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1193341_1 | and replaced by a new, wider $4 billion bridge and rail system. The task force, five cabinet-level appointees of Gov. George E. Pataki, concluded in a report that there was no ''silver bullet'' to alleviate the traffic congestion on the bridge. The report suggested a combination of solutions: a new bridge to accommodate eight lanes of traffic with shoulders, bracketed by commuter rail tracks; and a new commuter rail network, from Port Chester, near the Connecticut border, to Stewart Airport, in Newburgh. If approved, the project could be completed in 10 years. A short-term solution to congestion, the task force said, would be a toll increase during peak hours. But no matter what the combination, the report stressed that the most fundamental step was to demolish the current seven-lane bridge, which opened in 1955 but is already absorbing more cars than was originally planned. ''This is because rehabilitating the existing structure to keep it in good working condition,'' the report explained, ''which would involve years of ongoing traffic disruption and cost an estimated $1.1 billion, would not result in additional mobility enhancements and meaningful congestion relief.'' The report is not likely to placate transportation groups and local residents, who fear the proposal would reduce the quality of life and eat up homes on the Hudson River. The bridge has emerged as a major concern in the counties it connects: Westchester and Rockland. Residents have crammed town forums on the topic and more public meetings with the task force are scheduled in the coming weeks. If there are no snags and the governor approves the project, construction could begin in two or three years. Reactions to the plan today were decidedly mixed. Maureen M. Morgan, a past president of the Federated Conservationists of Westchester County, said the proposal would not increase traffic; the rail system and the toll increases during peak hours would help. Critics expressed concern about the financial viability of the project, given the precarious financial situation of the M.T.A., which would presumably work with the Thruway Authority to finance it. Jeffrey M. Zupan, a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, said that while the Thruway Authority is well-positioned to raise tolls and issue bonds, the M.T.A. is saddled by major capital projects. As a result, he said, the Tappan Zee Bridge project may be remembered as more of a highway widening project than a commuter rail one. | State Task Force Recommends Replacing Tappan Zee Bridge |
1193257_0 | Companies that monitor how their employees use the Internet usually argue that they have no choice: Workers, the companies say, are surfing the Web on company time, distributing confidential information willy-nilly, and receiving or sending offensive messages. A recent study commissioned by Elron Software, a maker of monitoring software, tries to prove that point. Of more than 500 employees surveyed by N.F.O. Interactive, a market research company, 27 percent say that they have received e-mail messages that leak confidential data about other companies. And more than 50 percent said that they had received offensive e-mail messages on the job. But some of the results don't sound so bad. According to the survey, only one-third of respondents said they spent more than 25 minutes per day using the Internet for personal reasons -- hardly enough time to even post a sale item on eBay. The other two-thirds spent even less time on the Web for matters outside work. LISA GUERNSEY NEWS WATCH | Personal Surfing at Work Is Not So Extensive, Study Finds |
1194891_1 | of devices that do not require licenses from the Federal Communications Commission. Technologies occupying the space include wireless LAN's, some of the latest cordless phones and handheld devices that use Bluetooth, a standard being developed to enable gadgets to communicate without wires. Another system operating in the 2.4-gigahertz range is Ricochet, a wireless network for urban areas. Ricochet is available in three cities, but the company is installing more iterations of the network, which will offer faster access. Most people using Ricochet are spared the problem of interference by the system's design. The only pieces of the system that use the 2.4-gigahertz spectrum are the network's access points. Attached to utility poles, outdoors and hanging at least 30 feet above the ground, the access points are out of the way of most other wireless traffic. The signals sent between a laptop and an access point in the Ricochet network use the 900-megahertz band -- a lower section of the radio spectrum. ''We won't bump into each other that much,'' said Tim Yankey, director of product marketing for Metricom, which makes Ricochet. Microwave ovens also use waves in the 2.4-gigahertz range, though ovens are the least of researchers' problems. Microwave ovens are designed to prevent the emission of electromagnetic waves outside their boxes. Cordless phones that operate in the 2.4-gigahertz band are more of a potential problem. Most of the phones are designed, however, so that they can be set at one of several narrow frequency bands to avoid interference with neighbors' phones. Others are configured so that the signals hop from one frequency to another to prevent interference. Those design elements, some engineers say, enable their signals to be kept separate from other wireless devices. But it is Bluetooth technology that may interfere most with wireless LAN's, and vice versa. Imagine, for example, a day when an employee is using a Bluetooth cell phone and a laptop that is connected to the Internet via a wireless LAN. At the moment that the employee tries to download phone numbers from phone to laptop, the Internet connection could slow down or the phone transmission stall. What could be happening is that packets of information are colliding with other packets, similar to traffic problems on a wired network. In such a case, the devices would continue to resend the data packets until they make it through. ''The end user will see it as | Preparing for Collision Of Wireless Services |
1194978_0 | YOUR son or daughter has just been accepted to both the University of Pennsylvania and to Penn State. The deadline for decision is May 1. Where should he or she go? Many factors should be considered, of course, but lots of parents and students are particularly interested in the potential economic payoff from higher education. Until recently, there was a consensus among economists that students who attend more selective colleges -- ones with tougher admissions standards -- land better paying jobs as a result. Having smart, motivated classmates and a prestigious degree were thought to enhance learning and give students access to job networks. But is it true? A study that I conducted with Stacy Dale of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, ''Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College'' (available online at http:// papers.nber.org/), has unintentionally undermined this consensus. It is easy to see how one could think that elite colleges enhance their graduates' earnings. According to the College and Beyond Survey, data collected by the Mellon Foundation, the average student who entered a highly selective college like Yale, Swarthmore or the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, earned $92,000 in 1995. The average student from a moderately selective college, like Penn State, Denison or Tulane, earned $22,000 less. The problem with this comparison is that students who attend more selective colleges are likely to have higher earnings regardless of where they attend college for the very reasons that they were admitted to the more selective colleges in the first place. Trying to address the problem, earlier studies compared students with similar standardized test scores and grade point averages who attended more and less selective schools. But this approach takes account of much less information than admissions committees see. There is no guarantee that all the relevant differences among students have been held constant. This problem is known as selection bias. More selective schools accept students with greater earnings potential, and students with greater earnings potential are more likely to apply to more selective schools. To overcome the problem, Ms. Dale and I restricted the comparison to students who applied to and were accepted by comparable colleges. Some students chose more selective schools; some less selective ones. College selectivity is based on the average College Board score of the freshman class. We used data from the College and Beyond Survey of 14,239 full-time workers who had been freshmen in | Economic Scene; Children smart enough to get into elite schools may not need to bother. |
1194954_0 | New York City has fallen disturbingly behind schedule in upgrading 102 sewage treatment plants upstate that discharge waste water into the city's reservoirs. Unless the Giuliani administration bears down harder on this crucial project, the city may not be able to avoid building a new $6 billion water filtration plant. The sewage plant upgrades, which would help eliminate water-borne parasites like cryptosporidium, giardia and other contaminants, are a key element of the 1997 watershed plan to protect drinking water quality for nine million people in the New York City area. If the cleanup is successful the city will avert a federal order to filter the water, as is required in most big cities. Under the agreement signed by the city, the state and upstate communities, the city obtained more authority to regulate future development in the watershed. The city also agreed to pay for upgrading sewage treatment plants in upstate communities, repair many of the region's septic tanks and acquire buffer land around the reservoirs. The city's ability to carry out this plan in a timely manner will be a key factor when the federal Environmental Protection Agency decides in 2002 whether to continue to allow the city to avoid filtration. Yet a new report released by the state attorney general's office shows that almost nothing has been done to modernize the plants. Nearly half the plants have not even developed a conceptual plan for improvements, much less done the tough jobs, from engineering designs to hiring contractors, required to get construction started. While city administrators blame the complexity of the projects and foot-dragging by upstate communities for the delays, the city clearly bears the burden of getting the job done. Without energetic prodding and continuous oversight, smaller communities are not likely to move quickly. | Sewage Treatment Delays |
1194982_1 | court in Washington. ''We will fight it as forcefully as we can,'' Mr. McDonough said. ''It's an unneeded project.'' An ardent opponent of the project in Congress, Bill Pascrell, a Democrat from Paterson, called the project ill conceived and speculative. ''This battle is far from over,'' he said in a statement. ''By no means are we waving a white flag.'' He said he was considering an appeal in the federal courts. Gary Lauderdale, senior vice president of Transcontinental's parent company, Williams Companies, said it was pleased with the commission's decision and eager to work with state and federal agencies to have the pipeline constructed in an ''environmentally responsible manner.'' The commission said it approved the project, intended to transport 700 million cubic feet of gas a day to New Jersey and the New York City area, because of growing demand in the deregulated gas market, spot shortages of gas in recent months, recent sharp increases in heating oil prices, and 18 gas-fired electrical generating stations proposed in New Jersey to meet peak summer power demands. Governor Whitman and the other critics contend that existing natural gas supplies and pipeline systems are sufficient to satisfy present demands and future growth. Initially, the Transcontinental project was part of a bigger proposed pipeline system that would link the New Jersey-New York City region to a major natural gas hub outside Chicago. Vast new supplies of gas from the Canadian Rockies are to reach that hub this fall through a pipeline now under construction. Transcontinental and other gas companies had planned to open the Northeast to that Canadian gas with new lines running from the Chicago hub to Defiance, Ohio, then from Defiance to another major natural gas hub in Leidy, Pa., and from there into New Jersey and New York City. In an interim order last December, the regulatory commission said the pipeline companies had not proved there was sufficient demand for new gas supplies near segments of the proposed pipeline in Indiana, Ohio and western Pennsylvania. At the time, those companies proposed selling the bulk of the gas to subsidiaries. The commission declined to accept such sales as proof of viable new markets and refused to grant a permit for any part of the Chicago-to-New Jersey project until the pipeline companies found independent, unaffiliated buyers for at least half of the gas in the Midwest and western Pennsylvania. In December, the commission | Federal Panel Clears Plans for Gas Pipeline in New Jersey |
1191942_0 | In Washington this weekend, a disparate gathering of protesters will be rallying against what they view as the malign forces of economic globalization. The dissidents' message is sometimes confused and misplaced, especially in wanting to dismantle essential institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. But the protesters, who call themselves the Mobilization for Global Justice, also represent a popular response -- misguided but heartfelt -- to a worldwide economic transformation that is not fully comprehended even by the experts. To be sure, some interest groups are trying to manipulate public concern for their own advantage. But it would be dangerous to ignore a growing popular unease over these trends and the need for broader educational efforts. Despite the dramatic stock market decline yesterday, the fact remains that the United States has on balance benefited from the unbridled flow of capital, goods, people and information that is called globalization. The dislocations felt by American workers have been far outweighed by the benefits of cheap imports, low inflation and expanding opportunities for American businesses overseas. Abroad, the poor countries benefiting from expanded markets outnumber those hurt by them. Nevertheless, the new world order has created hardship in declining or newly uncompetitive industries. Some nations see globalization as a code word for American domination. Many fear that the World Bank, I.M.F. and W.T.O. are pursuing the interests of an American-led elite, to the detriment of the poor and the environment. Critics on both the left and right have begun to question whether the world would be better off without these institutions. Certainly the institutions that manage the world economy must be more sensitive and transparent. But their real challenge is to help everyone understand that there is no realistic -- or beneficial -- way to reverse or even slow the forces that are driving the world economy. Just as American businesses have begun to discover that in the world of an Internet-driven economy the old rules have to be scrapped or adjusted, so countries around the world will have to learn to adjust to the new market forces if they want to harness them to their advantage. Underdeveloped countries have to learn that capital is voluntary, and does not flow to countries that do not obey its rules. Since the end of the cold war, there have been at least four major currency crises that threatened | Stopping the World |
1189753_0 | IN the curbside afterlife, the road from plastic Coke bottle to cozy polar fleece is paved with dirt, caps, sticky labels and extraneous resins, all of which have to be removed before a bottle can be recycled. To make that recycling possible, increasingly sophisticated technology helps bottle recyclers wash, sort, grind and analyze the bales of crushed bottles they buy from waste haulers or municipalities. About 290,000 tons of plastic bottles were recycled nationwide in 1998, the latest year for which statistics are available from the Environmental Protection Agency. The makers of recycling equipment include National Recovery Technologies and MSS Inc., both based in Nashville, and SRC Vision, in Medford, Ore. The companies have developed systems to detect and separate different plastic polymers using X-ray, infrared, near-infrared and visible-light sensors. The systems allow recyclers to process thousands of bottles an hour and to produce very precise separations of the different kinds of plastic resins used in bottle manufacturing. To be profitable, plastic recyclers need to produce clean, reusable batches of a single type of resin. The resins are used to make products like polyester carpet, insulation for winter coats and new bottles. The production of commercially viable polyethylene terephthalate, known as PET or PETE, is the mainstay for many bottle recyclers. PET is used in most plastic soda bottles; it is also used to package products like peanut butter, salad dressings and household cleaners. The recycling of PET bottles is greatly complicated when a batch is contaminated by bottles made with polyvinyl chloride, or PVC -- or vice versa, but recycled PVC is less desirable than recycled PET. PVC bottles, which are typically used for household cleaners and personal care products like shampoos, currently account for 2 percent of the market. Even small traces of PVC in a batch of PET, or traces of PET in a batch of PVC, will cause structural problems in recycling. Although some recycling companies attempt to sell their PVC stock, it has less resale value than PET, which is currently worth about 12 to 13 cents per pound. We've tried to sell it in the past for a couple of cents a pound, said Doug Meredith, a project engineer at Mohawk Industries, a carpet manufacturer in Calhoun, Ga., speaking of PVC. There's really not much of a market for it, and it usually goes into a landfill. The company uses PET in carpets. When | Sorters Ensure That Garbage In Isn't Garbage Out |
1189620_3 | other major conservation projects. The first six years were devoted to a study of the ''True Cross'' cycle, including damage done by earlier restorations, including the injection of liquid cement into the walls, which caused paint to flake off and sections of plaster to turn to chalk dust. ''Anything that could happen, happened to these frescos of Piero,'' said Anna Maria Maetzke, who oversaw the project as superintendent of Arezzo's art treasures, bemoaning five centuries of earthquakes, lightning strikes and manmade disasters. The restoration was noteworthy for its use of computer re-creations and modern chemical technology, said Ms. Maetzke and others involved in the project. The process clarified which sections had been painted by less accomplished apprentices. Under patient washings with de-ionized water, long-hidden stars were coaxed out of a luminous predawn sky above a sleeping Emperor Constantine where an angel, astonishingly foreshortened, hurtles out of the heavens. A colossal fabrication was uncovered in the form of a Roman ruin that a well-meaning earlier restorer had mistakenly conjured out of patchy sections of sky. As part of the restoration, the floor of the church was perforated in a honeycomb pattern for better circulation of air, and the outer walls were plastered for better insulation. The effort was so intense, wrote Silvano Lazzeri, the chief conservator, in a bank-sponsored compendium of articles on the project, that ''if I should ever find myself on a remote island in the middle of the ocean, I reckon I'd be able to reconstruct, in my mind's eye, all the scenes of the cycle.'' Critics of the restoration say that such intervention risks contaminating masterworks. On the other hand, Vittorio Sgarbi, a prominent Italian art pundit and a member of Parliament, said that the effort might have been too timid in stopping short of recreating lost segments that could easily be established in the context of the fresco. He also said that the costs of the project may have ballooned because of the resources of the sponsoring bank. Italy has so many priceless treasures that selecting what to conserve and restore takes political and commercial overtones as sponsors vie for projects that will provide maximum publicity while needier or worthier causes may go begging. But for all-round popular appeal, the Piero Project would be hard to top. Piero's birth in Sansepolcro to a prosperous family of leathermakers and indigo merchants, probably between 1410 and 1420, seems | A Fresco Seen With Fresh Eyes; The Restoration of Piero's Renaissance Masterwork |
1189643_1 | or fight. The census asks people to identify their employers. Is that disturbing? Or is it more troubling that privacy -- and with it, autonomy -- are disappearing from many workplaces? In many offices the boss owns your e-mail and can track your phone calls and the Web sites you've visited. Some companies even track bathroom visits and require regular drug screening. Might a person feel exposed by a question about ancestry or citizenship? Perhaps. But such fears might also play into worry about the more insidious kinds of exposure that have been brought about by technology. One such threat is posed by DNA testing, even though it is often used in ways that anyone can applaud: to free mistakenly convicted prisoners, to catch rapists. But what will this technology mean for legitimate protest when it is combined with surveillance devices like hidden cameras and voice amplifiers? Imagine trying to pull off the Boston Tea Party today. Infrared scopes see the ''intruders'' in the dark, DNA tests match the tea in the water with tea stains on the clothing. And who knows what else. Perhaps more psychologically relevant to most of us is that by knowing so much about what can be known about us, we lose a fantasy of freedom. If things get bad, I'll light out for the territory and begin again. But wait. The government has my DNA. It'll track my credit card. Many people have voiced a reluctance to reveal their incomes. I think this hesitance reflects the longing felt by average Americans to preserve a sense of self-worth. Every day in newspapers and on TV, millionaires and billionaires parade before us, flaunting their wealth. Having to contend constantly with this assault on our self-esteem, we may lose our peace of mind, our contentment, our sense of purpose. Feeling impotent to bring about real political change, to even describe exactly what needs to happen, people turn to symbols and subversions. The census offers a rare opportunity to vent frustration. A colleague at the hospital where I work mentioned last week that she hadn't returned her form because she couldn't decide which race needed her most. She is white, but she wants to place herself among the ranks of a minority that she feels deserves better representation. She's dedicated to social justice and is wondering if it isn't an ethical imperative to make sure that those in | Your Mail Isn't Spying on You |
