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1183753_5 | may explain its widespread activation in imaging experiments. Many believe that this part of the brain is responsible for controlled attention or that it responds to errors, Dr. Cohen said. But experiments that could have been done only with F.M.R.I. suggest that its real role is to register conflict. This, in turn, leads a person to pay more attention to what is happening. The distinction is subtle but important, Dr. Cohen said. Dr. Newsome, an expert in monkey brains, said an imaging experiment in humans got results that conflicted with what was known in monkeys. ''We went back and found that the monkey data were incorrect,'' he said. Thus, human experiments can pay off in unexpected ways. The imaging technology is improving rapidly, Dr. Sejnowski said. Soon, it may be possible to measure blood flow in tiny areas called cortical columns, clusters of neurons that carry out a single function like detecting edges or direction of motion. It is believed that these columns carry out the basic work of the cerebral cortex, and if researchers can see how they wire and fire together, they will have a better idea of how the brain is organized. Other improvements include new methods of computer analysis that allow researchers to distinguish meaningful signals out of confusing experiments with the new imaging. Brain imaging researchers are extremely excited about efforts under way to combine F.M.R.I. with other brain imaging techniques, like magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG). The new imaging is good at finding functional locations but is very slow at picking up signals. While brain cells work in thousandths of a second, functional imaging needs a couple of seconds to detect blood flow. Other technologies like MEG and EEG are fast but not good at identifying where brain activity occurs. By combining images from all three techniques with the help of powerful computers, researchers hope to produce ''movies'' of thoughts inside a human head. Right now, ''our knowledge is akin to looking out of the window of an airplane at night,'' Dr. Newsome said. ''We can see patches of light from cities and towns scattered across the landscape. We know that roads, railways and telephone wires connect those cities, but we gain little sense of the social, political and economic interactions within and between cities that define a functioning society.'' The same is true of efforts to look into the human brain, he said. | Just What's Going On Inside That Head of Yours? |
1183842_2 | instance, can produce their own pesticide and reduce the amount used in the fields. The seeds are now used throughout North and South America, China and Australia. Opponents concede that no one has ever been harmed by genetically modified food. But there are questions about environmental threats. Will genes from herbicide-resistant corn get into weeds, creating ''superweeds''? Will benign insects like Monarch butterflies be killed by pollen drifting from bug-killing corn? Many Europeans fear the food itself, and some supermarket chains will not sell it. Those who object to the science argue that more research is needed on long-term safety. Many factors are at work -- a mysterious science that occurs at the submicroscopic level, jingoism about food, scare campaigns by environmentalists, arrogant American responses and one bit of bad timing, the fact that freighters loaded with the 1996 American soybean crop sailed just as British mad cow disease, totally unrelated to genetically modified food, was terrifying Europe. There is also an anti-American element. Demonstrators' signs often portray America and its agrochemical companies as one and the same. But Guy le Fur, an expert on biotech food at the Confederation Paysanne, a radical farmers' organization that has destroyed silos full of modified grain, drew a distinction. He noted that there were European giants in gene-technology, too, although most of their work is in pharmaceuticals. ''I don't see it as a national issue,'' Mr. le Fur said. ''It is colonization by three or four companies who want total control of what goes onto the plates of people across the planet and who want to make a lot of money.'' Pierre Lellouche, a Gaullist member of the French Parliament committee on environmental safety, said there was deep mistrust specifically of American assurances that the food was safe. ''The general sense here is that Americans eat garbage food, that they're fat and they don't know how to eat properly,'' he said. American endorsements, Mr. Lellouche added, were ''like the British beef thing -- the British government is still screaming that their beef is perfect.'' Whether or not European fears will spread to America is unclear. Biotech seed accounts for 36 percent of American corn, 55 percent of its soybeans and 43 percent of its cotton. Some Americans wonder how dozens of supermarket items like infant formula, cola and muffin mix could contain biotech products without their knowing it. American seed producers like Monsanto | Protests on New Genes and Seeds Grow More Passionate in Europe |
1183842_5 | Belgium. ''They're bred for shelf life.'' Last year, the European Union bought just $1 million worth of American corn, down dramatically from $305 million in 1996. Europe buys 25 percent of the American soybean crop, worth $2.6 billion in good years. Purchases dropped, to $1 billion last year, according the United States Agriculture Department. That decrease largely reflects price cutting by exporters in Brazil and Argentina, the American Soybean Association said. Now their prices are rising. The anti-biotech movement affected soybeans less, because most imported beans are used to make animal feed and cooking oil. Under European law, food for animals is not labeled, and processed oil contains no DNA, meaning that it does not have to be labeled, either. The European Union is debating making those laws stricter. While Europeans fear the ''G.M.'' label, scientists like Chris Somerville, a Stanford University plant biologist, say that genetic technology is ''hundreds of times more predictable than traditional means'' like cross-breeding plants or mutating seeds with radiation or heat. The fear of creating unpredictable monsters is ''largely unfounded,'' Mr. Somerville added. Among American shoppers, surveys show that they have confidence in the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department. Europeans, on the other hand, having faced mad-cow disease and scandals over dioxin and sewage sludge in animal feed, have no such confidence in their regulators. Also, in a debate over gene-splicing in the United States in the mid-80's, a decade before the seeds were widely planted. Jeremy Rifkin, an anti-biotech campaigner, raised the alarm. But it blew over like the population scare of the 70's. Through a chance meeting in Washington in 1986, Mr. Rifkin made a convert of Benedikt Haerlin, then an official of the Green Party in Germany and now head of a campaign by Greenpeace to stop bioengineered food. Nearly a decade later, just as mad-cow disease struck, the first American crop with some herbicide-resistant soybeans was on the ocean. Advocates still talk about the 1996 crop as if it was the Normandy invasion. ''Now we had concrete targets,'' a spokesman for Greenpeace, Mika Railo, said. ''We had to hit the ground running.'' British newspapers leaped into the fray, and soon British companies were asking American exporters for unmodified grain. Big shippers initially refused. Worse, some Americans were insulting. Bill Wadsworth, the technical manager for Iceland, a British frozen-food and supermarket chain that is leading the fight against | Protests on New Genes and Seeds Grow More Passionate in Europe |
1183775_0 | SUGAR RISES. Sugar rose almost 4 percent as importers took advantage of low prices to secure supplies. In New York, raw sugar for May delivery rose 0.20 cent, or 3.8 percent, to 5.42 cents a pound. | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES |
1183747_2 | membrane. Pollution Decor How a home is decorated speaks volumes about the people who live there. It may also have a say in how much pollution they are exposed to. A study of benzene pollution in six European cities found that people were exposed to more of the pollutant in their homes than outside of it. Benzene is found in vehicle exhaust, and can cause leukemia. The study, conducted in the Belgian city of Antwerp, Athens, Rouen in France, Copenhagen, the Italian city of Padua and Murcia, Spain, found that the general level of benzene pollution increased from north to south among the cities studied. The researchers attributed this to weather conditions, particularly stronger winds in the south that would tend to clear the air. But personal exposure levels indoors increased from south to north. The researchers, who described their work in the journal Nature, say that home furnishings might be to blame. In the warmer south, Europeans favor tile, marble and bare walls, while in Northern Europe, carpeting, linoleum and wood surfaces are more the norm. The researchers suggest that benzene entering from the street tends to adhere more readily to the surfaces in northern homes, increasing the concentration inside. Sun's Surprises The Sun can produce some nasty surprises. Flares and other surface disturbances cause waves of plasma and radiation that can create problems with spacecraft and earthly radio transmissions. Scientists can see these storms on the side of the Sun facing Earth, but when one forms on the far side and then comes into view as the Sun rotates, Earth is effectively blindsided. It is reassuring, then, to know that scientists have finally been able to improve their solar weather forecasting by obtaining images of storms on the far side. They do it by using the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory to analyze sound waves bouncing around inside the Sun. Sound waves produced in the Sun are altered by what they pass through. Since the observatory, called Soho, was launched in 1995, scientists have used it to analyze sound waves to help determine the Sun's internal makeup. But sound waves are also accelerated by strong gravitational fields, such as exist in the area of surface disturbances. So by using Soho instruments to analyze how some sound waves get out of step with one another (as some move faster) the location of disturbances on the far side can be determined. | OBSERVATORY |
1183593_1 | lousy dressing rooms, but there is something that is very actor-friendly and theater-friendly about these spaces,'' said Anita Keal, who performs in ''The Countess,'' a play about a 19th-century love affair. The show plans to move to Lamb's Theater on West 44th Street after its current home, the Samuel Beckett Theater, closes on Sunday. As Ms. Keal spoke, crew members preparing the stage for the next performance offered their assessments of the theater, with its slightly-too-small stage, oddly sloping ceiling and unpredictable heat. ''It's got its quirks,'' said Juliet King, the assistant stage manager. Ralph Carhart, the master electrician, added, ''But the quirks are what give it its charm.'' Playwrights Horizons, a nonprofit theater company, opened the first stage on the strip in 1975. Three years later the 42nd Street Development Corporation opened several more theaters in an attempt to use the performing arts to renew a desolate block. The development corporation offered inexpensive, often below-market rents to theater groups, which in return stabilized the neighborhood and brought in new, paying visitors. Theater Row became one of the early successes in the continuing effort to reinvigorate 42nd Street. Of the eight playhouses on Theater Row, Playwrights Horizons has been the most significant, giving a start to Broadway productions like ''Driving Miss Daisy,'' ''Sunday in the Park With George'' and most recently, ''James Joyce's 'The Dead.' '' Other theaters have also had success. ''Nunsense'' ran for nine years at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater. ''There was a sense of purpose; we were united on this bizarre block of Manhattan,'' said Andre Bishop, who worked at Playwrights Horizons from 1975 to 1991 and is now the artistic director at the Lincoln Center Theater. ''Real estate gentrification was the last thing on our minds. We were just putting on plays.'' But the theaters did renew the neighborhood, and now the more recent Midtown boom has opened the way for more lucrative development. The first theaters to be affected will be the four owned by the development corporation: the Theater Row, Judith Anderson, Harold Clurman and Beckett Theaters. All four will close this month to make way for the redevelopment project. Although the contracts are not complete, the developement corporation is planning to rebuild much of the block between Ninth and Dyer Avenues and create four 99-seat stages, a 199-seat theater, a 499-seat playhouse co-owned by the Shubert Organization and an apartment tower. Some theater | A Bit Nervously, Theater Row Packs Up |
1183659_0 | As the airwaves grow ever more congested with modern wireless communications, the federal government is developing plans to open up the spectrum by in effect treating its frequencies as commodities to be bought and sold as routinely as pork bellies or soybeans in the open market. Officials at the Federal Communications Commission say they are preparing rules that would create a trading system in which telecommunications companies of all kinds, from old-fashioned radio stations and telephone companies to purveyors of wireless Internet services, could bid for underused slivers of the spectrum that are already under the control of other companies. It would be a radical overhaul of the rules governing one of the most valuable, if intangible, forms of property in the new economy: the rights to transmit electronic signals at specific radio frequencies that constitute the spectrum. It would also have profound implications, not only for the telecommunications industries, but for consumers as well. Under the current system, the federal government licenses each user and regulates what frequencies and signal power can be used. Most times these rights have been sold to the industry, although the oldest license holders got them free. But they have never been bought and sold in a secondary market like so many bushels of grain. With the proliferation of cell phones, pagers, satellite services and other wireless devices, the communications agency's top officials have warned that demand is so outstripping supply that it may lead to what they call a spectrum drought, making the scarce spectrum even more valuable to haves and have-nots alike. Now, for instance, the agency reports that the volume of traffic on the Internet is doubling every 100 days, a stunning increase considering that telephone traffic has traditionally risen about 5 percent a year. As consumers increasingly reach the Internet through wireless connections, like cell phones and handheld computers, experts fear the heavy use of the airwaves will begin to create bottlenecks and interference that could greatly frustrate the further development of the technology. ''What a tragedy it would be if, right as we're on the verge of the Internet migrating to inexpensive handheld devices and offering real hopes of truly democratizing the technology, the movement would be stymied by overloading the spectrum,'' William E. Kennard, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said in an interview on Friday. Mr. Kennard, who has been pushing the agency to consider what | F.C.C. TO PROMOTE A TRADING SYSTEM TO SELL AIRWAVES |
1184996_0 | WHAT is it like to have a brother who is autistic? Or a sister in a wheelchair? How do you explain a sibling's condition to a child who comes over for a play date? Or how do you deal with stares at the mall? Questions like these weigh on the minds of children with disabled brothers and sisters. ''Siblings of disabled children are often the forgotten story,'' said Joan Chess, a school psychologist in Mamaroneck. And she ought to know. She herself is the mother of four children, including a daughter with Rett's Syndrome, a neurological disorder that renders her mute and causes her to use a wheelchair. ''Parents are often so busy with their handicapped child that they don't have the time for the 'normal' ones,'' she said. Ms. Chess and Meryl Schaffer, a social worker, collaborated on a research project called the Siblings' Voice, which focuses on the needs of Larchmont and Mamaroneck grade-school children with disabled brothers and sisters. It was started five years ago with a grant from the Teacher's Institute of Mamaroneck. Ms. Chess said that siblings of disabled children often worry more than ''regular'' youngsters: they think about death, about what the future holds for them and their brother or sister. They may feel guilt. And they often feel alone and isolated, especially when there is no other nondisabled sibling to share frustrations and feelings with. Through their research, Ms. Chess and Ms. Schaffer have given children an outlet. The initial study grew out of Ms. Chess's own dealings with her daughter, Zoe, who was diagnosed as autistic before doctors determined that she actually had Rett's. ''Despite the fact that I'm a therapist, I found I didn't have the tools to deal with everything my family was experiencing,'' Ms. Chess said. Then one day she had what she describes as an epiphany: she saw her three other children, then 6, 11 and 14, playing and interacting with Zoe in normal brother-and-sister ways. ''I felt I had something to learn from them,'' she said. ''So I took a camera and started filming them separately, talking about Zoe.'' At the same time, Ms. Schaffer, who works with prekindergarten children with a range of disabilities, had been approached by parents to start a support group. And so, their research proposal was born: for a project involving on-camera interviews featuring 10 children, ages 6 to 15. As they | Giving a Voice to Siblings of the Disabled |
1184858_3 | But that was done with a different co-author. This one, written with Will Hively, a science writer, is more spare. During moments of tension, as a team finds nothing day after day, Ballard says things like ''The level of bickering increased.'' You want more. There's nothing in this entire book as revealing as a passing reference made in ''Sea Change,'' by another ocean explorer, Sylvia Alice Earle. She writes of Ballard, concerned that so little of the deep sea has been explored, ''pacing with an urgency and look of longing that suggests that he is just on his way to do something about the situation.'' This is a minor quibble. If that's the price we have to pay for the wealth of understandable explanations, it's worth it. At the end of the book Ballard elaborates on an idea he has helped develop. He believes that manned submersibles like Alvin should be replaced by remote vehicles bearing high-resolution cameras and other sensors. This would allow far more scientists -- and even nonscientists -- to participate in dives than will ever fit in Alvin's cramped three-person cabin. His pitch is eloquent. When a remote vehicle breaks, he says, the costs are measured ''in dollars and delays, rather than lost lives and broken hearts.'' That debate is current in space exploration as well as in deep water. But it will never be entirely resolved, because there will always be people, as Ballard himself says about Beebe and Barton, ''who would risk their lives to reach their goals.'' And for some, those goals include being there. Just as the lure of exploration itself is not easily explained, neither is the determination to see the mystery for oneself. Both drives will die only with our species. MY favorite story in ''The Eternal Darkness'' is about a moment that I think would lose its drama if seen only on a television monitor. It's the story of Alvin's discovery of life at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. A geologist is looking out Alvin's window, expecting to see a field of bare lava. Suddenly a whole new world of living creatures drifts into view: huge clams, mussels, shrimp, fish and things that look like worms. ''Isn't the deep ocean supposed to be like a desert?'' the scientist says. That surprise is true exploration. Back in the 1930's, Beebe reported seeing strange creatures out the window of his bathysphere that no | The Lower Depths |
1185035_5 | Internet-business positions. Mr. Jepsen said skilled employees are the most important need of the new technology companies. ''Connecticut has, on a per capita basis, a very highly trained work force, but we need more of those workers,'' he said. In fact, when Priceline.com looked for a new location, having had to move out of Stamford because of that city's shortage of commercial space, it chose a building close to Norwalk Community and Technical College expecting to create a relationship with the college and hire its graduates, Mr. Jepsen said. ''We're hearing numbers like 50,000 workers are going to be needed in the next five years'' in Internet-related businesses in Connecticut, said Jeffrey Cantor, dean of extended studies and work force education at the Norwalk College. Mr. Cantor said the college has signed agreements with several technology companies to provide specialized training for employees in networking technologies and software development, and is expanding course offerings in those areas. While Connecticut has its share of people with computer expertise, that isn't the whole reason for the state's success. Instead, entrepreneurs mentioned its wealth in experienced marketing and managerial executives, its location near several international airports, its financial services and venture capital investors, and its quality of life as other important factors. The fact that there are already many companies engaged in e-commerce, software development, and information technology creates a talent pool for each new venture. ''There's something of a critical mass building,'' said Will McEachern, editor of The Connecticut Economy, a quarterly journal published at the University of Connecticut that follows the state's economy. ''If you look under the covers of many of these companies you will find a lot of people who started other companies,'' said Connie Galley, president and chief executive of Mercator Software in Wilton, whichproduces software that allows other computer programs to work with each other. ''There's a history of R and D companies in this area,'' observed Arum Gupta, the software entrepreneur who started NeuVis Inc., which makes software for companies that want to sell their products on the Internet. ''I think some of the people who work for them have decided to take the jump and start up.'' Mr. Jepsen, however, noted that the state had a problem in attracting young men and women with technology skills: it isn't cool. He said the state has more of a country squire image than of a hip, urban | The Internet May Be Virtual, But the Jobs It Brings Are Real; Hundreds of Companies Have Moved In. The Trick Is to Keep Them Here. |
1184871_0 | TIGERS IN THE SNOW By Peter Matthiessen. Introduction and photographs by Maurice Hornocker. 185 pp. New York: North Point Press/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27. ''EVERYONE is connected. Only the tiger is not connected.'' That is what Vladimir Shetinin thinks, and he ought to know. As the commander of a Russian government antipoaching force in a remote area of eastern Siberia, Shetinin was in charge of policing the contested border between tigers and men. Yet it's an odd statement for Peter Matthiessen to choose as an epigraph for ''Tigers in the Snow,'' his book on Siberian tigers -- a book that carefully maps the myriad, often fatal connections that bind the great cats to the rest of creation. This is true, he shows, not just in overcrowded places like India and Bangladesh but even in Russia's wild east, where the human population averages well below one person per square mile and the Amur tiger (unlike its southerly cousins) is free to roam over vast stretches of territory among the snowy forests that slope toward the Sea of Japan. These are not fragile animals, to be sure. ''Wherever the species occurs,'' Matthiessen writes, ''the tiger resides at the summit of its ecosystem.'' Amur tigers require 10 pounds of meat every day -- the fresher the better. When they attack humans, as they sometimes do, search parties rarely recover more than a few bloody scraps. (Over the past four centuries, according to Matthiessen, Asian tigers are believed to have killed about a million people.) They are also amazingly versatile creatures, ''equally well adapted to temperate woodlands and tropical rain forest, marine mangrove forest and long-grass Himalayan foothills, riverine thicket and the vast reed beds of western Asia's inland seas.'' But the tigers' perch at the top of the food chain is exactly what makes them vulnerable. When forests are logged and deer and elk are hunted to scarcity, the great cats silently vanish. The story has repeated itself across Asia. Over the past few decades, at least three of the eight tiger subspecies have become extinct. There are now almost as many tigers living on rich people's ranches in Texas (some 2,000) as there are in the wild in India, which is thought to shelter the world's largest free-ranging population. Visiting the few scattered habitats that remain, Matthiessen finds the situation even bleaker than others have reported. In Southeast Asia, villagers use | Rough Beast |
1185032_0 | IN Rumson there's an 18th-century house whose owner wants to carve it up, and people are angry. In Piscataway there's a pile of timber that used to be the home of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, and people are downright furious. Two case studies, and a zillion points to ponder. First to Logan Lane in Piscataway, a slip of a side road not far from the Rutgers football stadium. Selman A. Waksman, a professor at the university for 40 years, used to live in a modest house there. He was living there, in fact, in 1952, when he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology for discovering streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. The discovery saved thousands of lives. Professor Waksman died in 1973, and the house, now 50 years old, has remained in private hands since. Last year, Leah and Perry Petsanas bought it, and in the fall, intending to build a new home on the site, they requested a demolition permit. That woke the preservationists up, but too late. While various boards were contradicting each other and appeals were flying, the Petsanases acted: on Jan. 29, Mr. Petsanas brought a front-end loader to the property and had its operator knock the house over. A police officer tried to stop the demolition, since the Petsanases still had no permit, but Mr. Petsanas stalled him just long enough. The officer said Mr. Petsanas then told him bluntly that ''he needed to make sure that enough of the house had been destroyed so that it could not be preserved as a historic landmark.'' Since then, a judge has ruled that the house was not ''historic'' under the law. Local preservationists disagree; in fact, years ago they nominated the house for the National Register of Historic Places, but somehow the application process was never completed. It's a moot point now; the building looks as if a good-size tornado hit it. The Petsanases were fined $500 for demolishing the house without a permit. It's difficult to understate the boldness of their action: Professor Waksman is something of a saint around Rutgers, and Piscataway is a town that takes its history seriously. Underscoring this boldness, the house is -- was -- right next to the Metlar-Bodine Museum, an 18th-century landmark. It was the museum's curator, Junelynn Sadlowski, who called the police on demolition day. She's more than just saddened by the loss (''It's like seeing | Slicing And Dicing Pieces Of the Past |
