Watching the World
Crime Costs
The cost of putting a criminal behind bars in the United States averages between $12,000 and $24,000 a year for state or federal prisons. “For that kind of money you can send a kid to Harvard,” notes Forbes magazine. However, in cities like New York the cost can run as high as $35,000 annually. Concerns over such costly incarceration are compounded by the “avalanche of prisoners” being added each year. Available statistics show that there are approximately 550,000 men and women in prison throughout the United States. “One of every 450 Americans is in prison,” reports Forbes, “the highest rate in the Western World.” Increasing the burden, however, are the 35,000 to 40,000 inmates being added to the ranks each year, which is “the equivalent of a new prison every four days.”
Unhappy Winner
Winning a multimillion-dollar jackpot is the dream of many an unemployed person. One out-of-work 27-year-old realized such a dream when he won $6.4 million playing the lottery. However, since winning, millionaire Bob Campbell declares: “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.” Why not? According to The Toronto Star, he found that buying material things did not bring much joy and satisfaction. “I would be just as happy without it,” notes Campbell. While conceding that it has eliminated the pressure of finding a job, “that’s about it,” he explains. He cautions others that there is no instant happiness associated with winning a large amount of money.
The Question Stands
How the millions of existing species came about is a question that has plagued evolutionists for a long time. For a species to be a species, it cannot interbreed with other species—even the one from which it is supposed to have developed. If progeny does result, it either is sterile (as in the case of mules) or dies before reaching maturity. According to the science magazine Discover, geneticists now say they have found “a rescue gene, a slight fault in the species barrier” that, while weakening the flies that carried it, enabled some hybrid males of a fruit-fly species to survive. “However, the gene didn’t completely break through the species barrier; it couldn’t render the males fertile,” notes the article. This raises a “troublesome question,” says Discover. “If the parents that carry it don’t benefit from it, and offspring that inherit it can’t pass it on, how could the gene possibly have evolved?”
Made to Last
An artificial blood vessel that “grows” with its recipient has been developed by Japanese researchers at Okayama University, reports The Japan Times. The new vessels are produced from a form of protein known as collagen that is extracted from defective blood vessels removed during surgery. The new vessels are encased in a synthetic fiber wrapping and strengthened by a special adhesive. To inhibit the clotting of the blood, this adhesive produces a thin layer of water inside the attached vessel that keeps unwanted clotting enzymes from appearing. Since the vessels have the unique capability to “grow” with the patient, infants with abnormal heart arteries and veins are expected to benefit the most.
Wife-Beating Approved
The surprise results of a random survey of 1,500 men and women throughout Australia revealed that, on the average, 20 percent (women, 17 percent; men, 22 percent) of those surveyed approved of wife-beating. While the extent of physical violence sanctioned varied, both men and women approved of a husband’s shoving, kicking, or hitting his wife “if she does not obey him, wastes money, fails to keep the house clean, refuses to sleep with him or admits to sleeping with another man,” reports The Australian. The survey also revealed a reluctance on the part of some people to report to the police any domestic violence they see being engaged in by their neighbors. At least a third of those surveyed regard domestic violence as a private matter.
AIDS Test for Monks
Monks in the 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries situated on Mount Athos (Greece) are living in a “state of extreme disquiet,” reports the French news agency AFP. The reason? One of their former novices, they learned, “is a carrier of the Aids virus.” Leaders of the monasteries are now “considering having all 2000 or so monks and hermits undergo an Aids test.”
Creeping Health Hazard
While studies show that cockroaches are the creatures most disliked by humans, research scientist Dr. Bann Kang explained at a recent entomology seminar in Washington, D.C., that roaches are also hazardous to health. According to a report in The New York Times, Kang said that allergies from roaches are far more common than had been thought and that “high rates of asthma in America’s inner cities may be caused by the severe levels of roach infestation in those areas.” Fungi, protozoans, bacteria, and viruses are all said to be carried by roaches. Commenting on the cockroach’s increase in populated urban areas, Dr. Stephen C. Frantz, a research scientist for the New York State Department of Health, stated: “By and large we have these problems because we are creating the conditions that allow these creatures to live with us.”
Only Partial Solutions
“Technology will probably never be able to simulate fully the complex nature of natural organs,” the Munich international congress on artificial organs was told. According to the report in Süddeutsche Zeitung of Munich, “the drawback of mechanical organs” lies in their reducing “physical activity to a single function, even though it might be the main and crucial one.” The human heart, for instance, does more than pump blood, and the kidneys do more than filter out toxins—hormones are also produced. While an artificial heart may pump blood through the circulatory system, it cannot react to the signals from hormones or nerves, nor can it ‘influence the complex regulatory systems that keep the circulation in equilibrium,’ notes the article. Dialysis also falls short in replacing “the sophisticated natural system of cell membranes” in the human kidney: “To this day doctors do not know for sure exactly which substances must be washed out of the blood plasma to prevent poisoning of the organism.”
Honeybee Threat
“Canada’s beekeepers are living in fear of a silent invasion of Asian mites [varroa jacobsoni] that is already threatening honeybees,” reports The Sunday Star, a Canadian newspaper. While the bee is in the pupa stage, the mite attacks, sucking “the juice out of the bees” and shortening the bee’s life by half. One authority on bees labels the Asian-mite threat the “most serious” crisis for beekeepers in 300 years. “Bee experts predict that every hive in the United States . . . will be attacked within the next two years and the impact on agriculture will be enormous,” notes the Star. A significant drop in the honeybee population would reduce necessary crop pollination.
Bullet Surgery
A 22-year-old man “plagued by a compulsion to wash hundreds of times a day” accidentally “performed successful neurosurgery on himself” while attempting suicide, reports the New York Daily News. Distressed over his obsessive-compulsive behavior, he “put a .22-caliber rifle in his mouth and fired a shot that hit the left front lobe of his brain,” explains the News. Instead of killing himself, the young man actually removed the portion of the brain that is believed to control obsessive behavior, reported Dr. Leslie Solyom in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Freed from his compulsive behavior, the individual has a new job and currently attends college.
Unconscious but Awake?
“Patients under anesthesia are unconscious but not necessarily deaf,” reports Geo magazine. Studies reveal that the brain’s ability to register acoustic stimuli can remain unimpaired even when the patient is sufficiently anesthetized. This could explain why patients under anesthesia have, on some occasions, taken note of things said in the operating room and later remembered them. Suggests one Munich doctor: “One ought to treat the anesthetized patient as if he were awake.” This would include making optimistic comments and avoiding cynical or offensive remarks about the patient.