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Observatory: When a Giant Walked the Earth
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, December 6, 2005
Martin A. Whyte is a dinosaur hunter by profession, stalking the remains of the beasts in Yorkshire, England. But no matter where he is, Dr. Whyte is always on the lookout for signs of ancient life.
So it's no surprise that Dr. Whyte, a professor at the University of Sheffield who is also a geologist, discovered a fossil track one summer day in 2003, when he took time from studying the geology of the central Scottish coast to stroll on the beach.
Dr. Whyte's analysis of what made those tracks, however, turned out to be a big surprise - a giant water scorpion from 330 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs. It is the first evidence that these long-extinct arthropods walked on land.
( Read More )
Better Bananas, Nicer Mosquitoes
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, December 6, 2005
SEATTLE - Addressing 275 of the world's most brilliant scientists, Bill Gates cracked a joke:
"I've been applying my imagination to the synergies of this," he said. "We could have sorghum that cures latent tuberculosis. We could have mosquitoes that spread vitamin A. And most important, we could have bananas that never need to be kept cold."
They laughed. Perhaps that was to be expected when the world's richest man, who had just promised them $450 million, was delivering a punchline. But it was also germane, because they were gathered to celebrate some of the oddest-sounding projects in the history of science.
Their deadly serious proposals - answers to the Grand Challenges in Global Health that Mr. Gates posed in a 2003 speech in Davos, Switzerland - sounded much like his spoofs: laboratories around the world, some of them led by Nobel Prize winners, proposing to invent bananas and sorghum that make their own vitamin A; chemicals that render mosquitoes unable to smell humans; drugs that hunt down tuberculosis germs in people who do not even know they are infected; and vaccines that are mixed into spores or plastics or sugars and can be delivered in glasses of orange juice or modified goose calls.
( Read More )
Really? The Claim: Never Drink on an Empty Stomach
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, The New York Times, December 6, 2005
THE FACTS It's an age-old rule about drinking, one that everyone knows and most people have broken: always fill up on food before filling up on alcohol.
Common wisdom, of course, suggests a simple reason, that drinking on an empty stomach will lead to intoxication more quickly. But just how much of a difference does eating before imbibing really make?
According to several studies and experts on alcohol, a lot. In 1994, one team of Swedish researchers set out to answer the question by having a group of 10 people consume a few drinks on two separate days.
( Read More )
India Accelerating | An Epidemic Spreads
On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger
By AMY WALDMAN, The New York Times, December 6, 2005
NELAMANGALA, India - Hot water: 10 rupees. Cold water: 8 rupees. Toilet: 5 rupees.
Sex: no price specified on the bathhouse wall, but, as the condom painted there suggests, safe.
Sangeetha Hamam, a bathhouse, sits on the national highway near this gritty truck stop about nine miles north of Bangalore. Its mistress is Ranjeetha, a 28-year-old eunuch who lives as a woman. Her lipstick and black dress provide a touch of glamour in the small dark shack.
Her clients are not only truckers, but also Bangalore college students and other city residents. They know to look for sex at highway establishments geared toward truckers. Her customers - as many as 100 on Sundays for her and five other eunuchs - come for a "massage" and the anal sex that follows, but also for the anonymity the location confers.
Ranjeetha knows men will pay more for unprotected sex, but she calculates that the extra money is not worth the risk to her livelihood and life. She knows they can go elsewhere; there are some 45 bathhouses doubling as brothels near this truck stop. She also knows several eunuchs who have died of AIDS.
India has at least 5.1 million people living with H.I.V., the second highest number after South Africa. It is, by all accounts, at a critical stage: it can either prevent the further spread of infection, or watch a more generalized epidemic take hold. Global experts worry that India is both underspending on AIDS and undercounting its H.I.V. cases.
Its national highways are a conduit for the virus, passed by prostitutes and the truckers, migrants and locals who pay them, and brought home to unsuspecting wives in towns or villages. In its largest infrastructure project since independence, India is in the process of widening and upgrading those highways into a true interstate system. The effort will allow the roads to carry more traffic and freight than ever before. But some things are better left uncarried.
