Watching the World
Marriage Is Healthy
Being married “lengthens life, substantially boosts physical and emotional health and raises income” for both women and men, states a researcher in The New York Times. A study by University of Chicago professor Linda J. Waite counters a report published in 1972 indicating that married women suffer more psychological stress. Dr. Waite found that “marriage changes people’s behavior in ways that make them better off,” such as drinking less alcohol. Marriage also appears to reduce depression. In fact, “single men as a group were depressed at the outset of the study and became more depressed if they stayed single.” However, Dr. William J. Doherty, of the University of Minnesota, notes that the data represent averages and do not mean that everyone is better off married or that people who marry the wrong person will be happy and healthy.
Violent Heroes
Some of the most popular role models for children are action-film heroes, according to a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization study of the effect of violence in the media. Of the five thousand 12-year-olds interviewed in 23 countries, 26 percent placed these movie heroes “way ahead of pop stars and musicians (18.5 percent), religious leaders (8 percent), or politicians (3 percent)” as their models for conduct, notes Brazil’s Jornal da Tarde. Professor Jo Groebel, coordinator of the study, says that children evidently regard violent heroes mainly as models of how to survive difficult situations. The more children become accustomed to violence, Groebel warns, the more capable they are of extreme behavior. He adds: “The media propagate the idea that violence is normal and pays off.” Groebel emphasized that parents play a fundamental role in providing their children with direction that helps them to separate fiction from reality.
Electronic Help for Lonely Hearts
In Japan the latest way for one lonely heart to meet another is with a “love beeper,” reports the Mainichi Daily News. The beeper has settings for preferred activities: karaoke (singing along with recorded music), friends, and chat. Suppose a young man wants to find a young lady to talk to. He sets his palm-size electronic matchmaker to “chat.” If he comes within a few yards of a young lady who also has a love beeper set at “chat,” the devices will start beeping and flashing a green light. Already, 400,000 people have bought the beepers. Those who are concerned about what type of person they may contact can turn off the beeps and rely on the flashing light alone. Says Takeya Takafuji, planning director for the manufacturer: ‘If this middle-aged man isn’t your type, or there is no way you want to talk to him, you just walk away.’
“No. 1 Killer of Young Women”
In economically developed lands, tuberculosis often strikes men over 65, reports Nando Times. But on a global scale, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), tuberculosis has become “the world’s No. 1 killer of young women,” says the report. “Wives, mothers and wage-earners are being cut down in their prime,” stated Dr. Paul Dolin, of WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Program. Experts gathered at a recent medical seminar in Göteborg, Sweden, said that worldwide more than 900 million women are infected with tuberculosis. About one million of these will die each year, most between the ages of 15 and 44. One reason for this death rate, according to Brazil’s newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, is that many abandon treatment before the disease is cured.
Zero-Pollution Car
Cars are a major source of air pollution in the world’s large cities. To address the problem, a French engineer has invented an urban car that is silent and odor free and “runs only on the air around us,” reports The Guardian Weekly of London. Engine designer Guy Nègre has developed a motor that runs on compressed air. It takes less than two dollars’ worth of electricity to fill its compressed-air tank, after which the car can run for ten hours in urban conditions at a top speed of about 60 miles [100 km] an hour. The car draws in outside air during braking. Because of its carbon air-filtering system, its exhaust emissions are purer than the air it sucks in. After conducting dozens of tests on other nonpolluting vehicles, Mexican authorities chose this car to replace Mexico City’s 87,000 taxis.
Contaminated Alps
Twelve years after the nuclear power plant accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, Europe’s alpine crescent is still highly contaminated by nuclear fallout. A recent analysis revealed very high levels of the radioactive isotope Cesium-137, reports the French newspaper Le Monde. In some places radioactivity was 50 times higher than the European standard defining nuclear waste. The most contaminated samples came from the Mercantour National Park, in southeast France; the Matterhorn, on the Swiss-Italian border; Cortina, in Italy; and the Hohe Tauern Park, in Austria. Authorities are asking the affected countries to monitor the radiation level of water and of susceptible foodstuffs, such as mushrooms and milk.
Family Dining
In a study of 527 teens, those who ate dinner with their families at least five times a week were “less likely to do drugs or be depressed, more motivated at school and had better peer relationships,” says Canada’s Toronto Star newspaper. “Teens labelled as ‘not well-adjusted’ ate with their families three or fewer days a week.” Psychologist Bruce Brian asserts that the family dinner hour is “a trait of a healthy family.” Dining together fosters family bonds, communication skills, and a sense of belonging, notes the report, and provides an opportunity to learn table manners and to share in conversation, humor, and prayer. One grown daughter of a family who regularly ate together says that if they had not always done so, “I don’t think I’d be as close to them as I am now.”
Deafness From Headsets
Research by Australia’s National Acoustic Laboratory revealed that even normal use of personal stereo headsets can cause latent ear damage, reports The Courier-Mail of Brisbane. Researcher Dr. Eric LePage said that young people are reluctant to take such warnings seriously. “They can repeatedly expose themselves to very loud sounds or music for years and they judge that it has no effect,” he said. One survey showed that warnings “had little impact until people actually started suffering deafness,” the paper said. The new research confirms German studies indicating that about one quarter of military recruits there aged 16 to 24 have already damaged their hearing by listening to loud music and that “almost 10 percent of students aged 16 to 18 had lost so much hearing that they had problems understanding some normal conversation.”
Tobacco Sponsors Sports
The tobacco industry’s extensive use of sports events and other entertainment for promoting their products creates “a positive association between sports . . . and cigarette smoking,” says Rhonda Galbally, of Australia’s Victorian Health Promotion Foundation. As a result, the often subtle tobacco advertising in sports may induce people to smoke. The Cancer Research Campaign in Britain found that “boys who enjoy watching Formula One motor racing on television are almost twice as likely to start smoking,” reports the news agency Panos. “Across Europe, tobacco companies spend several hundred million dollars every year in support of car racing alone.” And the cars are mobile advertisements that often appear on television.
First Farmers
The French newspaper Le Monde reports that a team of European scientists found that the DNA of strains of wild wheat in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East were most similar to cultivated varieties used elsewhere today. Along with wheat and other “founder crops,” the first domesticated sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were also apparently raised in that region. Scientists say that the use of domesticated crops spread out from there across Europe and Asia. Interestingly, some of the earliest agricultural villages where wheat dating back thousands of years has been discovered are to the southwest of Lake Van and the mountains of Ararat.