1189718_3 | not for Premarin, but for an unbranded ad that discusses the consequences of menopause and estrogen loss.'' Some women who refuse to take the drug say they constantly have to explain themselves. ''Everyone I know takes it, practically without exception,'' Dr. Nestle said. She does not, she says, because, ''I read the medical literature and I prefer to be cautious.'' Now Dr. Nestle feels vindicated. The disconcerting finding on heart disease arose in a study, known as the Hormone Replacement Therapy Trial of the Women's Health Initiative, that involves about 25,000 healthy postmenopausal women. They were randomly assigned to take hormone replacement therapy or a dummy medication. Last Friday, the study investigators sent each of the women a letter, gingerly informing them that those who took estrogen were having slightly more heart attacks, strokes and blood clots in their legs and lungs than those taking the placebo. The total number of women who experienced these serious problems was very small, less than 1 percent of the women. And the effect seemed to fade with time. But, the study investigators said, they had to tell the women about it. Another recent study, of women who already had heart disease, also found that hormone replacement therapy increased the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes for the first two years. Although the trend reversed itself in that study, the net effect of estrogen was neither to protect nor harm the heart. Many gynecologists were convinced by the weaker comparative studies, however. Dr. Nanette Wenger, a cardiologist at Emory University, said she went to a medical meeting recently and tried to explain the questions about hormone replacement therapy and heart disease to an audience of about 700 obstetricians and gynecologists. They were surprised, she said, telling her that they had thought that it was well known that estrogen prevented heart disease. As a result, Dr. Wenger said, ''often coronary disease is cited as the reason to prefer estrogen over other therapies.'' Some gynecologists say they will continue, for the time being, to recommend that some women take estrogen to protect against heart disease. Dr. Wulf H. Utian, an obstetrician/gynecologist in Cleveland who is the executive director of the North American Menopause Society, said he had and still would use estrogen for that purpose. The new findings, he said, ''don't change my stance at all.'' Dr. Charles B. Hammond, a professor and chairman of the | Estrogen Question Gets Tougher |
1189708_4 | at North Carolina State University, who sat on the panel. Dr. Gould said that the panel was questioning the often-repeated claim of proponents of biotechnology that ''a tomato is a tomato'' no matter how it was created. ''That is something we need to reconsider,'' Dr. Gould said. ''Not all tomatoes are equal.'' Critics of the regulatory system applauded the panel's recommendation that the Environmental Protection Agency begin reviewing plants genetically engineered with resistance to viral diseases. The plants carry foreign genes taken from the viruses that confer protection against the disease. Ecologists have expressed concern about the potential for such plants to interbreed with wild plants, conferring virus-resistance and creating a super weed. The report also agreed with scientists who have criticized the agriculture department's handling of ecological risks. The panel found that the department had lacked adequate scientific support for its controversial approval of a biotech squash, which some feared could produce a super weed. The report also acknowledged the potential for harm to monarch butterflies from Bt corn plants, as suggested by a study out of Cornell University last May. Since the study came out, companies selling the corn have insisted on the plant's safety. The report noted that further field studies were required to determine to what extent, if any, monarchs are being harmed in the wild. ''It's a question mark,'' Dr. Gould said. Some of the panel's conclusions disappointed members of 11 scientific societies, many of whom work in genetic engineering or in other agricultural research, who had originally asked the academy to do the study. The scientists in the societies had harshly criticized the proposed rule and had lobbied to have much of it thrown out. The academy decided to prepare the report released yesterday after at least one plant scientist, Arthur Kelman, a professor at North Carolina State University, approached top officials at the academy with the societies' concerns, said Dr. R. James Cook, a plant pathologist. Dr. Cook said yesterday that he was disappointed that the panel had recommended that the E.P.A.'s proposed rules be strengthened rather than weakened. ''In a couple of years,'' he said, ''we will see that this is overkill.'' But Dr. Cook said that many scientists had begun to reconsider their position that the technology requires little or no government regulation. With the growing opposition to genetically engineered plants, he said, scientists realize that strong government regulation could help | CAUTIOUS SUPPORT ON BIOTECH FOODS BY SCIENCE PANEL |
1189589_2 | prices can be much lower than list prices), with the least expensive models featuring fewer than 14 channels and no squelch settings. The more expensive radios come with many extra features, like voice-activated transmissions for hands-free operation, a choice of sounds to signify incoming calls (including vibration), a built-in weather radio or a scramble mode that makes your conversation unintelligible to nearby listeners using a different brand. In the next few months, however, the manufacturers will introduce new models that really load on the extras. Motorola will offer a model with a digital compass, thermometer, altimeter, barometer and FM radio. Cobra will have a unit with a weather radio that will turn on automatically for an alert. And Audiovox will sell a radio with a built-in Global Positioning System receiver to pinpoint locations. The radios are also popular because they are generally less expensive to buy and use than other communications devices, like cell phones, and can work better at short range. That was the experience of Gary Eheman, a senior market support representative stationed in Atlanta for International Business Machines, when he attended an industry convention in Anaheim, Calif. Although Mr. Eheman had a wireless phone and his co-workers had pagers, he was thwarted when he tried to use his cell phone to call a colleague from a basement conference room. That's when he thought about how useful family radios would be. ''I'm looking at my cell phone and I can't get a signal. Why? I'm below ground,'' he said. He switched to a set of Uniden 1400 radios -- a friend had purchased the pair for about $80 at a warehouse buying club -- and reached a colleague on the 10th floor. And there were no per-call charges. Away from work, Mr. Eheman and his son use the radios to stay in touch while hiking. The range of the radios is generally advertised as two miles, although atmospheric conditions, location and the type of terrain can alter that range significantly. Another fan of the F.R.S. radios is Paul Folmsbee, a real estate agent with Block & Associates in Raleigh, N.C., who uses the radios to talk to clients traveling in a separate car. ''Car to car, you get three-quarters of a mile,'' he said. ''Out in the clear, you get about a mile and a half. Under exceptional conditions, at the beach to someone out on the water, | With Family Radios, the Walkie-Talkie Comes of Age |
1188488_32 | sexism. We should do everything we can to ensure equal access, but it is foolish to insist that numerical inequality is always a function of bias rather than biology. This doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about individual cases of injustice; just that we shouldn't be shocked if gender inequality endures. And we should recognize that affirmative action for women (and men) in all arenas is an inherently utopian project. Then there is the medical option. A modest solution might be to give more women access to testosterone to improve their sex drives, aggression and risk affinity and to help redress their disadvantages in those areas as compared with men. This is already done for severely depressed women, or women with hormonal imbalances, or those lacking an adequate sex drive, especially after menopause. Why not for women who simply want to rev up their will to power? Its use needs to be carefully monitored because it can also lead to side effects, like greater susceptibility to cancer, but that's what doctors are there for. And since older men also suffer a slow drop-off in T levels, there's no reason they should be cold-shouldered either. If the natural disadvantages of gender should be countered, why not the natural disadvantages of age? In some ways, this is already happening. Among the most common drugs now available through Internet doctors and pharmacies, along with Viagra and Prozac, is testosterone. This summer, with the arrival of AndroGel, the testosterone gel created as a medical treatment for those four to five million men who suffer from low levels of testosterone, recreational demand may soar. Or try this thought experiment: what if parents committed to gender equity opted to counteract the effect of testosterone on boys in the womb by complementing it with injections of artificial female hormones? That way, structural gender difference could be eradicated from the beginning. Such a policy would lead to ''men and women with normal bodies but identical feminine brains,'' Matt Ridley posits. ''War, rape, boxing, car racing, pornography and hamburgers and beer would soon be distant memories. A feminist paradise would have arrived.'' Today's conservative cultural critics might also be enraptured. Promiscuity would doubtless decline, fatherhood improve, crime drop, virtue spread. Even gay men might start behaving like lesbians, fleeing the gym and marrying for life. This is a fantasy, of course, but our increasing control and understanding of the scientific | The He Hormone |
1188545_3 | with the inclusion concept: only two out of eight parents of prospective students declined when told of the nature of the Sleepy Hollow afternoon session, Ms. Morrow said. Among those who had no reluctance was Tara Boozer, whose 3-year-old daughter, Caroline, was busy making waffles in the classroom's miniature kitchen. ''It didn't bother me at all,'' Ms. Boozer said. ''I like the ratio at Sleepy Hollow -- 12 kids, 4 adults. And I thought, if some of the children are different, well, how could it hurt? Some people I know, to whom I told my plans, thought maybe my daughter would not get enough attention. They said, How will it affect her? But it has been just fine. I'm signing her up for next year.'' Caroline has made friends with Eric Dollinger, a 4-year-old with speech and language delays, and Ms. Boozer has gotten close with Eric's mother, Holly. ''It's good for parents to see that typical children function in some ways at a similar level,'' Ms. Dollinger said. ''They all overfeed the class goldfish.'' The children who have developmental disabilities, she added, benefit from relating to those who do not, picking up social skills by observation. ''They learn how to relate to each other. The happy part is, Eric has made a gain. Intellectually, he has made tremendous gains. He'll be here one more year, and then we'll start him in public school in the fall of 2001.'' In addition to the nursery school, the Children's School runs a mother-child program for 1-, 2- and 3-year-olds at the church. Rosemary DeRosso regularly attends with her grandson, Joey Freda, a 2-year-old with Down syndrome. On this early spring day, Ms. DeRosso was perched on the edge of a big sandbox, watching her grandson play with children from the nursery school. ''You have to work a little harder with him, but he can learn; he does learn,'' she said. ''Another child might learn certain things more quickly, but Joey does learn. And he happens to be the most wonderful thing that's happened to me. I'll be honest with you. I used to wonder, when I heard of someone with a Down syndrome child or grandchild, I would think to myself, How can people love these children? ''Now, of course, I understand. You hear people say sometimes how kids are cruel. I've found it to be the other way around. I think | The View From/Briarcliff Manor; A School for Toddlers of All Needs |
1190136_0 | Attorney General Janet Reno said yesterday that three doctors would meet with the family of Elian Gonzalez to decide how to handle the transfer of the child. Ms. Reno said Doris Meissner, the Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner, consulted with officials of psychological associations in choosing the three. PAULINA M. KERNBERG, 65, is the former director of child and adolescent services at the Westchester Division of New York-Presbyterian Hospital and now oversees the center's divorce program. That program seeks to provide psychiatric expertise for families going through divorces, and the judges adjudicating them. Dr. Kernberg provides evaluations of children and families and offers expert testimony for judges and courts, according to colleagues. But the program also provides sessions for young children to help them understand and cope with new family arrangements and changing custody. One colleague said that Dr. Kernberg had extensive experience dealing with the psychological and legal issues that swirl around divorce cases, and that always put the child first. ''Her primary concern is the child's best interest,'' said Dr. Fleming Graae, the interim director of child and adolescent services. Dr. Kernberg was born in Chile, attended college there and is fluent in Spanish. She received training in Baltimore and Topeka, Kan., and is a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University. She lives in Scarsdale, N.Y. LOURDES RIGUAL-LYNCH , 49, is a clinical psychologist and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Dr. Rigual-Lynch is the director of mental health services for the New York Children's Health Project. For more than a decade she has studied the effects of domestic violence and homelessness on children. Dr. Rigual-Lynch regularly counsels, evaluates and works with homeless children, said Thaler Pekar, a spokeswoman for the Children's Health Fund, which sponsors the health project. ''Dr. Lynch has worked with New York City's most vulnerable children for the past 10 years,'' Ms. Pekar said. Born in Puerto Rico, Dr. Rigual-Lynch moved to New York to attend Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y., and then Adelphi University's Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies in Garden City, N.Y. Dr. Rigual-Lynch, who is fluent in Spanish, wrote her doctoral dissertation on Puerto Rican migrants. She lives in Manhattan. JAMES M. WIENER , 66, is a professor emeritus in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University in Washington. Dr. Wiener, who still sees patients at university clinics, is considered a | Three Doctors Selected to Meet With Members of Gonzalez Family |
1190099_1 | viewpoints make for painful family confrontations. ''It's not intended for people to have a handicap,'' says the children's grandfather, who is not deaf, to his son, Peter, over cake and orange juice at the kitchen table. ''If I didn't know you, I would say you were an abusing parent.'' The complicating factor here is deaf culture, the emotional and social bond among nonhearing people who use American Sign Language and have come to cherish their silent world as special and worth preserving. The eagerness of loved ones to jump on the cochlear implant bandwagon comes as a betrayal to some. As Peter says to his mother during a backyard get-together, ''I didn't know that you didn't accept deafness until now.'' ''Sound and Fury,'' which is being screened today and tomorrow as part of the 29th New Directions/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art, is asking some big questions. In a socially aware, socially sensitive culture, we profess to believe that no particular skin color, religion, sexual orientation, political ideology, chronological age or physical attribute is superior to another. We say, in fact, that differences should be celebrated; thus the corporate buzzword of the moment: diversity. Are the deaf parents in this film calling the culture's bluff? Or is a physical disadvantage truly something that should be celebrated? Do parents have a right to keep their children at a remove from the hearing world just because, in their opinion and experience, deaf is beautiful? Have we gone so far in our fear of offending anyone that we now advocate disadvantages' being deliberately preserved? Or do the hearing-impaired have a right to rear their children within a somewhat separatist subculture? The Amish have been doing that for quite a while. The most telling event in the film is Nita Artinian's change of heart. In the beginning she supports her daughter Heather's request for the implant and, in fact, wants one herself. But after Nita learns that the implant will be far less helpful to her as an adult, she changes her mind. ''We're afraid that the cochlear implant will change her identity,'' says Nita after a visit to a preschool class of children with implants. Later, in a scene between mother and daughter, Nita uses the word ''we'' in discussing the decision. Heather corrects her with ''I thought you decided.'' Nita answers: ''Don't you remember? We decided together.'' SOUND AND | A Tight Little Island In the World of Deafness |
1195518_0 | For the fifth consecutive year, Hastings-on-Hudson ranked tops in Westchester for the amount of material recycled per resident -- an average of 415 pounds a person in 1999, according to county figures. Croton-on-Hudson and Scarsdale followed, with 375 pounds and 352 pounds a person, respectively. The three lowest rates were recorded in Mount Vernon (101 pounds a person), Yonkers (102 pounds a person) and Elmsford (133 pounds a person). Overall, Westchester residents recycled 0.6 percent more than in 1998, with a rate of 41.7 percent of the waste stream being recycled. Last year, Hastings recycled 66.7 percent of all solid waste. The county's goal is to have each municipality recycle 40 percent of its solid waste. Last year 1.6 million tons of solid waste were generated in the county. Of that total, 672,024 tons were recycled. Municipally recycled waste rose 3.1 percent from 1998 to 38.5 percent, and privately recycled waste dropped slightly, compared with the previous year, to 44.9 percent. On April 18 at Kensico Dam Plaza in Valhalla, the county recognized Mavis Discount Tires for accepting unwanted tires on a nonprofit basis. ELSA BRENNER IN BRIEF | Recycling Kudos |
1195797_14 | through bile-spewing,'' in which women from around the country write in to describe the most intimate secrets of former lovers they dislike. (The men are identified by their home towns and sometimes by their full names, a few letters of which are fatuously omitted.) Furthermore, when the gossip is archived, it can come back to haunt. If, in a moment of youthful enthusiasm, I posted intemperate comments to an Internet newsgroup, those comments could be retrieved years later simply by typing my name or Internet protocol address into a popular search engine. For more and more citizens the most important way of exchanging gossip is e-mail. But instead of giving private e-mail the same legal protections as private letters, courts are increasingly treating e-mail as if it were no more private than a postcard. In an entirely circular legal test, the Supreme Court has held that constitutional protections against unreasonable searches depend on whether citizens have subjective expectations of privacy that society is prepared to accept as reasonable. This means that as technologies of surveillance and data collection have become ever more intrusive, expectations of privacy have naturally diminished, with a corresponding reduction in constitutional protections. More recently, courts have held that merely by adopting a written policy that warns employees that their e-mail may be monitored, employers will lower expectations of privacy in a way that gives them virtually unlimited discretion to monitor e-mail. Even when employers promise to respect the privacy of e-mail, courts are upholding their right to break their promises without warning. A few years ago in a case in Pennsylvania, the Pillsbury Company repeatedly promised its employees that all e-mail would remain confidential and that no employee would be fired based on intercepted e-mail. Michael Smyth, a Pillsbury employee, received an e-mail message from his supervisor over the company's computer network, which he read at home. Relying on the company's promise about the privacy of e-mail, he sent an intemperate reply to the supervisor, supposedly saying at one point that he felt like killing ''the backstabbing bastards'' on the sales force, and referring to a holiday party as the ''Jim Jones Koolaid affair.'' Despite the company's promises, it proceeded to retrieve from its computers dozens of e-mail messages that Smyth had sent and received, and then fired him for transmitting ''inappropriate and unprofessional comments.'' Smyth sued, arguing that the company had invaded his right to | The Eroded Self |
