Era With No Name 3 East Village, Before the Gentry 5 Lessing Looks Back on Shadows and Parents 7 Panel Urges End to Prostate Screening at Age 75 9 You’re Checked Out, but Your Brain Is Tuned In 11 Patterns: In Older Neighborhoods, Less Weight Gain 13 The Germs Are Potent. But So Is a Kiss. 14 The Rush to Save Timbuktu's Crumbling Manuscripts 16 Light goes out on pioneer machine 20 Microsoft sees end of Windows era 22 Vitamin C 'slows cancer growth' 25 Human malaria jab tests nearing 27 Memory, Depression, Insomnia -- And Worms? 28 Chronic Exposure To Estrogen Impairs Some Cognitive Functions 31 Strategies To Control TB Outdated, Inadequate, Analysis Shows 33 Project Aims To Improve Energy Efficiency Of Computing 34 Rapid Natural Cooling Occurred 12,700 Years Ago 37 Genetically Modified Root Systems Result In Plants That Survive With Little Water 39 Thousands Of Globular Clusters Identified In Virgo Cluster Of Galaxies 41 Revolutionary Technique Could Reduce Lifelong Drugs For Transplant Patients 43 Next Generation Tool For Visualizing Genomic Data Introduced 45 Viterbi Algorithm Goes Quantum 47 Superconducting Electronic Circuit Pumps Microwave Photons 49 Fuel Cell Efficiency May Be Improved With Material With 'Colossal Ionic Conductivity' 51 Lowering Cholesterol Early In Life Could Save Lives 53 Turning Those Old Electronic Circuit Boards Into New Park Benches 55 Happiness Lengthens Life 56 Arctic Map shows dispute hotspots 57 Sleep on It: How Snoozing Makes You Smarter 59 How magicians control your mind 63 The Innumeracy of Intellectuals 66 Elastic electronics see better 68 Robots learn to move themselves 70 Children 'meet online strangers' 72 Neurobiologists Discover Individuals Who 'Hear' Movement 74 How Bacteria Attach To Human Tissues During Infection Process: New Clues 76 Voluntary Exercise Does Not Appear To Alleviate Anxiety And Depression 77 'Exercise Pill' Is No Replacement For Real Exercise, Expert Cautions 78 Rock Art Marks Transformations In Traditional Peruvian Societies 80 Why Some Smokers Become Addicted With Their First Cigarette 82 Wind Powered Vehicle, Ventomobile, Ready To Race In The Netherlands 83 One In Ten Children Using Cough, Cold Medications 84 Antarctic Fossils Paint Picture Of Much Warmer Continent 85 Bernini, the Man of Many Heads 88 Where the Devils Are in the Details 91 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila The Mythic Imagination of Beckmann in Exile 93 Researchers Halt Spread Of HIV With RNAi In Animal Model 95 Periodontal Disease Independently Predicts New Onset Diabetes 97 Climate Change: When It Rains It Really Pours 98 Is There Life On Jupiter's Moon Europa? 99 Whom Do We Fear Or Trust? 101 How Chemo Kills Tumors: Research To Reduce Side Effects 103 Researchers Unveil Vital Key To Cancer 105 Next-generation Computer Antivirus System Developed 107 Child Development: Lack Of Time On Tummy Shown To Hinder Achievement 108 Humans' Response To Risk Can Be Unnecessarily Dangerous 110 Use Of Cleaning Products During Pregnancy Increases Risk Of Asthma 112 Quantum Computers Are One Step Closer 113 Invisibility cloak 'step closer' 114 Sub to make deep Caribbean dive 116 Eat kangaroo to 'save the planet' 118 Cell change 'keeps organs young' 119 Scientists ask to plant GM trees 121 Gene hooks smokers at first puff 122 Why innovation is getting harder 124 Slow-Moving Vehicle 126 They May Not Mean to, but They Do 129 ‘Punk Half Panther’ 131 Marathon Man 134 Cern lab set for beam milestone 137 Meta-materials Mimic Ice Doesn't Fully Conform To Third Law Of Thermodynamics 140 Back To The Future: Psychologists Examine Children's Mental Time Traveling Abilities 143 Twenty Disease-specific Stem Cell Lines Created 145 NOAA Forecasts Stronger Atlantic Hurricane Season For 2008 Than Earlier Prediction 147 Museum of History Unveils Its Future 149 Humans Worsen Spread Of Deadly Emerging Infectious Disease 152 Running Slows The Aging Clock, Researchers Find 154 Designer RNA Fights High Cholesterol, Researchers Find 157 Growing Wheat In Acidic Soil 159 Medical Doctors Who Do Research Could Be A Dying Breed 161 Star Birth Near Tarantula Nebula Unveiled On Hubble's 100,000th Orbit Milestone 162 Microscopic Scaffolding Offers 'Simple' Solution To Treating Skin Injuries 164 Roman Temple Uncovered In Ancient Jewish Capital Of Galilee 165 Pacific Shellfish Ready To Invade Atlantic 167 New Metamaterials Bend Light Backwards 168 Promising Lithium Batteries For Electric Cars 171 Heavy Atoms Can Help Destroy Tumor Cells 173 Mixed fortunes for world's whales 175 'Pump and Dump' conmen targeted 178 Sky-high system to aid soldiers 181 Pain 'linked with low vitamin D' 183 Couple's 'fast-freeze' IVF baby 185 Bosses say education has worsened 188 Stress Hormone Found To Regulate Brain Neurotransmission 190 Eat Oily Fish At Least Once A Week To Protect Your Eyesight In Old Age 192 Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 Begins Mapping Oceans 193 Fuel From Cellulose, Cheaper And With Better Yields Than Ever Before 195 Psychiatrists Shift Away From Providing Psychotherapy 196 Mutation Found In Dachshund Gene May Develop Therapies For Humans Blindness 197 Compressor-free Refrigerator May Loom In The Future 199 Quantum Chaos Unveiled? 