Watching the World
Dowry Deaths
India Today recently decried the practice by money-hungry grooms of demanding exorbitant dowries from prospective in-laws, describing it as “the most insidious evil of Indian society.” That comment regarding this practice came as a result of a triple tragedy that recently struck a middle-class family in Kanpur, India. Three sisters committed suicide by hanging themselves when their father was faced with exorbitant dowry demands. Prospective grooms rejected dowry offers of up to Rs80,000 ($7,000 U.S.) by the father. As India Today notes: “The ultimate tragedy is that those responsible feel no guilt—it is shared by 800 million people.”
Plastic Currency
Australia has just produced a ten-dollar note printed on a secret mix of polymer fibers. According to The Times of London, the Australian Reserve Bank claims that the plastic note is more durable than a comparable paper one, especially for use in hot and humid countries. The note’s main appeal, however, lies in its security factors. In addition to a built-in watermark, the note has a unique OVD (optical variable device) that deflects light rays into colors of the rainbow with each shift in angle, revealing different patterns of color. To forge the note would mean printing and fixing an OVD, “and that,” says a bank official, “would be very expensive because the technology is highly sophisticated.”
A Bad Year for Banks
Bank failures in the United States reached “a post-Depression record in 1987,” and officials expect “at best only a small improvement this year,” says a report in the New York Daily News. According to the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), which insures the country’s commercial banks, 184 of them failed in 1987, and 19 other banks needed assistance in order to stay afloat. Chairman L. William Seidman called the year “one of the most difficult and unusual years in banking since this corporation has been in business.”
Flying Frogs
When hundreds of pink frogs were found hopping around the ancient town of Cirencester, England, shoppers and drivers could think of no explanation for the phenomenon. Now, however, scientists have concluded that the frogs originated in the Sahara Desert, where they are “dyed” pink by crystals in the sand in which they live. Sucked up by freak winds, they were carried the thousands of miles to the English countryside and deposited during a rainstorm, reports The Times. Cars covered with pink sand added credence to the theory.
More Dirt—More Wool
Recently, researchers at the University of New England in Australia claim to have made a surprising discovery. While searching for a means to combat a serious stomach disorder common to Australian sheep, they found that “small quantities of a naturally occurring clay, called bentonite, mixed into a sheep’s drinking water” not only improved the animal’s digestion but increased wool growth, reports The Australian. One of the researchers, Professor Ron Leng, said that a daily dose of a half ounce [15 g] of bentonite mixed into their drinking water had resulted in increases of up to about one tenth of an ounce [2 g] a day in a sheep’s wool growth. It is hoped that use of this mixture on sheep nation wide will bring increases in wool production worth millions of dollars.
All-Purpose Tires
In France, 500,000 tons of old tires are scrapped yearly, creating a serious environmental problem. Until now, recycling techniques were of limited use, owing to high cost. However, an interesting solution has been offered by an engineer from the French Civil Engineering Laboratory. The suggestion is to use from 15 to 20 percent of these old tires in backfills in construction projects such as roads, structures, and retaining walls. As French daily Le Figaro declared: “Compared with traditional methods, such as metal or concrete frameworks, old tires are . . . surprisingly strong.” Moreover, when tires are used in backfill, vibrations from passing heavy traffic are said to be reduced four to five fold.
Vanity’s Price
“Liposuction has become the most common form of cosmetic surgery done in the United States,” reports The New York Times Magazine. What is liposuction? It is a surgical technique designed to suction fat from body areas such as the face, buttocks, thighs, knees, and abdomen. Patients are generally persons between the ages of 20 and 40 who are seeking a slimmer appearance although they medically are not obese. Nearly a hundred thousand liposuctions were performed in 1986. While labeled “safe and effective” by some authorities, persons submitting to liposuction run the risk of severe depletion of body fluids, blood clots, massive infection, internal structural injury, and death. Reports show that 11 deaths have been attributed to this procedure since it came to the United States from France six years ago.
High Flier
An eight-year-old girl was suddenly lifted into the air while flying a kite, reports The New York Times. Apparently, the 200-pound-test [90 kg] nylon line used as a kite string was caught by a twin-engined plane that had just taken off from the Palo Alto Airport about 30 miles [50 km] south of San Francisco. The pilot claimed that his plane had climbed to about 800 feet [240 m] when the glider-type kite with a wingspan of 12 feet [3.7 m] became tangled around one of the plane’s propellers. The girl was suddenly lifted 10 feet [3 m] into the air and carried for about 100 feet [30 m]. She finally let go when she was about to hit a tree. The girl escaped serious injury.
New Approach
Locust invasions have usually been met by the spraying of enormous quantities of pesticides. But as some have pointed out, this is detrimental to both man and beast as the insecticides work their way into the food chain. So why not harvest the locusts? some authorities ask. They are nutritious for both man and animal. Africans have been eating them for centuries, and some farmers have used them as feed for poultry and cattle. “Let’s recognise it as protein on six legs and use it rather than abuse it by chemical contamination,” says Dr. John Ledger, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa. Writing in the journal African Wildlife, he hopes there will be a “move forward to a new age of understanding about the miracle that is the planet Earth and all creatures, great and small, that live on its fragile surface.”
Knockout Call
An anesthetist in Roodepoort, South Africa, has a novel though controversial way of putting children at ease in the operating room. While still in the ward, the child listens to tape recordings of popular nursery rhymes through a little toy telephone. When the doctor explains to the little patient what will take place in the operating room, he also says that the telephone will be there so the child can listen to the tapes. He does not say, however, that anesthetic gas will be coming out of the phone’s mouthpiece!
The children are so delighted with this toy that it takes only about a minute for the gas to take effect. “It works particularly well with children between the ages of three and 10 years,” says the anesthetist, “and many children want to come back.”
Japan’s New Generation
The Japanese are known worldwide for staying with one company throughout their working lives and for preferring their job to leisure, community life, and independence. But things are gradually changing with the new generation. “With the prosperity their parents worked so hard to create, young people do not feel the same need to work incessantly or cling to one company for security,” notes the International Herald Tribune. A 23-year-old employee explained: “Our parents gave us money. Now we work for ourselves. We think of ourselves first, and that’s a big difference between us.” Two recent surveys carried out among Japanese youths confirmed this opinion. The Tribune reports that “only 38 percent gave priority to work over family” and “55 percent considered their own welfare before that of society.”