combatants, giving them an opportunity to become active and productive members in that country’s society.

Finally: Long-term results are achieved when ex-combatants become good citizens.

The concept and process is attracting worldwide interest.

It has been in planning and implementation stages for more than five years now, with support from international peace foundations and some U.S. aid money.

To date 50,000 former combatant shave become involved in the integration process.

Combatants willing to give up arms and participate receive both psychological and educational support, as do their families. For employment, they are asked to choose an activity they like and in which they already show some abilities.

­Job opportunities remain limited in that country. Alliances with the private sector are still being built—a difficult task since there is some fear and distrust but “we need to transform the environment,= Pearl said.

Pearl, who had worked as a presidential adviser for reintegration and is the cofounder of the board of j NO MAS!, has an experienced background trying to implement peaceful and alternative solutions to solve the civil conflict in Colombia.

The Colombian approach helps ensure that ex-combatants remain off the battlefield and become contributing members of society.

Pearl acknowledged that many challenges exist for improving this processes results. However, he added that it is an example of peace-willing for the rest of the world.