200 2 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 33 August 2008 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Era With No Name B y NICHOLAS THOMPSON AMERICA BETWEEN THE WARS From 11/9 to 9/11: The Misunderstood Years Between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror. By Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier. 412 pp. PublicAffairs. $27.95. Bill Clinton desperately wanted a pithy slogan to encapsulate his foreign policy. But nothing worked. “Post cold-war era” was uninspiring. “Democratic enlargement” sounded like an unwelcome medical condition. “Age of hope” was too like the title of a New Age album. “We can litanize and analyze all we want, but until people can say it in a phrase, we’re sunk,” he snapped at his advisers in the fall of 1994. The president never succeeded. “Containment” of the Soviet Union described policy through the cold war, helping to make a mortal threat seem manageable. For the past seven years, “war on terror” has made a manageable threat seem mortal. The years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 remain nameless. In “America Between the Wars,” Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier argue that anonymity doesn’t equal irrelevance. The 12-year period may now look like a patternless jumble — Iraq, Sudan, Haiti, Nafta, Rwanda, Seattle, Kosovo — but we can learn much from it. “The challenges confronting America,” the authors write, “did not start on 9/11. They began when the cold war ended a decade earlier.” This statement isn’t technically accurate. Islamic terrorists, for example, blew up buildings before 1989. But the general point is a good one. For example, George W. Bush’s unilateralism is clearly rooted in a 1992 policy paper written by the staff of Dick Cheney, who was secretary of defense at the time. More interestingly, Madeleine Albright may have encouraged its growth with her invocations of the “indispensable nation.” Russia’s current antipathy toward the United States surely derives partly from the decision to expand NATO well east of the old Iron Curtain. America’s military presence in Saudi Arabia after Operation Desert Storm inspired Osama bin Laden’s first fatwa. Both authors served in the Clinton administration State Department, but they also show a faint nostalgia for the first Bush presidency. George H. W. Bush didn’t seek undeserved credit when the Berlin Wall came down, and he genuinely tried to build international consensus. He even tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade Cuba to support the first Iraq war. The current president may haunt his father’s legacy. But if the elder Bush could run again against Bill Clinton — busy much of this year dismantling his own reputation — it’s not clear whom the authors would vote for. The book’s flaw is its familiarity. There are no surprising heroes or villains; there are few surprising stories or scenes. Though Chollet and Goldgeier have conducted valuable interviews with many of the key players, little will feel new to people who read the newspapers carefully during the 1990s. To take one example, while describing the Asian financial meltdown of the mid-1990s, they write, 3 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 33 August 2008 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila “Whether the critics were correct” that Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his colleagues “had caused the economic disaster, or whether Time was right that they had saved the world, there was no denying that these unelected American officials were shaping the globalization debate.” That’s true, but we knew so then. And after 10 pages of lucid discussion and description, we don’t know whether Chollet and Goldgeier think Rubin saved the world or set it up for future ruin — a question with profound implications for today and tomorrow. Straight history like this is valuable, particularly for an oft-neglected era. But as hinted at by the ambiguous title, the book doesn’t fulfill its promise of reinterpretation. “America Between the Wars,” after all, could describe any peaceful era since independence. At the end, Chollet and Goldgeier seem to be in the same place as President Clinton in 1994. Yes, a lot happened in this era. But no one is exactly sure what it meant — or what it should be called. Nicholas Thompson is a senior editor at Wired and a fellow at the New America Foundation. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Thompson-t.html?8bu&emc=bua2 4 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 33 August 2008 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila East Village, Before the Gentry By COLIN MOYNIHAN Over the last 15 years Q.