Public release date: 30-Apr-2003 Contact: Lanna Crucefix lanna.crucefix@utoronto.ca 416-978-0260 University of Toronto

The black spots on the image show some of the inclusions of coesite and other minerals. The actual sample is approximately 2 mm in diameter and was captured through cathodoluminescence, a high-resolution imaging technique. It's called the 'Picasso' diamond because of its cubist appearance. Credit image to Schulze et. al.

Full size image available through contact

More than just symbols of wealth and beauty, diamonds are a testament to the history of the earth, says University of Toronto professor Daniel Schulze.

Schulze, a professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, believes that the materials that form the gem diamonds mined in Guaniamo, Venezuela, originated on the ocean floor and has found hard evidence that supports this controversial theory. The study is published in the May 1 issue of Nature.

The diamond formation process begins, Schulze explains, when the mantle - the interior layer between the earth's core and its crust - forces lava up onto the ocean's floor. The lava then solidifies into a volcanic rock called basalt. When the basalt interacts with sea water, its oxygen composition changes. "The volcanic rocks are altered to form new minerals. It's like the steel in your bicycle changing to rust in the rain," he says.

Geological processes then thrust this altered basalt under the earth's continental plates where heat and pressure turn the basalt into eclogite - beautiful red and green rocks that may contain diamonds, if carbon is present. Over time, as the eclogite remains in the mantle, it eventually takes on the oxygen composition found in this environment. "This process can erase or modify past evidence of the ecolgite's oceanic origins," says Schulze. "But because diamonds [contained within the eclogite] are impermeable, they act as 'time capsules,' preserving inside themselves a record of conditions that existed during diamond formation."

In his study, Schulze and his team developed a new procedure using an ion microprobe to analyze tiny minerals, called coesite, in the diamonds. They compared these minerals to those in ocean-altered basalts and mantle eclogite, finding the coesite's oxygen composition a close match to that of the altered basalt, rather than the eclogite. "This proves these diamonds have an oceanic heritage," he says.

This analysis also explains why mantle eclogites have an unusual oxygen composition compared to the surrounding mantle. "Although, over time, the eclogite assumes most of the mantle's oxygen characteristics, it may not have completely lost the oxygen composition it inherited as ocean-altered basalt," says Schulze.

In addition, these particular diamonds, he says, seem to have "biogenic" carbon signatures, indicating that some of the carbon that formed the diamonds originally was living, such as ancient sea floor bacteria. "Attached to the altered basalts, this carbon would have, in essence, gone along for the ride as the rock was thrust under the continents." Heat and pressure would have turned the organic carbon into pure carbon in the form of graphite and, then finally, into diamond.

Studying diamonds is one of the only ways scientists can learn not only about what is found deep beneath the earth's crust but the history of the early earth and environmental conditions when the diamonds were formed. "These tiny time capsules have indeed provided the 'missing link' between the mantle and the crust."

Funding for this study was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the National Science Foundation.

CONTACT: Lanna Crucefix U of T Public Affairs 416-978-0260 lanna.crucefix@utoronto.ca

Daniel Schulze UTM Department of Geology 905-828-3970 dschulze@utm.utoronto.ca

Daily Research News On Line

The ‘2003 Latin American Marketing Report,’ published this week by Strategy Research Corporation (SRC), now part of Synovate, presents buying power estimates for 18 countries, plus Puerto Rico, and 70 metropolitan markets across Latin America. According to Rick Tobin, president of SRC and co-author of the report, a few islands of economic brightness have surfaced in an ocean of South American gloom. Latin American nations located closest to the United States appear to have fared better in general than those furthest from the U.S., according to Dr. Adolfo Chiri, SRC's chief economist, the report's other co-author.

Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela (a notable exception to the ‘proximity’ rule) led the 10% downturn in consumer buying power in Latin America, estimated to total $1.2 trillion.

While the combined economies for the region are not experiencing growth, there are some obvious winners and losers. Puerto Rico and Mexico have the highest levels of average buying power per household, among the 125 million Latin American households, the report says. Twenty-two percent of Mexicans and 21% of Costa Ricans feel they are personally better off economically than in the previous year, while 64% of Latin Americans feel that their personal economic situations are worse than the year before.

Optimistically, 58% of Latin Americans expect their personal economic situations to be the same or better next year. At the same time, 54% of Latin Americans consider that their countries' economic situations will be the same or better next year, while 38% believe their country's economic situations will be worse. It is important to note that Argentina experienced a 62% decline in consumer buying power this year, while other countries, including Ecuador, experienced an 18% growth in buying power for the same period.

Twenty-five percent of Latin American households report doing grocery shopping daily. Sixty percent prefer grocery shopping in supermarkets, while 28% shop for groceries in traditional markets. Interestingly, shoppers are influenced most by quality, rather than price or taste when making their purchasing decisions.

Unemployment and security are among the leading problems that concern Latin Americans, while urban transportation and fixed phone services are the services with which Latin Americans are least satisfied.

