Watching the World
Travel Warnings
To prevent traveler’s intestinal afflictions, Western tourists in Third World countries are often told to lace the local water with alcohol or to avoid drinking water altogether. But these measures do not guarantee success, according to researchers from the University of Texas. One of the researchers, Dr. Herbert L. DuPont, says that “the concentration of alcohol has to be so high” to suppress diarrhea-inducing bacteria that adding alcohol to the water is “not really a practical recommendation.” Besides, says DuPont, contaminated food rather than water is the major source of traveler’s intestinal infections. He advises tourists to stick to steaming hot foods, citrus fruits, dry foods like bread and tortillas, and sugary substances like jelly.
New Genetic Codes Discovered
“Ever since molecular biologists cracked the genetic code in the 1960s, they have taken a measure of satisfaction in finding that every organism they check uses the same code,” reports Science Digest. But recently biologists in the United States, Europe, and Japan independently found two variations on the standard code in at least five species of one-celled organisms. “The fact that differences exist at all poses a major challenge to evolutionary theorists,” says the report. Why? Because, says John Preer, Jr., leader of one of the American groups that made the discovery, “it’s hard to imagine how one code could evolve into another without screwing up everything in the cell.”
Failed Nazi Resistance
Representatives of the Catholic Church who met in Düsseldorf, Germany, for a panel discussion on the subject of resistance to the Nazis during the Hitler regime were stunned by Düsseldorf’s 83-year-old prelate, Dr. Carl Klinkhammer. He said, as reported in Rheinische Post, that he “knew exactly who in the church had failed to resist. Pulling no punches, he named the leading members of the German episcopacy at that time, Cardinals Faulhaber of Munich, Bertram of Breslau, and Schulte and Frings of Cologne as having been ‘everything else but members of the resistance.’” The newspaper’s report of the discussion continued: “With the help of numerous quotations from sermons, pastoral letters, telegraphed greetings to Hitler, as well as other bulletins from German bishops, he succeeded in showing that, contrary to the wishes of many priests and some laymen, these leaders not only were against showing any opposition to the [Nazis] once they came to power but also saw in them ‘the only hope of rescue from socialism and communism.’”
Egyptian Dirt Shortage
Prior to the completion of Egypt’s Aswān High Dam in 1966, “there was always so much silt [from the river Nile’s annual floods] that Egypt never had to build with anything else, unless it wanted something special, like pyramids,” says New Scientist. Homes made of red brick—produced in small kilns from a mixture of topsoil, sand, and water—are a distinctive sight in Egypt. But now the government has launched a campaign against making mud bricks. Why? Because Egypt, with its burgeoning population, is losing too much farmland to brick production. Presently, farmers can make ten times more money by selling an acre of topsoil than by farming it. But the digging lowers ground levels, interferes with irrigation, and contributes to increased salt levels in the soil. Egyptians have stripped an estimated 20,000 acres (8,000 ha) of topsoil since the Aswān High Dam was built.
Hacking Epidemic
“Computer hacking—which has come to mean using the computer for illegal purposes—is epidemic among teenage computer users,” reports New York Daily News. “Youthful hackers need only a home computer, a modem (equipment that allows computers to talk over phone lines), a pushbutton telephone and 10 minutes of instruction from a friend in order to break into many data bases, to bill long-distance phone calls to someone else’s number, or to charge purchases to a stranger’s credit card.” Adds the report: “Experts say few systems can withstand the onslaught of a kid with a computer and a weekend to kill.” Authorities say that computer crime is epidemic among youths because many parents ignore what their children are doing.
“The Pope: Half Price”
That was the message in the window of a souvenir shop in downtown Montreal that reflected the vendors’ plight after the pope’s visit to Canada. The French-language newspaper La Presse said that vendors ‘encountered a wall of indifference’ on the part of the public toward purchasing leftover T-shirts, key chains, calendars, playing cards, and pictures of the pope. Many vendors were left with large quantities of unsalable items. Although sales of official souvenirs amounted to about $4.6 million, the overall operation was not profitable, says La Presse.
