Watching the World
AIDS Blood Tests
A short time ago, researchers believed that it took 3 to 12 weeks for detectable antibodies to develop and appear in blood tests for a person exposed to the deadly AIDS virus. But a more recent study in Finland undertaken by the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of Tampere, under the supervision of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, has lengthened that time estimate. “The period preceding the appearance of antibodies is much longer than was thought up until now,” said one researcher in the French daily Le Monde. “It is still possible to have a negative result for at least 14 months after having been contaminated by the AIDS virus,” continued the account.
Ancient City Discovered
Gene Savoy, an explorer from North America, announced last August his discovery of an ancient city in the Amazon jungle of Peru. The city has more than 25,000 buildings, reports Folha de S.Paulo. In comparison, Peru’s famous Machu Picchu, ancient fortress city of the Incas, has only about a hundred buildings. Savoy believes that the recently found city was built by the Chachapoya civilization, ancient inhabitants of northern Peru.
Rude Awakening
A 66-year-old man has discovered the cause of his leg pain—snoring. As recounted in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Neil Shear of Toronto, the man had gone to his doctor complaining of leg pain. Although given pain pills, he was awakened two nights later by a sharp pain in the calf of his right leg—caused by a kick from his wife. “Don’t kick me there. That’s just where my leg hurts!” the man told his wife. Her reply: “You were snoring again, and that is where I always kick you to stop it.”
“Keepers of an Aquarium”
During his visit last September to Australia’s capital, Canberra, Dr. Roy Pointer, the director for church training with the British and Foreign Bible Society, pinpointed a fundamental weakness in mainline religion today. He agreed with a humorous statement that “most ministers in England have been trained to be keepers of an aquarium rather than fishers of men,” reports The Canberra Times. He believes that the average minister needs to “think in missionary terms” and that “door knocking is still the best way to go” for the church to increase its membership. Interestingly, he used Jehovah’s Witnesses as an example of growth “because of door knocking.”
Grisly Corpse Removal
Revered by Hindus as a holy river, the Ganges is bathed in by millions of India’s inhabitants annually. However, in recent years, it has also become a dumping ground for corpses. Relatives too poor to pay the high price of cremation are using the Ganges as a means of disposal of their deceased loved ones, thereby polluting its “holy” waters. To stem the tide of decaying corpses polluting the river, according to the New Zealand Herald, the government of India plans to introduce crocodiles into the Ganges as an effective means of corpse removal.
Grave Changes
Japanese youths are buying their own graves and tombstones. Why this outlay in a land where people are traditionally buried in a family grave? The main reason, according to the purchasers themselves, is that after death they want to be free of family, especially of ancestors whom they have never met. This new trend pleases cemetery officials, who find themselves selling more burial plots. Manufacturers of tombstones are also jumping on the bandwagon and coming up with trendy tombstones in stainless steel, ceramics, or whatever material sells. In Osaka the average cost for grave and stone comes to 3.5 million yen ($28,000, U.S.). Tokyo’s Buddhist Information Center, a counseling service, laments: “In consultations we have, we strongly feel the weakening of family ties, even between husbands and wives, parents and children.”
Microchips for Paralyzed Limbs
Within the next decade, researchers at Stanford University in California hope to implant electronic chips in the nerves of paralyzed limbs to restore feeling and communication with the brain. The idea is that a tiny electronic chip would act “like a telephone switchboard, rerouting brain signals past crushed or severed nerves,” reports Equinox magazine. Being able to demonstrate that very small nerve fibers (axons) “will regenerate individually through holes of an appropriate size in an implanted one-millimetre-square silicon chip” gave rise to those hopes.
Commercials and Children
Children are neither as wary nor as skeptical of television commercials as adults are. Children tend to accept product claims and appeals as truthful and believable. For this reason, Dale L. Kunkel, a communication studies lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told a congressional committee recently that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission should restrict the number of commercials aimed at children. Kunkel said that research findings present strong evidence that children under five years of age “lack the perceptual capabilities to even discriminate program material from advertising content.”
Stroke Protection
“You get tremendous protection from strokes by eating more fruits and vegetables,” says Dr. Louis Tobian of the University of Minnesota. The reason is that most fruits and vegetables are rich in potassium, which, while not lowering blood pressure, prevents the pressure from damaging arteries. Speaking at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting on high blood pressure, Tobian said that animal studies showed that an extra helping of fruits and vegetables each day could cut stroke risk up to 40 percent over a period of time. Among the best sources of potassium are bananas, potatoes, strawberries, and grapefruit and orange juice.
Electronic Antinoise
How do you blot out excessive noise? Window double-glazing, mufflers, and insulating materials are the usual means. But now two British scientists, lecturers in acoustics at Southampton University, have come up with a unique method—antinoise. How does it work? The sound pattern of an unwanted noise is analyzed and a mirror image reproduced electronically so that when the two sounds meet, they cancel each other out. The application of this new technology is aimed at aircraft engines, particularly the low-frequency noise of propeller propulsion, reports The Sunday Times of London. The technique is already in use for reducing the “boom,” or hum, heard in some automobiles traveling at high speed.
Cairo Subway
On September 27, 1987, the first subway in Africa was inaugurated in Cairo, Egypt. The boring of the 2.8-mile-long [4.5 km] underground line required five and a half years. According to the French daily Le Monde, “the [building] firms had to progress blindly because of the lack of underground maps. It was necessary to feel around and divert miles of pipes and cables before beginning the boring.” When it reaches its peak capacity, the Cairo subway will be able to transport more than 50,000 passengers an hour. The inhabitants of Cairo hope that this “Pharaonic construction” will make traffic lighter in their city.