1184934_2 | an interview in which she eagerly shed her jacket to reveal biceps larger than a reporter's none too small thighs. ''Contemporary museums are used to pushing the envelope, especially in terms of gender and identity issues.'' Ms. Fierstein has pushed a few envelopes herself, sporting a body that in her words inspires reactions ranging from ''lust to dread to embarrassment.'' ''Muscularity equates with power,'' she said, ''and men don't want women to have that. Big, hard, round muscles generate a sexual disequilibrium that is very threatening.'' So where does the ''art'' come in and how? Ms. Stein, a critic and the curator of more than 90 contemporary-art exhibitions (who, by the way, admits to bench pressing 65 pounds a few times a week), places bodybuilding in the politicized performance-art environment of the 1970's and 80's. ''Several artists used their own bodies as their medium,'' she says, ''including Gilbert and George, who exhibited themselves as living sculpture, and Hannah Wilke, who posed nude to mimic a controversial Duchamp sculpture.'' Others, like Bruce Nauman and Howard Fried, videotaped themselves moving around their studios in sculptural formations intended to manifest the role of the body itself in the making of art. In ''Picturing the Modern Amazon,'' named for the superstrong and fierce women of Greek myth, bodybuilding is equated with sculpture. Ms. Stein points out that the founder of bodybuilding, Eugene Sandow, saw himself as a living Greek statue to such a degree that when he posed, he covered himself with white powder the better to resemble carved marble. To the skeptical, Irving Lavin, a professor of art history at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., confesses in a catalog essay: ''I had spent a large part of my professional career as an art historian blindly studying the representation of the human figure in the visual arts without seeing the subjects who were hidden within and behind the objects of my devotion. Was the model for the Venus of Willendorf a bodybuilder? How did she achieve those extravagant shapes?'' Mr. Lavin received this awakening from his daughter, Amelia, a photographer represented in the exhibition, who has had a longterm interest in bodybuilders. Among the 40 other artists in the exhibition are Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Renee Cox, Sidney Goodman, Matthew Barney, Annie Liebovitz, Herb Ritts and Cindy Sherman. Also included are portraits of Battleaxe, Jaguar, Nixa and, oh, yes, Bitchy Bitch, | So They're Muscular: Want to Make Something of It? |
1185540_1 | In children, the symptoms can impair social development and interfere with learning. The symptoms are repeatedly re-experiencing the trauma, often as nightmares, sometimes as flashbacks; persistently avoiding any thing, situation or place that reminds the person of the trauma; and the hyperarousal of the nervous system, characterized by easy startling, hypervigilance, sleeping problems and sometimes by irritability, outbursts of anger or difficulty concentrating or completing tasks. An estimated 13 million people are disabled by this disorder, making it the fifth most common psychiatric problem in the country. Over the course of a lifetime, one person in 12 is likely to develop the disorder, twice as many women as men, and the condition, if untreated, can last for years. These facts have prompted four organizations -- the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the Sidran Traumatic Stress Foundation -- to form the PTSD Alliance to raise awareness of this debilitating disorder. Free educational materials and referrals are available through the alliance's toll-free number: (877) 507-PTSD (7873). For PTSD to occur, a person must have been directly exposed to a traumatic event that involved an actual or threatened serious injury or death to oneself or others, and the person must have reacted to the event with intense fear, helplessness or horror. These two conditions apply to children as well as adults who develop PTSD, but among children the cause is often a less obvious form of trauma than, say, a rape or stabbing. In children, the most frequent causes of PTSD are sexual abuse, physical or emotional abuse by parents or others involved in providing care and being witness to domestic violence that threatened the safety of a parent or guardian. While in adults who experience a serious trauma, the risk of developing the disorder is one in five or one in 10, in children, a study has shown, more than half develop the disorder, often long after a trauma has ended. Dr. Susan V. McLeer, professor and chairman of psychiatry at the State University of New York at Buffalo, studied 80 sexually abused children and compared them to 150 children who were not abused. She reported that children who had been sexually abused were at great risk of developing the disorder, which, she said, is especially harmful for children because it may cause them to miss experiences | When Post-Traumatic Stress Grips Youth |
1185537_1 | because someone in the government suggested it would be helpful.'' But she flies regularly to North America to teach at Simon Fraser University in Canada and to oversee her charity, the Orangutan Foundation International of Los Angeles. Q. Give us a report on the state of the world's orangutans? A. They are poised on the edge of extinction. It's that simple. We're still seeing orangutans in the forest; they are coming into captivity in enormous numbers. You just know that there can't be that many left in the wild. Q. How did the orangutans come to be so threatened? A. The main factor was that until 1988, Indonesia had a forestry minister who was a real forester. In 1988, he was replaced by a forestry minister who was an agriculturist, a promoter of plantations. That signaled a shift in government policy from selective logging to clear-cutting of the forest. For orangutans, clear-cutting is a policy of extinction. If you selectively log, some animals will survive. But with clear-cutting, the habitat is gone. If that weren't enough, in 1997, there were these horrendous fires that devastated the forests. Moreover, the last three years have been a period of intense political upheaval: an economic crisis, ethnic strife, student riots, President Suharto's resignation. After President Suharto stepped down in 1998, there was a vacuum of power in the center. Once people in the provinces understood that, some felt they could do whatever they wanted. And what some of them wanted to do was log the forest. So throughout Indonesia, places that had, more or less, been protected, became besieged. At first, only local loggers came in. When nobody stopped them, the bigger commercial loggers followed. Suddenly, there were no more protected parks. Q. Is this true too in Kalimantan, Borneo, where you have your research station? A. Yes, though in the National Park where I work, we're doing what we can. We're trying to set up patrols of local men to go out with park rangers so that when they come across illegal loggers, they don't feel totally intimidated. We're working with the Indonesian government to set up new wildlife reserves at expired logging concessions. And of course, we're doing what we always have: saving wild-born orangutans who've been captured by humans. We have a hospital for 130 orangutans. We have an orphanage for the babies. Eventually, they are released to the wild, | SCIENTIST AT WORK/Birute Galdikas; Saving the Orangutan, Preserving Paradise |
1181156_1 | are ineffective, if all treatment or therapy has failed, if there is unanimous agreement that the situation has become intolerable, then one can envisage euthanasia,'' Dr. Didier Sicard, the committee's head, said. The group's opinions are usually heeded. (AP) POLAND: PORNOGRAPHY BAN -- Parliament narrowly passed a tough antipornography bill but the president may veto it. Opponents say it fails to define pornography and limits freedom of expression. Since the fall of Communism, pornography has been widely available and the Roman Catholic church has campaigned against it strongly. Donald G. McNeil Jr. (NYT) ITALY: PILGRIMS DEPORTED -- A group of 32 young African men on a Holy Year pilgrimage were stopped at the Rome airport last month and sent home to the Congo Republic, Fides, the news agency of the Vatican's missionary branch, reported. The men were turned away because officials suspected they were seeking to immigrate illegally, Fides said. Alessandra Stanley (NYT) ASIA INDIA: BIHAR SWEARS IN NATIONALIST -- Nitish Kumar, left, a Hindu nationalist, was sworn in as chief minister of Bihar state, and he has 10 days to muster a majority in the assembly. The move outraged his opponent, the political maverick Laloo Prasad Yadav, whose party won the most seats in recent elections. Barry Bearak (NYT) PAKISTAN: SHARIF'S LAWYERS RETURN -- All but one of the lawyers defending Nawaz Sharif, the deposed prime minister, have rejoined the case, saying he pleaded with them not to abandon him during his trial on charges of hijacking, treason and attempted murder in connection with his attempt to remove his military commander. Barry Bearak (NYT) THE AMERICAS CANADA: SALMON SUIT DROPPED -- British Columbia dropped its suit against the United States over the Pacific Salmon Treaty, but still says the treaty is not protecting fish stocks. The suit, filed in 1997 in United States federal court, claimed Washington was violating the treaty, which regulates how many salmon each country can catch. Stocks of several fish have dropped to record lows, because, Canadians say, Americans are overfishing. (Reuters) SURINAME: DUTCH URGE TRIAL FOR EX-LEADER -- An appeals court in the Netherlands said the former Suriname leader Desi Bouterse should be prosecuted for his involvement in the deaths of 15 dissidents in 1982. But the court did not say where Mr. Bouterse should stand trial. He staged coups in Suriname, a former Dutch colony, in 1980 and 1990, and is now running | World Briefing |
1186541_0 | From the most raked-over historical fields to the latest technology, scholars and researchers continually manage to ask new questions, rethink old verities and produce fresh insights. Arts & Ideas takes an occasional look at what some of today's thinkers -- the established as well as those who yearn to be -- are working on. Some ideas may turn into breakthroughs and others may turn out to be dead ends, but the journey is rarely boring. Here is a handful of works in progress. Karen Barkey is far from alone among scholars in trying to untangle the Balkans' tumultuous past and present. Shelfloads of books and articles have been written on the region's ancient ethnic and religious hatreds as well as on the modern machinations of today's leaders. But Ms. Barkey, a sociologist at Columbia University, argues that the region's history is much more cooperative than many of the current explanations suggest. ''Everybody talks about the Balkans as a powder keg, the Balkans and ethnic nationalism and ethnic cleansing,'' she said, ''but there is a lot that is nonethnic and much more interesting, such as the traders, the way in which society ordered itself, even with religion and the courts.'' Ms. Barkey is of Turkish-Jewish origin, a native of Istanbul, and is now at work on a book about the historical roots of the Balkan conflict. She believes it is crucial to rethink the structure of the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century, a pivotal period in the region's history. Until the 18th century, Ms. Barkey said, the Ottomans had developed a vertically organized society in which every level looked to the state. If conflicts arose, for instance, the peasants, traders or local officials involved would confer with the person above them, following a chain of command that ultimately led to Constantinople. But in the 18th century, Ms. Barkey argues, those vertical lines of association began to fracture because of a reorganization of the empire's system of rule and taxation, which transformed the way in which people did business. People started turning to other members of the same group or class to resolve disputes. Neighbors sorted out problems with neighbors. Civic associations formed. Traders dealt with their difficulties through a proliferation of trade associations and networks. ''There was an unbelievable mixing of people, the creating of low-level, autonomous, free associations,'' Ms. Barkey said. ''People started creating slowly a civil society in | The Past, the Pit, the Plants; Togetherness in the Balkans |
1186530_5 | River Terrace Apartments in Riverdale, the Bronx. She was referring to A View From the Terrace, the two-page compendium of news and announcements that hits residents' mailboxes irregularly. ''Now, we can easily create an online newsletter.'' So far, since its start on Feb. 23, EdificeRex has had 4.7 million hits and 69,900 regular visitors. But many buildings have been slow to use the system. ''Most of our tenants don't know about it yet,'' said Mr. Wachtel, a retired exhibit contractor. An enthusiastic Web surfer, he said that ''a lot of these things on EdificeRex are already on the Net, so a lot of it is redundant.'' He added, nevertheless, that ''it is an advantage to have it all'' on one Web site. So far, about 20 of the 287 residents in Sutton House have signed up with their names and apartment numbers for electronic mailboxes, signifying their willingness to receive e-mail. The site permits them to receive messages without giving away their own e-mail addresses. ''I think everyone should be listed,'' said T. K. Flatley, an investment banker, who lives in the 90-apartment DeSoto at 215 West 91st Street, at Broadway. ''It's a safety issue. People should know each other's phone numbers.'' Not every tenant agrees. Several -- who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the subject of anonymity -- said they cherished their Big Apple privacy and didn't especially want to know their neighbors. A less shy tenant insisted that ''being anonymous, that's what makes it so great,'' Mr. Skouras said. ''You say hello and that's about it. I think I'm going to list my name, though.'' Just about ''the only way you meet people in Manhattan is if you have an animal or a baby,'' said Maxine C. Gaylord, a psychoanalyst who treats private patients and is also an industrial psychology consultant. ''I think many in Manhattan are hungering for community. EdificeRex could be a new version of the backyard fence that we've gone away from, in a city where many neighbors never look each other in the eye.'' So far, no e-mailable superintendent has gotten a cybercall to a building emergency. But there was that virtual request Mr. Skouras submitted to fix some loose quarry tiles on his terrace. ''They followed it up just as they said they would,'' he said. ''Needed grout. It was fixed.'' Then, Ms. Miller said, there was ''the lock cylinder on | Where Is That Super? Try the Web; A New Site Links Co-Op and Condo Tenants to Services |
1186455_2 | unemployment. (Reuters) THE AMERICAS CANADA: PRESSURE ON PARKS -- Visits to Canada's national parks will double in 15 years to 28 million, according to a government study. Faced with growing pressure from tourists, Sheila Copps, the minister responsible for the country's 39 national parks, vowed ''no new ski hills, no new golf courses'' and proposed limits on fishing, hiking, camping and snowmobiling in the most popular parks. Ms. Copps has fought to limit development in Banff National Park, the crown jewel of the 115-year-old system. James Brooke (NYT) ASIA PHILIPPINES: DEATH PENALTY SUSPENDED -- President Joseph Estrada has suspended the death penalty until the end of the year ''in deference to the celebration of the Catholic Church's Jubilee Year,'' a palace statement said. The reprieve will be reviewed in January. Amnesty International called the move a breakthrough for rights in the Philippines, where seven people have been executed since 1994, when capital punishment was reintroduced. (Reuters) SRI LANKA: REBELS SKEPTICAL -- The separatist Tamil Tiger rebels called for an internationally monitored cease-fire and a troop pullback before entering Norwegian-brokered peace talks, a Tamil paper reported. A rebel leader called the government's willingness to talk a bid to buy time to modernize the army. (Agence France-Presse) MIDDLE EAST IRAN: CLERIC WARNS REFORMERS -- A prominent member of the conservative Muslim clergy warned reformers who won a landslide victory in February elections not to try to ease Islamic social taboos. ''It is not like the new deputies can pass any laws they like,'' Ayatollah Muhammad Yazdi said in a sermon at Tehran University. ''The young people who you think voted for you have no right to demand laws to allow them to dance in the streets, or the annulment of any Islamic mandates.'' John F. Burns (NYT) AFRICA ZIMBABWE: POLICE STILL DEFIANT -- The police continued to defy a court order requiring them to remove black squatters who have invaded hundreds of white farms. The police said they needed specific instructions from the government before moving against the squatters, who are led by veterans of Zimbabwe's war of independence from Britain. President Robert Mugabe has spoken out in support of the squatters. Rachel L. Swarns (NYT) NIGERIA: CEASE-FIRE PROCLAIMED -- President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that communities at war over land rights have agreed to a cease-fire, ending hostilities in which at least 80 people have died. ''The police will enforce the cease-fire,'' | WORLD BRIEFING |
1184516_2 | Europe, where imports of American corn and soybeans have plummeted. If farmers abandoned biotechnology seeds because of the protests, the companies could lose billions of dollars. Some of the world's largest food producers have already shaken things up by saying they will not use biotechnology crops this year. McCain Foods Ltd. of Canada, a huge potato producer and a leading supplier of French fries to Burger King, says it will steer clear of gene-altered potatoes. The Frito-Lay unit of PepsiCo has announced that it will not buy modified corn. And the Gerber Products Company, going somewhat against the stance of its parent, Novartis, has said that it will not use biotechnology crops in its baby food. ''We didn't eliminate them out of safety concerns,'' said Sheldon Jones, a spokesman at Gerber in Summit, N.J. ''We just wanted to take baby food out of the debate; baby food is a very sensitive area.'' Lynn Markley, a Frito-Lay spokeswoman, added: ''It's all about standing on the sidelines and waiting to see how consumers and the F.D.A. respond. Frito-Lay is not saying they are unsafe, and we are not ruling out genetically modified products in the future.'' Farmers worry, however, that an increasing number of companies will move away from genetically altered crops if fears spread among consumers. ''I'm very concerned because the consumer is who we rely on,'' said Todd Gibson, 37, in Norborne, Mo., who was an early biotechnology convert and says he will keep planting modified seed as long as he can. Opponents of the technology say the regulatory approval process is inadequate. They also question the safety of the food produced and wonder about the effects on the environment in future generations. The seeds are now used throughout North and South America, China and Australia. No definitive studies have been done on the safety of gene-altered foods, and protesters argue that more research is needed. In 1996, when American farms began shipping biotechnology crops to Europe, exports of corn and soybeans, both genetically modified and conventional, amounted to nearly $3 billion. But these shipments have declined markedly, to about $1 billion last year. In Europe, the trade in genetically altered seeds or foods has virtually stopped: farmers will not plant biotechnology crops, consumers will not buy the foods, and stores are declining to stock them. Regulators have approved no new seed strains for nearly two years. In the United | REDESIGNING NATURE/A special report.; In the Heartland, Genetic Promises |
1184538_1 | conducted by the Nature Conservancy, the United States provides habitat for more than 200,000 native species of plants and animals -- more than double the previous estimate. At the same time, commercial and residential development are placing those species under continuing pressure. For that reason, the conservancy announced that it would earmark $1 billion over the next five years to preserve large tracts of the American wilderness. This is an extraordinary pledge from a private group. But an equally important gift may be the conservancy's contribution to the way Americans think about diversity. To most Americans, the word biodiversity conjures up tropical nations and threatened rain forests in places like the Amazon. Most of the world's plant and animal species are indeed found in the tropics, but fully 10 percent, a much higher figure than previously estimated, are found in the 50 states. Moreover, the United States ranks at or near the top in its variety of mammals and freshwater fish. It also has a wider array of distinct ecological regions -- deserts, grasslands and different kinds of forests -- than any other nation in the world. The study says that new species are being discovered all the time, and that the United States may actually contain double the number documented so far. But as new species appear, so old ones disappear. The study found that 500 native American species had gone extinct or are missing, and that one-third of the remainder are at risk, 7 percent of them ''critically imperiled.'' These figures should lend fresh urgency to the cause of conservation. On the state and local level, voters in 1998 approved more than $5 billion worth of initiatives aimed at conserving open space, a record figure. But this enthusiasm has not been reciprocated in Congress. The conservancy's $1 billion pledge, for example, is roughly three times what Congress has appropriated for the normal operations of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the main federal program for acquiring open space. However, there is an unusual and exciting bipartisan movement afoot in Congress to provide a guaranteed financing stream of well over $1 billion annually for protecting America's natural resources. President Clinton, meanwhile, is trying to place 40 million acres of national forest permanently beyond the reach of the timber industry and other commercial interests. As the Nature Conservancy's report makes clear, these efforts are coming not a moment too soon. | America's Natural Abundance |
1182674_0 | WHEN car phones first became popular, some people asked whether motorists could talk and drive safely at the same time. A decade later, that question seems naive; many new cell phones can connect a laptop computer to the Internet, or the phones themselves have screens that can be used to browse the World Wide Web. Other potential distractions now popular in cars are navigation systems with maps to point the way to a destination, or maybe just to the nearest florist. Some high-end vehicles have video-screen controls for trip computers, built-in phones, air-conditioners or stereo systems. No one is sure just how much distraction a driver can stand, but there are indications that the answer is less than the ones that already exist, not to mention all those that automakers and electronics companies are promising to deliver. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lists three fatal crashes in the last few years attributed to in-car fax machines. Part of the problem may be the distraction of manipulating the dials, switches or keypads of electronics gear in the car, but even voice-activated systems have safety officials worried. ''Voice activation on cell phones mitigates the problem at the beginning of the call and the end of the call,'' said H. Keith Brewer, director of the Office of Human-Centered Research at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, referring to phones that respond to oral commands like ''call home,'' or ''hang up.'' ''But what you have in between is, they're deeply engrossed in the conversation,'' Mr. Brewer said. ''You can have cognitive overload; your hands may be on the wheel, but is your mind on the road? We really worry about that.'' There is more to worry about. Sirius Satellite Radio, which plans to use satellites to broadcast to cars, and ATX Technologies recently announced that they would develop products to let drivers buy the music they heard on the radio, ordering it as they drove. And the Ford Motor Company said it would offer Internet features, including e-mail, calendars, news, weather and traffic reports, through the cellular phones of Lincoln models. Ford's system would work by speaking and listening, rather than displaying data on a screen. Jacques A. Nasser, the company's chief executive, said: ''Henry Ford put the world on wheels in the 20th century. In the new century, Ford Motor Company will put the Internet on wheels.'' The Internet, however, | AUTOS ON FRIDAY/Safety; On the Road. On the Web. In Danger? |
1185782_0 | Here's a quiz: Two sectors of the global food industry grew rapidly in the late 1990's. The products of one have been extensively tested, without any evidence of harm. Those of the other are known to pose big health risks -- but nobody knows how big, because lobbying by the industry has blocked effective regulation, testing and even reporting. One of these sectors faces passionate public opposition, which may soon drive it entirely out of business, while the other basks in a warm glow of public approval. (a) What sectors are we talking about? (b) Which sector is in trouble? First, the answers to (a): One sector is the dietary supplement business -- the people who sell you ephedra to lose weight, melatonin to help you sleep, and so on. The other is the genetically modified food business -- which attempts to add genes to natural crops that confer resistance to pests, increased nutritional value and other useful features. Now the answers to (b): There is extensive evidence that dietary supplements can, if misused, be quite dangerous. A recent survey by The Washington Post finds that ''increasing numbers of Americans are falling seriously ill or even dying after taking dietary supplements. . . . The victims include men and women of all ages as well as children. . . .'' But a 1994 law specifically exempts supplements from almost all federal regulation, including the need to report adverse effects. You might expect activist pressure to change that law. But if the bulletin boards at natural product stores near my home are any indication, the people whom one might expect to campaign against an industry that is reckless with people's health -- people who are ready and willing to march against multinational corporations -- are among the dietary supplement industry's most enthusiastic customers. The products are ''natural,'' so they must be O.K. Then there is genetically modified, or GM, food, which has not been shown to do any harm but arouses furious opposition, especially in Europe. And this is one case in which Britain is truly European: the local furor over GM food -- commonly referred to here as ''Frankenfood'' -- would have done even the French proud. All the public remembers is the story of the rats that got sick after eating GM potatoes -- a case of misrepresented results, supposed independent experts who were actually political activists, and general | Reckonings; Natural Born Killers |
1185776_4 | in 1996 for a series of articles on fraud by fertility doctors, remembers wanting to ask the dealership's managers: ''What were you guys thinking? Did you look at his resume and notice that there were six years missing?'' Companies that conduct pre-employment background checks for employers say business has increased in recent years as smaller concerns have parceled out work they used to try to do themselves. Aided by Web-based search tools, the firms say, they can usually investigate a candidate's job history, credit rating and criminal record within 48 hours for costs ranging from $15 to $90. This year, for example, Powerpay.com, which provides payroll service for small businesses, began offering clients access through its Web site to ChoicePoint Inc., one of the country's largest pre-employment screeners. Ms. Mosher has used Business Directions Inc., of Atlanta, for background searches on Allied Domecq job applicants. In the case of the candidate with a bogus degree, a credit check by Business Directions disclosed a former residence and employer not listed on his application. That discrepancy prompted Business Directions to dig deeper, uncovering his criminal record along the way. To be sure, a mandatory background-check policy can annoy managers who are itching to snag a hot prospect before a competing offer arises. But Ms. Mosher urges personnel managers not to be swayed by them. ''They take offense because they think you are questioning their personal judgment,'' she said. ''And to put things into perspective, we don't get these types of bad reports all that often. But when you run into a situation where there is a glitch, we're glad we found out.'' If some companies are relaxing the vigilance in the current economic boom, others are being extra cautious. OnTarget Inc., a sales training company in Atlanta, requires that no job offer can be made until a candidate's background check is completed and at least two references have been called. To further help keep disreputable applicants at bay, the company now offers OnTarget employees as many as three cash bonuses if an applicant they recommend is hired and stays with the company a full year. ''If an employee knows of a good co-worker from a past life and that worker comes aboard, we're happy to pay a fee to the employee,'' said Marianne Haskins, the director of human resources. ''Then you have the personal recommendation of someone you know and trust.'' MANAGEMENT | Hold Resume Truths to Be Self-Evident? No Way |