1195539_4 | handlebars to their frames. The most effective locks these days, Mr. DiPaulo said, are hardened steel chains with Kryptonite locks, which, unlike some U-locks, cannot be pried open with metal bars. And, he added, two locks are better than one, allowing bike owners to use one to lock the frame and a wheel to a stationary object and the other to lock the remaining wheel to the frame. With this method, it is best to deploy two different types of locks -- say, a U-lock and a chain, or a chain and a cable -- so thieves are confronted with two different systems to pick or break. Seats should also be locked to bicycle frames. For about $5, some bike shops will fashion a permanent seat lock made of a recycled gear chain wrapped inside an old inner tube. Even wary cyclists sometimes do not do enough to protect their bikes. Not long ago, Mr. DiPaulo appraised a visitor's year-old mountain bike. Although he approved of a heavy chain for the frame and pronounced the seat lock satisfactory, he pointed out that the unsecured quick-release levers on both wheels made them inviting targets for thieves. Two days later, the visitor chained his frame to a lamppost on St. Mark's Place, then returned 20 minutes later to find that the wheels had vanished. The replacement cost was $200 -- almost the original price of the entire bicycle. SITES Cycling Through the Web A number of environmental and bicycling advocacy organizations provide information on the Web: Times Up!: www.times-up.org Transportation Alternatives: www.transalt.org Recycle-a-Bicycle: www.bway.net/rab/ Tri-State Transportation Campaign: www.tstc.org Information is also available through various New York bicycle clubs: Five Borough Bike Club: www.5bbc.org Kissena Bicycling Club: www.kissena.org The Century Road Club Association: www.crca.org New York Cycle Club: www.nycc.org The Weekday Cyclists: trudyth@aol.com Fast and Fabulous Cycling Team: www.fastnfab.org Chart: ''LINGO -- Try Drafting, Avoid Endo'' Bonked -- To be tired from riding long distances without eating or drinking. Death star trench -- The section of road between two large trucks. Doored -- To be struck by a car door. Drafting -- Riding closely behind another cycler to minimize drag from a headwind. Endo -- To be thrown over the handlebars. Snakebite -- Flat tire caused by riding without sufficient air pressure; characterized by a double puncture. Suicide lane -- The part of the road between a bus and a curb. URBAN TACTICS | Using a Bicycle Helmet, and the Head Inside |
1195669_4 | the numbers for men and women.'' A separate study, being published in The Journal of Women's Health, found that very few researchers analyzed their data to determine whether prescription drugs, surgical procedures and preventive measures, like changes in diet or behavior, had different effects on women and men. ''Analysis of outcomes by sex is sorely lacking,'' said the article, by Regina M. Vidaver and colleagues at the Society for Women's Health Research and George Washington University. Dr. Vidaver, a molecular biologist, and her colleagues reviewed research published from 1993 to 1998 in four of the nation's leading medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association, to see if researchers had analyzed the data by sex. Some scientists said they had had difficulty recruiting women to participate, in part because women had child care obligations more often than men. The third study, by Dr. Katherine D. Sherif of the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine in Philadelphia, found that a small proportion of published research -- less than 15 percent -- did any analysis of the differences in results for men and women. As a result, Dr. Sherif said, doctors are sometimes slow to recognize dangerous drug combinations. For example, she said, it was mainly women who suffered life-threatening abnormalities in heart rhythm when they took the antihistamine Seldane in combination with erythromycin, a common antibiotic, or ketoconazole, an antifungal agent. The accounting office said the National Institutes of Health had decided that people conducting certain types of research did not need to report on the inclusion of women. For example, it said, studies that involve only specimens of tissue or body fluids are exempt. But some scientists said the broad exemption might be inappropriate, because it sometimes makes a difference whether scientists are examining cells from a woman or a man. Barbara Cohen, the editor of Nature Genetics, a monthly journal, said: ''I can understand that exception. But it could lead to the loss of useful information because the cells of men and women, in any part of the body, have different genetic characteristics, and they are exposed and respond to different hormones.'' Under the law, the cost of including women in a research project is not a permissible reason to exclude them. The requirement does not apply to the study of diseases that affect only men, like prostate or testicular cancer. | Research Neglects Women, Studies Find |
1191089_1 | and Chinese -- could be expected to riot after a major earthquake. A6 U.S. Bracing for Protests Local and federal law-enforcement agencies in Washington are preparing for mass rallies this week against global economics. A5 Russian Moving on Arms Treaty President-elect Vladimir V. Putin, in the first major test of a new and more centrist parliamentary majority, reached agreement with legislative allies to bring a long-delayed nuclear arms reduction treaty to a ratification vote as early as Friday. A14 New Leader for German Party Angela Merkel, 45, was elected leader of the Christian Democrats, who face a crisis over their party's finances and identity. A14 World Briefing A8 NATIONAL A18-26 U.S. Set to Order Relatives To Hand Over Cuban Boy Justice Department officials prepared to present Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives with a letter telling them how they should hand him over to federal officials tomorrow or Thursday so that he could be transferred to his father's custody. A22 Ruling on Jailed Immigrants Hundreds of illegal immigrants in nine Western states who have completed prison terms for crimes in this country must be freed until the United States can persuade their homelands to take them back, a federal appeals court ruled. A25 Differing on Whistle-Blower The Labor Department says Pacific Gas and Electric maneuvered to have psychiatrists find ''paranoid delusions'' in a manager who had publicly complained about safety problems the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it found no evidence of retaliation. A27 Complaint Against First Lady The disciplinary arm of the Arkansas Supreme Court, already looking into a complaint seeking to disbar President Clinton, said it would review one against Hillary Rodham Clinton involving Whitewater. A26 Airport Delays in Washington A power failure prevented takeoffs and landings at Reagan National Airport last night, forcing planes to divert to Dulles International. Airlines said it was unclear how schedules would be affected today. A20 SCIENCE TIMES F1-12 Unintended Effects of Vitamins Large doses of vitamins C and E and selenium can be harmful, according to a report by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. A20 Backing for Impotence Drug An F.D.A. advisory panel recommended that a new tablet to counter impotence, Uprima, be approved for sale despite its side effects. A21 Rivals Doubt Genome Claim Leaders of the public consortium racing to decode the human genome expressed doubts that their | NEWS SUMMARY |
1191013_2 | Garcia, what it was like to be an officer here. He said it was sort of like being a movie star, with people always trying to get at you, only they don't want your autograph, they want to kill you -- ''so even your friends don't want to be in a restaurant with you, and they don't want their kids near your kids.'' Colombians tell this joke: After God created Colombia, an angel asked God why he gave all the beauty to one country -- rain forests, mountains, oceans, savanna -- and God answered: ''Ha! Wait till you see what kind of people I put there!'' For years, Colombia's mafia processed cocaine grown from coca in Peru. But as Peru drove the coca growers out, they migrated to the rain forest in Southern Colombia -- one of the largest unbroken expanses of rain forest left on earth, but also a region without much government. The drug mafia is now chopping down the rain forest -- thousands of acres each month -- then laying down herbicides, planting coca, processing it into cocaine in rain forest labs, throwing the chemicals in the rivers, and then flying the drugs out from grass airstrips. Underlying Colombia's drug war is a real 40-year-old social struggle between Marxist guerrillas and right-wing vigilantes (32,000 killings last year). But let's cut the nonsense: Colombia's guerrillas may have started as a romantic movement against an unjust oligarchy -- they may have started as a movement that ate to fight. But today, these guerrillas are fighting to eat -- fighting the government because they make tons of money protecting drug operations in the rain forest. In between the guerrillas and the vigilantes (who also profit from drugs), Colombia's silent majority is held hostage. Yes, Colombians are at fault for having been too tolerant of the early drug lords. And Americans are at fault for their insatiable appetite for cocaine. But here's the bottom line: If we give the Colombian majority the aid it needs to fight the drug Mafia there is a chance -- and it's no sure thing -- that it will be able to forge a domestic peace. If we don't -- and this is a sure thing -- the problem will only get worse, it will spew instability across this region, and the only rain forest your kids will ever see is the Rainforest Cafe. FOREIGN AFFAIRS | Saving Colombia |
1190976_4 | structure and water content lead to recognizable variations in reflection at different wavelengths, or colors, of the spectrum, all the way from the infrared band through the visible. ''Plants produce a different color pattern that I can identify,'' said Dr. Larry Lass, in the department of plant soils and entomological sciences at the University of Idaho, who is performing some of the analysis with the help of a grant from the National Geographic Society. In August, researchers found just how strikingly detailed the vegetation maps could be when they flew over about 100 square miles in the Virungas, including parts of all three of the countries that contain it, in a small airplane that carried a so-called hyperspectral instrument provided by Earth Search Sciences Inc. of McCall, Idaho. The data, which Dr. Lass and others are still analyzing, contain a minutely detailed spectrum from each patch of ground, about 15 feet square. The research team is also using somewhat coarser spectral images, covering a wider area, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Landsat satellites, said Dr. Timothy W. Foresman, national executive manager for the NASA Digital Earth Initiative, which is also supporting the project. All this information will be combined in various ways with radar images of the Virungas taken by the space shuttle Endeavor several years ago, digitized topographical maps and other data, said Dr. H. Dieter Steklis, chief scientist at the Fossey Fund and a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. (He is married to Ms. Steklis, the resource center's director.) Computer workstations and laptops to compile data have been delivered to the National University of Rwanda in Butare, said Paul Beaty, a geographer at Georgia Tech. The use of that equipment should help in monitoring the gorillas and their habitat, and perhaps even raise the profile of conservation efforts that the Rwandan government hopes will start a trickle of tourists back to the country, said Mr. Mutaboba, the diplomat. But if financing can be found, the eventual aim for the remote sensing technology is larger, said Dr. Romain Murenzi, chairman of physics department at Clark Atlanta University and a senior principal investigator at the Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems there. ''I would like to be able to have the possibility of a survey for the whole country,'' said Dr. Murenzi, a Rwandan who has applied for American citizenship. ''So they can see what they've | Tracking Gorillas and Rebuilding a Country |
1195338_0 | To the Editor: Are the studies mentioned by Alan B. Krueger that measured the income of people who entered college in 1972 and 1976 truly applicable to decisions about attending a more or less selective college today (Economic Scene column, April 27)? In the early to mid-1970's a much smaller percentage of the population attended college before entering the work force. A more meaningful study would look at people who graduated from college in the mid-1990's and later, when the percentage of people attending college was significantly greater, and when concerns about the new economy were already at the fore of the job market. LAURA J. WINSTON Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. April 27, 2000 | The Graduate, Updated |
1193825_24 | He had sailed his yacht, Manana, to the port of Mariel as a Red Cross volunteer. As my uncle explained the situation to the man, I sat on the hard cement surface of the docks, trying in vain to understand. From below, I noticed that the man's right arm was fake, but so real-looking that it was almost impossible to detect. The nails were perfectly shaped, and the curves of the forearm imitated the muscles on his left arm. The man agreed to take the women and children on his yacht and to tow the Valley Chief to international waters. When he tried to throw a rope from the docks to keep the Valley Chief from drifting, his fake arm got tangled up in the ropes and fell into the water. Everybody gasped. My mother fainted and hit the cement with a thud. Then a man dove into the murky waters of the port and, after a few seconds, came out triumphantly holding up the arm. The American, who turned out to be a Vietnam vet, simply took the arm, put it on and continued working. My mother came about. An explosion of applause followed. The event is etched in my memory because I remember thinking how courageous the man was to lead a full life with only one arm and how great technology must be in the United States to produce such an authentic-looking arm. It was a sign, I thought then, of good things to come. My father and uncle stayed behind on the damaged Valley Chief while my mother, my sister and I boarded the Manana. I tried to help in the kitchen making sandwiches, but someone called me up to the deck so I would not miss the last views of Cuba -- the faint edge of a low green hill and the masts of the boats swaying in the breeze. It was a little after 6 p.m., four days after we had left home. Before Cuba had completely disappeared from view, I began to throw up. There is little I remember after that. I was sick the entire night, curled up on the wet floor next to my sister, who was also sick. While everyone slept, strewn about the boat, my mother kept a vigil over my sister and me. She was 40 years old and, for the first time in her life, alone with | 'You Are Going to El Norte' |
1194184_3 | not extreme but mainstream to champion cleaner fuels. And they know that protecting the environment is the right thing to do; it will create jobs, not destroy jobs, and save the Earth as we know it in the process.'' Still, Mr. Gore has been careful and was today in pressing his environmentalist views, in part because he is trying to woo supporters in the traditionally Republican business community. Dressed in a starched blue work shirt, Mr. Gore used the rally as an opportunity to reinforce his campaign message that preserving the environment did not have to interfere with expanding the economy. ''The environment and the economy go together,'' he said. Today's celebration in Washington, called EarthFair 2000, was not politically diverse. The speakers who accepted invitations tended to be Democratic and liberal. (Organizers said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, declined an invitation to speak.) But the rally's loosely organized format made for some interesting contrasts. The loudest cheers during Mr. Gore' eight-minute speech came as he mentioned the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who led the festivities. Later tonight Mr. DiCaprio, 25, will be a host on an Earth Day special on the ABC television network. But today's rallies also featured speakers who back a campaign seeking to raise the environmental conscience of some prominent corporations, like the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC and will distribute a movie starring Mr. DiCaprio. The campaign, ecopledge.com, asks several corporations to change environmental practices, or face possible boycotts from students seeking employment, investors or consumers. Earlier this week the ecopledge campaign sent to the companies: they asked Disney to stop selling toys containing polyvinyl chloride and they asked Citigroup's investment bank, Salomon Smith Barney, to stop underwriting bonds for the Three Gorges Dam in China. Company spokesmen said they had no comment on the letters. No one from the Earth Day Network, the organizers of today's events, signed the letter. But ecopledge leaders were planning to speak about the campaign at rallies today in Washington, Boston and Los Angeles. ''We hope to gather 100,000 signatures,'' said Wendy Wendlandt, the president of Earth Day 2000. Some of the listeners were receptive to the idea. ''I think it's good to target companies like that rather than small ones, because they are so visible and have a direct effect on our environment and lives,'' said Heather McLeod, 22, of Washington, D.C. | Peaceful, Easy Feeling Imbues 30th Earth Day |
1193829_0 | The picture of femininity portrayed in Sullivan's article is troubling. He writes, for example, that the testosterone levels of men in long-term marriages drop over time: ''It is as if their wives successfully tame them, reducing their sexual energy to a level where it is more unlikely to seek extramarital outlets.'' Why does all of this pseudo-science of searching for hormonal justification for the sexual status quo always turn, in the end, on the castrating power of women? Aruna D'Souza Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. | The He Hormone |
1194127_3 | is counted in the hundreds of dollars. The highest priority now is to arrest the alarming spread of the disease. The U.N. estimates it would cost between $2 billion and $3 billion a year to do an adequate job of prevention in developing countries. The U.N. and international lending agencies have already committed substantial sums to AIDS prevention, but current efforts are reaching only 10 to 20 percent of vulnerable populations. The United States has nearly doubled its own contribution to global AIDS prevention efforts, from $125 million per year over the last several years to $235 million this year. There is bipartisan support in Congress for bills that would authorize $2 billion more over the next five years. The increases are laudable, but they will not be sufficient. Currently, some 95 percent of all the AIDS prevention money is being spent in the industrialized countries, while 95 percent of those infected live in the developing countries. There are some success stories that the world can learn from. Uganda, for example, has cut infection rates in half in recent years, through a combination of education, extensive testing and counseling, and condom promotion. Senegal has managed to contain the spread of the disease through sex education and condom promotion. Thailand has cut levels of infection by curtailing the sex trade. But for every relative success story, there are far too many countries where urgently needed prevention and care have been blunted by denial, social stigma and a lack of political will. In South Africa, which has one of the highest infection rates in the world, 3.5 million people will die in the next decade. Yet earlier this year it was disclosed that $6.2 million of the country's $17 million AIDS budget went unspent last year. Regrettably, President Thabo Mbeki's government refuses to pay for distribution of the drug AZT to pregnant women, calling it too toxic, though AZT has been shown to reduce transmission of H.I.V. from pregnant mothers to their babies. Mr. Mbeki is also promoting the views of scientists who claim that H.I.V. does not cause AIDS, a discredited theory that could undercut efforts to stop the spread of the virus. The World Bank and other international lending agencies can make money available for essential development of health care infrastructure in poor countries. But outside support will accomplish little unless the political will exists to confront this dread disease. | The Global Plague of AIDS |
1194306_7 | while Le Monde published 12 portraits from ''The Children'' on successive days. And to reach beyond Paris, nongovernmental organizations in France are putting on 120 shows of 61 posters donated by Amazonas Images. With both ''Migrations'' and ''The Children,'' which have their own multilingual Web site (www.sebastiaosalgado.com.br), a total of 100,000 copies have been published of each in six languages (English, German, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese), while 16 related exhibitions have already been scheduled. (The show at the George Eastman House in Rochester through June 18 will travel to the International Center of Photography in Manhattan in the fall.) And where exhibitions are held, Mr. Salgado encourages local newspapers to organize debates, not about his photographs but about what they show. And while the results of his travels to dismal corners of the world may not go unnoticed, the experience of witnessing violence, despair and misery on such a scale has eroded Mr. Salgado's belief in humanity. ''I am a different person from when I began this,'' he said. ''Some of the things I saw made me literally ill. The truth about human beings seems to be the truth of violence. Poverty and the destruction of the planet are going hand in hand. I once had political beliefs, I thought there were answers. I am no longer sure.'' But he has not given up. If he has concluded there are no global solutions, he evidently still believes that individuals can make a difference. So on the farm where he was reared, where 1,500 acres of pristine Atlantic Forest were cut down 50 years ago to make room for cattle, Mr. Salgado and his wife have invested a good part of their savings in a program to reforest the area with its original species. This winter the first 80,000 trees were planted. On its own, of course, the farm can hardly reverse Brazil's devastating deforestation. But plans also include a school on the property that will offer environmental courses to high school students, teachers and municipal officials. The idea, then, is for the farm to serve as a role model. Even more, it is to convince Brazilians that they can do something to save their forests. And for this, it helps to be the country's most famous photographer. When Brazilians come to hear Mr. Salgado talk about his photography, he never misses a chance to lecture them on the environment. | In Searing Images, Ravages of Upheaval; Brazilian Chronicles the Toll of Migration |
