Watching the World
Preparing for the Year 2000
“The year 2000 may bring technological chaos, but the [U.S.] Federal Reserve Board wants to make sure that whatever happens, Americans will be able to buy groceries in the new millennium,” states The Wall Street Journal. “The central bank has ordered an additional $50 billion of new currency to pump into circulation in case consumers make a run on their banks and automated teller machines.” The extra currency should be ready by the end of September 1999. Older computers that use only the last two digits to identify years may interpret the year 2000 as 1900. Some experts fear that some computers will fail because of this glitch, known as the Y2K. The problem can be solved by extensive, time-consuming reprogramming, but many banks and companies have only recently begun such programming. “Some public concern over the potential financial gridlock is being heightened by evangelical religious groups that consider the end of the millennium as a sign of dire biblical prophecy” and a “potential breakdown of society,” says the report.
Sleeping Sickness Returns
In 1974, Angola reported three cases of sleeping sickness. Recently, the World Health Organization estimated the number of cases there to be at least 300,000. Thousands, perhaps millions, more may be at risk. Sleeping sickness results from the bite of the tsetse fly. After sucking the blood of a human infected with a parasite, the fly moves on to infect its next victim. People working in fields or washing clothes in a river—and, even more so, infants strapped to their mothers’ backs—are vulnerable. Victims initially suffer headache, fever, and vomiting. Unable to sleep at night, they usually doze during the day. The parasite invades the central nervous system and finally the brain, resulting in insanity, coma, and death. Breaking the cycle of contamination and treating the victims is costly and difficult—about $90 a treatment, “a small fortune in Angola,” reports The Daily Telegraph of London.
Keeping Fit
“Physical activity doesn’t have to be very hard to improve your health,” says The Physical Activity Guide, recently released by Health Canada. As reported in The Toronto Star, “you can improve your fitness and your heart by doing light activity for 10-minute periods and add them up for an hour’s worth each day.” What are some of the recommended activities? They include walking, stair climbing, gardening, and stretching. Such household chores as vacuuming or mopping also count, and they build flexibility. The guide suggests that the goal of accumulating 60 minutes a day “can be reached by building physical activities into your daily routine.” Says Dr. Francine Lemire, president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada: “If you are inactive, studies show that the health risk could be on par with smoking.”
Computer Danger in the Air
“Experts believe that one day a small personal electronic device (PED) such as a laptop, mobile phone, CD player or game computer is going to cause as much carnage on an aircraft as a terrorist’s bomb,” states The Daily Telegraph of Sydney, Australia. “A new report documents 50 incidents where commercial aircraft have suffered potentially catastrophic in-flight problems because of passengers using personal electronic devices.” An example given was that of an aircraft on descent into the airport at Melbourne, Australia. The plane, on automatic pilot, suddenly lurched to the left, banking about 30 degrees. But no one had touched the controls. An investigation revealed that a passenger in the third row was using his laptop computer, despite the pilot’s clear instructions that all electronic equipment be turned off. Such devices have caused aircraft to climb, dive, change course, and even depressurize during flight. The electronic signals from PEDs can be picked up by the plane’s automatic navigation systems and can affect them. Passengers seated in the front of the plane create the biggest problem, as they are directly above the plane’s electronic bays.
New Cesarean-Section Method
“A new method of cesarean section could result in faster and more gentle deliveries,” reports the German newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine. “Using the Misgav-Ladach method, the surgeon manually stretches fat tissue, the abdominal wall, and muscles of the woman giving birth, instead of cutting them with the scalpel as hitherto.” Since cutting is limited to a minimum, bleeding is less serious, and only three layers of skin and tissue have to be stitched afterward, compared with seven using the common method. Further, the method is less time-consuming, it has a lower risk of infection, fewer pain-relieving drugs are needed, and the women can leave the hospital after three to five days. The method is named after the hospital in Israel that was first to test it.
Not the Desired Effect
City traffic often puts severe strain on a driver’s patience. A study conducted by psychologists at La Sapienza University, in Rome, has revealed that as traffic increases, so do the expletives directed toward religious subjects. According to the newspaper Corriere della Sera, on rural highways “54 percent of swearwords and behavior disrespectful of religion” were provoked by traffic-related problems. In big-city traffic, however, the “tendency to blame saints and madonnas” is more evident. “These days in the metropolises, 78 percent of profanities, commonly known as swearwords or oaths, are caused by traffic,” said the newspaper. Traffic has recently become a bigger problem in Rome because of construction in preparation for the year 2000, which has been declared a Catholic Jubilee year in which indulgences will be offered. “It is paradoxical but true,” comments the coordinator of the lay Jubilee-Watcher, “that in Rome the first effect of the Jubilee may be the multiplication, not of indulgences, but of swearwords.”
The Mighty Tardigrade
The tardigrade, an animal less than half a millimeter in length, is thought to be the toughest form of life on earth, reports the magazine New Scientist. Commonly called a water bear because of its chubby appearance under a microscope, it has eight legs and looks as though it were covered with armor plating. It can survive temperatures from -460 degrees Fahrenheit to 300 degrees Fahrenheit [-270°C to 151°C], exposure to X rays or to a vacuum, and pressures six times greater than those at the bottom of the deepest ocean. It can be found in roof gutters and between cracks in paving stones. Some of these little creatures have even been revived after lying dormant for more than 100 years in museum collections of dried moss. What makes this possible? A state of suspended animation when “the volume of the body is reduced by 50 per cent or more, accompanied by an almost total loss of water,” says Professor Kunihiro Seki, of Kanagawa University, in Japan.
Soothing Passengers With Classical Music
Passengers now listen to classical music by such composers as Strauss, Vivaldi, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Bach, Bizet, Schubert, and Brahms while waiting for trains in 18 of the subway stations of Rio de Janeiro. By this means, subway authorities hope “to calm passengers during intervals between trips,” states the newspaper O Globo. When the repertoire was selected, “compositions were chosen that would soothe passengers yet not give the impression of a dance hall on the platforms.” “Acceptance was better than expected,” said Luiz Mário Miranda, marketing director of Rio de Janeiro’s subway system.
Everyone’s Responsibility
“Humans have destroyed more than 30 per cent of the natural world since 1970 with serious depletion of the forest, freshwater and marine systems on which life depends,” states an article in the newspaper The Guardian Weekly. The article, based on a recent report by three concerned organizations, including the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), notes that although Western countries have traditionally been the highest consumers of natural resources, developing countries are now “depleting their natural resources at an alarming rate.” An official for the WWF observes: “We knew it was bad, but until we did this report we did not realise how bad.” While the report faults governments for their failure to halt the trend, it mentions that “every individual bears a responsibility for being careless with the world’s resources,” says the paper.