1182477_0 | In late 1997 the Department of Agriculture proposed rules that would have established a nationwide certification program for organic foods. During the 90-day comment period that followed, it became clear just how badly the department had stumbled. Rather than heed the advice of its own National Organic Standards Board, the agency would have allowed the use of irradiation, sewage sludge and genetically modified organisms in the growing and preparation of foods to be called organic. Whatever one thinks of those particular practices, they are hardly what most people would consider ''organic.'' The outcry from consumers and organic farmers forced reconsideration. On Tuesday the agency released a Revised Proposed Rule. It is a dramatically improved document that may signal a significant new direction at Agriculture. To quote the department's own press release, the new rule ''specifically prohibits the use of genetic engineering, sewage sludge, and irradiation in the production of food products labeled 'organic.' '' It also offers a strict standard defining what constitutes an organic food, a step that should do a great deal to enhance consumer trust that a food labeled organic really is organic. For raw products to be deemed 100 percent organic, for example, they must be grown or manufactured without added hormones, pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. The new rules do not reflect a judgment on the relative safety or quality of organic foods as compared with conventional foods. Rather, they govern marketing claims. The department's response to the community of organic farmers may herald a welcome new sensitivity to a sector of the farming world that has suffered from official neglect. The Clinton administration now needs to approve a final rule before it leaves office. The Agriculture Department should take what it has learned in developing these regulations -- especially the act of listening intently to farmers -- and apply it to other programs that affect small farmers. For their part, consumers and farmers should recognize the power they wield when they work together. | New Rules on Organic Foods |
1188091_6 | whose teachings influenced not only his colleagues but also influential scholars at the university's law school, like Edward H. Levi, who served as attorney general in the Ford administration. Beneath the Stagg Field grandstands, Enrico Fermi and his co-workers achieved the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear reaction on Dec. 2, 1942, the most important step in developing the atomic bomb. The site is marked with a massive bronze by Henry Moore, ''Nuclear Energy.'' In the Loop Frank Lloyd Wright's prototypical Prairie Style building, the Robie House, stands nearby, echoing the horizontality of the plains in its strip windows, the deep overhang of its eaves and even in the proportions of his trademark Roman bricks, very long and very skinny. The house made him world famous, along with the houses he built for himself and others in the western suburbs of Oak Park and River Forest. Also in Oak Park is Unity Temple, ''my little jewel,'' as Wright called it, a masterpiece in reinforced concrete, built in 1905 on an awkward site for only $45,000. But the birthplace of modern architecture, and of the skyscraper, was the Loop, as the central business district is known (after the elevated train tracks that circle it). Chicago's architects capitalized on the fire of 1871, which began in Patrick and Catherine O'Leary's barn on DeKoven Street, much as Christopher Wren capitalized on London's Great Fire of 1666. They were influenced by the great Henry Hobson Richardson's startlingly original Glessner House, a rugged study in rusticated stone (1887) that turned its back to the street, opening instead onto a south-facing courtyard. Louis Sullivan, Richardson's disciple and Wright's teacher, sensed ''an intoxicating rawness, a sense of big things to be done,'' and began with the Auditorium Building in 1889. Its acoustically perfect 4,000-seat theater, spanned by vast flattened arches, illuminated by thousands of clear, unshaded bulbs, is one of America's great interiors. At the same time Burnham & Root were designing the Rookery a few blocks away, organized around a graceful cast-iron light court that Wright reworked to good effect in 1906. In 1891 Burnham & Root built the brooding 16-story Monadnock Building, a pioneering skyscraper, and in 1899 Sullivan, in the Carson Pirie Scott & Company store, frankly expressed the revolutionary steel grid in bands of windows that became a Chicago School trademark. Below he applied webs of his luxuriant foliate ornament in cast iron. All these | Big Shoulders, Buffed for Action |
1188186_0 | In a few weeks many of the Seattle protesters will reassemble in Washington D.C. to throw rocks at the I.M.F. and the World Bank, denouncing them as agents of global corporate greed that is spoiling the environment and leaving the poor behind. The protesters are no doubt sincere, but the truth is the I.M.F. and World Bank are neither the problem nor the solution. They are bit players, of declining importance, in a much larger drama. The real drama is on the ground in the developing world, not on H Street; the real players are a diverse collection of companies, indigenous peoples, endangered species and local governments; and the real solution lies not with he who throws the biggest stone but he who builds the most effective coalition to get these players working together. I came to this remote spot on the Venezuelan-Brazilian border to watch a team from Conservation International try to build such a coalition. Its goal: to save the Guyana Shield, the largest unbroken expanse of tropical rain forest in the world, running from southern Venezuela across Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. As you fly over it in a small plane, this rain forest looks like an endless expanse of broccoli, broken only by waterfalls -- including Angel Falls, the tallest in the world -- and by tapuis, the mesa-like rock formations that thrust 8,000 feet above the forest floor. Save for local indigenous tribes, the area is ruled entirely by the ''locals''; harpy eagles and Amazon parrots control the skies, jaguars prowl the forest floor and ferocious peacock bass run the lakes. No wonder Arthur Conan Doyle based his novel ''The Lost World'' on this region. Conservation International began by strategizing with the indigenous Ye'kwana tribe on how to protect its homeland -- which lies at the heart of this remarkable ecosystem -- from the Brazilian and local miners who covet its gold and ore, from the Japanese logging companies that covet its timber and from a debt-ridden Venezuelan government with legitimate development needs. Throwing stones at the I.M.F. won't do it. This is not a teach-in. This is the sort of real problem that needs to be solved, here and elsewhere, if we want to protect the environment and support growth in the third world. Conservation International and the Ye'kwana are developing a ''network solution.'' First they are proposing the creation of a 13-million-acre protected | Foreign Affairs; Saving The Lost World |
1183080_18 | she could see the basic elements in a patent that Lucent Technologies filed just a few months before Amazon, describing ''user identifiers'' sent back and forth on a network. She noticed a comment that the identifiers help a company ''to recognize a returning user and, possibly, provide personalized service.'' Just what Amazon does! The next step seemed obvious -- in the patent office's technical sense of the word. ''It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made,'' she ruled tentatively, ''to include various command mechanisms for a single user action in order to execute the user's request.'' Obviousness is the key problem. Every patent examiner's work is about making fine distinctions: between two new applications on the same theme; between an old patent and a new refinement. Is that ''ergonomic topographic toothbrush'' novel enough to merit a new patent of its own? These are delicate enough questions when the subject is real stuff. Patent examiners can sink their teeth into concrete details like a ''detachable and replaceable bristle head.'' With software, where the nuts and bolts are vaporous and intangible, questions of what's obvious and what's novel begin to float in the wind. In any event, the burden of proof is on the examiner to show that an application must be rejected. Her subjective judgment is not allowed -- only actual references in published literature. ''People send in some really strange stuff for patents, and I have no choice but to issue it,'' says one examiner. ''I can't say, 'Gee, that's obvious to me.' ''Evidence of obviousness ''has to be out there and public and in the same detail.'' Amazon's lawyers argued and negotiated, agreeing to drop some claims in their application and amend others, and they followed the examiner's directions for reworking their drawings (margins incorrect, numbers too small, lines too irregular), and in the end, like most patent applications, this one was approved. After all, examiners are motivated to issue patents, not to hinder them. U.S. 5,960,411 grants Amazon exclusive rights to its method of placing an order ''in response to only a single action.'' Also, ''wherein the single action is clicking a button.'' And ''the single action is speaking of a sound.'' And wherein a user ''does not need to explicitly identify themselves.'' And ''the single action is selection using a television remote control'' or ''a | Patently Absurd |
1183193_2 | Spano's first official acts as county executive was to create the position of chief information officer and fill it with Dr. Norman J. Jacknis, who had held executive positions in the computer software industry. A year later, the Board of Legislators created a Department of Information Technology, which Dr. Jacknis oversees, responsible for the county's computer and telecommunications systems. Since taking office, Mr. Spano has taken these technology-related actions: *Provided members of the Board of Legislators and top appointed officials with laptop computers and replaced hundreds of desk-top computers. His top staff members have been given pagers, cell phones and palm-size computers with e-mail. *Issued a directive last year that all messages be sent by e-mail. (Mr. Spano preceded the directive with a mandate that all employees receive computer training.) *Had the county's Web page (www.westchestergov.com) redesigned. It includes everything from press releases to documents that contractors can use to submit bids for county work. The site also provides free e-mail to the elderly. Mr. Spano said the page gets about 2,000 hits a day and generates considerable e-mail for himself and other county officials (all of which, he said, is answered). *Started outfitting county office buildings with teleconferencing equipment to cut down on many meetings. *Started experimenting with telecommuting. The county is identifying 10 employees who, through technology, will be permitted to work at home. In making such changes, Mr. Spano, 64, is drawing on his experience running a company that specialized in electronic commerce from 1995 to 1998. But some of his innovations are things he first wanted to do while he was county clerk, from 1982 to 1993. Referring to Dr. Jacknis, he said, ''When I was county clerk and Norm was my friend, we tried to convince the powers that be that we should put together a high-speed, wide-band network here in Westchester County. We tried to change things when we weren't in charge, and we always had to convince the top, wherever that was, that they should do x, y and z. Now that we're in charge, it's made life easier.'' Telecom will make county operations faster and more efficient, Dr. Jacknis said. He likened it to the changes that the automobile made on work patterns. ''Centuries ago, people could get on a horse in Peekskill and go to lower Manhattan. But you couldn't do it fast enough to do it every day. Then came | County Expands Technology Role |
1183095_1 | does not adjudicate or mediate the individual complaints it receives, although it can fine an airline when it finds violations of the few remaining regulations: deceptive advertising on fares, for example, or failure to compensate travelers whose flights are overbooked and who are not taken to their destinations within a specified time. The complaints that come into the department are watched for patterns that might lead to penalties, but verified civil rights violations tend to bring immediate action against an airline. Right now, as a result of Mr. Wyden's amendments to a Department of Transportation bill, the inspector general in the department is monitoring the flow of complaints in two areas: finding the lowest fare and overbooking. Congress has asked for a report by the end of this year on the impact of consumer-satisfaction programs established by the big United States airlines on Dec. 15. There will be an interim report in June, according to Scott Macey, the inspector general's project director for the review of the airlines' customer-service commitments. Complaints to the department are one yardstick for whether travelers consider they are being badly informed, maltreated or cheated. Government auditors have visited the airlines' headquarters to learn how they do business, Mr. Macey said, and will also visit major airports to see for themselves. The Department of Transportation's electronic mail basket had been in service almost 22 months when the airlines presented their consumer programs; it was set up late in February 1998. Of the 9,608 complaints and inquiries it got that year, just 626 arrived by e-mail, the rest on paper or by telephone. In 1999, 5,650 of the 20,495 complaints came by e-mail. And almost half of these were relayed by a site called passengerrights.com, a no-fee enterprise set up by a travel agency in Florida. It is one of several Web sites harvesting complaints. At least two new Web entrepreneurs will process consumer complaints for a fee and seek compensation for their clients. There is usually no reason travelers should not do this themselves, saving a $19.95 or $25 fee. But if the choleric complaints sent as copies to this department are any indication, the discipline of filling in blanks and confining an account to one page is in short supply; a concise account by a professional probably speeds the problem to the cashier's window. Here is a brief tour of the electronic grievance gallery. Free | A Flier's Guide To Complaining |
1183339_0 | SITTING in Britain's staid, formal Institute of Directors with Shere Hite is quite an experience. She is ethereal in a tight, stretchy skirt that clings to her slim legs; her tiny, short cardigan accentuates her hand-span waist. Her shoes, impossibly high, are decorated with sparkling jewels. She is as quintessentially feminine as the room is unabashedly masculine, with its full-length portraits of ancient military heroes ''standing in commanding positions,'' Dr. Hite notes, and presumably meant to inspire Britain's business leaders. After 25 years reporting and researching gender politics, she can see no other obvious relevance to company directors of paintings that emphasize ''the archaic, paternalistic notion of military model hierarchies,'' Dr. Hite says, a notion to which her latest book -- her first on the world of business -- offers more user-friendly alternatives. The book, ''Sex and Business'' (Financial Times Prentice Hall), available in American book stores on March 20, is not just a look at office affairs -- or at whether you should contemplate one with your secretary or boss. Rather, Dr. Hite intends it to be a blueprint for creating a new social order in business that will, she is convinced, filter into other areas of society. ''It is easier to change the corporation than the family,'' she said. Her first ''Hite Report'' on female sexuality, published in 1976, helped document -- through surveys and anecdotes -- the clitoral orgasm. Later Hite Reports chronicled women's discontent about marriage, men's confusion about love and the implosion of the nuclear family to create many new types of households, but equally valid, in her view. After her ''Hite Report on Women and Love'' was published in 1987, some social scientists roundly denounced her survey methods, as they had following the publication of her reports on male and female sexuality. Other experts defended her, but the backlash prompted Dr. Hite to flee her sumptuous Fifth Avenue apartment, put her goods into storage and begin what she describes in her soon-to-be-published autobiography as the life of ''a daughter in exile.'' In 1996, she renounced her United States citizenship and took on that of Germany, home of her husband, Friedrich Horicke, a concert pianist. Her main base is Paris but she spends considerable time in Berlin as well as England, Spain, Italy and Japan. She is a professor of gender studies at Nihon University in Tokyo, which awarded her a doctorate based on her | Sex and Work: Can't Have One Without the Other |
1185501_0 | To the Editor: Re your March 14 front-page article about the controversy over food derived from biotechnology: What is lost in the squabble between the United States and Europe over this issue is the potential for the new technologies to affect food production in the third world. With a billion people going hungry today, we need every technological boost to improve food and nutritional security. When deployed responsibly, gene technologies can improve crop yields, cut down the use of chemicals, help us grow crops in harsher environments and make our food supply safer and more nutritious. The solution to world hunger lies in the further development of science-based improvements in farming. It would be immoral for anyone to put brakes on its further development based on illogical arguments. C. S. PRAKASH Tuskegee, Ala., March 14, 2000 The writer is a professor of molecular genetics at Tuskegee University. | Altered Food: Passion All Around |
1185418_1 | peck away at their bottom line, many mainstream businesses are accepting the fact that they must sell directly to consumers online, while doing what they can to mollify retailers. So it is with insurance. Companies like Allstate have announced plans to sell online, and others are indicating that they may not be far behind. But these are modest steps at best. Forrester Research predicts that by 2004, $13.5 billion of insurance will be sold online -- a fraction of an annual total of about $900 billion. Part of the reason for such gradualism, analysts say, is that even those carriers that want to sell some of their various types of insurance over the Web have run into technological hurdles. Each type of insurance can have widely varying underwriting rules, depending on where it is sold and to whom it is sold. The companies must work intensively to build systems that make such information available on the Web, when potential customers want it. ''With a lot of sites, you can fill out forms, but they send you an e-mail quote two days later,'' said Todd Eyler, a Forrester analyst. In addition, many sites for insurance carriers have an agent call the customer directly with the quote after the forms have been completed online. ''The Internet is all about immediate gratification, and this flies in the face of that idea,'' Mr. Eyler said. Technology companies are racing to build systems that allow insurance carriers to provide real-time quotes and either sell policies online or allow so-called insurance marketplaces like Intuit's Quicken Insurance, Insurance.com and InsWeb to do so. And though these technology companies spare the carriers the time and expense of building their own systems, the task of integrating the carriers' old software with the new can take six months or more. In some cases, the technology companies operate the online insurance marketplaces, as well. InsWeb, for example, provides insurance quotes on its site on behalf of other companies, while also selling software that helps carriers like Amica and Sun Life sell insurance on their own sites. Hussein A. Enan, InsWeb's chief executive, said the company got most of its revenue from referral fees it collected while operating its own site. By selling the technology that allows carriers to provide quotes online, however, InsWeb has created a revenue stream that will surpass the company's other revenues ''not too far in the future,'' | E-Commerce Report; Insurance companies, hampered by the industry's traditions, cautiously enter the Internet waters. |
1185503_0 | To the Editor: A March 14 front-page article notes that while Europeans protest genetically altered foods and will not buy them, by contrast, ''in the United States such ingredients are in nearly two-thirds of the products on supermarket shelves, and few Americans seem to have noticed.'' But as the article also notes, in the European Union, foods containing genetically altered ingredients are required to be labeled as such. This is not so in the United States, and the producers of genetically altered seed stock are adamantly opposed to any labeling requirements. Could they be afraid that if Americans were made aware of what they were buying and eating, and could therefore make informed choices, they too might protest? CAITLIN MCGRATH New York, March 14, 2000 | Altered Food: Passion All Around |
1185502_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Protests on New Genes and Seeds Grow More Passionate in Europe'' (front page, March 14): You point out that ''in Europe, the debate over genetically modified food is as much about passion as it is science.'' But emotion also motivates the advocates of genetically modified food, who assert that it is the answer to a host of problems: world hunger, pesticide contamination and low crop yields. Genetic engineering is not living up to the rosy predictions of its supporters, nor is it likely to. The reality is that this technology, like every other, will bring with it benefits as well as curses. While emotion may govern both sides of the debate, Europeans are wise to distrust predictions that have little basis in reality. TOM LALLEY Program Director Environmental Media Services Washington, March 14, 2000 | Altered Food: Passion All Around |
1187257_1 | authorities said they, too, had been sent nuclear fuel with falsified documentation. Switzerland suspended contracts over the weekend, halting shipments of spent fuel rods to be reprocessed at Sellafield. Sweden also said it would stop sending spent fuel for reprocessing. Concerned about nuclear contamination of the Irish Sea, the Irish and Danish governments have said they will discuss joint action tomorrow to press for closing the plant. Labor unions there have taken the highly unusual step of urging the 10,000 workers to identify the suspected saboteur in their ranks. ''This was clearly an inside job,'' said Jack Dromey, a spokesman for the labor unions represented at the plant, which lies near Britain's Lake district. Referring to the impact of the sabotage some time last month on pressures for the plant's closing, he said, ''This is the last chance for Sellafield.'' Even though unions were asking workers to inform on colleagues, he said, ''no one is more at risk from a Sellafield saboteur than the work force.'' The police and government inspectors are investigating the incident. British Nuclear Fuels said the sabotage affected a robotic arm handling nuclear waste used in maintenance proceedures that controlled six separate operations. There has been no explanation of why it was done, and the company said it did not affect safety. The Sellafield plant, dating to the 1950's, has always drawn strong criticism from environmentalists and advocacy groups concerned about issues ranging from radioactive contamination of the Irish Sea to health risks for people living nearby. But the newest series of complaints have raised new concerns about the plant's future in a region where, in addition to its own staff and contract work force, another 10,000 people, like storekeepers, depend on its existence for their jobs. Britain's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, a supervisory authority, said recently that, in addition to issuing false documentation, the Sellafield plant had also included shipments of dubious quality to Japan. Japanese authorities are pressing for Britain to take the shipments back. The chief executive of the company, John Taylor, was forced to resign, but only a handful of workers linked to the falsification of documents have been dismissed. In a letter to the work force following the sabotage incident, the labor unions represented at the plant called the situation there ''drastic.'' ''No one should underestimate the potential impact that this incident has upon all our futures at Sellafield,'' the letter said. | Nuclear Plant in Britain Admits Sabotage |
1187234_2 | He could support the idea of labeling genetically engineered food, he said, but if people took ''an extreme view,'' it might stop the benefits coming from improved crops and pharmaceutical products. ''I'm concerned over unreasonable reaction,'' he said. ''It's not the technology here, it's what people do with it.'' No genetically altered food has been shown to have harmed people, but opponents say that not enough research has been done to prove that it is safe. Protesters argued today that the agricultural biotechnology industry, fueled by greed, was placing human health -- possibly the health of the biosphere -- at risk. ''These are the people who gave us thalidomide babies,'' Sarah Seeds, a protester who also trains others to protest nonviolently, said of the participants in the Bio2000 convention. ''Now they want to give us genetically modified food.'' Thalidomide, a drug prescribed for morning sickness, caused deformities in infants in the 1960's. In Europe, the public sentiment against genetically engineered food reached a ground swell so great that the cultivation and sale of such food there has all but stopped. But Americans have remained much more receptive to genetically engineered crops, which have been altered by techniques that take some genetic material from another plant or animal and insert it to produce useful traits like greater resistance to insects. Nearly two-thirds of the products on American supermarket shelves are estimated to contain genetically altered crops. Today's protest, however, may indicate some swelling in the opposition. Last December in Oakland, Calif., only a few hundred people protested a public meeting about bio-engineered food held by the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the crops. Today, the crowd nearly filled Boston's Copley Square before the march, and the slogans and arguments seemed to get through to onlookers like Sathya Rajavelu, a technology manager for a financial services company who had wandered down to the protest. On the one hand, Mr. Rajavelu said, he thought the conference participants probably saw the protest as nothing but entertainment. On the other hand, he said, ''This is a cause that a lot of people could easily relate to, so they will most likely get on the bandwagon.'' And, he said, ''I'm sure there would be at least one person up there'' -- he gestured at the convention center -- ''who will step back and say, 'Have we been totally carried away with what we do?' '' | 1,500 March in Boston To Protest Biotech Food |