Female Smokers
The pressure on women to take up the tobacco habit grows. Liverpool’s Daily Post reports that women’s magazines in Britain contain an average of 12 pages of cigarette advertising each issue. How dangerous, though, is the habit? Lung cancer, very often smoking related, is now Scotland’s chief killer of women over 55. The British Medical Association attributes the death of almost 33,000 women in Britain in 1983 to smoking-induced diseases. Further, it warns that new evidence links cigarette smoking to cancer of the cervix. Yet many women do not stop smoking, notes researcher Dr. Bobbie Jacobson, some for fear they will put on weight.
Surgery—Assembly-Line Style
Five eye surgeons, seated over microscopes in a shining stainless-steel room and dressed in surgical mask and gown, wait for the assembly line to start. A button is pushed, a glass door opens, and a steady stream of patients on operating tables glides out on rails to each work station. After 15 minutes the tables exit through another glass door, the patients’ five-step operation for myopia, or nearsightedness, completed. The scene for this unusual approach to eye surgery is at the Moscow Research Institute of Eye Microsurgery directed by Dr. Svyatoslav Fyodorov. “Since last autumn [1984] we are having five surgeons perform one operation,” says Dr. Fyodorov in Soviet Life. “Each is responsible for one of the stages, which can take from three to five minutes. . . . Using this method, our ophthalmologists can perform about 100 operations a day.” The clinic also does assembly-line-style cataract removal, glaucoma surgery, and lens implantations.
Zipping Up Surgery
“A University of Maryland surgeon has substituted ordinary skirt zippers for stitches in 28 pancreas operations, dramatically lowering the death rate for acutely ill patients,” reports New York Daily News. The surgeon, Dr. H. Harlan Stone, said he used the 7-inch-long 60-cent zippers—the same kind found on women’s polyester skirts—to facilitate changing internal bandages. The rate of recovery for critically ill patients undergoing such delicate operations jumped to 90 percent from 10 percent with the use of zippers, since it eliminated the need for repeated surgery to change bandages.
Water Beds—A Danger for Babies?
Do water beds pose a possible danger for infants? The death of five-and-a-half-month-old twins while they were sleeping on a water bed raises that question, says The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Canada. Autopsies confirmed that death was due to asphyxiation. “If a baby’s on his belly and he’s choking, he can turn over if he’s on something firm,” a pediatrician explains, but “if he’s on something soft, like a waterbed, he may have trouble.” The coroner affirmed that these deaths were not due to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Five such infant deaths on water beds have been reported in Canada in the last two years, said a government spokesman.
‘Depth Charge’ Treatment
Urologists at Tohoku University in Japan have developed a device to destroy kidney stones with shock waves. The patients are placed inside a tank with water coming up close to their chests. Then, over a period of several hours, 200 small explosive charges are detonated under the water. The shock waves pass harmlessly through the body, but the energy from the waves concentrates in foreign objects inside the body and thus breaks up kidney stones and urinary deposits. Tests on 16 patients resulted in the destruction of most of their stones. However, the treatment is only used for stones in the kidneys and the upper section of the ureter, which are located far from the lungs and the pelvis, both easily affected by shock waves.
Cancer and Employment
After analyzing the vital statistics of 415,000 men whose occupations were known, the National Cancer Institute of Canada found a link between cancer and employment. For example, waiters were seven times as likely to die from cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx as the general population. Butchers carried four times the risk of dying from cancer of the rectum. Epidemiologist Joan Lindsay feels that occupational exposure appears to be a factor in causing cancer. She suggests that waiters may be susceptible to bronchial cancers because of exposure to tobacco smoke. Similarly, cancers of the rectum, usually linked with high-fat diets, may be due to butchers’ easy access to red meat. Nevertheless, the death rate for all Canadian workers combined is about 20 percent below that of the nonworking population. That means, says Lindsay, “if you’re healthy enough to hold a job you’re healthier than the population that can’t do that.”