1194375_0 | If the universe holds a more ideal place for growing oranges than Matao, it has yet to be discovered. The mix of sun, soil and revitalizing rain in this section of southeastern Brazil so perfectly suits citrus that the trees planted in vast plantations across rolling red hills almost bow to the ground with oranges waiting to be picked. Nobody grows or squeezes more oranges than Brazil, where orange trees now outnumber people and 400,000 workers rely on oranges for their livelihoods. Since most of the 170 million people in Brazil are not in the habit of drinking orange juice, all but 1 percent of the juice is exported. Much goes to the United States, where Americans are the globe's biggest consumers of orange juice, drinking 68 million glasses every day. In a world of open borders, this pairing of abundant supply and growing demand should come close to free-trade nirvana. But Washington has imposed heavy tariffs on orange juice from Brazil since 1987. And Clinton administration officials, otherwise considered free traders, are currently conducting a review to determine whether to extend tariffs when they expire next month. America's reaction to Brazil's prodigious output has become a sore spot in hemispheric relations, an unexpectedly emotional issue that has stymied trade negotiators, riled American citrus growers and infuriated every Brazilian who has anything to do with oranges. ''When we sit down at the negotiating table with American trade representatives they treat it as a joke and say, 'We have orange juice here for you today,' '' said Regis Arslanian, head of trade policy for Brazil's embassy in Washington. ''It has become such an emotional issue for us because we really think these tariffs are absurd.'' Brazilians point out the inconsistencies in American tariffs and charge that the levies on juice are protectionist, plain and simple, just like similar duties imposed on rolled steel, shoes and other goods from Brazil. While 92 percent of American tariffs fall below 10 percent, those on juice from Brazil range as high as 63 percent, which adds about 30 cents to the price of a gallon of juice in American supermarkets. Growers in Florida -- the heart of America's citrus industry -- say the tariffs are needed because Brazilian growers do not have to meet health and safety standards as demanding as those in the United States, which makes juice production cheaper there. Some American growers | Orange Juice Tariff Hinders Trade Pact For U.S. and Brazil |
1194296_5 | large, publicly traded e-tailers were among them. Those companies were still spending large amounts of money on marketing to reach as wide an audience as possible. Bucking the trend, a few Internet companies are finding sources of revenue inside their own marketing departments. David Friedensohn, chief executive of BigStar Entertainment, an online-only retailer of videos and DVD's, said that instead of the ''spray-and-pray advertising approach,'' the company's primary marketing vehicle has been its own database of 1.7 million customer e-mail addresses. BigStar built content features into its Web site like interviews with celebrities -- features that, when monitored, give the company a better idea of individual customers' movie tastes. In addition to tracking usage and buying patterns, BigStar designed software that can sift through customer profiles before sending an e-mail marketing letter, and can tailor each note to a customer's entertainment preferences. That approach has not only stabilized the company's marketing costs, Mr. Friedensohn said, but has also generated revenue, since BigStar now sells its e-mail personalization service to other companies. Such efficiency is important, he said, if BigStar is to survive in the long run. ''It's not that you anticipate failure,'' Mr. Friedensohn said, ''but because things change so quickly on the Web, you want to build flexibility into the business.'' Mr. Hagel, at McKinsey, said that unlike BigStar, most e-tailers had done nothing with the vast amounts of customer data they have collected. ''In many cases they don't have the tools in place, or the skills to use the tools,'' he said. ''But you don't even need sophisticated systems. A lot of this is back-of-the-envelope stuff.'' He cited the case of one McKinsey client, an online financial services company that was retaining customers at what was considered a good rate by industry standards. ''But they never bothered to look at who was actually leaving and why,'' Mr. Hagel said. After some rudimentary sampling, it turned out that the company's most profitable customers were leaving. ''Economically, it was a disaster,'' he said. ''This refocused the company completely.'' It is understandable why companies have not focused on the bottom line until now, Mr. Hagel added, since ''growth has been the biggest imperative.'' ''But the market's now saying pretty clearly that it's not just growth anymore,'' he said. ''It's about overall efficiency of operations. The only problem is, in most cases, the skill sets to get that done are sadly lacking.'' | E-Commerce Report; A New Concept For Web Sellers: Profitability |
1194336_2 | problems. There are chemistry classes conducting lead-paint analyses in local schools, English seminars writing newsletters for community groups, drama students helping displaced residents produce a play about the loss of their neighborhood. Separately, scores of universities, trying to set an example of good corporate citizenship, have formed partnerships with their surrounding communities to work on issues like affordable housing and river cleanup. Last year, 300 university presidents signed a declaration urging higher education to ''re-examine its public purposes and its commitments to the democratic ideal.'' In June, about 100 of them plan a meeting at the University of Pennsylvania on strategies for implementing that vision. ''It is not enough to provide a great education,'' Judith Rodin, the University of Pennsylvania's president, said in a guest lecture at Yale University last fall. ''It is not enough for us to produce brilliant, imaginative doctors, lawyers, scholars and scientists who will press the envelopes of their disciplines or professions, if we do not also engage them in the larger issues of our day, in the ferment of our times and our society.'' Here at Tufts, a campus of 8,500 students in a gritty town near Boston, John DiBiaggio, who is both the president of the university and the chairman of Campus Compact, has focused on the theme since he arrived in 1992. Dr. DiBiaggio provides free copies of The New York Times to undergraduates, and he rewrote the university's vision statement to include as a goal fostering ''an attitude of giving back'' and ''a desire to make the world a better place.'' The new college of citizenship will not have a campus building, nor will it confer degrees. Rather, its goal is to infuse every aspect of university life with a public-service component. Administrators are evaluating the current course offerings to see which might be cross-referenced under public service, while faculty members are developing new programs, like ''Reading Public Policy,'' which would employ literary techniques to deconstruct current events, and ''Decision Points in History,'' a classics professor's effort to link ancient Greece and modern America. In addition, 24 incoming students devoted to public service will be designated Omidyar scholars, and the college will confer grants to students, staff members or professors with ideas for community service projects. Mr. Omidyar, who met his wife, Pam, while at Tufts, returned to the campus for the first time today, and spent the afternoon talking about the | Public Service's Profile Is Rising in Many College Curriculums |
1194343_0 | The past few years have been discouraging ones for efforts to check the spread of nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan have abruptly pushed their way into the club of states possessing such arms. North Korea, Iraq and Iran are pressing against the door. Although 187 countries have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, four, including India and Pakistan, have not, and tougher inspection procedures are needed to make sure that all that have signed fully honor their obligations. The Clinton administration has rightly made discouraging nuclear proliferation one of its top priorities. But flexing American power, whether through bombing Iraqi weapons labs or testing missile defenses, will not suffice. Also needed is a stronger international consensus to discourage any new development of nuclear weapons and to dismantle more of those that now exist. A conference that opens at the United Nations today offers an opportunity. The recent flurry of nuclear treaty ratifications by Russia's Parliament, including the approval of the nuclear Test Ban Treaty, sets a positive tone for the conference. A coalition of non-nuclear nations, including Mexico, South Africa and Ireland, is calling for American ratification of the Test Ban Treaty, unwisely rejected by the Senate last year. The coalition also seeks further weapons cuts by Washington and Moscow and adding Britain, France and China to future talks. A constructive outcome would commit the nuclear-weapons states to negotiate further reductions and would work out arrangements for tougher, more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It would also renew efforts to bring the four remaining holdout nations into the nonproliferation treaty. Three of these -- India, Pakistan and Israel -- are capable of producing nuclear weapons. The other is Cuba. After this week's opening speeches, including one by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the conference will settle down to four weeks of hard diplomatic work. An effective international consensus on proliferation issues will not come easily. But establishing one would impart a new and necessary urgency to the challenge of curbing nuclear weapons, thereby reducing the risks of nuclear war. | Curbing the Spread of Nuclear Arms |
1192140_3 | detectives. The attack on Poitier began in earnest in 1967, when he starred in three hit movies during the same year. While ''To Sir With Love,'' ''In the Heat of the Night'' and ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?'' made him the biggest box-office star in the country, Poitier came under ferocious fire. White critics savaged his work as superficial. African-American critics like the playwright Clifford Mason, writing in The New York Times, branded him ''a showcase nigger'' who coddled white racists instead of punching them in the face. All at once, black radicalism begat the questionable blessing of the black exploitation films with pimps, prostitutes and tough guys yelling ''Get Whitey.'' Poitier was suddenly reviled as a Stepin Fetchit in a gray flannel suit. Everything changes if you live long enough, and now Poitier has gone from outcast to hero once more. Over the last several years, the critical establishment has beaten a path to his door bearing laurels and awards. The period of rejection in the 1960's, according to those who knew him, was a living hell. But when Poitier speaks of it today, he does so with the typical reserve: ''I didn't feel victimized by any of it. There was never a time when I didn't take those attacks without giving them their due natural measure, and saying, 'Is there value in this?' '' But those ''demons'' still rage beneath this polished veneer. In the most illuminating section of his memoir, Poitier discusses Virgil Tibbs, the black police detective he portrayed in ''In the Heat of the Night.'' The emotional center of the movie is a scene in which Tibbs interviews one of the town's most important white citizens and the man slaps him across the face, as he would any black person from the surrounding cotton fields. Without missing a beat, Tibbs slaps him back, quickly -- and returns to his cool, cerebral self. Poitier explains that he, and not the director, added the retaliation to the script. Poitier writes that a black man solving the murder of a white person in deep Mississippi represented progress that ''didn't come from unbridled rage any more than it came from polite submission. Progress then and now comes from the collision of powerful forces within the hearts of those who strive for it. Anger and charity, love and hate, pride and shame, broken down and reassembled in an igneous process | Sidney Poitier's Demons |
1192259_1 | in the wonder of Venice. He might just as well have been in his office for all he noticed. Yes, I know, the point is that his office is portable and so the view is better and he could take the headset off and actually walk around and see the sights if he chose. Ah, but would he? Would we? I just don't think we feel comfortable anymore taking off the headset, beeper and cell phone and enjoying the view. I think these devices all strung together are nothing more than a long leash. We have put ourselves into the ''cell'' in cell phone. Our new ''freedom'' is slowly eroding our free time, which we have contaminated with technology. O.K., we're busy. As the mother of three boys, ages 1 through 6, and as a writer on perpetual deadline working from home, I have a very clear picture of the hectic life of the 00's. I did the techno-leash until the day I said, ''I love you'' to my oldest son and he responded, ''Do you love me as much as the computer?'' So I went cold cyberturkey for three whole days. No phone, Internet or computer. Amazingly, I didn't miss much. The world twirled, newspapers got out on time and I'm not in the poorhouse. Now I'm like an ex-smoker telling others to ditch the habit. Believe me when I tell you it's good for your physical as well as mental health. Driving up the Parkway heading for Glen Ridge recently I was more than a little unnerved at the number of people piloting their palms rather than the two-ton missiles they were driving. People were chatting away on the phone, fishing for change to pay the toll and weaving through traffic. No it's not new. Unfortunately it's not getting old for people either. As a matter of fact, if people keep operating cars under those conditions a whole lot of New Jerseyans aren't going to get older. The thing is that we seem to have forgotten how to use our freedom to our benefit. Why go hiking if you have to bellow at dealmakers and employees over the phone? The man with the phone in the woods didn't see the beauty. He barely noticed his wife, who trailed behind him shaking her head. You could almost hear the conversation that likely brought them there. ''You never spend time | Taking Your Cell With You |
1192123_6 | the buy button, the site stalled. He restarted the computer and -- suspecting a poor connection -- reordered the tickets. Turns out, he bought three pairs of tickets, a fact he was alerted to by a phone call from Travelocity. The site eliminated the charge, but he had to wait a month for American Express to credit him with the refund. Ms. Shore said that the airlines themselves had gotten much more aggressive about offering low fares online, in part because they can fill seats more efficiently through the Internet. Northwest Airlines has even rolled out a site to compete with consolidators, airoutlet.com. The site doesn't mention Northwest Airlines -- a practice followed by many other consolidators because the airlines prefer not to be known as cut-rate among consumers. Airlines are also getting more aggressive about using their e-mail newsletters to sell seats they haven't committed to consolidators, and haven't sold to higher paying customers. Most of the major domestic carriers either have or are in the process of running an e-mail fare program, analysts said. ''And we'll start to see more airlines allow you to filter the flights, so the e-mail only shows the destinations you're interested in,'' Ms. Shore said. ''I just got a great rate to Dublin for the weekend through an e-mail newsletter, so it worked for me.'' Brag, brag, brag. I'm so happy I'm not like that. The Later the Better Ms. Berger, of Consumer Reports Travel Letter, said that although consumers might find isolated bargains that were not last-minute deals, ''in general good deals happen much closer in, at the last minute.'' And while e-mail newsletters cater to those looking for last-minute deals online, they aren't the only mechanism for doing so. Lastminutetravel.com, for instance, offers the equivalent of an e-mail newsletter, in real time, from multiple carriers. According to David Miranda, the company's chief executive, the site allows carriers to offer their last-minute fares in one place, and drop their rates if the seats aren't selling. Consumers who click on a fare are taken to the carrier's site directly to buy the tickets. In addition, Mr. Miranda said, his site automatically sends an e-mail message to users when offers of possible interest become available. Sites Linking Up More mainstream travel sites are also doing more to cater to the discount traveler, said Terrell Jones, the chief executive of Travelocity .com. Mr. Jones said | Web Air Deals: Caveat Surfer |
1192223_2 | muscled approval of the new county through the State Legislature in 1898, and J. Russel Sprague, who centralized executive power in 1936, making Nassau the first county in the nation to have an elected chief executive. One of the more enlightening essays is by Marjorie Freeman Harrison, a library media specialist at Lawrence High School, who tells how G. Wilbur Doughty built on the cohesiveness of the Italian immigrant community in Inwood to solidify Republican power. Two enviornmental issues seemed to dominate the South Shore: the decision to sell water from Hempstead to Brooklyn (and thus deplete Island supplies) beginning in 1871 and the dredging and sewage disposal that had to be addressed in the development of Long Beach in 1907. Both are laid out clearly here. The compendium touches on other conversation points. Is Nassau County ''united''? The various roles of the Hempstead Plains -- farmland and military training ground and now the route of major east-west road and rail divides -- are described in several essays, but still the consensus is that the north-south social and economic gap has been bridged. How much power should developers have? This issue is examined at some length by Patricia T. Caro in her chronology of the drawing of the Queens-Nassau border, especially in the Five Towns area (an article that could have used more detailed maps). There are a few misfires. Articles on the Jewish communities and on women in the clergy seem to lack the ''Island-ness'' of the others. The six short summaries on health care are perfunctory. And an article on Alan King and Billy Crystal titled ''From Soup to Nuts: Laughter in the Suburbs'' does not seem to have any point. The index -- a key component of any reference work -- is uneven (William Burden, the originator of the plan to sell water to Queens, is omitted; a passing reference to Frank Sinatra is included). Overall, though, this book is a rich, well-written source of information. Several towns are covered in some depth: Hempstead, Inwood, the Bellmores, Farmingdale (two articles), Long Beach. Almost all the 32 papers include extensive bibliographies. A browse through this collection could prove a welcome distraction after a morning spent inching along Old Country Road. NASSAU COUNTY From Rural Hinterland to Suburban Metropolis Joann P. Krieg and Natalie A. Naylor, editors Illustrated. 336 pages. Interlaken, N.Y.: Empire State Books. $19.99, paper. BOOK REVIEW | Why Nassau County Is No New York City |
1192375_4 | food company has taken over the side of a warehouse in the West 20's. Though each single instance may be dismissed -- or excused -- as ephemeral, the collective impression of a hundred fleeting glimpses is that life in New York is now one ceaseless, unrelenting branding campaign. And it is worth wondering, when everyone is shouting, whether anyone can be heard. ''It has changed a city of neighborhoods into just a drive-through advertising extravaganza,'' said State Senator Thomas K. Duane, a Democrat who represents some of the areas most conspicuously transformed by the barrage: SoHo, TriBeCa, the Flatiron and Ladies' Mile districts (around Union Square, Madison Square and the West 20's). ''New York is already noisy and it can be smelly,'' Mr. Duane said, ''and now there's no way even to rest your eyes.'' A Municipal Superego To Police the Supersigns To judge from appearances, city officials have been less vigilant policing supersigns than they have been in trying to curb other forms of expression like provocative museum exhibitions, political gatherings on the City Hall steps and ads that poke fun at Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. But the administration has taken some measures. The Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Buildings Department have prevented, removed or contested numerous signs that were oversized, inappropriate or simply illegal. And the City Planning Department will be offering its own signage rules ''imminently,'' said Jennifer Chait, a spokeswoman, without elaborating on exactly when that might be. The rules would limit the size, height and illumination of signs in manufacturing districts, which are liberally regulated under 39-year-old zoning rules that were written before industrial areas like SoHo and TriBeCa became residential. The new rules would not affect existing legal signs, Ms. Chait said. But, she added, ''The city does intend to increase enforcement.'' Mr. Barwick of the Municipal Art Society wonders just how effective any regulation can be that is drafted in the coming months. ''We're in an election year,'' he said. ''Who wants to offend giant media companies?'' And what politician would want to deprive landlords of what almost amounts to found money? Depending on the size of a wall, its orientation and location, a mural sign in Manhattan might yield $5,000 to more than $100,000 monthly. Since the penalty for an illegal sign is not likely to exceed $1,000, it has little deterrent effect. Even when the laws are enforced, advertising companies and | Your Ad Here |