1182184_0 | The Rev. Joan A. Mau, 50, is the pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Decorah, Iowa. She is a seventh-generation pastor; her father was general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation. She was interviewed by Gustav Niebuhr. PRIDE is a word I'm reluctant to use, because it's so easily misunderstood. But there's a sense of real satisfaction in being part of a tradition of proclaiming the Gospel. When I think of those brothers of mine in the faith who went before, I'm sure they never dreamed that their great-great-great-great-granddaughter would be following in their footsteps. It's humbling. I was very close to my father and learned from him a great love of the Gospel and the church. And he was certainly very proud of this family tradition that had been passed on from father to son. In 1993, I took a trip to Germany with my father. We went back to Altenkrempe, where the first in the line of preachers was pastor and was buried. To walk into the church and see where my great-great-great-great-grandfather had preached, and who died exactly 200 years before I was ordained -- he died in 1779 and I was ordained in 1979 -- it was very moving. The obvious innovation is that I am the first woman in my family. I was ordained nine years after the Lutheran churches in this country started ordaining women. That is a very new thing. I wish I had a nickel for every person who came up and said, ''I've never seen any of them before.'' There is a strong tradition of German theological rigor in our genes. I remember as a small child loving theology, being fascinated with the theological conversations taking place in my parents' living room with people from all over the world, especially Germans. Because women's experiences are different, we bring a different perspective to the Gospel. It's hard to choose, but one that pops into my head is the story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. She engages Jesus in a theological discussion, and she goes back to the village and proclaims the Gospel. She tells her friends and neighbors about Jesus. It's not just that she did what I do, in that she engaged in theology and proclamation. She's also an example of how Jesus treated women with respect and cared for them; that women are not unclean, | Bringing a Different but Well-Bred Perspective to the Gospel |
1187886_1 | 24 years old. A third of the male participants had been arrested at least once before joining the program; two-thirds of all participants had never held a full-time job. If the Job Corps does not improve the prospects of disadvantaged youths, then less-intensive programs are unlikely to help either. The Job Corps is expensive because 90 percent of students are sent from their neighborhoods to one of 116 residential campuses in 46 states. There they stay for about eight months of academic education, vocational training, counseling, health education and job placement assistance. Students train for jobs in the new and old economy, from Jiffy Lube to Cisco Systems. Mathematica's ''National Job Corps Study'' (www.ttrc.doleta.gov /opr/FULLTEXT/jobcorps/Outcomes/), financed by the Labor Department, presents initial results of the most scientifically rigorous evaluation of the program ever done. Researchers followed 9,409 applicants to the Job Corps between November 1994 and December 1995 who were randomly selected for the program, and another 6,000 applicants who were randomly assigned to a control group that was excluded from the Job Corps services for three years. Applicants were surveyed 12 and 30 months after they applied; almost 80 percent responded. The study compares the self-reported employment, earnings and criminal activity of the participant and control groups in the 30 months after students applied to the program. By the last survey, participants had typically lived on their own, away from the Job Corps, for a year and a half. The participants received about 1,000 more hours of education and job training than members of the control group. For high school dropouts, attending the Job Corps raised the percentage who earned a General Equivalency Development degree to 40 percent from 16 percent. Two and a half years after applying to the Job Corps, the average applicant selected for the program earned 8 percent more each week than the average control group member. Because only three-quarters of the selected applicants actually attended the Job Corps, the Mathematica analysts figured that the program raised the average participant's earnings by 11 percent. This increase is about what labor economists expect for every year of schooling. Program participants also had slightly higher employment rates, average weekly work hours and hourly earnings. For 16- to 17-year-old males -- a group whose prospects are notoriously difficult to improve with other employment training -- earnings increased, according to Peter Z. Schochet, co-author of the study, by an | Economic Scene; A study backs up what George Foreman already said: the Job Corps works. |
1187910_4 | cattle-ranching operation. After exiling the ranchers to Brazil and Venezuela, the army burned every structure to the ground. Looks can be deceiving, though, for while Lethem, and much of Guyana's economy, might show the effects of socialist experiments from the 1960's through the mid-80's, the country has introduced several market-driven initiatives since 1992, when a government was elected that favored opening Guyana to foreign investment. The privatization of companies like Guyana Airways and Guyana Telephone and Telegraph, in addition to awarding concessions to foreign concerns to mine for gold or cut timber, have resulted in inflows of investment from abroad. Another important foreign project, a satellite-launching facility to be operated by Beal Aerospace of Frisco, Tex., near Dallas, which would take advantage of Guyana's location near the Equator, is nearing government approval. From 1993 through 1997, the economy grew for five consecutive years -- more than 40 percent over all -- before contracting slightly in 1998, largely because of falling gold prices. In 1999, the economy grew nearly 3 percent, and this year 5 percent growth is forecast. ''We're making up for lost time,'' Moses Nagamootoo, Guyana's information minister, said in an interview in Georgetown. Indeed, the trappings of a modern economy are more evident in the capital, where cellular phones and sport utility vehicles imported from rich industrial countries are common. In Lethem, by contrast, basic telephone service by satellite hookup was initiated just two years ago. People in the interior use short-wave radios as their main communication tool. ''I can't wait until mobile phone service arrives in Bom Fim,'' Mr. McLachlan said, referring to the Brazilian community across the river from Lethem. ''If towers are installed allowing us to have cells here, I'll be among the first to sign up.'' While Guyana has slowly opened itself to foreign investment, trade with Brazil remains minuscule. Neither Brazil nor Venezuela, Guyana's other big neighbor, is among its leading trading partners -- outranked by such countries as the Netherlands Antilles, Canada, the United States and Japan, according to United States government figures. Not everyone sees sense in this. ''It is retrograde that we don't have more contact with Brazil,'' said Gerald Gouveia, owner of Roraima Airways, whose regular flight between Boa Vista and Georgetown, begun only recently, had to be discontinued for lack of demand. For its part, Brazil, in addition to paving the road to the border, is making overtures | Guyana: Caught in Brazil's Net?; Small Nation, New to Free Markets, Fears Loss of Its Identity |
1187841_1 | continues to grow. Both Ford Motor Company and Delta Airlines recently announced plans to give their employees personal computers and Internet connections at highly subsidized prices. Many companies, like Cisco Systems, already give employees home Internet connections. Some workers are given high-speed service. Others are likely to follow suit. But social scientists and business experts are beginning to revisit some familiar questions: What is the cost to an employee's psychological well being if that employee is constantly within reach? Will a connection from home -- one provided by an employer -- increase the pressure to check in with work during off hours? When is one's own time truly one's own? Throw wireless devices into the mix, and those questions become all the more pressing. Pagers and cell phones and laptop computers with wireless modems are often now packed along with the rest of the vacation gear. Cell phones are a common fixture on tables at restaurants, whether the meal is for business or not. ''People think wireless devices enhance their control over their lives,'' said Arlie Russell Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of ''The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work,'' recently out in paperback (Owl Books). ''I don't think it's clear that that's true. In fact, what you could argue is that you're losing control because it means you're responding to other people's calls.'' Professor Hochschild said she had observed that in places where strangers used to interact with one another -- the hairdresser's, cabs, the grocery store -- people are now busy having cell phone conversations. Peter Huemer is a latter-day Dick Christie. Mr. Huemer, 32, is the proprietor of User-Friendly Computing, a small, successful computer service and installation company in Santa Cruz, Calif. It is the nature of Mr. Huemer's job to have to stay in touch, but even he would admit that in the name of serving his customers, he has taken things to extremes. Not only does Mr. Huemer own both a cell phone and a pager, but they are at his side every minute of every day. He also checks his e-mail compulsively. Mr. Huemer knows that he no longer has a life outside work. While he and his wife, Valerie, a 30-year-old accountant, were in church recently, his pager sounded twice during the sermon. ''It was kind of a large | For the Well Connected, All the World's an Office |
1185997_2 | Another haptics tool, developed by Virtual Technologies, of Palo Alto, Calif., is CyberGlove, which can simulate the weight and even the basic texture of objects in a virtual environment. irtual touch is still in a relatively early stage of development. Work on more advanced systems continues in both universities and private companies. ''Up till now, we were using the visual and auditory channels'' for virtual reality, said Grigore Burdea, a professor at Rutgers University and general chairman of the conference. Dr. Burdea is also developing a haptic glove. ''Now people are realizing that if we open another communications channel, which is haptics, we can do it better and faster. It's not just fast, it's more natural.'' Many applications of virtual reality, like medical training and military applications, greatly benefit from a sense of touch, he said. ''Think about a fighter pilot,'' Dr. Burdea said. ''He's chasing somebody, and he's sensorially overloaded. All his normal communications are saturated. You can tell him anything, he won't hear. You can show him anything, he won't see. But if you can touch him, he'll respond.'' In fact, the military has shown a major interest in haptics development. An Air Force researcher, Daniel Repperger, presented the results of a study that showed that in simulated flight tests, the use of haptic interfaces could reduce crash rates by as much as half in some cases. That bodes well for the military's research on remote-controlled aircraft; from safe locations, pilots will feel turbulence rather than just see it. But for all their promise, haptic systems today are relatively crude, especially when compared with the range of sensations a human body can feel. ''It's not easy,'' Dr. Burdea said. ''The state of technology is so far behind what the human body needs and can do. The skin needs to be tickled hundreds of times per second'' to create a continuous sensation. Motion, on the other hand, can be simulated by showing the eye as few as 15 or 20 picture frames per second. And although advances in computer technology have allowed for the development of more complex visual virtual reality environments, haptic devices remain rudimentary. ''Interfaces tend to be too heavy, too encumbering, too fragile, too difficult to use or too restraining,'' Dr. Burdea said. ''You lose your natural freedom of motion.'' A solution may be to sidestep wearable contraptions and create a direct connection to the brain, | Giving Computers a Sense of Touch |
1186175_0 | A few years ago, black bears had all but disappeared from New Jersey. Now there are so many -- 1,000 -- that yesterday the state's Fish and Game Council proposed a bear hunting season, which would be the first in the state since 1971. Wildlife officials received 1,659 complaints about bears last year, and although no humans have been injured or killed, bears have broken into homes, killed pets and chased children, the state says. ''These safety issues cannot be overlooked, and warrant immediate action,'' said John W. Bradway, the council's chairman. The proposal, which faces a public hearing in June, calls for a bear season starting in September, open to bow-and-arrow and shotgun hunters, with a limit of three bears per hunter per season and a maximum of 350 bears killed. The goal is to reduce the bear population to about 300. The Humane Society of the United States was quick to attack the hunt. ''It's like shooting into a crowd to stop crime,'' said Nina Austenberg, the society's regional director. And she criticized the use of bows and shotguns. ''I can't imagine what's going to happen in terms of incidents with the public if we have bears wandering around with arrows in them.'' | Bear Hunt Is Proposed to Reduce Numbers |
1185980_0 | Among the most revered houses here are the experimental ones by Charles and Ray Eames (left), Richard Neutra (center) and R. M. Schindler (right). They are fragile, having been built with lightweight materials for as little as $7,500 (the Neutra house). It will cost a great deal to guarantee their survival. The Neutra house, which needs $400,000 for restoration, has just been put on the list of the 100 most endangered sites by the World Monuments Fund. April fund-raising benefits include open houses at the Neutra house ($15, 323 953-8400); Eames house seminars ($300, 310 459-9663); and a tour of modern gems including six Schindler houses ($60, 323 651-1510). CURRENTS: LOS ANGELES-- PRESERVATION | Huffing and Puffing to Keep Houses From Falling |
1185994_6 | Education Association in Washington, said schools should prepare for a possible onslaught of a whole new category of computerized gadgets. ''Schools, at some point, are going to have to develop some system for controlling the use of these devices in schools,'' she said, adding that she presumes that someday soon everyone, even students, will have wireless means of communications at their disposal. ''This is the world that they are growing up in,'' Ms. Stein said. Not surprisingly, Marc Rosenberg, vice president for corporate communications at Tiger, is more optimistic about the implications of these devices. ''We are empowering kids with adult tools that really are making their world a lot more relevant,'' he said. ''Why not create something that is affordable and applicable to their lives?'' Another Tiger device called Lightning Mail is scheduled for release in September and is expected to cost $60. Lightning Mail, the size of a pocket calculator, is capable of wirelessly sending and receiving text messages up to 50 feet. And when the same device is plugged into a standard telephone jack, it can send and receive e-mail to and from anywhere in the world. Similarly, another child-friendly device, the Chat@ message system, can transmit messages wirelessly and, through a toll-free number, can also send and receive e-mail messages. (There are also a number of e-mail-only devices on the market that do not require the use of a personal computer. But most of those devices are intended for home use and cost considerably more than the new devices aimed at the children's market.) Tiger's Lightning Mail comes loaded with software from NetZero, a free e-mail service, so Lightning Mail can handle e-mail without the user having to pay a monthly fee, Mr. Rosenberg said. Even in the toy industry, these devices have their critics. Kenn Viselman, founder of Itsy Bitsy Entertainment, a New York-based company that licenses things like the Teletubbies to toy makers, urged caution for parents who want to wire their children with the latest technologies. ''I think too many of us use technology as a means of saying, 'I love you,' '' Mr. Viselman said. ''I have a real problem with it.'' While some of the toys Mr. Viselman has licensed, like the talking Teletubbies, use electronic components, he said he favored toys that do less so children are required to do more -- like using their imaginations. What's wrong, he said, | Out of the Mouths of Babes: Wirelessly |
1187576_4 | $60,000.'' What these new businesses seem to be discovering, consultants and scholars say, is the importance of human interactions in business relationships and the need to understand how those relationships work in particular industries. ''Auctions, for example, create a false sense of urgency by leaving no time for discussion,'' said John R. Coleman, a founding partner and president of VIA Inc., in Portland, Me. The firm specializes in marketing and Internet strategies for eSprocket, among others. ''But in something like used capital equipment, you need a site that allows initial contacts to happen and negotiations to take place -- and not just through the Internet.'' Mr. Coleman has discovered empirically what Kathleen L. Valley, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, has shown experimentally. ''We found that e-mail transactions and negotiations are most successful when the parties have a pre-existing relationship,'' Professor Valley said. Even then, Internet communication has limitations. Because of the volume of exchanges these days, she said, e-mail puts a premium on saving time and money by keeping messages short and succinct ''with no social greasing of verbal interactions.'' ''But our research also found that the norm in e-mail exchanges, anyway, is to not share information,'' she said. ''It seems that there is very little trust.'' With good reason. ''Whatever information is shared electronically is much more likely to be altered in some way,'' Professor Valley said. ''People tend to shade and misrepresent more readily, even though e-mail is a written record.'' Nor are Web sites and e-mail exchanges the best avenues for negotiated deals, even among parties who enjoy longstanding relationships. Professor Valley has found that when people meet face to face, the impetus is to come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Telephone conversations resulted most often in lopsided deals. ''Surprisingly,'' she said, ''callers tended to assume that listeners could not detect a lie, while listeners assumed that they were hearing truths.'' But e-mail exchanges most often resulted in impasse, and often with increased anger leading to a cutoff of communications, she said. Professor Valley's advice to business executives? ''Appreciate electronic exchanges for allowing you to stay in touch: you can communicate any time with anyone, inexpensively and efficiently. But spend time sharing with customers and business partners the kind of social information that develops trust. And when it comes to the clinch, meet with the other person, or pick up the phone.'' BUSINESS TO BUSINESS | On the Global, Faceless Web, Trust Counts for Even More |
1187664_3 | (NYT) ROMANIA: NEW POLLUTION -- Three weeks after a major heavy metal spill, a new breach in an earthen wall under repair let small amounts of lead-laden water flow down the Tisza River. The environment ministry, in a report, blamed both rainy weather and shoddy work at the Baia Borsa mine. On March 10, 20,000 tons of heavy metal flowed down the river after a serious breach of the waste pond's wall. Donald G. McNeil Jr. (NYT) THE AMERICAS MEXICO: KEY AIDE HELD -- Cuauhtemoc Herrera Suastegui, a former senior aide to the attorney general who survived an assassination attempt last week, was put under house arrest as authorities investigated his suspected ties to drug traffickers. American officials identified Mr. Herrera as a security risk after he failed a 1998 lie detector test, but he kept his antinarcotics job until January. Sam Dillon (NYT) CANADA: LANGUAGE OUTRAGE -- Quebec has reacted with outrage to an Air France decision to force its pilots to speak English to air traffic controllers in Paris. ''The imperialism of the English language must know its limits somewhere,'' said Louise Beaudoin, Quebec's international affairs and French language minister. James Brooke (NYT) ASIA JAPAN: NUCLEAR SHUTDOWN -- In the first action of its kind, the operating license of a uranium processing plant that was involved in Japan's worst nuclear accident was withdrawn by the government. The science and technology agency said the plant's operator had demonstrated grave negligence, leading to an accident in September in which one person was killed and at least 440 others were exposed to radiation. Howard W. French (NYT) AFGHANISTAN: OPPOSITION FIGURE HUNTED -- Taliban officials say a key opposition leader, Ismail Khan, left, who escaped from prison on Sunday, is still in the area around Kandahar. An intensive manhunt is under way. The Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has promised a big reward for information leading to Mr. Khan's arrest. Barry Bearak (NYT) AFRICA RWANDA: KAGAME IMPLICATED -- The United Nations has acknowledged receiving a memo in 1997 from an investigator for the inspector general's office saying he had been told that Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, ordered the shooting down of the Hutu president's plane in April 1994, setting off massacres of Tutsi. The accusation, sent to the Rwanda war crimes tribunal in Tanzania, has been denied by Rwanda. Mr. Kagame is now defense minister and vice president. Barbara Crossette (NYT) | World Briefing |
1187580_0 | BUSINESSES have discovered the power of the Internet for communicating with employees and customers quickly through e-mail or a Web site. Buying automobile parts, selling books or arranging vacations can also be done efficiently online. Nonprofit organizations should find the Internet just as appealing. What better way to reach like-minded advocates, donors and volunteers or to coordinate services? The desire is there, but most nonprofit groups have been slow to pursue it. There are exceptions, most notably the American Red Cross, which is planning to develop an online system for its blood banks; and America's Second Harvest is using the Internet to distribute food more efficiently. But the vast majority of charitable organizations, while starting to raise money on their sites, have been hindered by a lack of money, time, workers and technological savvy. ''One of the struggles we have had for a long time is that nonprofits are late adopters in terms of technology,'' said Ken Goldstein, the director of online community development for HandsNet, a San Jose, Calif., group that advises human-service organizations about technology. Mr. Goldstein is convinced these groups need to make more use of the Internet, and argues that being online is becoming akin to being listed in the telephone directory. Most nonprofit groups have a long way to go. Catholic Charities USA, for example, is the largest private network of social service agencies in the United States. The charity, located in Alexandria, Va., works with up to 144 major agencies across the country. But only a third of those agencies have Web sites. ''This is still an area where we are trying to bring them along,'' said Jo-Ann Leitch, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities. ''It's not where they spend a lot of their money.'' Those furthest behind are the thousands of organizations with small budgets and limited expertise. ''Most nonprofits are small, and most small organizations are not networked,'' explained Anthony Wilhelm, the program director for communications policy for the Benton Foundation in Washington, which is active in helping nonprofit organizations make full use of technology. Many are unable even to use e-mail. Most of the current enthusiasm for the Web to date has focused on fund-raising. Many charities' sites allow people to make donations online. The American Red Cross has had significant success using its site to raise funds. Last year, in response to the war in Kosovo, the charity raised $1.2 million | Charities See Web's Potential, but Are Finding It Hard to Afford |
1186350_0 | To the Editor: The biotech industry and supporters like Paul Krugman (column, March 22) cling to the emotionally compelling claim that genetically engineered crops will usher in an era of sustainable agriculture and end hunger. But the first crops off the biotech assembly line, like insecticide-producing or herbicide-resistant varieties, are just an extension of the prevailing agricultural model that emphasizes chemical-based pest control and keeps farmers vulnerable to pesticide resistance. The industry has focused its immense pool of investment on products designed for farmers of the first world, which are of little relevance to poor subsistence farmers. The search for a biotech fix for hunger distracts attention from hunger's underlying causes and alternative interventions that might be more appropriate. BRIAN HALWEIL Washington, March 22, 2000 The writer is a staff researcher at Worldwatch Institute. | The Battle Lines Over Biotech Food |
1181708_4 | similar indifference. Both events serve the single narrative purpose of bringing Tom and Sarah together, though their connection seems to be more a matter of theological convenience than of romantic sympathy or sexual attraction. That, after all, would be mere behavior, and ''City of God'' is demonstratively committed to thought, both as a subject and as a mode of literary experience. The chief pleasures it offers are the pleasures of the mind. Doctorow is at least as well read as his characters, who cite Elaine Pagels on the Gnostic gospels, James Kugel on the textual history of the Hebrew Bible and Paul Tillich on ''the country of ultimate concern.'' His best passages illuminate the thorny paradoxes of modern science and philosophy with felicity and brio. But readers may find themselves thinking, most of all, of other recent fiction. The mini-movies within the novel have some of the MRated PG-13bius-strip irony of Borges or early Paul Auster. The character of Wittgenstein, with his prickly sensitivity and his eccentric passion for cinema, seems to have been summoned not from the spiritual ether but from ''The World as I Found It,'' Bruce Duffy's rather Doctorovian fictional treatment of the early-20th-century Cambridge philosophy scene. Sarah's father's reminiscences of life in the Jewish ghetto of Kovno, as filtered through Everett's prose, resonate with the sorrowful stoicism of an Aharon Appelfeld novel. Tom Pemberton, meanwhile, with his doughty liberal Protestant anxiety and his covetous regard for other men's wives, has emigrated to Doctorow's New York from a John Updike suburb. (The link between the loss of religious faith and the hegemony of movies is also an Updikean theme, explored most recently in the first section of ''In the Beauty of the Lilies,'' which is, come to think of it, Updike's attempt to rewrite ''Ragtime.'') And the self-doubling, unreliable narrator, Everett or Edgar, might be a distant cousin of Nathan Zuckerman -- I mean Philip Roth. ''You write well enough,'' Tom remarks to Everett at their first meeting, ''but no writer can reproduce the actual texture of living life.'' He may be right, but Doctorow, who is unequaled in his ability to breathe life into the inert images and fading monuments of the past, hasn't bothered to try. Anyone who has read ''The Waterworks,'' or who recalls Doctorow's appearances in Ric Burns's recent PBS documentary on New York, will be amazed at how little of the city | A Thinking Man's Miracle |
