Watching the World
Child Abuse in Greece
Specialists estimate that in Greece 7,000 children are abused by family members each year, according to the newspaper Kathimerini. Of that number, some 4,000 are sexually abused. Only a fraction of the cases are reported, however. Kathimerini reports: “It is estimated that from 40 to 60 percent of the abused children will suffer again if there is no intervention, while in 20 to 70 percent of the cases, even the brothers or sisters of those children run the risk of being abused.” The paper cites one estimate made by an attorney that 58.8 percent of suicide attempts by children are attributable to their being abused.
Corals in the Greenhouse
A panel of scientists recently warned that a mysterious bleaching of coral reefs, first noticed a decade ago in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, is now damaging reefs around the world. The corals bleach when they lose a certain type of algae upon which they depend for food, oxygen, protection from sunlight, and removal of wastes. Since many scientists believe that even a small rise in temperature can trigger bleaching, they are blaming the global warming that some attribute to the greenhouse effect. Scientist Thomas Goreau of the University of the West Indies calls coral reefs “the tropical rain forests of the oceans.” He warns that these vital oceanic ecosystems have deteriorated more in the last 4 years because of bleaching than in the last 40 years from all other causes combined.
Ostrich “Watchdogs”
Ostrich farmer Johann Stegmann of Cradock, South Africa, has a new job for his birds—“watchdogs”! According to the South African journal Farmer’s Weekly, Mr. Stegmann says: “They certainly deter thieves, because if they spot a stranger . . . , they race up menacingly, flapping their wings and glaring.” The inquisitive eight-foot-tall [2.5 m] birds do not usually attack people but seem to enjoy a kind of game that intruders would rather avoid. “If you . . . run away they chase after you,” says Mr. Stegmann, “and when you stop they stand expectantly with their wings open, as though challenging you to run again.” However, during the breeding season, they become very aggressive and “attack anything that ventures” into their camp. The book Birds of the World warns that ostriches “fight with their feet, kicking out and down with . . . their heavy claws that can easily rip a lion or a man wide open.”
Boosting Buddhist Education?
The quality of Buddhist education in Thailand’s schools has recently been the subject of heated debate, reports the Bangkok Post. The nation’s Education Ministry has proposed a new school curriculum, to go into effect next year. The curriculum would substantially reduce the class-time devoted to the study of Buddhism. In opposition to the change, a special Buddhist group has launched a national campaign to increase and improve Buddhist education in the schools. The group, which feels that already too little Buddhism is taught in school, says of the new curriculum: “We suspect that this is part of a gradual attempt to wipe out Buddhism in Thailand.”
Jealous Goddess?
Although the press was invited, a female reporter was barred from a recent ceremony to mark the completion of a tunnel in northern Japan. The project’s assistant supervisor explained: “There is a jinx. As the god of the mountain is a woman, she will get angry and cause accidents if other women enter the site. The men say they won’t continue the rest of the digging if a woman comes in.” The myth is based on the sexist belief that women are contaminated, said a disgusted male psychology professor. Even though the practice is “discriminatory,” admitted a Construction Ministry official, “construction workers’ feelings should not be ignored.”
Free-Fall Tower
Scientists often need to carry out their research in a gravity-free environment but can rarely afford to go to outer space to do so; hence, the construction at Bremen in Germany of a unique tower that allows scientists to observe items that are in a state of free-fall. The tower stands 479 feet [146 m] tall and contains a pipe 361 feet [110 m] high and 11.5 feet [3.5 m] wide. Items placed in a 6.6-foot-long [2 m] capsule inside the pipe spend 4.74 seconds descending in free-fall at speeds of up to 104 miles per hour [167 km/hr]. A camera taking 6,000 pictures per second is among the instruments used to gather data during the fall.
Obliged to Vote
Brazilians are obliged by law to vote, but in a recent election, many found a way to show their indifference or even disgust. The magazine Veja comments: “There are those who like to vote and choose candidates and those who do not, and hindered by legislation from staying home, they choose to cast blank or invalid votes.” Veja explains why some evidently have no interest in voting: “In consciously casting an invalid vote, the voter may want to show his revulsion for the entire system of choosing candidates.”
Divorce for Alzheimer’s
A Japanese court has granted divorce to a man whose 59-year-old wife suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. The grounds, according to Asahi Evening News, were that “the marriage was ruptured and the couple could not lead a normal married life.” The husband’s lawyer was quoted as saying that the decision “is a special case in which the husband is only 42 years old and still in the prime of life.” However, sociologist Chizuko Ueno writes in the Yomiuri Shimbun that this case substantiates the conclusion that too often the family of today is held together solely by what each member can get out of it. She fears that the court decision opens up the way for legally recognizing that “families stay together only as long as nothing ruptures the marriage,” thus allowing marriages to hinge on such factors as health, work, or even convenience.
British Car Traps
Insurance claims in Britain for the 378,000 cars stolen last year amounted to $500 million (£280 million). To catch the thieves, police in many areas now use specially converted cars, commonly called rat-traps. The vehicles, costing up to $1,800 (£1,000) each to adapt, are left with keys in their ignition to tempt criminals to drive them away. But as soon as one of these cars has traveled 15 yards [15 m] or so, the engine stalls, the doors lock, and the windows of unbreakable glass or plastic cannot be opened. At the same time, radio alarms alert the police, who soon arrive on the scene to arrest the driver. The National Council of Civil Liberties has voiced some concern at the practice, but the director of the Home Office’s National Crime Prevention Centre said that these self-locking vehicles are “a valuable weapon in the battle against car thieves,” reports The Sunday Times of London.
Recovering From Acid Rain
The damage that acid rain has inflicted on freshwater lakes throughout the world is reversible, according to two Canadian biologists. They began their ten-year study of Whitepine Lake in Ontario, Canada, just as acid rain began to pollute the lake’s waters. As the water’s acidity increased, the number of trout and other species of fish in the lake began to dwindle. Yet, six years after the pollution was stopped and when the acidity of the lake had returned to near normal, two thirds of the initial number of trout reappeared, and these as well as other forms of aquatic life continued to increase. So it seems that at least some lakes damaged by acid rain can naturally return to normal without human intervention—if only the source of the pollution is removed.
A Wandering Island
Imagine a large island, some 96 miles [154 km] long by 22 miles [35 km] wide by 750 feet [230 m] thick, that floats in the ocean. Such was the iceberg that scientists named B-9. It broke off of the Antarctic Ross Ice Shelf in 1987. Satellites first detected B-9, and scientists later kept track of its movements by means of a radio beacon dropped onto its surface. Since it broke free, obliterating a famous geographic feature of Antarctica, the Bay of Whales, B-9 has traveled some 1,250 miles [2,000 km]. In the process, it has broken up into three gigantic pieces and has taught scientists much about the complex, hard-to-measure ocean currents around Antarctica. Intact, it contained some 287 cubic miles [1,196 cu km] of frozen freshwater—enough, according to one estimate, to provide two glasses of water daily for everyone on earth for nearly two thousand years.