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Spreading Their Wings to Longest on Record
By SINDYA N. BHANOO, The New York Times, September 20, 2010
The wandering albatross has the largest known wingspan of any living bird, at times reaching nearly 12 feet. But millions of years ago, there was a bird with wings that dwarfed those of the albatross, researchers now report.
The newly named species, Pelagornis chilensis, which lived about 5 million to 10 million years ago, had a wingspan of at least 17 feet.
This is the largest wingspan known in any bird. Although other, larger estimates have been made, they were based on fossils of feathers, and not on an intact skeleton, as in this case. The report is in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Another intriguing characteristic of the bird is its long, bony beak with sharp, teethlike projections. “These were used to catch prey,” said Gerald Mayr, the study’s lead author and a zoologist at the Senckenberg museum and research institute in Frankfurt. “They probably flew down close to the water’s surface and kept their lower jaw open to catch slippery prey like squirrel fish.”
The new bird is part of a family of bony-toothed birds known as pelagornithids. Though completely extinct now, the last known birds, with much smaller wingspans, lived about two million years ago in various parts of the world, including North America, Africa, New Zealand and Japan.
The newly found skeleton is three-dimensional, and scientists were able to make a weight estimation of the bird. It was between 35 and 63 pounds.
Further study could help researchers better understand the physics behind how birds fly.
Cleaner for the Environment, Not for the Dishes
By MIREYA NAVARRO, The New York Times, September 20, 2010
Some longtime users were furious.
“My dishes were dirtier than before they were washed,” one wrote last week in the review section of the Web site for the Cascade line of dishwasher detergents. “It was horrible, and I won’t buy it again.”
“This is the worst product ever made for use as a dishwashing detergent!” another consumer wrote.
Like every other major detergent for automatic dishwashers, Procter & Gamble’s Cascade line recently underwent a makeover. Responding to laws that went into effect in 17 states in July, the nation’s detergent makers reformulated their products to reduce what had been the crucial ingredient, phosphates, to just a trace.
While phosphates help prevent dishes from spotting in the wash cycle, they have long ended up in lakes and reservoirs, stimulating algae growth that deprives other plants and fish of oxygen.
Yet now, with the content reduced, many consumers are finding the new formulas as appealing as low-flow showers, underscoring the tradeoffs that people often face today in a more environmentally conscious marketplace. From hybrid cars to solar panels, environmentally friendly alternatives can cost more. They can be less convenient, like toting cloth sacks or canteens rather than plastic bags or bottled water. And they can prove less effective, like some of the new cleaning products.
“Most Americans want to do things that are good for the environment, but not everyone wants to pay the price,” said Elke U. Weber, director of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University.
In the world of cleaning agents, where chemicals and fragrances can pose respiratory and allergy problems as well as pollute waterways, the environmental benefits of the switch are clear. Yet the new products can run up against longtime habits and even cultural concepts of cleanliness.
Phosphorus in the form of phosphates suspends particles so they do not stick to dishes and softens water to allow suds to form.
Now that the content in dishwasher detergent has plummeted to 0.5 percent from as high as 8.7 percent, many consumers are just noticing the change in the wash cycle as they run out of the old product.
“Low-phosphate dish detergents are a waste of my money,” said Thena Reynolds, a 55-year-old homemaker from Van Zandt County, Tex., who said she ran her dishwasher twice a day for a family of five. Now she has to do a quick wash of the dishes before she puts them in the dishwasher to make sure they come out clean, she said. “If I’m using more water and detergent, is that saving anything?” Ms. Reynolds said. “There has to be a happy medium somewhere.”
Similarly, a nonprofit group in Oakland, Calif., that helps women form environmentally minded cooperatives and trains house cleaners, says their employers have often resisted switching to the new cleaning products.
“There’s the myth that to be clean it has to shine or smell or make a lot of bubbles,” said Ivette Melendez, one of the trainers for the group, Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security. She says products like vinegar, baking soda or the newer cleansers work just as well as traditional items if applied in the proper mix and quantities.
But Jessica Fischburg, a commerce manager in Norwich, Conn., for CleaningProductsWorld.com, which sells janitorial supplies in bulk, said she was not surprised that many of her clients rejected products marketed as environmentally friendly.
“The reality of any green product is that they generally don’t work as well,” she said. “Our customers really don’t like them.”
But some users attest to quantifiable benefits. Reports of burns, rashes, dizziness and scratchy throats among housekeeping employees have plummeted at North Central Bronx Hospital and Jacobi Medical Center since the staff switched to new cleaning products in 2004, said Peter Lucey, an associate executive director for support services at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. The number of lost days linked to injuries from the products declined from 54 in 2004 to zero last year, he said. “It’s the switch and the training,” Mr. Lucey said.