1192380_0 | THE latest issue on business school campuses? It's not whether to start your own dot-com before graduation, but whether you should be allowed to use your laptop in the classroom as you please. While more and more schools -- especially business schools -- provide Internet access in class and require students to lug their laptops with them, some are imposing rules on what their students can and cannot do with them in class. But why, in the sedate hallways of graduate schools, is there need for debate on rules of discipline? It seems that some students, although smart enough to earn M.B.A.'s, have not figured out how the old, generally unwritten rules of conduct apply to the wired classroom. More and more students are sending instant messages to one another (chatting and note-passing, 21st century-style), day trading (as opposed to daydreaming) and even starting their own companies, all in class. The resulting commotion has annoyed many students. Jen McEnry, 28, a second-year M.B.A. student at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, recalled that a classmate once downloaded an e-mail attachment during a finance lecture. The attachment automatically turned on the sound on the student's computer, which then delivered a booming message: ''Oh my God, I'm watching porn!'' Everyone roared at the practical joke, but the problem was clear. ''It's distracting when people are day trading, checking their e-mails or surfing the Web,'' Ms. McEnry said. All the more distracting because Darden relies heavily on classroom participation. At Columbia University, the business school's newspaper reported that a student-run ''chat room'' ended up on the overhead projector in the middle of class. University officials denied the report. But by January, cyberspace had so intruded on classroom space at Columbia that a committee of professors and students came up with a code of professional conduct. ''We're trying to find ways professors and students can use technology effectively and appropriately to create leaders,'' said Jeff Derman, a second-year M.B.A. student who heads the panel. Yet how can M.B.A. students, whose average age is about 28 nationally, not know that it's rude to click away in class? After all, they presumably know not to walk out in the middle of a lecture, however boring. The rules of etiquette shouldn't change just because of technology. Still, some business schools have gone beyond issuing rules. Two years ago, Darden officials installed a switch | The Laptop Ate My Attention Span |
1192185_4 | SHIRIN NESHAT, an Iranian-born artist with a substantial reputation. She makes photographs and 16-millimeter films in which women dressed in flowing black chadors evoke the behind-the-veil strictures of Islamic life. Although Ms. Neshat tends to get treated as the art world's resident expert on Iranian affairs, her work contains a large quotient of entertainment value, extracting a lush cinematic glamour from the mosques, narrow streets and thronged bazaars of the Muslim landscape. Her pearly toned ''Rapture'' (1999), a two-screen, black-and-white film now at P.S. 1, is a desert spectacular with a cast of hundreds, the art-house version of ''Lawrence of Arabia.'' ''When you make films, the world is your studio,'' said Ms. Neshat, who is 43 and has lived in this country since her college days in Berkeley. ''I don't really like the art world. Instead of being in my studio in Chinatown and thinking about what some collector wants, I prefer looking at a map and saying I want to go to Egypt and hiring a cast of 500 people.''' CHAKAIA BOOKER brings new life to old rubber tires, recycling their shredded remains into twisty sculptures and wall reliefs. She belongs to the junk-into-art tradition conceived by Kurt Schwitters, an art scavenger who discerned a pathos in discarded things. But that's an old European story, and Ms. Booker manages to update it in her tire-specific, American-style assemblages. Tires conjure visions of motion, and no one would ever want to puncture one, except for teenage delinquents -- and Ms. Booker, whose work strips the tire of its getaway potential. In the place of manly autonomy and flight, her sliced and woven-together wheels variously suggest innards, crazily overgrown house plants and a fleshy tangle of limbs. Don't drive off, they seem to say. The best action is right here. ''There are at least 300 tires in my Whitney piece,'' said Ms. Booker, a 47-year-old native of Newark. ''I get most of my tires from automotive repair shops in New York City, usually for free, though I have to be selective. I wouldn't want a tire that is too hard to cut. I prefer the ones that are super-worn and where all the tread is gone.'' GHADA AMER extracts cutting-edge elegance from the unlikely tradition of the sewing bee. Born in Egypt, she is best known for hand-embroidered paintings in which delicate threads are set against bright, Popsicle-color grounds. At first her | A Roll Call of Fresh Names and Faces |
1192103_2 | rescued, 990 miles east of Rio de Janeiro, by the German ship Moctezuma. This survival cannibalism was ''the custom of the sea'' to which the title of Hanson's book refers. It was an accepted fact of seamen's lives throughout centuries when no telecommunications and no possibility of air rescue were available to mariners stranded in faraway waters. It occasionally recurs in modern plane crashes, of which the Andes air disaster of 1972 (the subject of Piers Paul Read's remarkable book ''Alive'' and the movie of the same name) is the most famous example. Cannibalism is the act most deeply repugnant to civilized societies, fraught with obsessive fears and fascinations. At the same time, this extremest of situations had about it a kind of normality, as the word ''custom'' suggests. Like other taboo subjects, it became the subject of jokes, street ballads and comically macabre poems by well-known writers, including Byron, Thackeray and W. S. Gilbert. The nervous humor with which we respond to the unspeakable is one of our ways of assimilating great horrors. But in seagoing communities from Falmouth to Nantucket, it was understood that such things happened as a hazard of ordinary life. Survivors were not treated as criminals or monsters, though the topic had sensational and even pornographic aspects, exploited by the press and in freak shows. As in the more institutionalized or tribal forms of cannibalism, there was even a ritual element, in the widely observed practice of selecting the victim by drawing straws. The law generally turned a blind eye. The story of the Mignonette was an exception. For one thing, the ritual was not observed, though it was considered. Also, the case became the subject of a famous trial. The facts are connected to the extent that the failure to make the customary draw gave an added sense of premeditated murder, and this became something of an issue. Another factor was Dudley's extraordinary openness about the event. On the Moctezuma, and back in England at Falmouth, Dudley talked too much, out of euphoria, nervousness, guileless honesty and a clear conscience with nothing to hide. His accounts read like a sailor's travelogue of the kind parodied in Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels,'' with a touch of the jumpy jokeyness that often surfaces in cannibal stories. The sighting of the Moctezuma, Dudley said, occurred ''as we was having our breakfast we will call it,'' adding for good measure, | The Ultimate Taboo |
1192376_0 | H. J. Heinz and Del Monte Foods are trading barbs over a ketchup cap. Heinz, whose iconic ketchup has been the market leader seemingly forever, said early this month that it would introduce a cap for its plastic containers that is designed to capture the watery stuff that can hit your food after you start squeezing the bottle. (Water tends to collect atop pureed fruits and vegetables through a natural process called syneresis.) The new Heinz contraption has a reservoir and a small tube built inside a tall cap. When the bottle is turned upside down, syneresis fluid that may be present is trapped in the cap, while the thicker ketchup is sucked out through the tube. Nothing new about that, retorted Del Monte, the No. 3 ketchup marketer, behind Heinz and Hunt's. According to Maria Ruta, a spokeswoman, Del Monte introduced a patented syneresis cap with its plastic bottle six years ago, but did not promote it because its ketchup formulation does not create a significant syneresis problem. Heinz contends that its technology is a first and says it may seek a patent on its cap design. ''Our point of view is, as category leader, we're upholding a rather long history of being first,'' said Deb Magness, a Heinz spokeswoman. ''We were first with the squeeze bottle and first with the recyclable bottle, and now we're first to solve the issue of the watery stuff.'' But what of the Del Monte cap that Ms. Ruta said worked fine back in 1994? ''We took a look at Del Monte's cap and found it ineffective against our standards,'' Ms. Magness said. Heinz plans to trumpet its syneresis cap in a big advertising and promotional campaign as the new ketchup bottles reach stores over the next 60 to 90 days. PATRICIA WINTERS LAURO BUSINESS: DIARY | A Tempest In a Condiment Cap |
1189529_0 | 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. | Corrections |
1189512_1 | New York City -- 14 percent compared with 35 percent statewide. Special education students are not required to pass the Regents exam to graduate; they may take a less stringent competency exam. Last school year, 12,516 special education students, or 58 percent of approximately 21,580 special education students nearing graduation, took the Regents English exam -- a jump of 118 percent from the previous year. While the statistics show a smaller proportion of those taking the tests passed, there were nevertheless 7,480 who did so, the largest number ever. Two years ago, 4,400, or 27 percent of the special education students nearing graduation, took the exam; 3,399 passed. And more special education students are being integrated into mainstream classes, said Richard P. Mills, the state education commissioner. Last year, nearly 45 percent of special education students spent 80 percent or more of each school day in general education classes, up from 39 percent four years earlier. Over the same period, the percentage of students in segregated special education classes fell to 8.9 percent last year from 11.5 percent. The curriculum for students who remain in separate special education classes is more aligned now with the new, tougher Regents standards than previously, said Lawrence C. Gloeckler, the deputy commissioner who oversees special education services in the state. In elementary schools, more than four out of five special education students in the fourth and eighth grades took the English and math tests given to general education students for the first time last year, Mr. Mills said. The gains in performance among special education students -- those who have been classified as having learning disabilities, emotional problems or severe physical disabilities -- are a result of more aggressive actions taken by the State Board of Regents in 1996 and implemented by the State Education Department over the last three years, the report said. The Regents compelled local school districts to increase the numbers of students placed in mainstream classes and to align curriculum with that of general education students. ''It used to be that not much was expected of special ed students,'' Mr. Mills said. ''They were not expected to read, to write or to perform at a higher level. And they certainly were not going to college.'' About 12 percent of New York City special education students dropped out of high school last year, nearly double the rate of special education students | More Special Education Students Taking and Passing the Regents Exam |
1189438_1 | But if they think it is of no immediate concern to them, they should think again. Ritvik Toys is one of hundreds of companies that are looking at workers' correspondence on a routine basis. And the number of companies doing so is soaring. ''The market for e-mail monitoring has basically doubled in size over the last year,'' said Abner Germanow, a research manager at the International Data Corporation. ''And we anticipate it to grow very rapidly.'' Managers give a variety of reasons for installing such software. Some, like Mr. Quinn, are on the lookout for oversize e-mail attachments that clog networks. Others seek to dissuade employees from using their systems for personal activities. And others want to make sure employees are not sending harassing messages. Whatever the reason, the snooping raises ethical questions. Should managers really be peeking into people's private lives like this? And what should they do with sensitive information that, if disclosed, could jeopardize an employee's career? Mr. Quinn's original purpose in installing the software, called SuperScout, was to manage his mail server more efficiently. But he has since grappled with the privacy issue, deciding against programs that would let him store and review the text of messages, rather than just the headlines. ''That's none of my business,'' said Mr. Quinn, an amiable computer guru with a hint of a Scottish accent, abundant freckles and a beeper on his belt. ''I'm not just sitting here to watch people. But if there is a problem, I want to be able to pinpoint it.'' Until recently, electronic monitoring applied mostly to Web browsing. It was easy for managers to look through logs of Web sites visited by employees. By contrast, tracking e-mail meant sitting in front of an e-mail server for hours. Few managers bothered. But the last six months, software has become more advanced, enabling companies automatically to record, filter and sort every word that streams through their networks. SuperScout, a product made by SurfControl, can generate bar charts showing the 10 people who get the most e-mail messages, the 10 who send the most and the 10 who send the biggest messages. Another product, xVmail, made by xVault, enables managers to view and search the text of messages. Symantec and GFI Fax and Voice have also introduced e-mail monitoring products the last few months. Mr. Quinn said employees' habit of sending personal e-mails never bothered him -- | MANAGEMENT: You've Got Inappropriate Mail; Monitoring of Office E-Mail Is Increasing |
1189466_0 | Researchers have informed about 25,000 women taking part in a federal study of hormone replacement therapy that, far from protecting the heart as many researchers had assumed, the therapy may have put the women at a slightly higher risk of heart attacks and strokes. The study, known as the Hormone Replacement Therapy trial of the Women's Health Initiative, is the first large-scale controlled clinical trial asking whether the therapy prevents heart disease in healthy post-menopausal women. But in letters sent out on Friday, participants were told that those who had been randomly assigned to take estrogen were having slightly more heart attacks, strokes and blood clots in the lungs than those who had been assigned to take dummy pills for comparison. While the effect was not sufficiently pronounced to stop the study, the researchers themselves were taken aback. The findings were reported yesterday by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. An estimated 10 million American women take Premarin, an estrogen that was approved only to alleviate the symptoms of menopause, like hot flashes, and for the prevention and management of osteoporosis. The drug's maker, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, a subsidiary of the American Home Products Corporation, says the estrogen is the best-selling prescription drug in America. Doctors and individual women say that one reason for estrogen's popularity is that there is a widespread belief that it will prevent heart disease. But that hypothesis came from indirect evidence. Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, said in a statement on Monday that the new information is ''preliminary.'' It does not address the larger issue of long-term benefits and risks of hormone replacement therapy, he said, ''and, therefore, it should not influence current medical practice.'' Previous studies have shown that women who take estrogen after menopause have fewer heart attacks than women who do not. But since women who take the hormone tend to be better educated, less likely to smoke and more likely to eat balanced diets and exercise, it was hard for researchers to tell whether the therapy or other factors in their lives contributed to their lower risk. The only way to know for sure was to do a large study like the current one. Dr. Jacques E. Rossouw, who is acting director of the hormone replacement trial, said in an interview yesterday that even though it was too soon to say whether the | Estrogen Tied to Slight Increase In Risks to Heart, a Study Hints |
1198809_3 | of electricity with solar cells, about half the European total. In the United States, efforts to use natural fuels like biomass have been stymied in part by relatively low prices for oil and natural gas. Biomass now accounts for about 3 percent of national energy use, but that also includes wood burning to heat homes. Nevertheless, the Clinton administration announced in August a long-term effort to triple the energy produced from crop waste and farm products by 2010. The idea, administration officials said, is to reduce reliance on imported oil, create additional farm income and generate technologies that American companies can sell abroad. Carmen Becerril, director of the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving in Madrid, financed by the Ministry of Industry, said ''the whole secret is price.'' In 1996 Spain, lacking oil and gas resources, joined other European countries, including Germany and Denmark, in providing state funds to offset the difference for consumers between the cost of providing electricity from renewable sources and the market price. Given the relatively low cost of the required technology, she said, government price supports for power generated from agricultural wastes like olive skins are a fraction of those for electricity generated by solar power or wind energy. Jose Luis Marin, who is responsible for diversification at Endesa, said the power generated at Benameji feeds a national grid. Given its relatively small share of the company's total electricity production, he said, only about 2 percent of what consumers spend for power is covered by the government subsidy. But even with government help, the path to alternative energies can be slippery. Raimon Argemi Puigdomenech, Endesa's technical director, who helped design the plant here, said the high humidity content of the olive waste hindered combustion. Moreover, hauling the olive mass from distant oil-pressing sites proved expensive. Hence, Endesa's future plants will be constructed near plants that process olive oil. Endesa sees potential export markets for its technology in other olive growing countries, including Italy, Greece and Turkey. On the Greek island of Crete, utilities are already using olive pressing waste to generate small amounts of electricity. In Cuba, Endesa is helping supply similar technology to produce power from sugar cane waste. And after that? Besides olive oil, wine is among Spain's best-known agricultural products. ''Within two years,'' Mr. Argemi said, ''we will decide whether to build a generating plant using the waste of wine-making.'' INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS | Spain Tries Electricity Shaken, Not Stirred |
1198798_0 | The Senate decisively approved legislation today to promote commerce with Africa and the Caribbean, ending more than five years of defeats on trade bills for the administration. The 77-to-19 vote reflected unusual bipartisan support for a compromise measure worked out by Senate and House negotiators that would lower tariffs and quotas on products from sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Central America. More than 20 African ambassadors watched approvingly from the gallery during the vote. The legislation now goes to President Clinton, who is expected to sign it quickly. Most of the measure's provisions will not take effect for several months, until trade officials can determine which countries and products are eligible for new privileges. Supporters cheered today's passage as an important first step to build broader commercial and diplomatic ties between the United States and some of the world's most impoverished nations. Opponents, largely from textile states in the South and New England, warned of crippling job losses for American workers. ''We're doing something for Africa besides sending peace forces or aid,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat and one of the bill's chief sponsors. The legislation would be the first major trade measure enacted in the United States since approval of the Uruguay Round in 1994, which set up the World Trade Organization. The measure is separate from an even more contentious China trade bill before Congress, but Mr. Clinton and other supporters of the China bill hope that approval of the Africa-Caribbean measure will build momentum for the larger legislation. The House is to vote on the China bill the week of May 22, but the outcome is considered too close to call. The Africa-Caribbean compromise drew broad bipartisan support today after months of backroom haggling and after last rites were read over the legislation more than once. Supporters said the measure would help African nations diversify their trade with the United States to include apparel and textiles, and translate into $8 billion in new sales and 120,000 jobs for the United States over the next five years. Oil, platinum, diamonds and gold make up about 80 percent of current African exports to United States. Last year, the House and Senate approved different versions of the measure. Since then negotiators have sought a compromise. Under today's deal, worked out with the help of the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, and the Senate majority leader, Trent | Bill to Expand Fabric Imports From Africa Clears Senate |
1198853_0 | Reactions to a Virus | |
