clipped from www.bris.ac.uk

A new study published today in the Lancet proposes that drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do

Alcohol and tobacco more harmful than cannabis and ecstacy.

New ‘matrix of harm’ for drugs of abuse

Press release issued 23 March 2007

The new ranking places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table. These socially accepted drugs were judged more harmful than cannabis, and substantially more dangerous than the Class A drugs LSD, 4-methylthioamphetamine and ecstasy.

1. the physical harm to the individual user caused by the drug


2. the tendency of the drug to induce dependence


3. the effect of drug use on families, communities, and society

The process proved simple, and yielded roughly similar scores for drug harm when used by two separate groups of experts.

“Drug policy is primarily aimed at reducing the harm to individual users, their families and society. But at present there is no rational, evidence-based method for assessing the harm of drugs.

clipped from www.jpl.nasa.gov

An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling
the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with
six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and
member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like
this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere where circularly-shaped
waves and convective cells dominate is perhaps the last place you'd expect to
see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar
hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and
perhaps the interior," added Baines.

scientists
think it is not linked to Saturn's radio emissions or to auroral activity, as once
contemplated

with NASA's Cassini mission.