Watching the World
AIDS Threatens Asia
The deadly disease AIDS is threatening Asia with an epidemic, warns WHO (World Health Organization). “If we allow AIDS to get into the powderkeg of Asia, then we are really going to have a problem,” says WHO director-general Halfdan Mahler, according to the international news service organization Reuters. Although North and South America now have the highest number of reported cases of AIDS and Asia the lowest, WHO fears that as the lethal virus spreads to the highly populated nations of Asia, governments will not be able to check its growth. “I am afraid you have a potential for a major catastrophe,” says Mahler. “I am really afraid of that.”
For the Birds
“More Israeli military aircraft have crashed following collisions with birds than have been downed in air fights,” reports the German newspaper Die Zeit. Millions of large migratory birds, such as storks, herons, and pelicans, cross the country each year. To save energy when gliding, the fowls make use of the warm updrafts from the earth that carry them to heights of over 6,500 feet (2,000 m). The airplane accident rate, however, was reduced recently when ornithologists arranged for gliders to accompany huge flocks of birds in order more easily to warn jet pilots of their “feathered competitors.”
“Monkey Business”
If you were in the coconut business, whom would you employ as pickers? In the southern province of Surat Thani, Thailand, one enterprising firm employs about 800 monkeys to do the job. Under a $4,000 (U.S.) grant provided by the Thai royal family, monkeys are given professional training on how to pick coconuts from trees. However, “not any old monkey will do,” reports The Economist. Some do not have the temperament for the job, as is true of the ‘white eyebrow’ variety—they often prove to be too lazy. By contrast, a workaholic monkey can pick as many as a thousand coconuts daily, notes The Economist. If it were paid a salary proportionate to its productivity, it would earn more than a middle-ranking civil servant in the Thai government. In spite of a working life of only about five years, they are well worth the investment. They cost about $40 to train.
Children’s Greatest Fears
A Melbourne psychologist recently surveyed over 3,000 children in Australia between the ages of 8 and 16 concerning their fears. The Sydney Morning Herald published his results and listed the fears expressed by the children. They are ranked: (1) being unable to breathe; (2) being hit by a car or a truck; (3) bombs and invasion; (4) earthquakes; (5) being burned; (6) falling from heights; (7) burglars; (8) snakes; (9) death or dead people; (10) electric shocks. Girls revealed nearly twice as many fears as did boys, and children from eight to ten years of age tended to be the most fearful.
Women Live Longer
It has long been known that women live longer than men. Past research has shown that, even in prenatal life, womb deaths, on the average, have been 50 percent higher among male fetuses than among female fetuses. Now, an article published in the British Medical Journal confirms that women still live longer than men. Alan Silman, the article’s author and lecturer at The London Hospital Medical College, noted that even in less-developed countries, women average about six more years of life expectancy than men do. He reported that in England and Wales, two thirds of the women aged 65 can hope to survive to the age of 80, compared with only two fifths of the men. The reasons? Women tend to take fewer risks, visit their doctor more often, and perhaps more importantly, they smoke less. In addition, heavy drinking is less common among women than among men. Yet, according to Mr. Silman, “there is a sting in the tail.” The extra years that women survive are often of “poor quality,” spent in social isolation and poverty.
Disasters Increase
A Swiss insurance company recorded 2,305 major disasters that struck worldwide between 1970 and 1985. According to statistics, “on the average, a large-scale catastrophe strikes somewhere in the world every three days, taking the lives of more than 20 persons or causing damage in excess of ten million dollars,” says the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. About 1.5 million people lost their lives within these 15 years, some 50 million were left homeless, and the combined estimated cost to national economies was 700 billion dollars. “Together with typhoons and floods, earthquakes are also occurring with increasing frequency, often reducing whole cities to rubble,” the newspaper comments. “During the last 16 years, 90 such earthquakes were registered.” Because of the increase in disasters, compensation claims made on insurance companies have multiplied.
Psychiatrist Versus Computer
Properly programmed computers can offer agoraphobia (abnormal fear of being in open or public places) sufferers treatment as successful as that prescribed by psychiatrists, reports the Institute of Psychiatry in London, England. After a study of 71 patients afflicted by various phobias, including 40 agoraphobics, researchers found that a qualified psychiatrist, a self-help manual, and a suitably programmed computer had equal success when administering the so-called exposure treatment, reports The Times of London. According to Dr. Isaac Marks, professor of experimental psychopathology, related studies show that “alcoholics interviewed by a computer admitted drinking more than alcoholics interviewed by a psychiatrist.” Faced by mounting evidence that much of the psychiatrist’s work “can be done remotely,” doctors who believe their professional expertise is vital “may not find [these] results easy to swallow,” concludes the report.
New Therapy?
Osteoreflexology is the name of a new therapy in the Soviet Union. What is it? The treatment of pain and certain diseases by using the sensitivity of bone tissue. Soviet doctors claim that bones can detect changes in blood pressure, temperature, and the composition of various chemicals, reports The Times of London. Their experiments have shown that bones relay complicated sensory signals to the brain and central nervous system and that bones of healthy people send information completely different from that of unhealthy ones. By inserting needles into a bone near an area of pain or in the vicinity of an affected organ, the doctors claim that they stimulate nerve impulses that, in turn, help in the treatment of rheumatism, arthritis, circulation disorders, and myopia.
Bibles in Japanese
The Japan Bible Society is publishing a new, 1987 Japanese translation of the Bible, called the Common Bible. Both Catholic and Protestant scholars worked on the translation, making it the third ecumenical Bible in the world after those of West Germany and Korea. Japan’s financial newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun says that the translation took 18 years to complete because the scholars “endeavored to come up with a translation faithful to the original text as well as to integrate the interpretation of both parties.” The Japan Bible Society hopes that the Common Bible will attract wide readership and increase their distribution of Bibles. In 1985 that Bible Society sold 180,000 complete Bibles. Five years ago, however, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society published the complete New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures in Japanese. In 1985, 232,055 copies of the New World Translation, including the Reference Bible, were shipped from its printing factory in Japan.