1200313_0 | THE phrase ''software pirate'' conjures up images of foreign sweatshops mass-copying software or hackers swapping files. But the Interactive Digital Software Association is trying to shut down a different type of pirate: people who just want to play out-of-print games. Publishers don't want to make old games available. The market wants games that push the limits of the processing and graphics capabilities of modern computers; a game designed for the Atari 800 or Apple II just won't sell at CompUSA. But at more than 100 sites on the Internet, you can download old out-of-print games, along with emulators to let you run them -- the games include the original versions of Atari 2600 games like Missile Command and Space Invaders as well as landmark computer games like M.U.L.E. and Balance of Power. These sites call the games abandonware: software for which publishers no longer offer technical support. Of course, the publishers don't view the games as abandoned. ''Copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets,'' Nintendo says on its Web site. ''If these vintage titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of the intellectual property and adversely affects the right owners. Emulator and ROM piracy is competing head-on with Nintendo's current systems and software.''(ROM piracy is the copying of game code from the old read-only memory chips into files that can be stored on a computer.) So Nintendo and other companies want abandonware sites to shut down -- they leave enforcement to the software association. Their position is highly debatable. Gamers don't go out and download games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System instead of buying new games for Nintendo 64. Someone who wants to play an older game is looking for an experience that is different from what is available from a modern game. And by keeping older games alive, abandonware sites sometimes serve the ultimate interests of publishers: a new version of Frogger (first released in 1981) was one of the Top 10 best-selling computer games in 1999. Publishers became interested in re-releasing titles like Frogger precisely because they noticed that people were still playing it. Abandonware helped them identify a new market niche. Moreover, publishers provide no legal way for gamers to get older games; the market is too small to justify the effort. So gamers feel justified in making vintage games available, despite the legal risks. Older gamers' enthusiasm for games of their | New Front in the Copyright Wars: Out-of-Print Computer Games |
1200829_0 | The distant roar of howler monkeys echoed like a ghastly dirge on a recent day in the smoldering remains of a thick forest of palms, cedar and mahogany. Illegal loggers had cut down the best trees and hauled them off at night, while land-starved peasants torched what remained to clear the land for cornfields. The effect of a population boom here has been disturbingly visible during the peak of the dry season in April and May, with the area's natural beauty shrouded in smoke from countless fires. Although El Ceibal is a national park that is home to Mayan ruins, it is protected only on paper. The fires were set by invasores, or squatters, more than 200 of whom have lived in the park in two settlements of thatched-roof shacks since 1998. They are part of an unending internal migration to Guatemala's Peten region, which covers a third of the country. It includes the sprawling, environmentally sensitive jungles of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, which is rich with wildlife, thick clusters of trees and majestic temples. The area's population is estimated to have grown from 20,000 in 1960 to almost a half million today -- not all illegal, but nonetheless harmful. The fires, by and large, are set; some are from slash-and-burn farming gone awry, and others are touched off by poachers who hunt armadillos and large rodents by smoking them out of burrows and hollow logs. Some are even believed to be set by poor peasants who hope that the local authorities will hire them to help the understaffed local fire brigades. The migration, with its accompanying fires and deforestation, underscores the problems facing Guatemala as it emerges from 36 years of civil war, ending in 1996. Peasants, including thousands who returned after years of exile in Mexico, scramble to find a patch of land they can farm. In their struggle for self-preservation, conservation is forgotten. And the government lacks money and manpower to fight all the fires, much less arrest wrongdoers. ''The Peten has served for the last 20 years as a pressure valve,'' said Roan McNab, the Guatemala program director for the Wildlife Conservation Society. ''How can Guatemala prioritize conservation in the face of overwhelming pressure? When you're hungry for tomorrow, it's impossible to think 20 years down the road.'' Since early April, fires have raged not only in El Ceibal, but also in several larger parks inside | Guatemalan Squatters Torching Park Forests |
1200806_0 | Just as a breakthrough in the long deadlock over guerrilla disarmament is at hand, the Northern Ireland peace effort is falling back into the grip of politically charged symbols, which have often been as divisive as firearms. The Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, has postponed a crucial meeting Saturday of his ruling council for a week. That is to give him time to persuade the party to endorse an Irish Republican Army offer to permit international inspections of its secret arms dumps. Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, told the BBC today that the importance of the vote could not be overstated. ''The choice that the Ulster Unionists are going to make next Saturday is going to determine the course of Northern Ireland politics, its political stability and also its economic prosperity for a generation to come,'' he said. Acceptance would speed the return of the power-sharing home rule government in Belfast that was suspended in February after the I.R.A. failed to make expected moves on arms. But on May 5, the I.R.A. said it would permit the inspections of its arsenals by international figures, would re-engage with an international commission on disarmament and would ''completely and verifiably put I.R.A. arms beyond use.'' In the days to come, Mr. Trimble will be lobbying his own party to treat the I.R.A. pledge as the long-sought promise of disarmament, and to support him in his desire to return to government with the party's Catholic rival, Sinn Fein. Refusal would deliver the two-year-old peace accord its most serious setback and would likely end the leadership of Mr. Trimble, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is viewed as the only Protestant politician able to turn the party from its rejectionist past. It is a fight for the heart and soul of the Ulster Unionists, but the debate is now turning as much on issues like what flag flies atop government buildings, what name the new police force bears and what symbols end up on the officers' uniforms as much as it is on weapons and secret armies. Mr. Trimble spent the past week trying to exact clarifications and concessions on these points before announcing Thursday night that he was postponing the ruling council vote. Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman, Alastair Campbell, said: ''We have come to the end of that process this week. We have set out the position in terms of flags. We | Effort for Peace in Ulster Stumbling Over Symbols |
1196121_1 | being sought to sell the fish in Canada. A menagerie of other genetically modified animals is in the works, promising what biotech backers say will be advantages like cheaper and more nutritious food. Borrowing genes from various creatures and implanting them in others, scientists are creating fast-growing trout and catfish, oysters that can withstand viruses and an ''enviropig,'' whose feces are less harmful to the environment because they contain less phosphorus. Scientists are also developing a pig that makes a leaner pork chop, one of the first genetically modified animals that would offer direct benefits to consumers and something biotech advocates hope will make the marketing of genetically modified foods easier. Mr. Entis and colleagues describe their fast-growing fish as part of a blue revolution in aquaculture that could feed more people more efficiently and more cheaply. But critics and even some Clinton administration officials say genetically engineered creatures are threatening to slip through a net of federal regulations that has surprisingly large holes. While food safety issues should be addressed, some scientists say, the bigger concern is the environmental threats posed by genetically modified animals like the salmon. A recent study showed, for example, that populations of wild fish could, in theory, be wiped out by mating with certain kinds of genetically engineered fish, should they escape. In addition, there is the possibility of unpredictable environmental disruptions, like those that occur when non-native species invade ecosystems, as the zebra mussels have the Hudson River. Yet United States regulators interviewed could not point to any federal laws specifically governing the use or release of genetically engineered animals. ''This is a very big hole,'' said Dr. Rebecca Goldburg, senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, a group that has been highly critical of the biotech industry and the federal regulators. ''There's nothing clearly on the books. There are no regulations about what you can and can't do.'' Instead, federal agencies seeking to regulate genetically engineered organisms are stretching regulations written for other purposes to what critics describe as surprising lengths. So far, for example, only the Food and Drug Administration appears to have any authority over the new salmon, which the agency claimed by designating the fish's foreign genes and the growth hormone they produce as a drug for animals. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture, the two other agencies overseeing genetically modified organisms, have bowed out of | REDESIGNING NATURE: A special report.; Altered Salmon Leading Way To Dinner Plates, but Rules Lag |
1196143_3 | on the Web site. Since then, Ms. Corcoran has added features like floor plans and a database that allows prospective buyers and renters to search for properties with certain amenities, in specific neighborhoods and within their price range. She has also added photographs, e-mail links to brokers and 3-D virtual tours. Corcoran.com, which unveiled its new Web site in April, has in many ways been way ahead of the curve, according to online real estate industry experts. Last year, the company received 28,879 e-mail requests and sold 225 apartments to clients who came through the Web site. In recent weeks, the Web site has seen up to 7,500 visitors a day. In New York, selling a home on the Internet can cost a company less than $1 in advertising, compared with hundreds of dollars per sale using the classifieds, company officials said. For now, there is little worry among those working in newspaper advertising that sales of classifieds will decline because of online real estate sales. The reason is that real estate companies still need to use classifieds, as well as television spots and display advertisements, to draw customers to their Web pages. But these transformations have already given pause to some brokers who are worried that the online companies are cutting into their commissions. Information that brokers once provided -- Is this a good neighborhood? Is this a realistic price for a two-bedroom in this area? How do I finance a mortgage on this apartment? -- is increasingly available on Web sites. Rolf T. Wigand, director of the Center for Digital Commerce at Syracuse University, said brokers ''are trying to find their new role in this process'' because customers can ''partially bypass'' them. Robert G. Eychner, founder of Eychner Associates, a downtown real estate brokerage, said: ''Everyone has to be on the Internet one way or the other. But there is no replacing the human aspect of having a broker, especially in today's heated market. A computer can't tell you that this is a brand new listing and that it is going to last 20 minutes.'' Mr. Eychner, whose company has been selling in New York since 1982, said part of his job description is being a therapist. ''Buying residential real estate, people really need to talk it through and they need to have someone holding their hand, an adviser who has been through the process,'' Mr. Eychner added. | Apartment Hunt Goes Virtual; Buying a Place Sight Unseen, Other Than Online |
1196118_2 | to be very difficult for us to overcome.'' He and other local leaders say that people were sick for several weeks after the spraying, and in interviews a few residents complained of lasting symptoms. Three fish farms with more than 25,000 rainbow trout were destroyed, residents said, and numerous farm animals, mostly chickens and guinea pigs, died, while others, including some cows and horses, fell ill. In addition, fields of beans, onions, garlic, potatoes, corn and other traditional crops were sprayed, leaving plants to wither and die. As a result, community leaders here say, crop-substitution projects sponsored by the Colombian government have been irremediably damaged and their participants left impoverished. The spraying around this particular village has since stopped, residents say, though they fear that it could resume at any time, and it continues in neighboring areas, like nearby Guachicono, and year-round elsewhere in Colombia. Peasants in the coca-growing region of Caqueta, southeast of here, last year complained to a reporter that spray planes had devastated the crops they had planted after abandoning coca, and similar reports have emerged from Guaviare, another province to the east. Indeed, American-financed aerial spraying campaigns like the one here have been the principal means by which the Colombian government has sought to reduce coca- and opium-poppy cultivation for nearly a decade. The Colombian government fleet has grown to include 65 airplanes and helicopters, which fly every day, weather permitting, from three bases. Last year, the spraying effort resulted in the fumigation of 104,000 acres of coca and 20,000 acres of opium poppy. Yet despite such efforts, which have been backed by more than $150 million in American aid, cocaine and heroin production in Colombia has more than doubled since 1995. In an effort to reverse that trend and weaken left-wing guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary groups that are profiting from the drug trade and threatening the country's stability, the Clinton administration is now urging Congress to approve a new aid package, which calls for increased spending on drug eradication as well as a gigantic increase for crop-substitution programs, to $127 million from $5 million. Critics, like Elsa Nivia, director of the Colombian affiliate of the advocacy organization Pesticide Action Network, see the eradication effort as dangerous and misguided. ''These pilots don't care if they are fumigating over schools, houses, grazing areas, or sources of water,'' she said in an interview at the group's headquarters in | To Colombians, Drug War Is Toxic Enemy |
1197207_1 | diverted to a channel leading to a pipe that runs into troughs downstream of this dam, the first of the four, which is near the Idaho border. Standing by the troughs, a busy assembly line of seasonal workers briefly anesthetizes the salmon and then injects a computer chip the size of a rice grain into their bellies so they can be tracked over the years. They are barged for a 36-hour, 300-mile trip, bypassing the dams on the Snake and four more on the Columbia River. More salmon are collected at two other dams on the Snake and one on the Columbia. It is all part of the government's bid to keep both salmon and dams -- ''to find a way to have our cake and eat it, too,'' said Jim Anderson, a fisheries professor at the University of Washington. But with the river's coho salmon already declared extinct, and every other species of Snake River salmon and steelhead now listed under the Endangered Species Act, the once-unthinkable idea of breaching the dams has emerged in several federal studies as the action with the best chance of restoring healthy salmon runs. The Corps of Engineers is to recommend by the end of the year whether to propose such a step. Breaching the dams is bitterly opposed by many people as an assault on the area's agricultural economy, and the proposal has already emerged as a hot-button issue in the Northwest in this year's presidential race. Gov. George W. Bush of Texas vowed in the primary campaign here never to allow the dams to be breached, while Vice President Al Gore, part of an administration that is intensely debating the issue, has taken no public position. Breaching the dams would mean removing the earthen parts and restoring a 140-mile section of the Snake to its wild, free-flowing condition, thus making salmon barging both impossible and unnecessary. It would also mean that the 4 percent of the electricity the dams provide in the Northwest would have to be supplied by other sources. The cost of the 20-year-old barging program for juvenile salmon, known as smolts, is just part of more than $3 billion the government has spent over that period trying to save salmon on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. The barging program is derided by critics as a ''techno-fix'' that harms fish, interfering with their natural migration rhythms, causing them to | U.S. Giving a Lift to Salmon, But Future of Aid Is in Doubt |
1197172_1 | died, emissaries who visited today said all were alive. On a videotape made by a local journalist one week ago, foreigners in the second group said that they were not being treated badly but that they were sick and hungry. In tears, they pleaded for their freedom. The hostage-taking is as complex as it is seemingly senseless, the full expression of a lawless world of pirates, smugglers and warlords, where kidnapping for ransom is a business and religious wars are fought by throwing bombs into markets and churches. For nearly 30 years, various separatist groups have battled the government on the island of Mindanao, some 500 miles south of Manila. The conflict has taken as many as 120,000 lives and has helped to keep the island of 17 million people one of the poorest areas in the Philippines. In this largely Roman Catholic nation of 74 million people, the Muslims of Mindanao have never been assimilated and have lived -- for four centuries -- in continuing conflict with the island's Christians. The kidnappings are the work of a fundamentalist splinter group called Abu Sayyaf, or ''Bearer of the Sword'' in Arabic, a group of as few as 200 fighters whose founder was trained in Libya and fought in Afghanistan. It is a group whose trademark is bloodshed rather than policy -- it is known for kidnappings, church bombings and the massacre of 53 people in 1995 -- and it counts other Islamic groups, as well as Christians, among its enemies. ''The Abu Sayyaf are bandits masquerading as religious fundamentalists, giving Muslims a bad name,'' said Col. Hilario Atendido, a military spokesman. The current standoff began when the children and teachers were seized six weeks ago, along with the priest, from two schools on the small island of Basilan, in the Sulu Sea, where pirates and bandits have held sway for centuries. At first the kidnappers seemed to be demanding certain fishing rights and a large sum of money. Then they insisted that a popular action-movie actor, Robin Padilla, act as a negotiator. He posed for photographs with them and won the release of two hostages. Then, in what seemed to be an attempt to gain support from Islamic militants abroad, they demanded that the United States release Ramzi Yousef, who is serving a 240-year sentence for the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993. When the | Innocents in Web of Philippine Terror |
1197237_0 | To the Editor: How devastating that a single e-mail message can circle the world leaving swaths of destroyed data in its wake (front page, May 5). But how interesting the habits of those read it! Would it have had the same effect if the heading had been ''world hunger and poverty'' instead of ''I love you''? What are those people in thousands of companies -- and, more important, in the White House, the Pentagon and Congress -- doing or thinking or longing for that compels them, in the middle of a workday, to stop what they are supposed to be doing and to hit ''open'' when seeing ''I love you''? LAWRENCE R. GORDON New York, May 5, 2000 | The E-Mail Virus Is Telling Us Things; Why We Were Diverted |
1197192_0 | The British and Irish governments announced late Friday night that they had agreed on a new formula to restart the suspended power-sharing government in Belfast this month and urged Ulster's Roman Catholic and Protestant leaders to endorse it. The new plan envisages resumption on May 22 of the government that was suspended in February, after only eight weeks of activity. And it sets a new date of June 2001 for putting in place all the steps of the flagging Northern Ireland peace accord. The surprise announcement followed 30 hours of negotiations by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, with the Northern Ireland political leaders at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast. It was made at a moment when there appeared scant hope of a breakthrough in the impasse over disarmament that has continually blocked progress. May 22 is the date set out in the April 1998 accord by which all disarmament by Northern Ireland's paramilitary groups was to have been accomplished, and although that possibility has faded, the date has taken on the symbolism of a deadline by which there has to be some progress to avert a total collapse of the peace accord. Mr. Blair and Mr. Ahern met last week in London and this week for two days in Belfast under increasing pressure to produce something to keep alive the settlement that had raised hopes of an end to 30 years of sectarian violence that has cost more than 3,600 lives. The details of the new blueprint were not made public. But an eight-point statement issued just before midnight on Friday indicated that the governments had dropped the demand for disarmament itself, long the barrier to progress in putting the settlement into place, and were instead looking for a declaration from the Irish Republican Army and Protestant paramilitary groups that would rule out any future resort to violence. ''With confidence that there are clear proposals for implementing all other aspects of the agreement, the governments believe that paramilitary organizations must now, for their part, urgently state clearly that they will put their arms completely and verifiably beyond use,'' the statement said. Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the predominantly Catholic Irish Republican Army, has in recent weeks discouraged hope of any such declaration from the I.R.A. But in comments early today, he sounded more conciliatory. When Britain suspended the home-rule | Britain and Ireland Agree On a New Start for Ulster |