1181352_4 | video screen. After the sorting is finished late this spring, Dr. Agelarakis will try to determine the minimum number of individuals. Then he will probe their skeletal growth, checking whether their physiques were robust or fragile and looking for clues of occupational stress, like changes in the heel bone that might indicate frequent mounting and dismounting of horses. Growing up in Greece, Dr. Agalarakis was torn between a desire to study medicine and his love for the classics. It was at a university in Sweden, working under some of the pioneers of the study of human cremations, and at Columbia University, where he got his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1989, that he learned to combine his two passions as a forensic anthropologist. His expertise also includes osteology, the study of bones. He has been a paleopathologist, studying the diseases that affected human beings in antiquity, for nearly two decades. Until he filled the position for a physical anthropologist at Adelphi in 1990, it had been held by adjuncts for years, Dr. Agelarakis said. Under his tutelage, 37 undergraduates -- most of whom are not anthropology majors -- have been nationally recognized for their research in forensics and physical anthropology. The key to their success, he said, is fieldwork. Summers, he works alongside his charges at archaeological digs in Greece, Cyprus and Israel. But he is on sabbatical from teaching forensics, forensic anthropology, epidemiology and disease, human skeletal anatomy, paleopathology, evolution and archaeology to work on the Athenian project. Dr. Agelarakis said he should be able to determine whether the men were young, middle or older adults. Traumatic conditions, like broken bones, should be discernible, as well as infectious diseases that may have affected their bones. In one batch, he has already found a vertebra that was hit by a bronze arrow. The victim survived, he said, though the circumstances surrounding his wound will always be a mystery. Further analysis -- including X-rays of pathological samples, CAT scans and electron microscopy -- may provide insight on diet, revealing trace elements, like the glaze of a ceramic vase they were drinking or eating from, that may have been ingested. And he will run tests to find out how much the remains were thermally altered. But a more comprehensive portrait of Pericles' soldiers' lives will emerge when the data Dr. Agelarakis compiles is synthesized with the artifacts found alongside the bodies. The pottery, | On the Trail of Pericles' Heroic Soldiers |
1181492_3 | The most prominent investments are in biotechnology. The fund, for example, owns about 5 percent of York Medical, a private company in Toronto that tests and licenses Cuban medical breakthroughs like a promising anticancer vaccine. Beta is traded on the Dublin Stock Exchange, but can also be bought through Cedel, a European clearing house. Shares traded recently at 4.75 Swiss francs. Mr. Scott said he did not know if Americans participate because he never asks investors to identify themselves. ''In theory, we care if Americans are involved,'' he said. ''But in practice, we're not going to know anyway.'' ONE way around the regulatory morass could be the closed-end Herzfeld Caribbean Basin fund (ticker symbol: CUBA), which has about $9.8 million invested in companies outside Cuba, many of which would benefit from Mr. Castro's fall. The fund returned 22.9 percent last year, and closed at $5.125 on Friday, off 4.7 percent for the year to date. The fund's top holding is Florida East Coast Industries, which runs a railroad from Miami to Jacksonville. Thomas J. Herzfeld, the fund's manager, says that if the embargo is lifted, the railroad would be used to haul goods shipped to and from Cuba. Its stock closed at $40.75 on Friday, off 20 percent from its January high. There's even a speculative Cuban bond play. Mr. Herzfeld's fund holds $165,000 in face amount of Cuba's sovereign debt, known as ''Batista bonds.'' Mr. Herzfeld bought them for $63,000 in 1995 and said they could be worth as much as $291,000, including interest, if paid in full. (The bonds are now valued at zero.) Americans eager for a piece of Cuba can also invest in companies that stand to benefit if the government pays off its debts. The ITT Corporation used to own the Cuban telephone system. When ITT split into three companies in the 1990's, each inherited part of a $130 million-plus-interest claim on property confiscated by the Castro regime. The Italian company that now runs the Cuban telephone system is paying ITT's successors a total of $30 million over 10 years for the right to temporarily use the confiscated property. If the claim is ever settled, the smallest of ITT's offspring, ITT Educational Services, with a market capitalization of $361.5 million, could see a modest bump up in its shares. INVESTING Correction: March 12, 2000, Sunday An article last Sunday about the prospects for investing in | Finding Ways to Dabble in Cuba, Legally |
1181497_3 | loves photography. ''Radio is a powerful medium,'' he said. ''You draw word pictures, but you don't feel the visual side of your brain is working.'' He had warned me that he had to squeeze in a quick radio interview, and we headed downtown to the Municipal Building. ''I shouldn't be so cavalier about live radio, but I just have faith and it works out,'' he said as, barely in time, we hurried into the offices of WNYC, the public radio station that carries his program on weekdays (6:30 p.m. on FM and 7 p.m. on AM). It's a jumbled warren of rooms, recording equipment seemingly perched haphazardly against one wall, a box of ''Morning Edition'' mugs nestled against a table, a couple of black-and-gray ''Marketplace'' mugs on a shelf. His interview, with Northeast Public Radio, was by telephone, and he got on the line, looked up and whispered with relief, ''Two minutes.'' Wait a second, I thought. He's doing a phone interview? We raced down here, slogged through the building's metal detectors and negotiated a labyrinth of elevators -- to get to a phone? Are there no other phones in this city? This, I realized, is a true radio guy. He looked coiled, primed to pour forth market wisdom and promote the book, his first. Soon he was on live, and the mantras tumbled out: ''It's a personal finance book for people whose SAT verbal is higher than their SAT math.'' ''Before you ask for investment advice, find out what kind of car the person drives. I ride a bike to work.'' ''We are anthropologists of the business beat.'' Asked about the book's cover (he is shown tossing a bill out of a car), he said: ''I work for public radio. That's a $1 bill.'' He had warned me that one bane of his existence was being asked investment advice, and when listener call-in time came, he covered the phone and said, ''I know just what they're going to ask: 'I have this fund, and . . .' '' Sure enough, that's what the first question was. One place he had visited in preparing for the book was the New York Stock Exchange, and we headed there next. Standing amid a scattering of badged traders on smoking breaks, Mr. Brancaccio recalled his earlier visit, when ''one guy came out holding his half-eaten lunch and a copy of 'The Art of | Squandering A Bundle, In His Mind |
1181262_2 | Ingrid Nygaard, co-authors of ''Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time,'' this regulation is only halfheartedly enforced. Professionals and, of course, waitresses can usually dart away and relieve themselves as they please. Not so for many cashiers and assembly-line workers, some of whom, Linder says, have taken to wearing adult diapers to work. In the area of privacy rights, workers have actually lost ground in recent years. Here, too, the base line is not impressive -- no comprehensive right to personal privacy on the job has ever been established. I learned this on my first day as a waitress, when my fellow workers warned me that my purse could be searched by management at any time. I wasn't carrying stolen salt shakers or anything else of a compromising nature, but there's something about the prospect of a purse search that makes a woman feel a few buttons short of fully dressed. After work, I called around and found that this, too, is generally legal, at least if the boss has reasonable cause and has given prior notification of the company's search policies. Purse searches, though, are relatively innocuous compared with the sophisticated chemical and electronic forms of snooping adopted by many companies in the 90's. The American Management Association reports that in 1999 a record two-thirds of major American companies monitored their employees electronically: videotaping them; reviewing their e-mail and voice-mail messages; and, most recently, according to Lewis Maltby, president of the Princeton-based National Workrights Institute, monitoring any Web sites they may visit on their lunch breaks. Nor can you count on keeping anything hidden in your genes; a growing number of employers now use genetic testing to screen out job applicants who carry genes for expensive ailments like Huntington's disease. But the most ubiquitous invasion of privacy is drug testing, usually of urine, more rarely of hair or blood. With 81 percent of large companies now requiring some form of drug testing -- up from 21 percent in 1987 -- job applicants take it for granted that they'll have to provide a urine sample as well as a resume. This is not restricted to ''for cause'' testing -- of people who, say, nod or space out on the job. Nor is it restricted to employees in ''safety-sensitive occupations,'' like airline pilots and school-bus drivers. Workers who stack boxes of Cheerios in my local | Warning: This Is a Rights-Free Workplace |
1181640_0 | The Department of Agriculture is announcing much tougher rules that prohibit the use of genetically modified ingredients in products carrying the organic label. The rules also prohibit the use of irradiation to decontaminate the products and the application of sewage sludge as fertilizer. The new rules, which could take effect by the end of the year, address concerns about the three processes, which were widely opposed in 1997. That was the last time the agency tried to define and regulate organic food. The policies indicate an about-face in the agency's attitude on organic farming and represent one of several steps it is taking to help small and medium-sized farmers, who have received comparatively little attention from the agency for decades. The national standards could also help American producers sell organic food abroad, where there has been substantial opposition to the use of genetically modified crops and other new food technologies. Article, Page 22. | Strict Rules to Limit Genetic Engineering On Organic Foods |
1181603_0 | In this pleasant coastal community, a place of lush golf resorts and second homes, there is little to evoke Rwanda, a densely populated East African nation, the site of a devastating ethnic conflict in 1994. But the two places have a link, a spiritual one, which became abruptly apparent a month ago in an event that sent shock waves among the world's Anglican churches, whose 73 million members include those in the Episcopal Church in the United States. The Rev. Charles H. Murphy III, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, whose stately campus here occupies a swath of land near the Waccamaw River, was consecrated a bishop by the head of the Anglican Province of Rwanda. In the same ceremony, which took place in Singapore, another Episcopal priest, the Rev. John H. Rodgers Jr., retired dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa., was also consecrated a bishop, under the authority of the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia. Within days, both men returned to the United States, with plans to minister to conservatives in the Episcopal Church who feel alienated from the church's leadership. The ceremony, held with no warning to Episcopal Church leaders, vividly showed an unusual alliance that has developed between conservative Episcopalians in the United States and the like-minded heads of some Anglican churches overseas, who share a perception that the Episcopal Church has come to rely less on Scripture than on ideas from secular American culture, especially on issues of sexuality. ''There is a crisis of leadership in the American church,'' Bishop Murphy said in an interview here, a few hours before he was to fly to Rwanda, for a meeting with his new boss, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini. While there are divisive debates within the Episcopal Church over such questions as whether to ordain gay men and lesbians as priests, Bishop Murphy said, ''Human sexuality issues are a symptom of the problem.'' Some conservative congregations in this country have already requested his ''oversight'' as a bishop, he said. But, he added, Archbishop Kolini asked that he take no action now, and instead wait for guidance after the heads of the 38 Anglican church provinces worldwide hold a meeting in Portugal on March 23. Still, for the heads of two of those provinces to create bishops to minister within the areas of sister churches, as happened in Singapore on Jan. 29, is remarkable. In secular | Consecration of Two Splits Anglicans |
1181421_1 | that's a very guilt-making feeling to admit it.'' Jack is in his late 60's. Cared for by their mother until the age of 37, he has been living since then in a group home in Florida where Mrs. McHugh visits him regularly for trips to places like Disney World. But getting to where she is now -- a place of acceptance and love -- was a long and difficult passage, made more meaningful by raising her own child with a disability, which helped Mrs. McHugh understand and appreciate what her own mother had gone through. Mrs. McHugh, a former editor and the author of seven books, shares her thoughts in ''Special Siblings: Growing Up with Someone With a Disability,'' (Hyperion, 1999) a memoir and guide for other siblings of people with disabilities. ''I wanted to make a point that not only are the people with disabilities special siblings,'' she said, ''but I also wanted to point out that the other siblings in the family, the healthy siblings, are also special because they grow up perhaps with a better understanding of what the child with the disability is going through, even more than the parents sometimes.'' For her book, she interviewed more than a hundred people, including psychologists and other experts -- but also many siblings like herself, and tells their stories too. In talking to them she concluded that they shared many characteristics, including championing the underdog, that often lead siblings to go into the helping professions. ''It turns out that siblings of people with disabilities have an extra dimension, compassion and tolerance for people, a way of looking at the world,'' she says. ''They see beyond the appearance of the person, like skin color, and go to the heart of the person.'' Don Meyer, director of the Sibling Support Project at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, which claims to be the only national project dedicated to the concerns of more than five million siblings of people with special health and developmental needs, said Mrs. McHugh's book is the first on the subject by a sibling of a disabled person to be published by a mainstream press. ''She's just good people,'' Mr. Meyer said in a telephone interview. ''What really impressed me about her book is that she doesn't shy away from the troubling aspects that many brothers and sisters of people with special needs grow up | Her Brother's Keeper |
1181287_2 | Eastern Region conference in Atlantic City. So I was running all over the Philadelphia train station. I found a great peach cobbler. In fact, they have a wonderful soul food place if you're ever there. I got fish and some sweet potatoes too. Chuck likes sweet potatoes. I told him it may not have been home-cooked, but it was homemade love. Do you take a lot of work home? No, I try not to. I do a lot of my reading in the car or on planes, though. What about e-mail. Do you use it much? I don't do as much by e-mail; I'm not here enough to do it. I get my e-mails printed out and I read them. But I'm very big on talking on the phone. I'm still an old-fashioned techy. I hear you're the queen of multitasking. What's your all-time best combo? I hate that whole term. I always say it's not multitasking; it's simultaneous management. Like when I had my photo taken I was also getting a briefing on our new Youth Opportunity ad and running through a speech in my mind. Also, I'm a phone snacker. While I'm on the phone, I'm always signing papers and eating grapes or pineapple chunks. You must have to choose quiet foods. Right. Cherries in season are good, too, so you can get in your nutrients at the same time. What was the worst job you ever had? I have never had a bad job. And I've done everything. I cleaned houses to help put myself through school. I've been a telephone operator. I was a camp counselor, teacher's aide, social worker, adoption counselor. My work has always been a source of fulfillment. There's a wonderful line in ''The Prophet'' that says work is love made visible, and I believe that. Even when you were cleaning houses? Yeah, because I like the people I was working for. There are different ways you get gratification for work, and sometimes in the simplest of jobs it's the people you come in contact with. When I was a telephone operator, for example. For some people that might have been repetitive, but you meet some interesting people over the phone. So, are you ever going to get a honeymoon? That's a goal. Now whether it will really happen, I don't know. But we do have time set aside for it. Melinda Henneberger | The Way We Work Now: 3-5-00: Questions for Alexis M. Herman; Married to the Job |
1181387_2 | is exactly what happened, and has continued to create a public relations nightmare for his new employer. It would seem that Josef Mengele rather than Dr. Singer -- the grandson of Holocaust victims himself -- was being described by the shrieking headlines: ''Philosophy of Death'' (The Washington Post), ''The Dangerous Philosopher'' (The New Yorker), ''Singer's Final Solution'' (U.S. News & World Report) and ''Dangerous Words'' (Princeton Alumni Weekly). Indeed, Princeton is so wary of attention that its chief spokesman, Justin Harmon, tries to shoo away reporters at the mere mention of Peter Singer. The controversy reached its height at Princeton last September when the billionaire publisher Steve Forbes -- a university trustee and alumnus who at the time was seeking the Republican presidential nomination -- announced during an anti-Singer rally that he would cut off all his contributions to Princeton until the philosopher left. With equal vehemence, Princeton's trustees responded by defending the appointment in terms of academic freedom. ''The university does not take positions or alter positions because of the flow of contributions or the threat of cutting them off,'' said Robert Rawson, chairman of the executive committee for the university's board of trustees. All this fuss over a philosopher? Certainly, over the millennia, people like Socrates, Machiavelli, Adam Smith and Karl Marx have argued the fundamental questions of human life, stated their ideas boldly -- and changed the world. But in the 20th century, academic philosophers have largely quibbled over abstract -- even sterile -- intellectual inquiries. In epistemology, for example, the branch of philosophy concerned with the underpinnings of knowledge, questions like, ''How do we know that there is really a table in this room?'' can be, and are, debated endlessly. Peter Singer has never had a lot of patience for such discussions, especially when millions of people are dying all over the world. ''There's no amount of argument that would make a difference to our lives if we can't be sure that there's a table between us now,'' he said. His impatience with such inquiries has not only fueled a spectacular career, but has actually changed the questions being asked in ivory towers. He made his mark as a 25-year-old philosopher with two academic articles, both of which appeared in 1972. ''Moral Experts'' took the view -- considered quite radical at the time -- that moral philosophers ought to get into the nitty gritty of defining | Peter Singer Settles In, And Princeton Looks Deeper; Furor Over the Philosopher Fades Though Some Discomfort Lingers |
1189864_0 | Hollywood, Back When . . ''My mother was great friends with your mother,'' Leatrice Gilbert Fountain told Budd Schulberg as they shook hands in a suite at the Drake Hotel in Manhattan. The occasion was the annual New York visit of the Turner Classic Movies Archival Project, an ongoing initiative of the cable channel to interview every available witness to the golden age of American film Ms. Fountain, who is the daughter of the silent film stars John Gilbert and Leatrice Joy, and Mr. Schulberg had never met, though both grew up in the same small town that was Hollywood in the 1920's and 30's. Mr. Schulberg, apart from being the author of ''What Makes Sammy Run?'' and the screenplay of ''On the Waterfront,'' is the son of the early Paramount boss B. P. Schulberg and the literary agent Ad Schulberg. It was the sort of encounter that makes the archival project particularly rewarding, said Tom Karsch, TCM's general manager. ''Out of everything we do, I am most proud of this, because if Matisse were alive or Degas, you'd want to talk to them.'' During a three-day marathon last week, the TCM crew, led by the producer-interviewers Alexa Foreman and Maureen Corley, conducted 13 hourlong interviews with the likes of Jason Robards, Jane Powell and Sheila MacRae. Shot on 16-millimeter film, the interviews will be used as lead-ins to feature presentations on TCM or incorporated into profiles. ''My favorite thing about the project is the feeling that it's old home week,'' said Darcy Hettrich, the project's director of talent. ''People end up seeing people they haven't seen in a while.'' On camera, Mr. Schulberg talked about his childhood in a household where Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier would compete for attention at parties. His interview concluded, Mr. Schulberg expressed regret that he didn't have time to talk about Marshall (Mickey) Neilan, a dashing figure who directed many of Mary Pickford's early hits, fell on hard times in the 30's and made his last appearance, shortly before he died, in a supporting role in Mr. Schulberg's 1957 ''A Face in the Crowd.'' ''Mickey Neilan was a great example of the passing seasons of success, of how fast people could go up and down that roller coaster. I saw him at the height of his fame, as a 14- or 15-year-old on my bicycle, cruising Wilshire Boulevard. There were two white Packard | AT THE MOVIES |
1194751_1 | brick-and-glass complex with 921 rental apartments. And there are a half-dozen other residential or commercial projects planned along 42nd Street at every intersection from 12th to Eighth Avenues. Behind the shift is the rapid expansion in recent years of Wall Street, communications and dot-com technology firms, all of which have gobbled up much of the available office space in Midtown and have pushed into more industrial areas like the garment district and the far West Side of Manhattan. As a result, the Midtown vacancy rate has dropped below 6 percent and developers are building where no corporate tenants could be found a few years ago. That trend, developers say, is also increasing demand for housing nearby. ''For decades, developers and city planners have struggled to extend the boundaries of development from east to west along 42nd Street,'' said Ross Moskowitz, a real estate lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who is a former city economic development official. ''The biggest hurdle was crossing Sixth Avenue. Despite the naysayers and false starts, it finally appears that the two-mile stretch from river to river will be anchored at both ends.'' Mr. Demchick, whose company owns 3.5 million square feet of office and retail properties, as well as 5,000 apartments, bought the property on 42nd Street nearly two years ago and, until two weeks ago, had planned to build a 49-story, glass-walled condominium. But Mr. Demchick's company is used to holding on to property, not selling it. After talking with Mary Ann Tighe, vice chairwoman of Insignia/ESG, a commercial broker, Mr. Demchick said he became convinced that Carlyle could quickly build an office tower on the same site with the large floors and fiber-optic lines that would attract the corporate tenants that can no longer find adequate space in Midtown. While average rents have crept above $50 a square foot a year, he said that he could offer space in a new building for $45. ''I'd like to say that we're smart, but it's really market driven,'' said Mr. Demchick, whose partner in the project is the Feinberg real estate family. ''I don't want to be out there selling apples when people are buying pears.'' The demand for office space is so strong today that Mr. Silverstein is also considering building an office tower on his site between 11th and 12th Avenues, instead of a second 40-story apartment house. At the southwest corner | Once Scorned, Far West 42nd St. Is Now Much in Demand |
1191804_3 | that China needs to do.'' With the census approaching, top government officials and the state news media are all clearly anxious about a simmering rural population problem. Last month, President Jiang Zemin called on cadres to ''strengthen population and family planning work,'' to achieve a stable, low-level birthrate. ''They must establish an attitude of protracted war,'' he said. At the same time, the Central Party Discipline Inspection Committee of Guangdong issued a warning that ''certain local leaders'' had ''not grasped family planning work, or muddled through it, or even fiddled with and faked numbers to win merit.'' To prove its point, it highlighted Guangdong's Tanba township for failing to report more than 2,000 births. In Tanba's Xin village, nearly 80 percent of women had three or more children, including 21 of the 25 married members of the local Communist Party cell. ''The population is seriously out of control,'' the report said. China's family planning system, which carries out the country's 20-year-old one-child policy, has been generally effective at controlling population, dropping the average number of children per woman to 1.8 today from 5.8 in 1970, according to official statistics. The population is growing by about 10 million a year. On paper, the system allows urban residents one child, and rural residents a second if the first was a girl. Members of China's minorities also may have two, and three in some western regions. In China's large cities, the policy is strictly enforced, but in the countryside there is tremendous variation. In Beijing, just one-tenth of 1 percent of newborns were third or later children in 1997, according to the commission's estimates. But in provinces where large families are preferred, the percentages are much higher. In Guangdong, the number of babies who were born third or later was 6.4 percent, in Hainan Province it was 15.5 percent and in Ningxia Province it was 10.2 percent. Almost all of those births are illegal. And most demographers assume that these and other official statistics drastically understate the population problem because family planning regulations give Chinese a powerful incentive to conceal excess births. At an international conference in Beijing in 1997, many academics assumed that the average number of children per women was 2.1 and some as high as 2.6, virtually ignoring the official 1.8 figure. In rural China, every large family makes its separate peace with the local family planning system. Those who | Rural Flouting of One-Child Policy Undercuts China's Census |
1191747_0 | SUGAR CLIMBS. Sugar rose as Brazil, the world's biggest grower, withheld supplies from the world market to lift prices. In New York, sugar for July delivery rose 0.18 cent, or 3 percent, to 6.21 cents a pound. | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES |
