2006
Year of the Dog
Islamic calendar 1426-27

Internet brought under UN jurisdiction - UNTERNET
New synthetic drugs spread rapidly; police powerless
60 million HIV-positive cases worldwide
20th Olympic Winter Games in Helsinki, Lahti & Lillehammer

Benecol PLC reports data breach - fears shares may suffer
Movenergy underwear converts body movements to electricity
Finnish Labour Unions, IRS worried over growth in cash payments to smart cards
Environmentalists demand global ban on leisure drone-kites - nesting birds endangered
Nanorobots perfect surround & destroy technique on cancer cells - Medical Review hails new breakthrough

NYSE - Bulletin (Benecol) 20.1.2006

Benecol PLC reports data breach - fears shares may suffer

A spokesman for the Finnish-based Benecol PLC has today confirmed a data breach within the company's Brussels office. The information may influence Benecol stock prices on international markets.

According to preliminary police reports, e-mail has been sent from the databases at the Benecol Corporate Communications Department in Brussels, to a ghost address at a Paris officehotel. It has not thus far been possible to determine the nature of the messages, as they are encrypted with a sophisticated encoding system. It seems apparent, however, that an imported virus has read internal memos from the company's mail system and text documents from a number of terminals in the office.

A statement issued from Benecol's Espoo headquarters emphasized that the Brussels office did not have sensitive data on the company's research or product development plans. Equally, the Brussels database contains no details of patents currently pending or forthcoming patent applications. What may have been comporomsed in the breach, however, are data and messages from which conclusions might be drawn on Benecol's short-term strategies and product launch scheduling. It might also be possible to determine the state of play in Benecol's negotiations with food and drug authorities on their new range of "smart foods". Such details could allow competitors to focus their attention and increase investment in their own similar projects. This is of vital importance to competing foodstuffs manufacturers, as the sales life expectancy of smart foods is short, and new products must be kept coming onto the market regularly.

Hans Guiller, 42, the Director of Benecol's DataComms Division and the man ultimately responsible for company secuirty in this area, reported that the virus is an unknown species of the "chain-letter" variety, and has probably entered the Benecol local network in apparently harmless e-mail. Guiller commented that henceforth Benecol would be placing its security systems on alert and that all outgoing electronic mail would be passed through a buffer or exclusion zone, and all mail bound for addresses not listed as approved would be terminated, inspected, and then destroyed.

Hans Guiller admitted that the heightened security level would bring problems, as the buffer will stop all personal correspondence from the company's sites. As a result, Benecol will as soon as possible be installing a new mail server and mailing program. Each member of the Benecol staff will be given a personal keycode, and no mail will be able to pass outside the internal company net without the sender's code attached.

Police enquiries into the data breach have run into "a Great Wall of silence", according to Commander Michelle Rousseau of the EU Security Enforcement Unit. The switching logs of the local operator reports that the server in the Paris office complex was operated remotely from Hong Kong. This brought investigations to an abrupt dead-end, however, as China is not a signatory to the International Internet Crime Prevention Treaty, the so-called Kiel Agreement. The Chinese authorities refused to sign the document on the grounds that they did not have the technical or economic wherewithal to play an active part in such investigations, but there has been widespread criticism of their actions. The Treaty, set up originally by the EU and the United States and since extended, requires that Internet operators maintain a log of the routeing of all messages sent to the network from their servers. The idea was first put forward in Finland in 1996 during the drafting of a new Freedom of Speech Act, and Finland was the first country to introduce the measure.

Internet News Update 12.3.2006

Movenergy underwear converts body movements to electricity

The Movenergy power suit, originally devised for use with mobile communicators in difficult conditions, is becoming increasingly popular with citydwellers as well.

Movenergy is a device produced and developed by the Anglo-French consortium Magna Power PLC, and is designed to convert kinetic energy into an electrical charge which is stored in its own lightweight batteries. Some twenty-five years ago, the world was amazed by the introduction of self-winding wristwatches, which operated on more or less the same principle. Movenergy is a great deal more efficient and stores energy from not only the movements of the wrists or arms, but also from other parts of the body. In this way it is possible to recover the energy of the legs and back.

Magna Power PLC originally developed the technology for use under conditions where it was not possible to charge the battery of a portable communicator in the normal way, and where the load to be carried on the person had to be as light as possible. Examples include treks in desert or jungle terrain, mountain climbing, and polar expeditions. Comfort-loving and price-conscious individuals with a conscience about preserving limited natural resources havetaken to the idea in droves, and by the end of last year, more than two million Movenergy outfits had been sold to customers in both rural areas and large cities.

Movenergy facilitates a portable energy supply in many situations. When travelling or on an outing somewhere, it is no longer necessary to carry heavy battery packs or accumulators. There is also no fear of the energy supply running out. When a person puts on the Movenergy suit, he or she knows that there is enough energy along for the ride.

The rising cost of batteries and mini-accumulators and the steep increase in energy taxation that we have witnessed in recent years means that Movenergy makes sense even in an urban environment. Since it completely by-passes the mains electricity normally required in recharging batteries, it has become particularly popular among Greens and Ecofans.