1202584_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Pilots Just Say Non to English-Only'' (Roissy Journal, May 23): Perhaps if all those involved would learn from the hard-earned experiences aboard the clipper ships in the 19th century, this problem would be resolved quickly. The polyglot crews came from many countries, yet aboard ship they all spoke the same nautical language. Every piece of equipment, from the complicated rigging to the sails to every piece of mechanical gear, had a common well-known name, so that the officers shouting orders in the teeth of a howling gale off Cape Horn would be absolutely certain that the crew understood their commands. If this were not the case, the lack of coordination in responding quickly could easily lead to disaster. It is not generally appreciated just how skillful the officers and crews of these ships were, and that the common nautical language they all spoke contributed to success in handling these swift but demanding ships. JEREMIAH B. LIGHTER New York, May 23, 2000 | At Sea, Dreams of a Common Language |
1202655_0 | The Rev. Gerald H. Anderson has a resume that one would expect had allowed him an unusually broad view of trends within Christianity worldwide. A United Methodist minister trained in church history, Mr. Anderson has served as a seminary dean in the Philippines and a college president in the United States, and he has also edited many books on Christian missions. As Mr. Anderson is to retire next month as director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, it seemed a good time to ask him what he thinks is the most important development in Christianity during his professional life. ''I just happened to be giving a lecture on this last night,'' he said, reached by phone on Thursday at a retreat center in Georgia. What he told his audience, he said, was that Christianity was no longer ''a predominately Western religion.'' ''The majority of Christians live outside Europe and North America,'' he said. ''And this represents a monumental shift in what has been called the ecclesiastical center of gravity.'' Mr. Anderson said the greatest momentum in the change had taken place since World War II. The study center he directs publishes an annual survey, relying on statistics gathered by David Barrett, editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford, 1982). Mr. Barrett's statistics point to an explosive growth of Christianity in Africa in the 20th century, Mr. Anderson said. As an example of what has happened, Mr. Anderson cited the Moravians, a Protestant group with roots in Central Europe and American communities that date to the 18th century. There are about 700,000 Moravians worldwide, with about 50,000 in the United States. ''Half of all Moravians in the world today are in Tanzania, in East Africa,'' Mr. Anderson said. ''And the annual membership increase in that nation is more than the total Moravian membership in the United States.'' The center that Mr. Anderson directs serves as a base for study by missionaries and church leaders from around the world, said Jonathan J. Bonk, the associate director, who will succeed Mr. Anderson. ''We reflect the shift from the North to the South, and the West to the East, in the demography of our residential population,'' Mr. Bonk said, adding that at least 70 percent of those who study there are from outside North America and Europe. Mr. Anderson said a common mistaken impression was that Christian missionary activity diminished in | Religion Journal; Perceived Shift in Ecclesiastical Center of Gravity |
1202638_1 | industry now outpaces timber as a source of jobs, the debate over whether to build more logging roads in the world's largest remaining stretch of temperate rain forest is also surprisingly spirited, in a way that would have been unthinkable a generation ago when logging was firmly seen as the great spur to jobs in the sparsely populated area. While logging interests complain that environmental restrictions have already cost the region hundreds of good jobs over the years and closed down two big mills, many of those who make their money by guiding tourists and sport fishers through the spectacular inlets and past the emerald forests favor more protections, and even an end to any clear-cutting in the Tongass. And while just about everyone here agrees that America's largest, wildest national forest holds great resources, the core question in the debate is this: just how much of an economic resource is untouched wilderness? ''A lot of Alaskans don't like what we are inevitably becoming -- a place where people come to see it, rather than to exploit it,'' said Richard Nelson, a writer and cultural anthropologist who is on the board of the Sitka Conservation Society, an environmental group that wants to include the Tongass in President Clinton's ban on new road building. ''The whole frontier philosophy, the whole conquest-of-wilderness mentality, is certainly alive and well here,'' Mr. Nelson said. ''But there is a whole opposite ethic that is growing fast.'' There is no question that much of the battle over what to do with the Tongass will be fought in Washington. For environmentalists, ''leaving the Tongass out of this plan is like deciding to protect all national parks except Yellowstone,'' said Matthew Zencey, the Washington-based manager of the Alaska Rainforest Campaign, an umbrella coalition that hopes to have much of the forest protected by a road ban. The timber industry is similarly animated, saying the Tongass is already subject to a federal ''management plan'' that balances wilderness protection in the area with a prudent amount of logging. The administration, in fact, cited that plan in exempting Tongass from its road restrictions, although other areas also have management plans. But critics of the exemption have suggested that the administration was merely trying to avoid picking a fight with Alaska's senators, who both lead committees that have authority over the forest service. But as the land use struggle ensues thousands of | A Land Use Struggle Over a Forest Bounty |
1199677_0 | To the Editor: ''As the Tiniest Babies Grow, So Can Their Problems'' (front page, May 8) makes some assumptions that potentially support a disturbing viewpoint. It is not disabilities alone that ''can keep children from living independently, or ever having a social life or being able to function in society,'' as you quote a specialist as saying, but the social stigma and isolation a person with a disability faces in our society. Withholding care promotes an ideology that life is not worth living for a person based on the fact that he or she has a disability, regardless of whether it is judged objectively, using medical criteria, to be ''severe.'' Let's cherish life for what it is and start talking about people, not tragedies. CARL HERR Jamaica, Queens, May 8, 2000 The writer is a disability rights advocate at the Queens Independent Living Center. | The Stigma of Disability |
1199730_2 | analyst at the Manila office of the International Data Corporation, a computer research company, said of the Mr. de Guzman's program. ''He made do with what he has.'' In a country where the gap between rich and poor is enormous, Filipinos say, the jeepney ethos has moved beyond transportation to inspire a kind of subculture of proletarian larceny. Poor Filipinos commonly tap into everything from power lines to cable television. The Business Software Alliance, a United States trade group that fights software piracy, estimates that about 77 percent of the software used in the Philippines is pirated. Like commercially written software, the Internet is considered by many Filipinos to be unjustly expensive. While customers in the United States and other developed countries can use it at negligible cost, or even free, Internet services here charge nearly $1.50 an hour. Why so expensive? Limited competition for international telecommunications links keeps Internet access more than four times as expensive as in the United States. Making matters worse, poor domestic telephone lines mean that the fastest connections here are still roughly 50 times slower than the best lines available to Internet users in the United States. Most Filipinos do not even have a telephone, much less a personal computer. At the school that Mr. de Guzman attended, Amable Mendoza Aguiluz Computer College, the situation is even more challenging. The school has 150 branches around the country, though it has yet to be accredited. Many of its instructors are recent graduates, and Mr. de Guzman's campus in Manila is in a former warehouse without flush toilets. It is no M.I.T., but to its 15,000 students it holds the promise of a lucrative career, perhaps even the chance to work in the United States. For example, Myra Deguro, an 18-year-old junior, grew up in a home without a phone. She hopes to turn her computer science degree into a secretarial job if she does not land a position in a high-tech company. Ms. Deguro is fortunate: her father is a driver for a wealthy Manila family, which is paying her annual tuition and laboratory fees of about $1,500. Other students, she says, end up taking time off so they can save enough money to graduate. Students say Internet access is a precious commodity. College labs limit them to several prescribed hours among a limited number of computers, many of which are incapacitated at any given | Virus Brings Publicity to Computer Subculture in Philippines |
1198672_0 | To the Editor: Re ''The F.D.A. Chickens Out,'' by Andrew Kimbrell (Op-Ed, May 8): A mandatory label indicating genetic modification raises questions about the safety of biotech foods that have been reviewed and found safe. A National Academy of Sciences panel has ''found no distinction between the health and environmental risks posed by plants modified through modern genetic engineering techniques and those produced by conventional breeding practices.'' The F.D.A. has a policy in place that requires labeling if products of biotechnology differ from traditional products in terms of composition, nutritional content or allergenicity. Mandatory labeling is reserved for health and safety issues, while voluntary labeling is a way for the marketplace to help consumers determine which features and benefits they prefer. C. MANLY MOLPUS President and Chief Executive Grocery Manufacturers of America Washington, May 9, 2000 | Altered Food: To Label or Not? |
1198596_1 | confine their recommendations to a standardized court form and should not attach the additional records. Judge Pauley found that trial judges did not always need extensive psychiatric records to determine whether a trial could go forward. Although he recognized the state courts' need to establish a defendant's mental fitness for trial, the judge wrote, ''the fitness reports reveal far more information than is required by any court.'' In its lawsuit, Mental Hygiene Legal Service, a state agency that represents patients in psychiatric hospitals, claimed that confidential patient records were routinely attached to forms that were then placed in public court files, and that making the records available to the public violated defendants' constitutional right to privacy. Lawyers for the State Office of Mental Health denied that the records were made public, saying they were stamped confidential and were only for the judge's use. Lawyers for Mental Hygiene Legal Services also said the records attached to the competency reports often had little to do with the defendant's ability to understand legal proceedings, and included personal information like sexual orientation, and past medical illnesses. While only one state hospital, Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center, was cited in the legal papers, a spokesman for the State Office of Mental Health said psychiatrists at all of the state's high-security psychiatric hospitals would follow the court's guidelines. Mid-Hudson is the largest such facility in New York, with 286 patients. As a preliminary injunction, the judge's order is not the final determination in the case. Dennis D. Feld, a lawyer for Mental Hygiene Legal Services, said he expected the case to go to trial in several months. Roger F. Klingman, spokesman for the Office of Mental Health, said his department is reviewing the judge's order and has not determined whether it will appeal the injunction. To support their argument, the Mental Hygiene Legal Services lawyers filed the reports for four defendants, who were only identified by their initials. The reports included information on H.I.V. status, sexual matters and family history. ''The fact that a criminal defendant is H.I.V. positive and bisexual, was physically abused 14 years earlier, takes H.I.V.-related medication and suffers from hepatitis and diabetes, or has siblings who served time in prison, is not essential information which a court must have before determining that a defendant has sufficient ability to consult with his lawyers or to understand the proceedings against him,'' the judge wrote. Judge | Judge Bars Detailed Records In Mental Fitness Reports |
1198670_0 | To the Editor: Re ''The F.D.A. Chickens Out'' (Op-Ed, May 8): Andrew Kimbrell's arguments in favor of mandatory labeling of gene-spliced foods are specious. Such labels would imply that the buyer needs to be warned of unspecified dangers, would inflate production costs and hurt the environment by forcing more pesticide use and more cultivation of land for farming. Since 1992 the F.D.A. has required extra risk assessment and risk management (including labeling) when safety issues are raised in foods from new plant varieties. Moreover, with regard to food labeling, there is no consumers' ''right to know.'' A federal appeals court, invalidating a Vermont law that required milk labels to disclose the use of bovine somatotropin (a protein that increases the productivity of dairy cows), found that the labels were a constitutional violation of commercial free speech. HENRY I. MILLER, M.D. Stanford, Calif., May 9, 2000 The writer was head of the F.D.A.'s Office of Biotechnology, 1989-93. | Altered Food: To Label or Not? |
1198671_0 | To the Editor: Andrew Kimbrell (Op-Ed, May 8) is right to criticize the Food and Drug Administration for refusing to require the labeling of genetically modified foods, but the agency's announcement may be even worse for consumers than he suggests. In 1994 the F.D.A. pressured dairy producers who told consumers they would avoid genetic engineering to add a label disclaimer. Dairies using a modified hormone had no labeling requirement. But some dairies that followed F.D.A. guidelines for unmodified milk suffered legal challenges to their labels. Now, the agency says it will develop guidelines to ensure that ''label claims concerning the biotechnology status of foods'' will not be misleading. It would be bad news for consumers if the agency took the same backward approach that it took with milk. CHARLES MARGULIS Baltimore, May 8, 2000 The writer is a genetic engineering specialist at Greenpeace. | Altered Food: To Label or Not? |
1203388_3 | going to be graded; it's a self-examination. Julian Bond N.A.A.C.P. chairman. Washington University, St. Louis. If we can shrink the world's population to a village of only 100 people, keeping all existing ratios the same, that village would look like this: there would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere -- north and south -- and 21 Africans; 52 would be female; 70 would be nonwhite and 30 white; 70 would be non-Christian and 30 would be Christian. Six of the 100 people would own 59 percent of all the wealth in the world, and all 6 of those people would be from the United States. Eighty of the 100 people would live in substandard housing. Seventy would be unable to read and write. Fifty would suffer from malnutrition. One would have a college education. Bill Amend Cartoonist. Amherst College, Amherst, Mass. For a graduating senior, it's got to be like music from heaven to hear that an Amherst education can actually lead to a job where you can wear sweats all day, sleep in late, play your stereo all you want, and get paid lots of money to draw silly little pictures in between games of Quake on your computer. . . . Knowing you have an audience, especially one that matters to you, can be utterly paralyzing. The fear of failure, the weight of expectation, the indecision that comes from striving for perfection can transform even simple tasks into brain-melting impossibilities. But knowing you have an audience can also elevate you to do more than you might otherwise. And to do it better. To consider what you're doing from more that one view. As a syndicated cartoonist, I have a huge audience. They tell me it's over 25 million readers. This might be cause for a little intimidation were it not for my handy science background reminding me that this is merely one 250-billionth the number of sodium ions in a single grain of salt. Trust me, anybody can write for salt. Henry G. Cisneros President of Univision Communications. Occidental College, Los Angeles. Over the years I have learned that the people who are the most successful, the people I have admired the most, are not necessarily those who are the most brilliant, or witty, or have mastered a particular discipline, but those who had the stamina to stay the course over a long period | Words of Advice for Graduates on the Threshold of the Millennium |
1201737_0 | Hot flashes were quickly eased in frequency and severity by relatively small amounts of antidepressant drugs among women with breast cancer, a researcher said today at the meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology here. Breast cancer patients often complain of debilitating hot flashes from early menopause induced by chemotherapy. The apparent new use for antidepressants presumably will also benefit women suffering hot flashes during menopause and men who suffer hot flashes during hormonal therapy for prostate cancer, said the researcher, Dr. Charles L. Loprinzi of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Although hormones known as estrogens and progesterones can relieve hot flashes, many doctors shy away from prescribing them for women with breast cancer because of concerns that hormones may stimulate the growth of malignant tumors. Hot flashes can disrupt sleep and work performance and come as night sweats. They can also be part of mood swings. There are now three studies that show the benefit of antidepressants on hot flashes. Because the antidepressant drugs ''so clearly work and are reasonably tolerated,'' they may offer an effective alternative for women who do not want to take hormones, Dr. Loprinzi said at the meeting. However, Dr. Loprinzi said the antidepressants did not completely relieve hot flashes in every woman. The drugs were effective in smaller amounts than are used in treating depression, said Dr. Loprinzi, who has conducted two of the studies. They involved two common antidepressants, Prozac and Effexor, that are selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors, or S.S.R.I.'s. In March, researchers from Georgetown University reported a similar benefit in a third study among 27 women using Paxil, also an S.S.R.I., Dr. Loprinzi said. In the pilot study from Georgetown in Washington, the women kept diaries of the frequency and severity of hot flashes while they took increasing amounts of Paxil for six weeks. The women also completed questionnaires. All women knew they were taking Paxil. The two studies with Prozac and Effexor were scientifically more rigorous because neither the women nor the doctors knew what drug the women were taking, Dr. Loprinzi said. The idea for this use of antidepressants came from anecdotal observations among women who reported unexpected improvement in their hot flashes while they were taking the drugs to fight depression. The study reported today was the largest of the three, involving 229 women who were divided into four groups, Dr. Loprinzi said. The federally funded study began | Antidepressants Ease Hot Flashes, Cancer Study Shows |
1201816_0 | The City University of New York trustees yesterday approved a plan offering a new vision for the university, with elite colleges and research groups, higher standards for admission and graduation and possibly a required core curriculum across campuses. The effort to reinvigorate CUNY is spelled out in a 133-page master plan that by the law the university must submit to the New York State Regents by next week. It would affect everything from the hiring of professors to testing requirements for students. CUNY officials hope the plan will rebuild the university's reputation after years of battering by critics, including Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and some of the university's own trustees, who charged that its standards were too low, that many students failed to graduate and that others who did graduate could not read or write English. Although some say the attacks were unjustified, the master plan does not debate the issue; it simply pledges to do better and adopts some of the recommendations made last June by Mayor Giuliani's advisory task force on CUNY. Among the programs called for in the master plan were the upgrading of teacher education, the creation of an honors college to attract the academically strongest students and an increase in the proportion of full-time faculty. Although long-range plans are sometimes lofty documents doomed to remain on a high shelf, the university's chancellor and the trustees are already working to turn this one into a reality, to the dismay of some critics. Most of the steps can be taken without permission from the Regents, although some, like the addition of new professors, will depend on increased financing by the city and the state. Added momentum comes from the fact that two top trustees -- the board's chairman, Herman Badillo, and its vice chairman, Benno C. Schmidt Jr. -- were on the Giuliani task force, and Mr. Schmidt was its chairman. CUNY has already begun to limit the number of students who enter some of its senior colleges and its teacher education programs by requiring higher grade point averages and test scores. It has also begun to forge partnerships with the city's schools chief and its business leaders. And the chancellor has started to reorganize his office and to develop a performance evaluation system for top administrators. ''We have wonderful opportunities at this university to do some extraordinary things,'' the university's chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, told the trustees, | Plan Approved To Invigorate City University |