1193154_0 | Step into a confessional booth to unburden yourself and you will talk to a man. But while the Roman Catholic Church still requires that its leaders be male, most other religious groups in the United States have flung their doors open to women. The percentage of women in the clergy almost tripled from 1983 to 1999. Their enrollment in Master of Divinity programs has risen even more sharply. In 1972, according to the Association of Theological Schools, about 1,000 women, representing less than 5 percent of the students, were enrolled in such programs. By 1998, there were almost 9,000 women, or about 30 percent of the total. There have been other demographic shifts in divinity schools, according to Eileen Lindner, associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches. The average age of divinity students has risen from the mid-20's in the early 1970's to the mid-30's today as more people have decided to go into the clergy as a second career or after retirement. The Catholic Church has also made some changes. Recognizing that fewer people are willing to take vows of celibacy, the church has created more positions for deacons, who have many of the same responsibilities as priests but are allowed to marry and have children. DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN TRENDS | Many Are Called, and More Than a Few Are Women |
1193014_0 | Last year, Our Lady Help of Christians, a Roman Catholic church in Newton, Mass., was host to 155 baptisms, 110 funerals and more weddings -- 96 -- than any other church in the Boston Archdiocese. Add in the Masses, support-group sessions, prayer meetings and school plays and scheduling becomes an administrative juggling act. Clearly, Mary Ellen Cocks, a pastoral associate who was sitting at a 7:45 a.m. parish staff meeting recently, had reason for distress when a colleague violated the sanctity of the schedule book. ''I was not happy when I saw a 9 o'clock funeral written in after we put in for a 9:30 rehearsal,'' she said sternly, sending the hint of a glare across the conference-room table. Luckily, the funeral reservation had been made for a contingency, not an actual event, so she added, ''I'm just praying that nobody dies.'' Like most of her colleagues at the table, Ms. Cocks is not ordained, but she takes her job seriously. She is one of nine full-time, nonclergy employees who run the business side of Our Lady's, as parishioners call it. Churches are first and foremost houses of worship, of course, but they are workplaces, too, and together they make up a pretty big economic sector. The 352,000 full-time clergy in the United States, for example, outnumber the nation's 266,000 psychologists and 310,000 bartenders. Add all the lay people who work full-time or part-time in churches, synagogues and mosques, from music directors to secretaries and janitors, and the religious work force probably surpasses one million. And to make all the religious events happen, they have to do what people in any other businesses do: hold meetings, write memorandums, resolve conflicts, plan budgets, meet deadlines, hire and fire people and deal with grumpy bosses. As the early morning conference at Our Lady's shows, the Catholic Church is responding to a worsening shortage of priests and nuns by recruiting people from the secular world. More lay people than seminarians are now seeking degrees in Catholic ministry, said Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame. ''It's very difficult to run a modern parish without a specialized core of pastoral ministers,'' he said. ''Some will be business managers and keep the books and worry about the physical plant. Others will be specialists in religious education.'' The Rev. Walter Cuenin had two assistant | Those Who Do Their Jobs Religiously |
1192993_0 | My grandfather was a master builder in Italy. My father trained under him. I was trained in the Old World sense of how buildings stand up, how materials interact. From the time I was 5, I was learning how to read and understand blueprints, how to appreciate the inherent characteristics of natural materials. Wood and stone need to breathe, almost like living things. I help religious institutions restore what's already there; I don't design anything new. Contractors do the actual physical work, but I'm on-site to help monitor the quality of work. I work primarily in New York City at places like the Friends Meeting House, the Trinity Baptist Church and the Judson Memorial Church. I did some consulting for the Central Synagogue some years ago, before it was badly damaged in a fire in 1998. Often I'm in parts of buildings, like bell towers, where nobody's been for 25 years or more. In many religious institutions, everything is done by committee. The people who serve on these boards with the clergy are volunteers. I have to educate them about budgeting, accounting strategy and planning. They could be sitting in a building that's falling down around them and not be able to make a decision. My job is to get them organized internally and help them get started. Sometimes people call me in for one problem and I find out it's something else. Generally I insist on looking at the whole building. If I find a problem with the tower, for instance, and the stained-glass window needs restoration, too, I might suggest putting up the scaffolding around the window first so the parishioners will get excited about the most visible work. It helps with fund-raising. Many of my projects can take 10 years. Some of them are multimillion-dollar programs. We'll do top-priority projects and then the religious institution may run out of money. They'll call back in a couple of years, and we'll do the next step. I've been working on St. Michael's Episcopal Church since 1991. They had no idea what the problems were when they called me in. They needed extensive masonry and roofing replacement, and the carillon, the set of bells in the tower, had to be reinforced and rehung. At the First Presbyterian Church of New York, on 12th Street and Fifth Avenue, we had the entire top of the tower disassembled and spread out on | The Approach Is Holistic; The Sites, Holy |
1191567_0 | Next week marks the first anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., which left 15 dead and 23 wounded. The massacre, carried out by two Columbine students, generated intense debate about access to guns, the effect of violence in movies and video games, and the failure of schools and families to spot signs of murderous rage in the teenage gunmen. Yet the Littleton incident was only one of 13 rampage attacks last year, and multiple murders in schools and workplaces have become common news items. A team of New York Times reporters and researchers, in examining the nature of these attacks and the individuals involved, compiled a detailed database on 100 such cases over the past 50 years. The series of articles published in The Times this week based on that research offered several new insights. Although such killings account for only one-tenth of 1 percent of all homicides, the series confirmed the public perception that they appear to be increasing. It also found that rampage killers share several traits. Most are better educated than typical murderers, are more likely to have military experience, and are far more likely to kill themselves. Cultural influences on this group, such as violent entertainment, seemed to have little impact. Instead, the most common factor was serious mental health problems. About half had received formal diagnosis of mental illness, often schizophrenia. More than half made threats, and a third had histories of violent behavior. Many never received treatment for mental disorders or were not monitored to keep them on their medication. Most of their rampage attacks were not sudden, impulsive acts but the culmination of years of rage, depression and mental illness. Often the failure of families, co-workers and even therapists to deal with warning signs led to catastrophic consequences. Even with greater care in spotting mental disturbance, there can never be a perfect system. But the other crucial factor in rampage killings, access to guns, can be affected through legislation and regulation. More than half the killers, including those with histories of hospitalization for mental illness, were able to buy guns easily. While federal law prohibits the sale of guns to those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution, most states do not conduct background checks on a purchaser's psychiatric history. Many civil liberties groups and advocates for the mentally ill rightly resist giving police officials unlimited | A Closer Look at Rampage Killings |
1191544_2 | from Ohio State University in 1953. Despite his later prominence in academics, he never obtained a Ph.D., instead learning the tools of advanced research on his own. ''He was very proud of that -- that he got there without the ticket of admission,'' said Dr. Margaret Kivelson, a professor of space physics at U.C.L.A. His early research involved using statistics to link scattered measurements of Earth's gravity, made on the ground, into a single pattern, Mr. Chovitz said. But with the launching of the first artificial satellites in the late 1950's, Mr. Kaula began working out the problem of analyzing their orbits to determine the so-called geoid, a shape that gives a measure of how Earth's gravitational field varies. With that analysis in hand, geodicists used photographs of the satellite orbits to go beyond fragmentary measurements made on the ground, said Dr. Gerald Schubert, a professor in the department of earth and space science at U.C.L.A. ''By flying overhead and covering all the space around the Earth, you could get a complete, global coverage,'' he said. Global knowledge of the geoid gave map makers the information they needed to create a single, accurate frame of reference for detailed charts of individual land masses and the seas. Dr. Kaula's book on the subject, ''Theory of Satellite Geodesy,'' first published in 1966, has remained a classic in the field, Dr. Schubert said. Mr. Kaula later led experiments that used lasers flown aboard several Apollo missions to map the topography of the Moon, and he participated in a related mission that used radar to discover striking surface features such as volcanolike structures and great plateaus on Venus. Besides his wife, he is survived by three children, Anne Shapiro, Jaqueline Kaula and Marie Bloechle; three stepchildren, Don Jensen, Janet Jensen and Patty Schwartz, and nine grandchildren. Known for a potent memory that helped him pull together results from widely disparate fields of research, Mr. Kaula nevertheless constantly jotted down facts that interested him in small notebooks that he always carried. He collected not just scientific facts but also quotations from literature, pithy insights from his colleagues and more mundane matters. ''He could look up the amount of fat on a herring if he wanted to,'' said Dr. Fred Spilhaus, executive director of the American Geophysical Union. ''In fact,'' Dr. Spilhaus said, recalling a discussion with Mr. Kaula about a diet plan, ''he did once.'' | William Kaula, 73, Who Drew Maps of Earth Using Satellites |
1191592_0 | To the Editor: What a great new idea: more powerful car batteries (''Higher Voltage for High-Tech Cars,'' April 6). The starter/chargers will be just like the one my Gravely Commercial 10 two-wheel tractor. That was a 1964 model, recently retired. And, yes, the system (starter/charger) was very efficient. Old ideas are like boomerangs -- they're coming back. JAIME LORENZANA Dix Hills, N.Y. | What Goes Around |
1191433_3 | a kidney transplant recipient who was familiar with the site's online organ donor consent forms. Now she takes solace in making her own wishes available to her family and friends. In messages intended for her two grown sons, she writes that she is proud of how they have brought up their own children and tells them, ''You have both been worthwhile additions to the world.'' She praises one son's strength in protecting her from the outside world after her husband's death and thanks the other for his sensitivity and compassion. Not everything Ms. Groves has written strives to be profound. She has posted a small dictionary of her husband's own nonsense language, defining words he sometimes used with close family and friends. ''The e-mail messages I've done are for posterity, something my family can look at whenever they want,'' Ms. Groves said. ''It's comforting to open an e-mail message, to see these words of love reinforced. It's something I wished I had been able to have with my husband. And unlike something tangible, it can't be lost or destroyed.'' Ms. Groves has also taken advantage of the site's Resource Centers, which include links to articles on coping with loss and to online support groups. The site also provides online forms in which users can instruct survivors on nearly every aspect of their wishes after their deaths. The personal property allocator, for example, lets relatives know who gets what, while the pet lover's organizer tells the family how to take care of the parakeets. Mr. Krim emphasized that none of the documents or forms were legally binding and could not serve to invalidate a will. They can function as organizational tools and give survivors a clear picture of those things not mentioned in a will, like a particular song to be played at a funeral or memorial service. Many of the approximately 10,000 customers who have signed up for the free afterlife e-mail are under 40, Mr. Krim said. He reasons that people that age are not only more familiar with the Internet but also view talking about death as less taboo than their parents and grandparents. Mr. Krim blanches at being referred to as a cyberspace funeral director, as he has been in several published articles. ''FinalThoughts is not morbid at all,'' he said. ''In many ways the site is life-affirming. We communicate that death is a natural human experience.'' | Tales From the Crypt: Storing E-Mail to Be Sent After Your Death |
1189158_1 | times as detailed as a 1991 version. Fourteen new views of the earth are included in the images released last month by the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colo., part of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The center gathers and exchanges geophysical and geological information with international organizations, academic researchers, government agencies, the military and other sources. It compiles the information into computerized databases used by its scientists to create maps and other images. The maps, which depict the earth as seen from space with no covering clouds, provide shaded, three-dimensional views of the geophysical variations that give the planet its unique look. Continental uplifts with their mountain ranges, plains and depressions contrast with deep ocean basins fractured by shifting tectonic plates and massive crustal upswellings. Some of the images even show the location of fault lines that produce earthquakes. Dr. Peter W. Sloss of the data center said the detail of the undersea topography maps was the biggest change from earlier versions. This time, researchers were able to include sea-surface data gathered in the late 1970's by satellites that scanned the oceans with radar. By comparing sea heights measured by radar with models of where the surface ought to be if undisturbed by gravitational variations underneath, Dr. Sloss said, researchers can infer what the ocean floor looks like by the subtle changes it produces higher up. Computers are programmed to filter out waves and other short-term disturbances that influence sea-surface heights. ''A sea mountain, for instance, attracts water toward it because its mass produces gravity that pulls down in all directions, from its top all the way down its sides,'' he said, ''The object below actually creates a hump over itself that roughly suggests its shape. The same is true of a trench, which we can see as a subtle trough on the surface.'' Dr. Sloss said the satellite data was calibrated at certain points by physical depth measurements to confirm that it could be used accurately to interpret the nature of the ocean floor. Sets of images and forms for ordering copies are available at the data center's Web site, www.ngdc.noaa .gov/mgg/whatsnew.html. Correction: April 5, 2000, Wednesday An article in Science Times yesterday about highly detailed maps prepared by an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave an incomplete address for the Web site for ordering them. The address is www.ngdc .noaa.gov/mgg/whatsnew.html. | Maps Show Earth and Seas in Unprecedented Detail |
1189265_4 | consumers with a viable alternative to existing Intel-compatible PC operating systems. From these facts, the court has inferred that if a single firm or cartel controlled the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems worldwide, it could set the price of a license substantially above that which would be charged in a competitive market -- and leave the price there for a significant period of time -- without losing so many customers as to make the action unprofitable. This inference, in turn, has led the court to find that the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems worldwide does in fact constitute the relevant market in the context of the plaintiffs' monopoly maintenance claim. The plaintiffs proved at trial that Microsoft possesses a dominant, persistent, and increasing share of the relevant market. Microsoft's share of the worldwide market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems currently exceeds 95 percent, and the firm's share would stand well above 80 percent even if the Mac OS were included in the market. The plaintiffs also proved that the applications barrier to entry protects Microsoft's dominant market share. This barrier ensures that no Intel-compatible PC operating system other than Windows can attract significant consumer demand, and the barrier would operate to the same effect even if Microsoft held its prices substantially above the competitive level for a protracted period of time. Together, the proof of dominant market share and the existence of a substantial barrier to effective entry create the presumption that Microsoft enjoys monopoly power. At trial, Microsoft attempted to rebut the presumption of monopoly power with evidence of both putative constraints on its ability to exercise such power and behavior of its own that is supposedly inconsistent with the possession of monopoly power. None of the purported constraints, however, actually deprive Microsoft of ''the ability (1) to price substantially above the competitive level and (2) to persist in doing so for a significant period without erosion by new entry or expansion.'' Furthermore, neither Microsoft's efforts at technical innovation nor its pricing behavior is inconsistent with the possession of monopoly power. Even if Microsoft's rebuttal had attenuated the presumption created by the prima facie showing of monopoly power, corroborative evidence of monopoly power abounds in this record: Neither Microsoft nor its OEM customers believe that the latter have -- or will have anytime soon -- even a single, commercially viable alternative to licensing Windows for | Excerpts From the Ruling That Microsoft Violated Antitrust Law |
1189198_1 | to open a Pandora's box for them,'' Mr. Rifkin said. ''When people watch these ads they're going to say, 'What? What are genetic foods? Why are they in our stores?' In Europe, when people heard about genetically modified foods they became more skeptical.'' Last December, Mr. Rifkin and some of the nation's most prominent antitrust lawyers filed a class-action suit against Monsanto for engaging in anticompetitive practices and rushing genetically altered seeds to market without proper testing. Though a recent government survey suggests that American farmers have begun cutting back on biotechnology plantings -- something the big companies strongly dispute -- the industry says that over 60 million acres of corn and soybean were planted with genetically altered seeds a year ago, and farmers generally approve of the products because they cut down on chemical spraying. But with opposition growing in Europe and Asia, and Americans growing wary, the companies say they are at a critical juncture in the process and want to assure consumers that the products have been thoroughly tested and offer great benefits. In the future, they say, science will create more nutritious foods: tomatoes that stay ripe; fruits that can deliver vaccines, and the prospect of growing more food on less land, enough to feed a global population that could top nine billion in the year 2050, the council says. Neither a Web site nor a pamphlet created by the council, however, tell consumers what foods already contain genetically modified substances. The answer, experts say, is everything from McDonald's French fries to breakfast cereal and corn chips. The council says it hopes to give consumers information on how agricultural biotechnology works, what it is, and to tell consumers that the products have been ''exhaustively reviewed'' by government agencies. ''These ads were designed to raise awareness about biotechnology,'' said Jeff Bergau, a spokesman at Monsanto. ''What we've found is that people just aren't thinking about this. The overwhelming response is people need more information.'' The council has hired BSMG Worldwide, a public relations and advertising agency, that has expertise in crisis management and consumer awareness campaigns. BSMG is a unit of True North Communications, which is based in Chicago. The council began showing a 30-second television spot today on some of the major networks, including CNN and CNBC. The television spot shows the sun setting over a farm. It blends agricultural scenery and scenes of doctors, children | Industry Moves to Defend Biotechnology |
1189284_2 | included because of the amusement park. ''This is a great find,'' said William G. LaPerch, a senior vice president of Metromedia Fiber Network, one of the largest cable fiber-optic companies. ''My only disappointment is that we didn't find it sooner.'' Built over six years, the water mains actually constitute three systems that are not connected to one another. With the development of trucks that could generate high pressure for fighting fires, the water main system was no longer needed. In recent years, some thought has been given to redeploying the system to transport water for irrigating golf courses and similar purposes, said Joel A. Miele, the City Commissioner of Environmental Protection. At the same time, Mr. Dobrin's agency was contemplating putting fiber-optic cables in the sewer system, using Japanese-made robots to install them. But a few weeks ago, environmental protection agencies said no. ''We thought that might impact normal sewer operations,'' Mr. Miele said. He gave credit for the idea of recycling the water main system to Diana Chapin, a deputy commissioner in his department. When the sewer proposal was rejected, Ms. Chapin said she asked herself, ''What else is out there that we might offer up? Immediately, I thought of the high-pressure system as a possibility.'' The notion of using existing infrastructure for adding transmission lines is not new. Los Angeles, for example, is building fiber-optic cable in the tunnels serving its fledgling subway system -- an idea that New York is also exploring. And on the private side, an oil company is building high-tech cable lines inside thousands of miles of unused oil pipes. But New York's dormant water system offers several advantages. Not only are the pipes in the right parts of the city, they are also closer to the buildings where the potential customers are than traditional telephone lines. The city says that because the pipes were connected to fire hydrants on city sidewalks, it may be possible to gain access to the system without interfering with traffic. Just what form the water main system's conversion will take has not been determined. Yesterday, the city invited private industries and the public to submit ideas on how the system could be used. ''New York City is one of the best-wired systems in the country,'' said John Bonomo, a spokesman for Bell Atlantic. ''But there's a huge demand for telecommunications services. This is something we would fully investigate.'' | City Finds a Fiber-Optic Solution Underfoot, in Old Pipes |
1194451_1 | they did -- that high-fiber diets protected against colon cancer. Now, however, preliminary data from a large federal study indicate that at least initially hormone replacement therapy is not protecting postmenopausal women from heart disease and may even be leading to a tiny increase in heart attacks, strokes and blood clots in the legs and lungs. The data are far from conclusive, and few would conclude at this point that estrogen was dangerous. But the point is that no one really knows whether it protects against heart disease. Last week, two large and rigorous federal studies of high-fiber diets failed to show that they protected against colon cancer. Once again, the results emphasize that this truth about diet and cancer is far from established. Scientists will say they knew it all along. If these truths were so evident, there would be no need to do large studies in which people were randomly assigned to take estrogen or, for comparison, to take a dummy pill. There would be no need to do similar studies with high-fiber diets. In fact, such studies would be unethical because they would deprive the control groups of a valuable preventative measure. The same goes for other questions now being investigated: does examining the colon with sigmoidoscopy screening prevent colon cancer deaths? Does the P.S.A. test and a digital rectal exam for prostate cancer save lives? Does a high-fiber diet prevent heart disease? Maybe the problem is one of language. Scientists and the public alike use words like ''prevents'' and ''protects against'' and ''lowers the risk of'' when they are discussing evidence that is suggestive, and hypothesis-generating, as well as when they are discussing evidence that is as firm as science can make it. As reactions to the estrogen and high-fiber diet studies show, years of such careless use of language can make preliminary evidence appear to be ironclad. ''It's one of the biggest problems in this business,'' said Dr. Gilbert S. Omenn, a public health expert who is executive vice president for medical affairs at the University of Michigan. Yet even in the aftermath of the high-fiber diet studies, researchers were speaking confidently about other measures people could take to ''prevent'' colon cancer, like exercising and staying thin. And they were saying that there were reasons to keep eating fiber because it could ''reduce the risk'' of heart disease. When asked about the evidence for these | Health Advice: A Matter of Cause, Effect and Confusion |
1194444_1 | say, it would greatly simplify crop breeding. A high-yielding corn, wheat or rice plant could reproduce itself unchanged for generations. ''Once this occurs, the ramifications could well dwarf the green revolution in terms of its impact,'' said Dr. David M. Stelly, a professor of soil and crop sciences at Texas A&M University, who has dubbed this the ''asexual revolution.'' But apomixis could also represent a threat to the seed companies, changing the balance of power between the companies and farmers. It is thus being swept up in the worldwide controversy over agricultural biotechnology. Right now high yields are obtained using hybrids, which are crosses between two different varieties. But hybrids, which display a somewhat mysterious ''hybrid vigor,'' take years of painstaking, costly breeding to develop. Moreover, because crops reproduce sexually, the children of hybrids vary in their characteristics and generally do not retain the high yield of the parent. So farmers cannot save the seed from one year's crop to plant the next, but must buy new seeds every year, providing seed companies with recurring income. Apomixis would greatly simplify development of hybrids, putting them within reach of developing countries, which most need the higher food output but which now generally cannot afford it. With apomictic hybrids, seed could be saved and planted the next year without loss of yield. And a farmer obtaining a few such seeds could reproduce and multiply them, just as it is possible to make numerous perfect copies of a software program. ''This is a way for local farmers to take control of their seeds,'' said Dr. Michael Freeling, a professor of genetics at the University of California at Berkeley. ''It puts the seed companies out of business.'' Indeed, apomixis is being championed by some in the developing world as the antidote to the controversial ''terminator'' technology, an experimental method of making plants infertile so that farmers have to buy new seeds every year. ''It's the challenger to the terminator technology,'' said Dr. Stephen L. Goldman, a professor of biology at the University of Toledo, who is working to create apomictic corn. ''It has enormous political implications.'' In fact, worried that a big seed company could patent apomixis technology and deny access to the rest of the world, apomixis researchers meeting in Bellagio, Italy, in 1998 issued a declaration calling for ''broad and equitable access to plant biotechnologies, especially apomixis technology.'' Dr. Tony Cavalieri, director | Looking for Crops That Clone Themselves |