( Read More )
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, December 6, 2005
Martin A. Whyte is a dinosaur hunter by profession, stalking the remains of the beasts in Yorkshire, England. But no matter where he is, Dr. Whyte is always on the lookout for signs of ancient life.
So it's no surprise that Dr. Whyte, a professor at the University of Sheffield who is also a geologist, discovered a fossil track one summer day in 2003, when he took time from studying the geology of the central Scottish coast to stroll on the beach.
Dr. Whyte's analysis of what made those tracks, however, turned out to be a big surprise - a giant water scorpion from 330 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs. It is the first evidence that these long-extinct arthropods walked on land.
( Read More )
Better Bananas, Nicer Mosquitoes
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., The New York Times, December 6, 2005
SEATTLE - Addressing 275 of the world's most brilliant scientists, Bill Gates cracked a joke:
"I've been applying my imagination to the synergies of this," he said. "We could have sorghum that cures latent tuberculosis. We could have mosquitoes that spread vitamin A. And most important, we could have bananas that never need to be kept cold."
They laughed. Perhaps that was to be expected when the world's richest man, who had just promised them $450 million, was delivering a punchline. But it was also germane, because they were gathered to celebrate some of the oddest-sounding projects in the history of science.
Their deadly serious proposals - answers to the Grand Challenges in Global Health that Mr. Gates posed in a 2003 speech in Davos, Switzerland - sounded much like his spoofs: laboratories around the world, some of them led by Nobel Prize winners, proposing to invent bananas and sorghum that make their own vitamin A; chemicals that render mosquitoes unable to smell humans; drugs that hunt down tuberculosis germs in people who do not even know they are infected; and vaccines that are mixed into spores or plastics or sugars and can be delivered in glasses of orange juice or modified goose calls.
( Read More )
Really? The Claim: Never Drink on an Empty Stomach
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR, The New York Times, December 6, 2005
THE FACTS It's an age-old rule about drinking, one that everyone knows and most people have broken: always fill up on food before filling up on alcohol.
Common wisdom, of course, suggests a simple reason, that drinking on an empty stomach will lead to intoxication more quickly. But just how much of a difference does eating before imbibing really make?
According to several studies and experts on alcohol, a lot. In 1994, one team of Swedish researchers set out to answer the question by having a group of 10 people consume a few drinks on two separate days.
( Read More )
India Accelerating | An Epidemic Spreads
On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger
By AMY WALDMAN, The New York Times, December 6, 2005
NELAMANGALA, India - Hot water: 10 rupees. Cold water: 8 rupees. Toilet: 5 rupees.
Sex: no price specified on the bathhouse wall, but, as the condom painted there suggests, safe.
Sangeetha Hamam, a bathhouse, sits on the national highway near this gritty truck stop about nine miles north of Bangalore. Its mistress is Ranjeetha, a 28-year-old eunuch who lives as a woman. Her lipstick and black dress provide a touch of glamour in the small dark shack.
Her clients are not only truckers, but also Bangalore college students and other city residents. They know to look for sex at highway establishments geared toward truckers. Her customers - as many as 100 on Sundays for her and five other eunuchs - come for a "massage" and the anal sex that follows, but also for the anonymity the location confers.
Ranjeetha knows men will pay more for unprotected sex, but she calculates that the extra money is not worth the risk to her livelihood and life. She knows they can go elsewhere; there are some 45 bathhouses doubling as brothels near this truck stop. She also knows several eunuchs who have died of AIDS.
India has at least 5.1 million people living with H.I.V., the second highest number after South Africa. It is, by all accounts, at a critical stage: it can either prevent the further spread of infection, or watch a more generalized epidemic take hold. Global experts worry that India is both underspending on AIDS and undercounting its H.I.V. cases.
Its national highways are a conduit for the virus, passed by prostitutes and the truckers, migrants and locals who pay them, and brought home to unsuspecting wives in towns or villages. In its largest infrastructure project since independence, India is in the process of widening and upgrading those highways into a true interstate system. The effort will allow the roads to carry more traffic and freight than ever before. But some things are better left uncarried.
( Read More )