The Movenergy outfit is actually an one-piece undergarment, with a very large number of ultrathin and flexible plastic fibres woven into the material. When a part of the body moves or bends, the fibres bend at the same time. This generates a charge, and this is passed as a very weak electrical current to the charging unit, which as it were gathers the weak currents together and passes the electricity on to a lightweight battery.

To look at, and also when you wear it next to your skin, the Movenergy suit is just like any piece of underwear. It does not cause any extra tiredness in the wearer, and looks perfectly natural under normal clothing. Movenergy suits are already being manufactured in a range of models and with different thermal characteristics to suit all kinds of situations and climatic conditions.

Magna Power PLC plans further improvements to later models, for example incorporating into the design a function whereby upward movement - jumps, hops, and so on - can be made to take part in the energy-generating process.

Economist Intelligence Unit European Digest 21.4.2006

Finnish Labour Unions, IRS worried over growth in cash payments to smart cards

(Helsinki)

The Central Organizations of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) and the country's inland revenue service, known as "Verohallitus" have both expressed concerns about wage arrangements for temporary contracts and the spread of direct cash payments to smart cards.

SAK Chairman Mr Lasse Vihalainen and the recently-appointed new tax supremo, Director-General Toivo Karhu were both among the keynote speakers at a recent jubilee seminar for the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers. Whilst two of the other main speakers, the former British PM Tony Blair and the now-retired media mogul Rupert Murdoch, contented themselves with pleasantries for the invited audience, Vihalainen and Karhu must have left the industrialists with much to think about over their dinners. The main issues on the two men's minds seem to be "smart card" payroll practices and the threat to their existence of the spread of temporary contract work through the labour market.

According to a recent Gallup-Nielsen survey, already more than 10% of the work carried out in Finland is paid for in cash-in-hand deposits to employees' smart cards. Cash payments like this are particularly prevalent in piecework contracts, for example temporary secretarial jobs or in the building industry, but models adapted to salaried staff on hourly wage contracts are becoming increasingly common, and naturally neither the labour bosses nor the Finnish taxman like the way things are going.

SAK Chairman Vihalainen commented that temporary contracts, piecework, and cash payments have their place for instance for students or performing artists, but he warned that there was likely to be trouble in the workplace if these practices spread much further. "People are looking for stability, and for a clear picture of their future earnings and employment", he argued.

The National Board of Taxation is also unsettled about the new models of employment and compensation for work done. Last year, said Karhu, there were cases where a single employee was listed as having as many as 2,000 separate written employment contracts. Karhu pointed out that the tax authorities' computer system is simply not designed to cope with situations like this.

"It is quite impossible to keep track of and control this volume of contracts. The biggest problem we face is work carried out via the datanets, and the payments - all apparently in smartcard cash deposits with no deductions at source - for this. Since we do not have the details of many of these payments, we shall have to develop procedures for the arbitrary assessment of income. There is a precedent for this; we have previously had similar problems with assessing taxidrivers, restaurant doormen, and artists and musicians on their income tax and pension contributions."

The same survey also examined the problem within the service sector. Many branches have seen the growth of very loose working contracts, in which the employees agree on the tasks to be carried out with the employer, and receive a cash card coded by the employer. The employee can do the work connected with his or her particular skills when he wishes. Employers approve of this form of payment, since they argue that piecework payment and short-term contracts get the job done at peak periods when it is needed, and it also spreads the entrepreneurial responsibility among the employees. They also claim that the down-times in the working day - those extended lunches and half-hour coffee breaks of yesteryear - when wages were still being paid for no productivity, have all but disappeared from many fields with the advent of cash payments.

As elsewhere in Europe, Finnish employers have been feeling the pinch in the wake of the recent EU directives on lowered margins to stimulate competition, and at the same time workers have been clamouring for higher wages.

One of those attending the seminar was Aulis Helle, of the Kesko retailing group, which owns some 2,000 stores and is active in everything from groceries to agricultural and builder's supplies. He dismissed the complaints of the labour unions and tax authorities: "The work has to be done when it is there to be done", he said emphatically, "And in our business, the easiest way of smoothing out seasonal peaks is to pay temporary staff on the smartcard system."

Helle's comments may not be altogether unconnected with the fact that a 51% share of Kesko was sold last week to WebSales Corp., based in the Cayman Islands, which is one of the world's largest and oldest net trading houses. Some months ago WebSales rationalized the payroll systems of all its sales and warehousing staff around the world. Now WebSales employees charge up their pay on their smart cards each day at the close of business. The funds are transferred via the Internet from an automated system in the Cayman Islands. The salary automat does not even know the employees by name, but only their wage-bracket and PIN code.

SatWeb 3.5.2006

Environmentalists demand global ban on leisure drone-kites - nesting birds endangered

WildLife and several other environmentalist organizations have demanded a global ban on the sale and non-professional use of drone-kites. They left a petition to this end with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at their meeting in New York yesterday.