1194442_2 | until the crop matures before harvesting it. This can mean that much of the crop -- up to 50 percent in some cases -- is lost to pod shatter. Shatterproof varieties could greatly increase yields of canola oil. Amazon's Vanishing Trees There is a divide-and-conquer chain of events being played out in the central Amazon. Humans divide up the rain forest by clear-cutting, and nature conquers by killing off a disproportionately large number of big trees in the remaining forest. That is the conclusion of a study of rain forest near Manaus, Brazil, by scientists with the National Institute for Amazonian Research. The researchers, who wrote about their work in Nature, kept track of more than 64,000 trees with trunks more than four inches in diameter for about two decades. Some of the trees were in plots of land within continuous areas of rain forest, while others were in fragments of forest up to 100 acres in size. The researchers found that many more trees died near the edges of forest fragments than within continuous forests, and that a far higher proportion of the dead trees near edges were more than 24 inches in trunk diameter. Since trees of that size make up something like one-quarter of the above-ground biomass in the Amazon, the study results are a cause for concern. The scientists suggest three reasons why large trees in fragmented areas are dying at a faster rate. First, thick, inflexible trunks may be more susceptible to uprooting in windy conditions, which are worse near the edge of forests. Second, old trees are more susceptible to infestation by parasitic vines, which are more prevalent near edges. And third, taller trees get more sun and are therefore more likely to be affected by drier edge conditions. A Scope for SETI Astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence have unveiled a prototype of what they hope will be a dedicated SETI radiotelescope. The prototype, in Lafayette, Calif., consists of seven 12-foot dishes linked to form an array. The goal of the astronomers, with the University of California and the SETI Institute, is to create an array of hundreds of similar dishes with a total collecting area of one hectare, or about 2.5 acres. Perhaps most important, the telescope would be used primarily for SETI research. Currently, SETI astronomers usually have to piggyback on other research to get data for their work. | OBSERVATORY |
1194542_1 | case could propel in some ways. Close to 200,000 Americans, both legal and illegal travelers, visited Cuba last year, nearly double the number from 1998, according to Julia Sweig, the deputy director for Latin American affairs for the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the Cuban government, Americans now account for the second-largest group of visitors, after Canadians. ''This is a lot more exposure to Cuba,'' Ms. Sweig said, noting that the American travelers ranged from Hollywood producers to Midwestern farmers looking for business selling seeds to nongovernmental agencies. (The farmers went under a new program sanctioned by the Clinton administration, but they found little business.) This exposure has contributed, Ms. Sweig said, to a ''certain sense of exhaustion -- people are tired of deferring to a Cuban-American minority view.'' A Gallup poll last May showed that 70 percent of Americans were in favor of lifting the trade embargo against Cuba, with 28 percent opposed. More than 20 years earlier, another Gallup poll showed that 63 percent favored abolishing the trade embargo and 37 percent were opposed. An ABC News poll conducted earlier this month, in the heat of the Gonzalez battle, showed a shift in opinion, with respondents evenly split on whether to restore relations with Cuba and end trade restrictions. Respondents strongly favored removing travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba. In Congress, where opposition to improving ties with Cuba has been the most enduring, the Senate voted last year, 70 to 28, in favor of ending the restrictions on sending food and medicine to Cuba, a softening of attitude that took some by surprise. In the same vein, Congressional supporters of broader ties with Cuba noted that earlier in the Elian Gonzalez dispute, Senator Robert C. Smith, Republican of New Hampshire, could not muster enough support in the Republican Senate caucus to give asylum in the United States to the child. The most passionate anti-Castro crusaders in the Congress nonetheless believe that in the short term, the heightened tensions stirred by the case have helped their efforts to slow any move to normalize relations. But others doubt that there will be any lasting impact. For example, in permitting more Americans to go to Cuba, the Clinton administration believes that it has broadened the debate within the United States and undermined somewhat the power of the Cuban American minority in Florida. Since last May, academics, artists, scientists | Dispute Could Warm U.S.-Cuba Relations |
1190928_2 | fire in a suburban Philadelphia shopping mall in 1985, killing three people and wounding seven. In response to the recent spate of rampage-style mass shootings in schools, workplaces, stores and other public places, The New York Times re-examined 100 such violent incidents that occurred in the United States over the last 50 years. The Times gathered extensive information on all 100, and looked closely at more than 25 of the cases, a surprising number of which attracted little but local attention. The examination included reviews of court cases, news coverage and mental health records, and interviews with families and friends, psychologists and victims, in an effort to glean what the people closest to each tragedy had learned. In some cases, reporters questioned the killers themselves. Based on this information, The Times found that in 63 of the 100 cases (which involved 102 killers), the killers made general threats of violence to others in advance. Fifty-five of the 100 cases involved killers who regularly expressed explosive anger or frustration, and 35 killers had a history of violent behavior and assaults. They were so noticeably unstable that even in their very separate circles they had been awarded similar nicknames: ''Crazy Pat,'' ''Crazy John,'' ''Crazy Joe.'' And in 40 cases, family members and others said they noticed a sudden change in behavior in the period before the rampage. ''The more you find out about each of these cases, the more it makes sense,'' said Prof. Dewey G. Cornell, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia and director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project, which studies school safety and violence prevention. ''This notion that someone just snaps is based on ignorance and denial,'' Professor Cornell said. ''People don't just snap. Pressures build up.'' Many psychologists caution that it is impossible to predict violent behavior, and that most people who threaten violence never follow through. Often, it is only in retrospect that each killer's life appears to be a coherent chilling narrative foretelling obvious danger. Looking back, it is easy to marvel, how could the people who knew the murderer have failed to see it coming? In particular, how could so many psychiatric workers, and even the police, have missed the warning signs? In many cases, there was no single person in the potential killer's life to put together the lethal clues. Colleagues, friends, family members, mental health professionals, teachers and the police may | The Well-Marked Roads to Homicidal Rage |
1193713_1 | from doctors with high-brow credentials. Because of the free-form world of the Internet, the therapists are not subject to the rigorous system of interstate licensing that governs conventional, in-office counseling. The phenomenon is so new that the major professional organizations are just working out their policies. Some experts on mental health agree that online counseling, through e-mail, real-time e-mail exchange, and eventually video conferencing, is one of the most promising developments of the maturing Internet because it opens up new treatment options to people in remote areas, the disabled and those who feel too stigmatized to seek treatment for mental illnesses. ''This form of communication is very important, because we have overcome the basic limitations of space and distance -- and those are worth overcoming,'' said Dr. Zebulon Taintor, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Telemedicine who is a professor of psychiatry at New York University. The committee has drafted some guidelines for online psychiatry that address issues like appropriate behavior for doctors. Dr. Taintor said he expected approval by the association in late May. But Mirean Coleman, head of the policy and practice of clinical social work committee for the National Association of Social Workers, said privacy issues related to the Internet would have to remedied before her group would recommend online treatment. Indeed, skeptics say the medium's anonymity allows patients to misrepresent themselves by disguising their appearance. At the very least, the skeptics say, doctors are at a disadvantage when they cannot hear the inflections of a patient's voice. Nor, they point out, is there anything to prevent an unqualified entrepreneur from putting out a shingle as a mental-health expert. And while the fledgling field of online psychiatry has yet to yield any documented disasters, some Web sites have taken precautionary steps to prevent crises like suicides. Some, for example, have installed emergency systems where severely troubled patients are automatically referred to a local suicide hot line. Some mental health experts see a world full of potential catastrophes. ''I think it's terrible, and it could be disastrous,'' said Dr. Sheldon Miller, head of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University and Hospital. ''You just don't deal with strangers in that kind of format and expect anything wonderful to happen. There's no way of controlling the outcome, and I have a real problem with that.'' The ethical questions are just beginning to emerge, because | Online Therapy: An Arm's-Length Approach |
1190312_8 | at the Walt Whitman Mall would have rearranged its shelves accordingly. Later on, the more time you spent in the city, the cooler you were, because you had personally bathed in coolness's headwaters, at the Fillmore East, say, or the Thalia, or the Eighth Street Bookshop. It doesn't seem as though Long Island's cultural and economic antennas point west in quite the same way anymore. Oh, sure, the Long Island Expressway still creeps every morning, but often now it's creeping in both directions, and a lot of those cars are heading to places like the Gateways Executive Mall (Exit 45), rather than to Manhattan. The retail, which once helped light up the city in suburban eyes, is no longer any different: the Walt Whitman shopping area is now basically Lexington Avenue and 59th Street -- Gap, Banana Republic, Nine West, Barnes & Noble, J. Crew and Tower Records, all anchored by a Bloomingdale's. But whether this represents the colonization of the suburbs by the city or the opposite is a question. Radio and network TV still originate in Manhattan, but the newer media have traded broadcasting's radiating waves for centerless webs of wire. Who can say where in the world cable TV comes from? (A lot of it from Long Island, actually: Cablevision's headquarters happen to be in Bethpage.) And the Internet? America Online, perhaps the first great suburban medium, originates somewhere in suburban Virginia, though like the rest of the Web it might as well be anywhere. One way to tell the story of the American suburbs is as a story of new technologies recasting the relationship of city and countryside. Electric power, trains, automobiles and broadcast television propelled successive waves of decentralization, each along slightly different lines. Until now, however, the pattern those lines formed always resembled the spokes of a wheel, with the city firmly in the center. Radiating highways and radio waves used to reinforce the gravitational pull of cities. But cable and computer networks are forming different patterns now, ones that mirror and speed the emergence of the burbs as free-floating entities with their own overlapping gravitational fields. Time has been kind to many of the suburbs, and Juneau Boulevard is much prettier than I remember it. The conehead evergreens and midget rhododendrons, the paper birches and forsythia -- all that dinky nursery stock plunked into backfill by landscapers -- have put down roots and | The Triumph of Burbopolis |
1190284_10 | of the country, attention deficit disorder has become a frequent diagnosis for an unfocused child, and any stigma attached to the label has all but dissipated. In Greenwich, Conn., according to a report in The Hartford Courant, nearly one in three high school students in 1997 were in special education, most of them learning disabled. If the problem is overdiagnosed in well-to-do families, it is underdiagnosed in poor and minority students. At Bassick High School in Bridgeport, Conn., one of the poorest cities in the state, less than 5 percent of students were being helped for learning disabilities in 1997. Andrea E. Berndt, an assistant professor of psychology at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, found a similar disparity in a recent study at the university, which is predominantly Hispanic. She found that five times more students had serious learning problems than were formally diagnosed. ''If there is a difficulty, it's seen as a result of their background,'' she said. ''Very few of our students arrive here with a diagnosis, although the learning disabilities do exist.'' Robert Sternberg, professor of psychology at Yale, and Elena Grigorenko, a research scientist, have written about the disability divide and lack of uniform standards for diagnoses in their new book, ''Our Labeled Children.'' Rich parents, they write, ''may view the LD label as their last hope that their children will maintain their socioeconomic status and prestige when they reach adulthood. ''In essence, U.S. society has created a legal means to help ensure that children of well-to-do parents who can afford to have the children diagnosed will remain at the top of the heap.'' The lack of conclusive science on learning disabilities, coupled with their prevalence among affluent families, has contributed to skepticism about the disorders. Dr. Hallowell acknowledges that accommodations open the door for abuse. ''None of these diagnoses can be proven -- dyslexia, depression,'' he said. ''But there are legit diagnoses and legit treatments that don't violate common sense.'' It used to be that most students who could not do higher math and could not spell or read were just bad at math or spelling. ''It wasn't so long ago that the diagnosis was 'you're stupid' and the treatment was 'try harder,' ''said Dr. Hallowell, who is both dyslexic and has attention deficit disorder and struggled through school without accommodations. Traditionally, learning disabled students were steered toward vocations. You could be a carpenter | To Teach, or Merely Accommodate |
1190284_12 | whether or not you could read. But for middle-class families today, there is little discussion of not going to college. When Jonathan Mooney graduates from Brown, he will move to New York to be director of Eye-to-Eye, a charitable organization that matches learning disabled college students with learning disabled elementary students. Jonathan expects to need a secretary to type his letters and a reader to translate memos, letters and books. He doesn't think spelling is the measure of a college education. Others agree. ''I just don't think that being able to spell is today a critical skill,'' Ms. Nathanson said. ''It goes with our notions of being literate, but it's not a great impediment.'' Besides, scanning devices and computers that read text aloud may soon make it possible to work in an office without being able to read. But is there any job for which a learning disabled student should not qualify? Who wants a pilot or doctor who is disorganized, easily distracted and has difficulty interpreting symbols? What happens when a lawyer who has difficulty reading charges by the hour? In fact, it is not uncommon to find law students as well as medical students who are learning disabled. ''We graduated a student from law school who was reading on a sixth-grade level,'' Ms. Nadeau of the University of Utah said with pride. One specialist in Utah's student disability office teaches selective reading to dyslexic medical students, who have reams of material to digest. While lawsuits have been decided both ways, the National Board of Medical Examiners has often denied extra time on medical boards. Bar associations have also been sued over their strict documentation requirements for students who want extra time on bar exams. ''Many people who are lifelong documented students since age 6 are facing career-ending problems right now,'' said Louise H. Russell, director of student disability resources at Harvard. ''It's been heart-wrenching to see people who are performing very well in clinical rotations be turned away from receiving accommodations'' when taking medical boards. Down the road are other issues: Do employers, who cannot discriminate on the basis of a disability, have to hire someone to write down another employee's work? Should schools hire teachers who can't read? ''A lot of the basic kinds of accommodations need to be discussed within the context of good career counseling,'' Ms. Nathanson said. She sometimes has to tell students: Look, | To Teach, or Merely Accommodate |
1190807_2 | weight on the diet,'' he said. ''And I was amazed at how few of them kept the weight off.'' Slim-Fast had no comment. He and Slim-Fast parted company in 1992. But by then, Mr. Simon had figured out the niche market he wanted to address: the nutritionally-aware consumer who might spend a little more for potato chips that were perceived to be somehow healthier than others. ''The big food companies didn't have anything new or unique, and I saw an untapped market for healthy eating,'' Mr. Simon said. His bought the Kineret line of kosher foods and took the company public in late 1993. He quickly followed with the acquisition of Hain, a line of condiments, vegetable oil and other products. ''Half of life is timing, and Irwin Simon got a big head start over the likes of Kellogg's and Kraft,'' said John McMillin, a food stock analyst at Prudential Securities. ''The question now is: Will they catch him?'' These days, Hain is quick to embrace health concerns as they course through the collective consciousness. When the health benefits of soy products were confirmed by the federal government, Hain pushed its Westsoy soy milk that much harder. Lately, many products owned by Hain are being labeled as kosher (which many customers perceive as healthier) or ''GMO Free'' -- free of genetically modified organisms. While the rest of the food business is more or less inert, sales of natural foods -- a $10 billion category -- are growing by double digits annually. Such growth, and Mr. Simon's own activity, haven't gone unnoticed by the giants of packaged foods. Last year, H. J. Heinz took a 19.5 percent stake in Hain, in exchange for turning over its Earth's Best baby food brand to Mr. Simon. Kraft Foods, a unit of Philip Morris, is venturing into the natural-food business, buying up both Balance Bar, a nutritionally enhanced snack bar, and Boca Burger, a meatless sandwich, over the last few months. Nestle has also become involved, paying an undisclosed amount last month for Power Bar, and Kellogg, bothered by flat cereal sales, paid about $80 million in December for Worthington Foods, another veggie burger maker. Mr. Simon says the entry of such daunting competitors doesn't worry him. ''It's very, very hard for somebody to go out and duplicate what Hain has done,'' he said. But there have been some mistakes and rough patches. In | Private Sector; Selling Natural Food to the Crowd |
1190587_11 | before long. Some organic farmers say genetic engineering has already created some products that they should be allowed to use, like Ecogen Inc.'s pesticides extracted from genetically-altered bacteria grown in fermenters. Such products, the proponents say, are simply more efficiently produced forms of sprays that organic farmers already use. Others say genetic engineering should be considered where breakthrough gains for sustainable farming might be achieved, such as inventing a perennial form of wheat that could be mowed rather than harvested and replanted each year. ''Among organic farmers the views about transgenics range from 'no, never' to 'not yet,' '' said Brian Baker, policy director of the Organic Material Review Institute, a nonprofit group in Eugene, Ore., that rates the acceptability of materials for organic farming. The partisans of the small and local have the high ground when it comes to poetic thinking; some of them talk, for instance, of developing a society based on ''foodsheds,'' just as the ecology of rivers is based on watersheds -- but the marketplace seems to be moving away from them. Many organic farmers on the East Coast say they are under heavy pressure from larger operations in California and imports from Mexico. ''All the same patterns that affect conventional agriculture are happening in organic,'' said Jim Crawford, whose New Morning Farm in Hustontown, Pa., is the headquarters for the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative, which represents 20 farms in the area. ''We're not even selling that we are organic at this point. We are selling freshness, quality and nearness to our markets.'' Mr. Crawford added that sales to restaurants in the mid-Atlantic corridor had jumped from zero to 60 percent of the co-op's total revenue in the last four years. Even the nation's biggest organic farmers, like the Lundberg family in California's Central Valley, have no intention of betting the entire farm on the organic business. ''About 55 to 60 percent of our sales are organic,'' said Bryce Lundberg, whose family currently grows organic rice on about 6,000 acres near Richvale, Calif. Although organic sales are way up from the 1970's, their share of the total farm revenue is down from 75 percent because major weed problems forced the Lundbergs to sharply reduce organic production for several years. ''It's a little more profitable, but much higher risk,'' said Tim O'Donnell, the Lundbergs' vice president of sales and marketing. ''There's years when you could lose everything.'' | Organic Farming, Seeking the Mainstream |
1190601_5 | by how much they despise Fidel and Communism, not by where they stand on education and Social Security. You grow up meeting former political prisoners who spent 15 years in Cuban jails for showing their disillusionment with the revolution, and thousands of others who broke Cuban law and jumped on teeny, tottering rafts just to get away. You know lots of cousins here who hate cousins there because they are Communist believers, and you hear endless sorrowful tales from mothers who can't get their children out of Cuba. You swim in nostalgia here, some of it air-brushed by time. As kids, we would laugh at our parents' descriptions of Cuba, where the sand on the beaches was as fine and as white as sugar and where everyone lived in perfect harmony. To them, Fidel Castro is not an irrelevant dictator. He is not a curious relic. N OW I find that in Elian, exiles are venting about all this and more: about how they placed their hope in a young, bearded revolutionary who later betrayed them without a hint of remorse; how they lost their homes, crammed with photographs accumulated through generations; how they said goodbye to family members they expected to see again soon, in a matter of months, maybe a few years; and in the end, how they lost their country, the place where they expected to marry, have children, grow old and die. But now I am also an outsider looking in, and it is easy to see why Cuban exiles have drawn the ire of many Americans. Their television screen has shown them people in Miami who want to reshape the law to fit their endgame. It has shown them a mayor who has said his police officers will not cooperate with the federal government. It has shown people who are protesting in the name of freedom chasing away other people who are also protesting in the name of freedom. And, for the xenophobes, it has shown them people unfurling Cuban flags, speaking staccato Spanish and pining for the old country while casting aspersions on the new. For some outside Miami, it is difficult to understand why people who have heaped scorn on Castro for so long for wrenching families apart appear to be doing that very thing. But in Miami, it makes perfect sense. For a long time, exiles have felt helpless. Then came Elian. | CORRESPONDENCE/Little Havana; A Look at Cuba's Exiles From Both Sides of a Great Divide |
1190498_0 | To the Editor: Driving a car in New Jersey under the best conditions (itself a contradiction), requires constant vigilance and unlimited patience. ''Talking and Driving: Growing Road Menace?'' (Cover March 26), will, I hope, result in a call for responsible action on the part of our legislators. While no law can ever bring back loved ones killed as a result of inattention by a driver using a cell phone it is amazing that we do not demand more of our elected officials or for that matter ourselves. The article points out that there is insufficient data to prove a causal connection between cell phone use and resulting accidents and deaths. What has happened to our common sense? If we otherwise accept as true that seat belts save lives, that smoking can be detrimental to health, that the sun's ultraviolet rays can be harmful and that we have a problem with handguns, are we not sufficiently educated to make a leap of faith that a cell phone can cause a driver to be distracted, which may result in an increased chance of an accident? The fact that other countries have recognized the inherent danger of combining cell phones with driving should send us a wake-up call. In terms of countering the lobbying efforts of cell-phone manufacturers, I do think in time that insurance companies will step up to the forefront in efforts to eliminate the phones' usage. When car insurance premiums go even higher in New Jersey -- now there's a scary thought -- and deductibles increase, perhaps then it will hit people in their financial face. How sad that would be, if it becomes a matter of money versus the value of human life. JOHN FOSTIK Vorhees | How Much Proof Is Needed On Cell Phones and Cars? |