In the case of the new dishwasher detergents, the main benefit is viewed as the protection of bodies of freshwater.
Once they go down the drain and into the environment through discharge at sewage treatment plants, phosphates end up in lakes, streams and drinking-water reservoirs.
Phosphorus pollution comes from multiple sources, including fertilizer and manure that enter the water through runoff. Dishwasher detergents contribute just a fraction, but environmental campaigners say any reduction can result in a tangible improvements. (Laundry detergents and hand soaps are already free of phosphates.)
The first significant regulatory rumblings came in Washington State in 2006. As more and more states followed suit, manufacturers faced the prospect of uneven laws that could disrupt retail distribution nationwide, said Dennis Griesing, vice president for government affairs at the American Cleaning Institute, which represents the cleaning product industry. The nationwide product rollover began late last year.
Industry officials generally insist that most customers have not noticed a change. But in its September issue, Consumer Reports reported that of 24 low- or phosphate-free dishwasher detergents it tested, including those from environmentally friendly product lines that have been on the market for years, none matched the performance of products with phosphates.
The magazine did note that the formulas were improving, and it rated seven detergents “very good,” including two of six Cascade products it tested. Susan Baba, a spokeswoman for Cascade, said that while most Cascade customers had not noticed any change, Procter & Gamble was modifying the formulas of some products in response to complaints.
“As we learn more, we’re finding out that there’s a lot more variation than we saw in the labs,” she said.
Ms. Baba added that the conversion to low-phosphate content had been complex, with three or four ingredients needed to match what the phosphates accomplished alone.
Elise Jones, a 32-year-old mother of two in Chatham, N.J., and a blog editor for Babybites, a group for new and expectant mothers, said she noticed “a white dusty film” on her dishes and children’s cups starting about a month ago. “I thought it was the dishwasher,” she said, before she heard of the change in formulas.
All the same, she agrees with the restrictions on phosphates because “we all worry about our water supply.”
Washing the dishes entirely by hand is not necessarily better for the environment, experts say, because people tend to let the tap run even when they are not rinsing. So Mrs. Jones now rinses them all by hand after the wash cycle, trying to economize on water so that her rinsing can match the dishwasher’s efficiency.
“You try to do things as consciously as you can,” she said.
The Claim: Replacing Your Desk Chair With an Exercise Ball can Improve Your Posture
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR, The New York Times, September 20, 2010
THE FACTS Exercise balls are becoming a popular alternative to plain old office chairs, a way — some say — to burn more calories and improve posture.
The increase in the calorie burn is real but small. According to a 2008 study, performing clerical work at a desk while sitting on an exercise ball burns about four more calories an hour than the same activity in a chair, or roughly 30 extra calories in a typical workday.
And that figure does not factor in the additional burn that would come from routines like bouncing or leg lifts, which many users say the balls inspire them to do.
But as far as posture is concerned, there is not exactly a compelling body of evidence. Although proponents say the balls force users to sit up straight to stabilize themselves, a 2009 British study found that prolonged sitting on a therapy ball led to just as much slumping and “poor sitting position” as a desk chair.
Another study last year, by Dutch researchers, compared workers who did hourlong typing tasks on exercise balls and while seated in office chairs with armrests. The balls produced more muscle activity and 33 percent more “trunk motion.” But they also produced more spinal shrinkage.
“It is concluded that the advantages with respect to physical loading of sitting on an exercise ball may not outweigh the disadvantages,” the researchers wrote.
Other studies have had similar results.
THE BOTTOM LINE Sitting on an exercise ball burns more energy than sitting on an office chair, but the evidence that it improves posture is lacking.
United States: Decrease in Bubonic Plague Cases May Be an Effect of Climate Change
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, September 20, 2010
Global warming may have one minor but previously unknown benefit, scientists said this month: it may be cutting down cases of bubonic plague in the United States.
About 10 to 20 Americans catch plague each year, and 1 to 3 die of it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nowadays, most cases are in the Four Corners area, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet, and most victims live in rodent-infested rural housing. The plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, lives in the blood of prairie dogs and ferrets, and the fleas that infest those colonies can transfer it to squirrels, rats and mice, who like to live close to humans and their flea-carrying pets.
A study in this month’s issue of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene tracked climatic conditions in 195 counties in 13 Western states, from Washington to Texas, that reported even one plague case since 1950.
Cases have dropped over time, and the study concluded that rising nighttime temperatures since 1990 had helped. Warmer nights melt winter snowpacks earlier, leading to drier soil in rodent burrows. When the soil gets too dry, fleas die.
Still, the authors warn there could be fresh outbreaks as population growth pushes housing deeper into rural areas, closer to the infected animals.
Despite the fearsome reputation the disease earned in the Dark Ages, it can be cured with antibiotics if it is caught early enough.