In electronic services, 85% of Latin American households connected to the Internet do so by dial-up connection. Seventy-five percent of Internet users use it primarily for e-mail, while 63% report using online banking for paying bills. Latin Americans listen to the radio an average of 19 hours per week.

Further information is available at www.strategyresearch.com

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 13, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson

The English translations of the gospels make a dreadful mistake, in my opinion, with the Greek word paradidomi. This mistake is the result of church teaching over many centuries and might be considered the root cause of much anti-Semitism and the deaths of thousands and possibly millions of people. In misusing this word, we might be guilty of sustaining the charge that Jesus was betrayed ... which is what the church teaches.

However, if we read the account in the gospels in a careful manner, and forget what the church has taught we find a very different story. The word paradidomi is used no less than fifty-nine times in relation to the death of Jesus, and each and every time this word is translated as "hand over." The word is also used another thirty-two times about the relationship between Jesus and a man who has been given the name Judas. Although the word paradidomi is used in the same context as in the other fifty-nine times the translation for the Judas uses is "betray."

Why did the translators use betray and not hand over?

The answer is because the translators have been led to believe that Judas betrayed Jesus, not from the evidence of the gospels but because of church teaching. The gospels have been made to fit church teaching by the English translators of the gospels.

It is a distortion, and a dangerous distortion at that. There are perfectly good words in Greek for betray, but none of them are used in relation to Judas. The word used is paradidomi and it means "hand over" ... and in a search through hundreds of contemporary manuscripts in which paradidomi has been used, no application of it can be found in which it means to betray.

Judas did not betray Jesus, and the church is wrong in teaching that he did, because there is no evidence to support such a claim.

Why then did such a claim arise?

The answer is that, as the Jesus-faith church developed and grew, it became increasingly difficult for the various groups who worshipped the God YHWH to hold together. Their views were too far apart for them to share a single theological view and the new Jesus-faith was bringing in many gentiles ... which was resented by those who wanted to keep the Judah faith exclusive to families who had originated in the land of Judah.

• Similarly, though Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists will both claim to be Christian they do not seek each other out in order to worship together.

Although the emerging Jews and Jesus-faith Christians both had their origins in Eretz Israel, they were becoming increasingly alienated because of their beliefs. The result was that the Christians left the synagogue and founded their own church buildings, and they blamed the people from whom they had parted for what happened to their leader. In other words they were resentful of the other Jewish group and they didn't mind taking it out on them by shifting the blame of Jesus death from the Romans ... with whom they were developing a new relationship ... to the new Jews who were evicting Christians from their synagogues.

What they did not realize was that it would have a profound effect upon history.

The stories of Judas' suicide are concocted and faintly ridiculous. To start with, the various accounts do not agree and they have Judas' guts spilling out on the floor in one version, and him hanging himself in another. Maybe I will talk about this another time, but in the meantime, I would encourage you to read the story of the handing over of Joseph to the traders who took Joseph to Egypt and also the "value of a man" story in Zechariah 11: 12-13.

Who was Judas? The answer is we don't know. He could have been any one of a number of people or even an imaginary person created for the occasion. His name: Judas is Yehudah in its original form and means a person from Judah. It was a popular name at the time of Jesus and for some considerable while afterwards.

What we now understand, from the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that anyone leaving the Essene community was totally rejected and considered to be dead by them. They opened the door, pushed him out and forgot him.

If there was a disciple or close follower of Jesus who left the group, they would, more than likely, have treated him in a similar way as the Essenes treated their deserters. Or was it that there wasn't a single deserter, but that Judah as a nation was represented by Judas as being the ones to leave the faith of Jesus, and so, for the Christians, they were as good as dead for they had handed him over to his fate when they might have saved him if they had believed him and his message of good news?

Also, if paradidomi does or can mean "betray" we are presented with another problem.

It would mean that the death of Jesus would not have been a sacrifice but something beyond Jesus' control ... as others would have betrayed him.

If Judas betrayed him, then the crucifixion was a hideous accident and not a deliberate act on behalf of Jesus, and it places Christian theology on very shaky grounds.

It is an issue that the Christian Church has not properly dealt with, and every time we blame Judas, we blame a people for a crime they could not have committed.

So anxious was the early Christian Church to turn attention away from the Romans over the death of Jesus, that it offered their main rivals, the Jewish people, as a sacrifice in the person of Judas.

Christology became defined in Jesus as the Messiah who, they said, the whole world wanted and waited for, and who would have lived had it not been for a nation who killed him.

So the guilt came to rest on them and Judas who was their agent and one of their number, who left him and betrayed him. Yet this story goes against every part of Jesus' message of love and caring and forgiving one's neighbor and enemies.

Confining the blame to that generation of people in Judah is no good either, because any one who does a study of that period of history, soon discovers that the people were not waiting for or expecting an anointed one, a messiah, to come and save them and even less to redeem them and be their savior.

If they had been. they would have responded better to Jesus and his forerunner John the Baptist. No, the saving and redeeming was a Christian hope that became so important to them that they made the assumption it must have been everyone else's hope as well.