1190599_0 | THE news out of Uganda has been very bad, and that nation's two daily newspapers have spared their readers none of it. For three days running, the state-owned paper, The New Vision, ran front-page, full-color photos of rotting corpses -- a sad few of the perhaps 900 victims of a deadly cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments. The pictures were so awful that investigators have now barred cameras from any other grave sites they may find, a possibility that is depressingly likely. The New Vision received many complaints about the photos, perhaps loudest from government officials. But not everyone thought the decision to publish them was wrong. For Uganda has been groping for explanations for the mass killings, and alongside sensationalism in the daily press there has been a remarkably frank discussion of the roots of the problem -- most interestingly, a tracing of the current religiosity and mysticism associated with cults to the despair left by years of dictatorship, poverty, AIDS and other diseases. The discussion in the press, in both its liveliness and thoughtfulness, mirrors a larger discussion taking place in Ugandan society about the cult and the murders, and this reveals a great deal about Uganda itself -- how far it has come in its tortured passage of nearly 40 years from independence, through a brutal dictatorship and at last toward a society where open expression is recognized as a tool for solving the nation's problems. ''We needed to be shocked,'' Father John Mary Waliggo, a Catholic priest who is one of Uganda's human rights commissioners and a professor of African history, said after the photos were published. ''From this shock, we will be able to find out what happened.'' In fact, the pictures were just part of the aggressive coverage of the cult murders by Uganda's two papers, The New Vision and The Monitor, and their coverage has mirrored Ugandans' general reaction: shock, horror, a search for blame, along with an ample measure of ''What will the world think of Uganda now?'' That last thought is predictable. It has been only 21 years since the dictator Idi Amin was deposed after a rule of brutality and death that made Uganda a synonym for state-sponsored horror. BUT in the years since, Uganda has developed in a way that might surprise most outsiders. It has become one of the brightest spots of central Africa, | THE WORLD: Uganda's Trauma; A Deadly Cult Stirs Lively Questions About a Nation's Soul |
1190637_2 | national forest would cost millions of dollars in lost jobs and would also be shortsighted. They say timber operations protect the sequoias by thinning out the undergrowth and smaller trees surrounding them and protecting them from fire and pest infestation. Under Mr. Glickman's proposal, any future arrangements for logging within the boundaries of the monument would be outlawed, but logging deals already negotiated would continue while logging is phased out over the next two and a half years. In his recommendation, Mr. Glickman outlined a plan that he said was intended to safeguard the trees well into the future. He suggested that a science advisory panel be created to assist in the development of a management plan for the trees. The plan would be used to develop guidelines on such issues as controlled burning, which could replace the clearing by timber operations. Grazing operations and other uses that are already permitted would remain in effect, and all existing rights of private property owners within the forest would be preserved under the secretary's recommendations. Recreational access would also continue. Existing camps, like Camp Whittsett Boy Scout Camp and Pyles Boys Camp, would probably remain, Mr. Glickman said. ''The fact is that overall, there will be a special management effort to protect the trees over and above your normal forest management,'' he said. ''Despite their tremendous size, giant sequoias are vulnerable. They are very much affected by what happens in the surrounding forest.'' Forestry officials said that the area chosen for the monument comprises 75 groves. The area was selected primarily because of underground water supplies and its history of fires. The Sequoia National Forest is close to a million acres. ''Ancestors of the giant sequoia once grew as far east as Colorado and Wyoming,'' Mr. Glickman noted. ''Now these precious trees are only found on the west slope of the Sierra Nevadas. To ensure the permanent survival of these ancient giants, we must provide them with permanent protection.'' Although California's redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, sequoias are the largest overall, measuring up to 30 feet in diameter and weighing as much as 600 tons. In 1992, President Bush signed a proclamation prohibiting logging within 1,000 feet of a sequoia. Several other groves are already protected because they are in national parks, not national forests. Mr. Clinton has used the antiquities act to establish four monuments and expand another. | A Plan to Preserve Giant Sequoias, World's Biggest Trees |
1190602_5 | Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, said many aspects of behavior -- like impulse control, the ability to focus and empathy -- vary greatly from child to child, and develop at different ages. Dr. Gopnik said she was disturbed by ''the idea of doing this in preschoolers, where the medical evidence isn't there.'' ''I don't think parents always have a good idea of what just normal preschooler behavior is,'' she added. Increasingly, Dr. Gopnik said, there is a ''mismatch between what children are like just as children, what schools require from children and the time and energy parents have to negotiate that difference.'' Psychiatrists still know little, if anything, about diagnosing specific mental disorders in preschoolers. Studies indicate that such diagnoses are often fluid, changing as the child grows older, though severe behavior problems often persist. Given the lack of hard data, few experts would dispute that the sharp increase in prescriptions for toddlers is disturbing, particularly over so brief a period. Nor would most deny that the trend raises larger social and ethical questions. Dr. Zito, for example, said that at some point, society must decide how far down the age scale the medical model, which relies on diagnoses of illness and is likely to see drugs as the appropriate treatment, should be extended. ''We are generalizing from adults to school-age children, and now from school-age children to very young children.'' For his part, Dr. Jensen, who was a former associate director for child and adolescent research at the National Institute of Mental Health, says the federal government shares much of the blame for the dearth of knowledge about how to evaluate the use of drugs. Federal agencies, he said, have not yet provided high levels of research funding to study children's mental health. That may be changing. Responding to the outcry over Dr. Zito's study, the National Institute of Mental Health said it would spend $6 million over the next five years to study whether Ritalin is safe and effective for children under 6. And the White House is planning a conference next fall on mental illness in preschoolers. Eventually, scientists may learn whether the increase in drug prescriptions charted by Dr. Zito and her colleagues represent overmedication or appropriate -- in some cases, lifesaving -- treatment for young children. Outrage is easy; it is harder, and more expensive, to find real answers. | IDEAS & TRENDS: Reading, Writing and Ritalin; Fury, Not Facts, in the Battle Over Childhood Behavior |
1190298_2 | available on the Web, through the home page of the F.A.A.'s strategic command center in Herndon, Va., www.atcscc .faa.gov. An advisories database, updated frequently, shows various problems around the country. But it is so thick with acronyms and jargon that most viewers will find it hard to understand. The agency intends to add a user-friendlier version soon, on the Web site fly.faa.gov. This will help travelers who want the big picture, although F.A.A. officials say that people may still be better off calling their airlines about specific flights. Travel buffs can dig deeper into the strategic command center's Web site and find an extensive list of ''escape routes'' that the airlines and the F.A.A. have developed as standard detours. When weather disrupts operations, controllers can refer to the alternate routes by predetermined code names. Airlines and officials at the command center will talk as frequently as every two hours, if disruptions warrant that, to plot strategic plans. (''Strategic'' means something different at the F.A.A. than in some slower-moving fields. ''Later in the day -- that's pretty strategic for us,'' said Monte Belger, the acting deputy administrator.) The airlines and the F.A.A. want to avoid both the delays and the finger-pointing that were common last summer, according to people involved in the new effort. The airlines believe that extensive delays create a mood in which new passenger-rights legislation could pass in Congress; the agency is also eager to avoid Congressional and public wrath. Their plan for this summer has several other aspects. Airlines and the F.A.A. will make greater use of low-altitude routes, to avoid traffic higher up. Airlines like their planes to climb fast, to reach thinner air where flying takes less fuel, but they will accept lower altitudes to cut delays, officials said. Another part of the plan is to route planes through Canadian airspace more often, especially those flying between destinations like Chicago and New York. In the past that has had limited success, agency officials said, because the Canadians have sometimes been unable to accommodate the traffic. Still, government officials say an element of luck is involved. Jack Kies, the deputy program director for air traffic tactical operations at the F.A.A., who operates the command center, said that at planning sessions this winter, ''everybody was at the table except Mother Nature, and we'll see how she cooperates and plays this spring and summer.'' TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT | Airlines, F.A.A. Agree To Agree on Weather |
1190577_2 | weight on the diet,'' he said. ''And I was amazed at how few of them kept the weight off.'' Slim-Fast had no comment. He and Slim-Fast parted company in 1992. But by then, Mr. Simon had figured out the niche market he wanted to address: the nutritionally-aware consumer who might spend a little more for potato chips that were perceived to be somehow healthier than others. ''The big food companies didn't have anything new or unique, and I saw an untapped market for healthy eating,'' Mr. Simon said. His bought the Kineret line of kosher foods and took the company public in late 1993. He quickly followed with the acquisition of Hain, a line of condiments, vegetable oil and other products. ''Half of life is timing, and Irwin Simon got a big head start over the likes of Kellogg's and Kraft,'' said John McMillin, a food stock analyst at Prudential Securities. ''The question now is: Will they catch him?'' These days, Hain is quick to embrace health concerns as they course through the collective consciousness. When the health benefits of soy products were confirmed by the federal government, Hain pushed its Westsoy soy milk that much harder. Lately, many products owned by Hain are being labeled as kosher (which many customers perceive as healthier) or ''GMO Free'' -- free of genetically modified organisms. While the rest of the food business is more or less inert, sales of natural foods -- a $10 billion category -- are growing by double digits annually. Such growth, and Mr. Simon's own activity, haven't gone unnoticed by the giants of packaged foods. Last year, H. J. Heinz took a 19.5 percent stake in Hain, in exchange for turning over its Earth's Best baby food brand to Mr. Simon. Kraft Foods, a unit of Philip Morris, is venturing into the natural-food business, buying up both Balance Bar, a nutritionally enhanced snack bar, and Boca Burger, a meatless sandwich, over the last few months. Nestle has also become involved, paying an undisclosed amount last month for Power Bar, and Kellogg, bothered by flat cereal sales, paid about $80 million in December for Worthington Foods, another veggie burger maker. Mr. Simon says the entry of such daunting competitors doesn't worry him. ''It's very, very hard for somebody to go out and duplicate what Hain has done,'' he said. But there have been some mistakes and rough patches. In | PrivateSector; Selling Natural Food to the Crowd |
1190806_15 | book, documented two cases of soldiers running amok with a tank in Germany in the 1980's after a widely publicized tank attack there. Army security was increased, and ''tank amok never happened in Germany again,'' Dr. Adler said. An angry, depressed, unstable, perhaps mentally ill person picks up a gun because it has become a known alternative. ''Something that was inconceivable to many people suddenly becomes conceivable,'' Dr. Messner said. ''The transmission mechanism seems to be nothing more or less than that it's an idea that's in the air,'' said Philip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke University, who has studied social contagions. ''So you have these kind of catastrophic consequences from what seems a minor change in the environment.'' How the Study Was Conducted The New York Times set out to study rampage killings by assembling a detailed database of as many such crimes as could be discovered by searching news clippings in all 50 states, scientific papers and other sources. Times researchers and reporters found 100 cases that met strictly defined criteria aimed at encompassing the kind of crimes that seem to have become more common recently. The crimes had to have had multiple victims, at least one of whom died, and to have occurred substantially at one time and in a place where people gather -- a workplace, a school, a mall, a restaurant, a train. Multiple killings that were a result of domestic strife, robbery or political terrorism were excluded, as were serial killings. Reporters and researchers reviewed newspaper articles and court transcripts, and interviewed prosecutors, victims, families and, when possible, the killers. Reporters recorded into a database more than 90 separate pieces of information on each crime, including age, mental health histories, victim relationships, weapons used, warning signs, location, time of day and criminal records. Ford Fessenden, a database reporter at The Times, coordinated the research. The 100 cases include 20 shootings at schools, 11 at restaurants or shopping malls and 32 at the killer's workplace. There were 102 killers. Four hundred twenty five people were killed and 510 injured. In some cases, it was difficult to get precise information, as news accounts and even police reports varied. And while extensive efforts were made to be as complete as possible, there is no central list of multiple murders, and the database does not include every attack of this type over the last 50 | They Threaten, Seethe and Unhinge, Then Kill in Quantity |
1190296_3 | of course, but do not sell yourself to the highest bidder. Do not conclude without asking that parents will not, cannot or should not spend more on your first choice. Above all, weigh large loans and sticker shock against the dividends of learning with first-rate faculty and socializing with smart, stimulating students who become spouses, friends and, along with alumni, a professional network. A study last year by Caroline M. Hoxby, an economist at Harvard, ranked colleges by selectivity -- 1 being the most selective, 8 the least. Ms. Hoxby found that, given identical aptitudes, a male student who entered a rank 1 private college in 1982 could expect to earn $1.15 million more over his career (in 1997 dollars) than one at a rank 8. A rank 1 graduate would earn $400,000 more than a rank 3 graduate. Beyond the Numbers In comparing academic characteristics, average class size is not a meaningful statistic, because large numbers of tiny graduate and senior seminars keep the average down. An institution with an average class size of 12 can still pack hundreds of students into introductory classes. Freshmen are traditionally taught in such large lecture courses, an efficient way to impart information. More telling is the size and range of classes for sophomores and juniors, and the ratio of professors (rather than teaching staff, which includes instructors, lecturers and adjuncts) to undergraduates. Moreover, a high percentage of graduate students to undergraduates -- say, anything more than 1 to 4 -- might indicate that faculty attention and resources are diverted to masters and doctoral students. Also compare the number of teaching assistants leading discussion sections. Overall, however, the best evidence of academic excellence is the number of undergraduates from the top 10 percent of their high school classes, a statistic known to admissions offices. Who Are You? Find Out Trust no one over 30, because the information is likely to be stale. Instead, ask as many undergraduates as can be collared about the accessibility of faculty; the opportunities to do independent research, design a major and write an honors thesis; quality of the library and laboratories, and availability of internships. Then explore motivations. It's almost always better to act on aspiration rather than from anxiety, and being explicit about fears is valuable for, and beyond, the choice of a college. Do you want anonymity or personal attention, a homogeneous or diverse student body? | The Big Choose |
1190669_15 | book, documented two cases of soldiers running amok with a tank in Germany in the 1980's after a widely publicized tank attack there. Army security was increased, and ''tank amok never happened in Germany again,'' Dr. Adler said. An angry, depressed, unstable, perhaps mentally ill person picks up a gun because it has become a known alternative. ''Something that was inconceivable to many people suddenly becomes conceivable,'' Dr. Messner said. ''The transmission mechanism seems to be nothing more or less than that it's an idea that's in the air,'' said Philip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke University, who has studied social contagions. ''So you have these kind of catastrophic consequences from what seems a minor change in the environment.'' How the Study Was Conducted The New York Times set out to study rampage killings by assembling a detailed database of as many such crimes as could be discovered by searching news clippings in all 50 states, scientific papers and other sources. Times researchers and reporters found 100 cases that met strictly defined criteria aimed at encompassing the kind of crimes that seem to have become more common recently. The crimes had to have had multiple victims, at least one of whom died, and to have occurred substantially at one time and in a place where people gather -- a workplace, a school, a mall, a restaurant, a train. Multiple killings that were a result of domestic strife, robbery or political terrorism were excluded, as were serial killings. Reporters and researchers reviewed newspaper articles and court transcripts, and interviewed prosecutors, victims, families and, when possible, the killers. Reporters recorded into a database more than 90 separate pieces of information on each crime, including age, mental health histories, victim relationships, weapons used, warning signs, location, time of day and criminal records. Ford Fessenden, a database reporter at The Times, coordinated the research. The 100 cases include 20 shootings at schools, 11 at restaurants or shopping malls and 32 at the killer's workplace. There were 102 killers. Four hundred twenty five people were killed and 510 injured. In some cases, it was difficult to get precise information, as news accounts and even police reports varied. And while extensive efforts were made to be as complete as possible, there is no central list of multiple murders, and the database does not include every attack of this type over the last 50 | They Threaten, Seethe and Unhinge, Then Kill in Quantity |
1188385_2 | incur the wrath of governments or powerful groups are protests aimed at large, lucrative projects -- such as oil production in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Ecuador, toxic waste dumping in Cambodia, logging in Kenya and Mexico and new dam construction in China and India. The activists tend to emerge from the same isolated communities that suffer most from pollution. Typical is Rodolfo Montiel, a peasant who organized small farmers in rural Guerrero State, Mexico, against the clear-cutting of local forests, which was threatening their harvests and way of life. In May, he and a bystander were arrested and charged with weapons possession and drug trafficking. Amnesty International and the Sierra Club, which have begun a joint campaign to draw attention to the persecution of environmentalists, say the two men were tortured into confessing. The arrests are part of a pattern in Guerrero. Five years ago, 17 unarmed peasants protesting logging were shot by the state's judicial police. Another member of the peasant organization was reportedly abducted at gunpoint last month. The interest and intervention of large environmental organizations is especially helpful to rural activists, who usually lack the connections enjoyed by their urban counterparts. What makes the rural activists particularly vulnerable is that they live in out-of-the-way places that happen to be rich in the very resources that governments and powerful interests hope to exploit. For that reason, they can get in the way of a lot of money. To most developing nations, the economic promise of forests, mineral deposits or oil and gas outweighs environmental concerns. Such projects can also produce a river of graft for government officials. European and American groups like Amnesty International and the Sierra Club can also play an important supporting role. Many of the oil and gas companies, as well as the big customers for foreign timber and minerals, are based in the industrialized world. These companies, in turn, can influence how the governments they work with treat environmental dissidents. The worldwide opprobrium heaped on Shell for its failure to help Mr. Saro-Wiwa has sensitized corporations to the public relations costs of silence. The next test is in Chad, where a consortium led by Exxon Mobil is about to drill, and Cameroon, where the pipeline will lead. Amnesty International and the Sierra Club say that several people who have raised environmental concerns have been threatened and silenced, even though digging has not yet begun. | Foreign Conservationists Under Siege |
1192777_2 | 30's, is occurring in younger men more often now than in the past. Men at every age, from infancy onward, are at risk, with a second rise in incidence occurring after age 65. Similar increases in incidence have been noted in Canada and Europe. For unknown reasons, no rise in incidence has occurred among African-American men, whose risk of testicular cancer is much lower than for white men and who account for only 5 percent of all cases in this country. Dr. Fisch hopes that by analyzing who gets testicular cancer and when, it may be possible to decipher factors that promote its development. Among the many possibilities suggested by various studies is an increase in the age at which women become pregnant. Among sons born to older mothers, Dr. Fisch said, there is a 50 percent greater risk of developing testicular cancer than there is for men whose mothers were teenagers when they were born. During the last two decades, the proportion of births to mothers over 35 has more than doubled. Exposure to greater amounts of estrogen during prenatal life or early childhood may also be a factor. This can occur through hormone treatments for infertility, twin pregnancies, maternal obesity or perhaps through exposure of mothers or their young sons to environmental sources of estrogenic chemicals. The only well-defined risk occurs in boys with undescended testicles, which increases the chances of developing testicular cancer by 5 or 10 times. Other studies have suggested such risk factors as having an inguinal hernia, low birth weight or sedentary lifestyle, a family history of testicular cancer, occupational exposure to certain chemicals or extremes of heat or cold, and infection with the virus that causes AIDS. But the associations between these factors and testicular cancer are much weaker than for undescended testicles. A recently published study in The American Journal of Epidemiology found a link between frequent vigorous physical activity in adolescence and later development of testicular cancer. In the study conducted in Ontario, boys who participated in moderate and strenuous recreational activity in their teens five times a week faced more than twice the risk of testicular cancer than did boys who were less active. But Dr. Fisch said this link was unproved and had no plausible biological explanation. Other studies have suggested the opposite -- that lack of activity increases cancer risk. ''It's very important for boys to get involved | Threat of Testicular Cancer Increasing |
1193278_0 | With Northern Ireland's season of emotional anniversaries and marches nearing, the Good Friday peace agreement remains stalled. The Irish Republican Army refuses to commit itself to giving up its arms, and the province's hopeful experiment in self-rule stands suspended. But amid this bleakness, one positive development stands out. David Trimble, Northern Ireland's most important Protestant politician, unmoved by a militant minority in his Ulster Unionist Party, is seeking creative ways around the arms impasse. Mr. Trimble overcame a challenge last month to retain his leadership post. His opponents criticized his support for the Good Friday agreement and were particularly upset about a recent comment in which he said he was ready to consider re-entering a home rule government without waiting for an actual I.R.A. handover of weapons. Mr. Trimble now seems to be suggesting, helpfully, that it would be enough for the I.R.A. to declare that its war is over and that it will never again resort to violence. Mr. Trimble has made clear that he would expect such a declaration to be followed quickly by a clear statement committing the I.R.A. to surrender all of its weapons. This week Mr. Trimble took a further step to prepare his party for new peace moves. He announced plans to strip the militant Orange Order of its traditional bloc vote on the Ulster Unionists' ruling council. That reform, which Mr. Trimble has the power to see through, would presumably result in a council more strongly committed to carrying out the Good Friday agreement. Unfortunately, Unionist flexibility alone cannot guarantee peace. It is up to the I.R.A. to match Mr. Trimble's political courage and repeated demonstrations of good faith with its own declaration of a permanent end to violence and a pledge to disarm. | A Bid for Compromise in Ulster |
1193369_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Ethiopian Hunger: Another Disaster Ahead?'' (news article, April 17): You report in the opening scene of your account that 4 of 10 children in one family died in the last three months in southeastern Ethiopia. This is not an isolated circumstance. The impending famine in this devastated country is not caused by drought, but by overpopulation. Wherever the population exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of the land, famine is a likely consequence. The short-term solution may be for other countries to send tons of food, but in the longer term it would be more effective to send aid for family planning in the form of advisers and means of birth control. Reducing the birth rate is also the key to increasing the standard of living. ROGER LeB. HOOKE Orono, Me., April 18, 2000 The writer is a retired professor of geology at the University of Minnesota. | Again in Ethiopia, Faces of Death |
1193231_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Company Aims to Reap the Wind as a Clean Source of Electricity'' (news article, April 14): There is other demand for high wind-swept sites: cell phone towers. Granted, this demand is currently located in high population areas, likely without such enviable winds as occur in Madison, N.Y., which was featured in your article. But when combined purposes allow, simultaneous use of one tower for both wind energy production and communication would be an advantage to both. Cell phone towers might obtain public approval more easily if they contributed some non-polluting energy to the power grid. And all children prefer a whirligig to a steel sentry. BILL FAIRCHILD Glenville, N.Y., April 15, 2000 | To Catch the Wind, to Call a Friend . . . |
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