The drone-kites differ from conventional remote-controlled aircraft in that they take their energy from the ground and can be airborne for a practically unlimited period. In actual fact, the most developed examples are flying robots. In certain areas they are so prevalent that they have caused disturbances to nesting birds. In Sri Lanka, for instance, where the craze has spread to all sections of society, many species of birds have not nested at all this year, since they have been surrounded on all sides by dozens of drone-kites. The kites have also interfered with commercial air traffic in numerous cases, despite strict exclusion zones in force around air corridors.

As well as in Sri Lanka, the hobby of flying these drone-kites has become immensely popular in Mexico, Japan, China, and Thailand. The development of a constant energy supply for the toys has meant that it is now possible to equip them with an impressive array of add-on devices. Some of the latest models come with built-in panorama mini-cams, which send a picture to the controller's videophone on the ground. In this way, the user can - within limits - fly the kite to wherever he chooses, and is not limited to the immediate area above him, where he can actually see it. Next year, Sapporo in Japan plans to host the 1st Drone-Kite World Championships.

Initially the drone-kites were designed to perform a specific task, often with a military intention. Primitive flying robots were deployed for surveillance and missile guidance operations already in the Persian Gulf conflict of the early 1990s. A few years later the Japanese developed a kite-like aircraft that took its energy from the ground in micro-pulses. This gave it an unlimited time in the air, and radically altered the nature of the invention. Aside from military uses, drone-kites have been employed for infra-red mapping, in aerial searches for missing persons, and also for crop-spraying operations in areas where it would be difficult to land and take off conventional aircraft. They were also developed for navigation and for guidance purposes, being programmed to fly ahead of cars, ships, or pleasure craft. The sole limitation on their use was that they could only operate where there was access to a micro-impulse field.

After the turn of the millennium, the first machines came onto the market having the energy source passed to the drone-kite by laser. These craft stayed airborne just as long as it was possible to supply them with energy from portable laser units, and in practice this meant they were only capable of being operated within clear sight of the pilot on the ground.

The present generation of drone-kites is equipped with technology to notify the laser transmitters when they require extra energy, but the limiting factor here is the cost of the transmitters. Kite manufacturers are attempting to skirt this problem by pooling their resources to construct a series of large micro-pulse networks. This would finally free the drone-kites completely, allowing them to be flown almost anywhere - even hundreds of kilometres from the owner - without a laser transmitter leash. According to the plans, the network operators would invoice the kite users with an energy charge according to the micro-pulses used, much the same as in the case of videotelephony.

The idea of micro-pulse networks - in other words of a cordless energy transfer system - has spawned numerous other developments. Some European research establishments have adapted the technology to the design of a city-car, which would derive its energy not from heavy onboard batteries but in the form of micropulses, and would thus be both light, manoeuvrable, and totally pollution-free.

NetWeb 11.12.2006

Nanorobots perfect surround & destroy technique on cancer cells - Medical Review hails new breakthrough

An important new step in the fight against of cancer was announced yesterday. Doctors in the Cancer Department of the Helsinki University General Hospital report that they have succeeded for the first time in destroying a cancer cell by the use of mechanical microrobots.

The robots, known as nanosomes, are smaller than 0.01mm. In essence, they are smart mechanical cells, and the treatment used in Helsinki involves implanting the nanosomes into the circulatory system of the cancer patient. The nanosomes can recognize cancer cells from among normal human cells, after which they attach themselves to the cell surface of the carcinoma. Then, having surrounded the tumour in this way, they feed cytotoxins to the cancer cell, arresting and ultimately killing it.

The treatment lasted roughly three weeks, as a new infusion of nanosomes into the patient's bloodstream was possible only after the previously killed cancer cells had fallen off and revealed the next layer.

According to Professor Antti Vaivio, who heads the international team in HUGH, the cancer is as it were "exfoliated", layer by layer, without damage to any of the surrounding healthy cells. He also commented that the nanosomes would appear to offer some very promising solutions to other problems associated with the treatment of cancer patients:

"In the not-too-distant future we believe it will also be possible to use nanosomes to destroy cancer cells even in cases where they are in difficult locations or spread around the body." He cited the examples of leukaemia, metastatic tumours, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, and certain types of brain tumour.

The cell-recognition programming in the nanosomes was developed jointly by the University of Helsinki's Hartmann Laboratory and the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Some ten years ago the Helsinki research team discovered the recognition procedures by which natural killer cells in the body find a defective or hostile cell. The MediPro Corporation and the Hartmann Laboratory then spent five years developing for the nanosomes the kind of program that would allow them to target and destroy cancer cells. Delighted team-members now feel that the basic solutions have been found, and that programming to weed out other types of cancer is to be expected in the near future.

The December issue of the international Medical Review heralded the new breakthrough with a two-page illustrated spread, and the magazine's editorial comment argues that the biomechanical nanosomes are one of the greatest strides taken by biomedicine in the last decade.

Hannula I. & Linturi R. 1998: 100 Phenomena.
Yritysmikrot Oy, Helsinki 1998. Copyright notices ISBN 952-9508-18-2