Why should I tell you about Judas?

For a number of reasons ... we should not blame others for our own predicament, nor should we presume that what are our goals and hopes, must be the aims and aspirations of others, no matter how closely we are or were once related.

Finally, we should not retell our history in such a way as to distort the truth so that we look better and others look worse. Christians, in their anxiety to make themselves appear badly treated, have brought about the deaths of countless Jews.

It is time we owned up to the deception.

We are not as lovely perhaps, as we thought we were ... we are a people in need of redemption.

St. Mary's Cathedral "News from the pews" -- Parish Notes The Very Reverend Roger Dawson, Dean of St. Mary's Cathedral (Caracas) -- telephone: +58 / (212) 991.4727, telefax: +58 / (212) 993.8170

WASHINGTON, April 1, 2003 (CBS/AP)

"Men may not even recognize that depression is the problem or that much can be done to help them." Dr. Thomas Insel

(CBS) In a society that emphasizes men being rugged and strong, it's tough for a guy to admit to being depressed, but the National Institute of Mental Health wants that to change.

The agency, one of the National Institutes of Health, launched a campaign Tuesday to raise awareness that men, too, suffer from depression and that they need to seek help.

About 6 million men have clinical depression, but research shows they are less likely to seek treatment than do women. One result is that men are suicide victims about four times more often than women.

"For generations men have been told that they have to act tough," U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said in a statement. "Today we're saying to men, it's OK to talk to someone about what you're thinking, or how you're feeling, or if you're hurting."

The new public health campaign, said Carmona, is "attacking the stigma that tough guys can't seek help. They can and they should."

Called "Real Men, Real Depression," the campaign will include a series of television, print and radio public service announcements featuring people telling their personal stories about how they confronted their own depression. The campaign will not use actors, but ordinary people who had problems, the agency said.

Studies show that depression affects women about twice as often as men, but the two genders respond differently to the serious health problem. Women tend to talk about the symptoms and seek treatment, while men do not, the NIMH said.

Men tend not to recognize that some health symptoms may be caused by depression. Signs of depression include irritability, poor sleep, loss of interest in work or hobbies, and withdrawal. Depression is often a major factor in suicides.

"Men may not even recognize that depression is the problem or that much can be done to help them," Dr. Thomas Insel, head of NIMH, said in a statement. "Effective treatments are available and the success rate is very high — more than 80 percent — for people who seek help."

When depression strikes, men are more likely to seek relief with drugs or alcohol, or to become frustrated and angry. Some respond with compulsive work or attention to hobbies. Others may engage in reckless behavior.

"We need to understand how men respond to stress and symptoms associated with depression and how to alert physicians to better recognize and treat depressive disorders in men," Dr. Dennis Charney, chief of the NIMH mood and anxiety disorders program, said in a statement.

CBS

(CBS) When soldiers are wounded how they are treated on the battlefield can mean the difference between life and death.

The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay took a look at the latest medical devices being used on the front lines.

Dr. Senay says since the first Gulf War, the military has invested a lot of money in creating new medical devices so doctors in the field are better equipped than they have ever been. Many of the advances we've seen are in devices that treat hemorrhaging, which is perhaps the largest preventable cause of death among soldiers.

Here are some examples of progressive medical equipment:

Fast-Clotting Bandages: This is one of a new breed of fast-clotting bandages that was recently given approval by the Food and Drug Administration. They are manufactured by a new company called Hemcon, and they are made from chitosan, which is a shrimp-based product. Dr. Senay says it works by using positively charged chitosan molecules that are attached to the bandage. They attracts negatively charged red blood cells, creating a clot. Researchers say the product is very effective at treating all types of battlefield wounds.

Clotting Powder: This is a quick-clotting powder that goes by the name QuikClot. It induces rapid coagulation of wounds. Dr. Senay says it works by rapidly removing liquid from the blood and stops bleeding almost instantly. QuikClot is poured directly into an open wound. And the clot it creates stays in place until the soldier is brought to a medical facility. Another good thing about this product is that wounded soldiers can apply it directly to themselves.

One-Handed Tourniquet: The Tourniquet has been around forever and in order for one to work effectively, it takes two hands. But with this new device, says Dr. Senay, a soldier takes it out of the bag, slips it through the arm and simply pulls. The one-handed tourniquet was developed by Army researchers. More than 20,000 of the tourniquets have been handed out to U.S. soldiers.

Intraosseous Infusion Device: This device is used to stop blood pressure from dropping to dangerously low levels. Dr. Senay says this sometimes happens when a person loses a great deal of blood. It is filled with fluids, including saline. And it works by punching a hole in the sternum so that the fluids quickly enter the blood stream by bone marrow.

After a soldier has been treated on the battlefield, he or she can go back into action with minor injuries, says Dr. Senay. Others will be sent to the hospital at the nearest base. There are also floating hospitals, including the USS Boxer, which is now stationed in the Northern Persian Gulf. It is equipped to deal with biological and chemical attacks.