Watching the World
Marriage on the Decline
In Canada, marriage as an institution is rapidly declining. According to a Statistics Canada report, in the last 15 years, “the number of Canadians simply living together has almost tripled from 700,000 to 2 million—an annual growth rate six times that of marriage,” says The Toronto Star. Additionally, “half of all first unions in Canada are now common-law and the number soars to four out of every five in Quebec.” Why the change? Common-law unions are “evidently part of a social revolution, one of a series of rejections of institutions founded on a social order that is falling out of fashion,” says the report. The newspaper article noted that “living together was once viewed as a trial marriage, but is now seen as an alternative to it.”
“The Moses Effect”
Two physicists from Japan have successfully parted water in a laboratory, reports New Scientist. Masakazu Iwasaka and Shogo Ueno, of the University of Tokyo, used powerful electric coils to create a strong magnetic field around a horizontal tube partially filled with water. The magnetic field, some 500,000 times stronger than that of the earth, forced the water to rush to the ends of the cylinder, leaving a dry section in the middle. The phenomenon, which the scientists first discovered in 1994, has been duplicated by physicists in Europe and the United States. How does it work? According to Koichi Kitazawa, a colleague at the University of Tokyo, water “has a mild distaste for being magnetised. So a powerful magnet repels water, and drives it from places where the magnetic field is high to others where it is low.” Kitazawa has dubbed the phenomenon “The Moses Effect.”
Ill-Mannered Tourists
Italy’s rich cultural heritage makes it a popular tourist destination. Unfortunately, vacationers there often let their guard down when it comes to good manners. According to Mario Lolli Ghetti, Florence’s commissioner for environmental and architectural heritage, “many feel authorized to do things they would never dream of doing at home.” Therefore, the city of Florence has produced a “Charter of Tourists’ Rights and Duties,” which reminds visitors of what they can and cannot do, reports La Repubblica. Here are some reminders: Do not bathe or put your feet in the fountains; do not picnic in front of monuments and museums; do not throw cans or chewing gum on the ground; do not wear sleeveless T-shirts when visiting museums; and do not sunbathe in swimwear in historical gardens and squares. Of course, well-mannered tourists are still appreciated and welcome.
Baby-Feeding Dilemma
“For two decades, doctors and public health agencies have offered uniform advice to new mothers in poorer countries: Breast-feed your babies to protect their health,” says The New York Times. “But now, the AIDS pandemic is upsetting that simple equation. Studies are showing that mothers infected with the AIDS virus can transmit it through breast milk at significant rates. . . . The United Nations recently estimated that one-third of all infants with H.I.V. got the virus through their mothers’ milk.” The alternative is an infant formula, but that has its own problems. In many nations mothers have lacked the means to afford the formula or to sterilize bottles and do not have access to clean water. As a result, babies suffer from diarrhea and dehydration as well as from respiratory and gastrointestinal disease. Poor families water down the product, resulting in malnutrition of babies. Health officials are now struggling to balance both issues. Worldwide, there are over 1,000 new cases of HIV infection among infants and children each day.
World’s Sanitation Level Worsens
“Nearly three billion people, more than half the world’s population, do not have access to even a minimally sanitary toilet,” reports The New York Times. These findings, part of the Progress of Nations annual survey conducted by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), also reveal that “sanitation statistics are among those getting worse worldwide, not better.” For example, some countries that have made progress in providing clean water for the poor fall short when it comes to sewage disposal. This lack of basic hygiene adds significantly to the spread of new plagues and to the renewal of old diseases, says the report. It is estimated that over two million children die every year from illnesses related to unsanitary conditions. Akhtar Hameed Khan, author of the study, says: “When you have a medieval level of sanitation, you have a medieval level of disease.”
Home Is Most Important
Is day care—supervision of children by others while the parents work—good for children? That is what a U.S. study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development wanted to find out. Prominent child-care researchers at 14 universities kept track of 1,364 children from birth to age three. More than 20 percent of the children were cared for by their mothers at home; the rest were sent to day-care centers or to the homes of paid baby-sitters. The results? “The researchers found that children in high-quality day care—the kind in which adults talk to them a lot in a responsive way—have a slight advantage over kids in less attentive settings when it comes to language and learning abilities,” notes Time magazine. “But the chief conclusion was that the impact of day care was far less important to the mental and emotional development of the children than was the character of their family life. . . . Researchers calculated that just 1% of the differences among children could be traced to day-care factors but 32% could be explained by the differing quality of their experiences within their families. What’s the message? Home is the learning center that counts.”
Unusual Friendship
Scientists have long marveled at the relationship between ants and African acacia trees. The trees provide the ants with food and shelter. The ants, in turn, attack insects that cause damage to the trees and sting animals that browse on the leaves. The trees appear to depend on this protection for their survival. But the trees also need flying insects to pollinate their flowers. In view of this, how do pollinating insects get the chance to perform their task? According to the science journal Nature, when the trees are in “peak flower fertility,” they give off a chemical that seems to deter the ants. This allows insects to visit the flowers “at the crucial moment.” Then, after the flowers have been pollinated, the ants return to their guard duty.
Gutenberg Bible Discovered
A section of a Bible printed in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg has been discovered in a church archive at Rendsburg, Germany. Following its discovery early in 1996, the 150-page section of the Bible was closely examined before being pronounced a genuine Gutenberg, reports the Wiesbadener Kurier. Worldwide, 48 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist, of which 20 are complete. “The famous two-volume Bibles printed by Johannes Gutenberg are regarded as the first major work in book printing,” the newspaper says. The latest discovery “still has its original book chain intact, with which the Bible was fastened to the pulpit to prevent it being stolen.”
Living Longer
What does it take to stay healthy and live longer? “A personality tendency to preserve a consistent mood that is largely free of psychological distress promotes physical health much more than exercise or eating habits do,” says Dr. George Vaillant of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston. Vaillant’s contention is based on an ongoing study of over 230 men who were originally recruited in 1942. At age 52, the men who were in good health were divided into three groups: those considered to be “distressed” (they had abused alcohol, regularly used tranquilizers, or consulted a psychiatrist), “undistressed” (they had never abused alcohol, ingested mood-altering drugs, or consulted a psychiatrist), and “intermediate” (they were between the other two groups). At 75 years of age, “only 5 percent of the [undistressed] had died, compared to 25 percent of the intermediate group, and 38 percent of the distressed men,” reports Science News. Certainly, maintaining a healthy diet and exercising regularly help to promote good health. But “longevity, at least for men, seems to depend on a penchant for emotional stability that wards off extreme pangs of depression,” says Science News.