1196405_0 | RYDER-Irving. Died May 1 at age 78. Survived by the love of his life, his longtime paramour Toby Olkin. Also survived by his beloved children, stepchildren and children-in-law Robert and Jill, Carol and Randy, Phillip and Janice, and Paul; his adored grandchildren Tyler, Benjamin, Rachel and Michael. He'll forever be in our hearts and in our funnybones. Oh, how he made us laugh. | Paid Notice: Deaths RYDER, IRVING |
1197953_1 | in large part to the I.R.A.'s intransigence over disarmament. At the time, David Trimble, the pivotal Protestant leader, was threatening to give up his post over the arms issue. The I.R.A.'s new proposal meets the British and Irish governments' demand that paramilitary groups state clearly that they will put their arms ''completely and verifiably beyond use.'' The group said some arms dumps would be open for inspection within weeks as a confidence-building measure and would be subject to re-inspection at regular intervals by representatives of an international disarmament commission to verify that weapons are not being used. The I.R.A. also said it would reappoint representatives to the commission. To move from confidence-building steps to a broader disarmament, the I.R.A. will have to devise long-term timetables for setting aside all of its explosives, hand grenades, assault rifles and pistols, subject to verification. The Protestant paramilitaries must do the same. The I.R.A.'s long-awaited commitment was not an easy one for the group to make. Its leaders deserve credit for overcoming doubts about disarmament among the organization's most militant members. Reciprocal steps must be made by the Unionist side. Mr. Trimble greeted the I.R.A.'s announcement cautiously, but he conceded that it ''does appear to break new ground.'' He must now follow through on his recent promise to bring his party back into a home-rule government if the I.R.A. made a firm commitment to disarm, without waiting for actual disarmament to begin. The British and Irish governments have postponed by a year the deadline for completing a number of additional measures that are needed to insure peace. They include development of a new police force with a more balanced membership among Roman Catholic and Protestant officers and new provisions for respecting human rights. These goals should not be neglected in the months ahead. Both Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, have shown admirable persistence in reviving the Good Friday agreement. Mr. Trimble and Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing, have each shown courage in making the compromises necessary to end three decades of sectarian conflict that has cost more than 3,600 lives. The I.R.A. and the Protestant paramilitary groups have maintained cease-fires for nearly three years now. With the prospect of renewed self-rule, there are grounds for optimism in Northern Ireland among the overwhelming majority who yearn for a fair and lasting peace. | Northern Ireland Peace Progress |
1197968_0 | To the Editor: Political collapse and economic uncertainty after Communism's fall may have contributed to Eastern and Central Europe's population decline (news article, May 4). But the fear of ''de-population'' has caused the erosion of women's reproductive rights in the region. The Hungarian Parliament is about to pass a restrictive abortion law, and the Russian Parliament has likewise been presented with legislation seriously restricting access to abortion. Across the region, employers discriminate against women of childbearing age because of a long, mandatory maternity leave. Domestic violence laws are nonexistent or poorly enforced. Until Eastern and Central Europe begin to protect and promote their rights, women will continue to feel that these countries are not safe places to raise their children. MINDY JANE ROSEMAN New York, May 4, 2000 The writer is staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy. | Women and Babies In Eastern Europe |
1197978_5 | boarding passes for passengers waiting in long lines. The initiative that is the furthest along is the installation of the ticket kiosks that print boarding passes. Alaska, Continental and Northwest have put them in dozens of airports, and British Airways and Alitalia, among others, use them in Europe. Delta has installed them in Boston, New York and Washington for shuttle flights, and United is now testing a version in Aspen, Colo. Airline executives say they have not cut any jobs because of the machines but likely would have had to hire more agents without the kiosks. Typically about six feet tall, the machines allow passengers with electronic tickets to insert credit cards, print boarding passes and sometimes change their seats or get tickets on earlier flights. The machines pose, in text form, the security questions that gate agents ask passengers who check in the old-fashioned way. For now, there is rarely a line, and almost never a long one, at the kiosks. Mary Anne Smith of Metuchen, N.J., used one of them last week at Newark International Airport before boarding a Continental flight on a business trip. ''They're quicker even than when there are no lines'' at the counters, she said. ''I don't have to talk to anyone.'' They are mainly useful, however, for passengers who have no bags to check and no questions to ask. Only Alaska, in Anchorage and Portland, Ore., now permits passengers to print their own tags and then drop them onto a conveyer belt from which the luggage is X-rayed and put on the plane. The other carriers force passengers using the kiosks to wait in a line -- usually separate from the main one and shorter -- to check their bags. The airlines have also not fully explained the policies to travelers, analysts said. Ms. Smith, for example, said she believed she could not use the kiosk at all if she had wanted to check a bag. In addition, the kiosks do not yet give fliers the same control that talking to an agent does, particularly for frequent travelers whose requests the airlines often meet, noted Samuel C. Buttrick, an airline analyst at PaineWebber. ''I can't ask that the seat next to me be left open. I can't ask about upgrade wait lists. I can't ask questions about the status of a connecting flight,'' Mr. Buttrick said, adding that he rarely uses the kiosks. | AIRLINES IN A PUSH FOR SHORTER LINES |
1197952_5 | birth, has mild cerebral palsy and severe hearing loss. Like most hospitals with neonatal intensive care units, Rainbow Babies and Children's has a follow-up clinic for premature babies, and Mischa was seen there. But as is typical, the tracking at Rainbow stops at age 3. After that, medical and educational professionals lump disabled premature children with the estimated six million disabled youngsters in the United States. When Mischa was younger, Mrs. Bolden said, she worried about her daughter's physical condition. Hoping to improve Mischa's strength, she signed her up for gymnastics and ice skating. ''Now,'' she said, ''I'm more worried mentally.'' In the first grade, Mischa is having trouble with math. Mrs. Bolden, who until recently was a single mother, working and going to school full time, is considering a tutor, though she is not certain how to pay for one. Mischa has trouble filtering out background noise, and Mrs. Bolden said she had fought with school officials to pay for hearing-aid amplifiers. ''I read a few preemie books when she was little,'' Mrs. Bolden said, ''but there is no manual when they get older.'' Decisions about rescuing children like Mischa at birth play out every day in neonatal intensive care units. The one at Montefiore Medical Center, like all such wards, is a place of dreams and heartache. Everything is in miniature. Tiny creatures, their eyes protected by dark patches, their fragile bodies connected to a maze of tubes, sleep in plastic cases, many under the glow of violet lights to cure jaundice. Diapers and pacifiers look as though they were made for dolls. Feedings are measured in half teaspoons. As director of this unit, Dr. Campbell faces the delicate task of answering the questions of new parents who inevitably want to know what the future will bring. ''You want to give hope, you want to encourage them,'' Dr. Campbell said, ''but you've got to keep everybody reasoned.'' Some advocates for parents of premature children say that if doctors were more forthright, parents might make different choices about whether to rescue their babies. ''Parents are very rarely told about the long-term, so-called minor disabilities,'' said Helen Harrison, author of ''The Premature Baby Book'' (St. Martin's Press, 1983), a guidebook for parents. ''These minor disabilities, of course, can keep children from living independently, or ever having a social life or being able to function in society.'' Doctors say they do | As the Tiniest Babies Grow, So Can Their Problems |
1203456_4 | especially in the first years of the project. Dr. Stephen Herrero, an emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Calgary and a leading expert on bear attacks, said, ''There are 700,000 black bears and 70,000 grizzly bears in North America and on average they kill three people a year and injure a dozen to two dozen. People fear these animals because they can be violent and cause injury or death, but once people know about bears, they can respect them and live with them without danger.'' All the reintroduced bears will be equipped with radio collars so that wildlife biologists can monitor their health and movements, Dr. Servheen said. The citizen management committee and wildlife officials will also work to allay people's fear of bears and to prevent the sorts of situations and conflicts that lead to the deaths of bears or people. Establishment of the citizen management committee represents a triumph for a coalition consisting of the Resource Organization on Timber Supply, a group of timber companies and unions with headquarters in Lewiston, Idaho; the Intermountain Forest Industry Association, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; the National Wildlife Federation; and Defenders of Wildlife. In 1995, that coalition presented the concept to Dr. Servheen and the grizzly bear recovery team as a way to allow logging, recreation and other activities to continue in the company of bears. The Fish and Wildlife Service embraced the idea, which was hailed nationally as a sign that a new spirit of cooperation was taking hold in the West after years of bitter conflict over land use and the Endangered Species Act. Despite a poll showing that a vast majority of people regionally and nationally wanted grizzlies, the plan was immediately caught in the sort of fierce political struggle it was intended to prevent. A number of environmental groups oppose the plan, and have proposed an alternative plan for the grizzlies. ''This plan is not the best we could do for bears,'' said Mike Bader, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, which is based in Missoula, Mont. He said the plan went too far in accommodating the timber industry and not far enough in protecting grizzly bears and their habitat. Anti-bear groups and a majority of the region's political leaders complain that because the grizzly is not at immediate risk of extinction, the federal government is needlessly unloosing a predator that is | Grizzly Bears Poised to Make A Comeback; Opponents Fear Bear Attacks; Advocates Fear for the Bears |
1203441_0 | When my sons were in the first grade, a rumor circulated through New York City elementary schools that cockroaches often contaminated canned tuna. Though the boys liked other fish, including sardines, they refused to eat canned tuna in any form and still avoid it more than 20 years later. Like alligators living in the sewer, many urban myths assume a life of their own despite a total lack of supporting evidence. The alligator myth is more a source of amusement than a problem for anyone, since very few of us venture into sewers. But when myths involve health issues, they can result in needless anxiety, avoidance behavior and inconvenience. In years past, these unsubstantiated rumors about health hazards lurking in our midst spread relatively slowly from person to person by word of mouth, unless some radio or television program happened to give them national airing. Now there is a new rapid-fire means of transmitting misinformation nationwide, even worldwide, via e-mail and the Internet. And since these communications appear in writing, rumors about health hazards floating around cyberspace seem to acquire an undeserved validity that makes them more likely to be believed than any oral warning. Of course, not everyone is equally gullible. Still, some people react with fear, even panic, when a cybermyth about health appears on their computer screens. Several of these ''urban health myths'' are exposed for what little they are worth in the May issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource, a newsletter published by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. I have added one of my own, on aluminum, that predates cyberspace but refuses to die. MYTH: Cooking in aluminum pots causes Alzheimer's disease. The sick brain cells of people with Alzheimer's disease have been found to contain high amounts of aluminum. This prompted people to point a guilty finger at aluminum pots and pans as a source of this element that they believe damage brain cells, resulting in senility. Countless people tossed out all their aluminum cookware, replacing it with stainless steel and enameled cast iron. But what those who panicked failed to realize is that sick cells tend to accumulate toxic metals because they are unable to eliminate them. Despite numerous investigations, there is no scientifically reliable evidence that aluminum is the cause, rather than the result, of a diseased brain. MYTH: Antiperspirants cause breast cancer. A persistent Internet myth is that since antiperspirants block | Mighty Cyberengines Spew Health Myths |
1203490_1 | made a momentous and mature decision on Saturday when it voted to resume participation in the government established by the Good Friday peace accords. Britain had suspended the home-rule government in February after only two months because the Irish Republican Army refused to turn over any of its weapons. Earlier this month the I.R.A. offered instead to permit international inspectors to verify that it had put some of its arms caches out of service. The Unionist vote to accept this offer, although by a narrow margin, shows that both Protestant and Catholic leaders can make the compromises necessary for a lasting peace. The vote was a tribute to the statesmanship of the Unionists' leader, David Trimble, who has resumed his post as Northern Ireland's first minister. Mr. Trimble spent the last week in an energetic effort to convince his party not to abandon the peace accords. Gerry Adams, who leads the I.R.A's political wing, Sinn Fein, took the personal and political risks of pressing the I.R.A. to make its arms proposal. Mr. Trimble's last hurdle turned out to have nothing to do with disarmament. Unionists were furious that Britain had proposed changing the name of Northern Ireland's police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, to the more neutral Northern Ireland Police Service. The change was one of dozens of necessary reforms recommended by a commission headed by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, that sought to make Northern Ireland's police more inclusive and accountable. Currently, 93 percent of its members are Protestant. Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, cooled Unionist passions by deleting mention of the name change from the police bill now before the British Parliament and announcing that other contentious symbolic issues would be decided later. That debate, however, obscures more serious problems with the police bill. The Patten commission, for instance, wanted Catholics to make up half of each new class of recruits for 10 years. Mr. Mandelson's bill would cut the time period to three years. Mr. Patten wanted a strong ombudsman and civilian oversight board that could demand documents and investigate allegations against police. Mr. Mandelson proposes much weaker versions of both these oversight agencies. Parliament needs to make the police bill truer to the Patten recommendations. A durable peace in Northern Island will require not only the kind of political changes that are developing but also a change in powerful institutions like the police. | Another Gain for Irish Peace |
1203541_0 | To the Editor: George R. Nethercutt Jr. (Op-Ed, May 26) notes that advocates of normal trading relations with China say that trade talks are not the appropriate place for resolving differences on human rights or security, and that these issues can be pursued in parallel discussions. Trade advocates also say that trade promotes democratization. Mr. Nethercutt asks, ''If this is true for China, why not for Cuba?'' The answer is simple. China offers lots of money and profit. Cuba, at the moment, does not. Never mind that both countries are equally guilty of egregious human rights abuses and that citizens in both live under an authoritarian Communist rule. Efforts to lift the embargo and establish a relationship with Cuba are continually stymied by the anti-Castro Cuban lobby in Florida, to whom politicians in both parties look for votes. It's easy to hate tiny Cuba, but hating China is obviously too expensive. DICK HALPERN Atlanta, May 26, 2000 | China and Cuba: Same and Different |
1203545_1 | longstanding tradition at the site, which limits such services to men, the ministry said the women could hold prayers at an adjacent location that would not offend Orthodox worshipers. Joel Greenberg (NYT) KUWAIT: WOMEN AND THE VOTE -- A court referred to the nation's highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court, the question of whether women should vote and run for office, a decision women's rights activists hailed as a victory. Kuwait's 1962 Constitution gives equal rights to men and women. But an election law bars women from voting or running for office. Activists want the Constitutional Court to make a definitive ruling. (AP) EUROPE NORTHERN IRELAND: JOINT GOVERNMENT -- The government that divides authority between the province's Catholic and Protestant political parties has resumed, with Britain formally restoring powers suspended in February. The Irish Republican Army has agreed to open its hidden arms dumps to international inspectors, and the Ulster Unionists, the largest Protestant party, voted by a narrow margin on Saturday to accept that move as reason to return to government with Sinn Fein, the political allies of the I.R.A. Warren Hoge (NYT) POLAND: RESIGNATIONS REJECTED -- Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek rejected the resignations of five cabinet ministers, demanding new talks to keep his government from falling and facing elections it would probably lose. The ministers are members of the Freedom Union, the Solidarity-led government's junior coalition partner, which says Mr. Buzek must step down if the alliance is to survive. (AP) RUSSIA: BERIA PLEA TURNED DOWN -- The Supreme Court rejected a request by relatives to posthumously pardon Lavrenty Beria, the reviled chief of the N.K.V.D. who sent millions of people to their deaths under Stalin's dictatorship in the 1930's and 40's. The N.K.V.D. later became the K.G.B. Mr. Beria was executed after Stalin's death in 1953 on trumped-up charges, including rape and espionage. Michael Wines (NYT) RUSSIA: REBELS ATTACK -- Chechen rebels have apparently begun a broad offensive against Russian troops, and, by their accounts, killed 40 soldiers in an ambush in the Grozny suburb of Aldi. Russian forces stand accused of conducting a killing and looting rampage in Aldi last February that residents say left at least 80 civilians dead. Russian officials denied rebel casualty reports, but said the situation in Chechnya is ''tense and difficult.'' Michael Wines (NYT) THE AMERICAS MEXICO: FOX SPURNED -- Vicente Fox, the leading opposition presidential candidate, appeared to abandon attempts to | WORLD BRIEFING |
1203513_4 | is not even equipped with a wheelchair ramp. ''When the child came in for evaluation, I saw possible signs of neglect,'' Ms. Schelling said in an interview last week. ''The child was not receiving any services, and the child was a paraplegic.'' But to get Ahsianea into a program, her mother needed to submit a doctor's report. Two weeks later, when she failed to do so, officials at Lucille Murray said they became worried. On Feb. 4, they faxed a note to the Administration for Children's Services; officials there responded by saying the family was already known to them. Over the next two months, the center twice dispatched a social worker to the family's home, each time pressing Ms. Carzan to furnish a medical report for Ahsianea. ''I was a bit fearful about this case,'' Ms. Schelling said. ''She seemed so overwhelmed, having to bring all these kids. We went to her.'' The home visits did not put Ms. Schelling at ease. Ahsianea was sitting in a stroller. Why had her mother not acquired a chair especially designed for paraplegic children, she wondered. The girl's hands were clenched in a fist -- cerebral palsy can severely restrict motion -- and the inside of her palm was covered with festering wounds. Ms. Carzan did not seem uncaring, Ms. Schelling recalled, just overwhelmed. ''She said, 'I try to do my best,' '' Ms. Schelling said. ''I thought this was a young parent who needed to get that child to treatment.'' Ms. Carzan finally furnished the doctor's report in April. Though it was not as thorough as she would have liked, Ms. Schelling said, it allowed Ahsianea to be enrolled in a special education program. In the end, Ms. Schelling's efforts bore no fruit. The next month, school officials in the Bronx recommended the Lavelle School for the Blind, a private academy in the Bronx under contract with the state. As a kindergarten student, Ahsianea was to attend classes five hours a day, five days a week, and receive language, occupational and physical therapy. But according to the spokeswoman for the city schools, Ms. Feinberg, the girl's mother refused. And that was her prerogative: state law does not require a child to be in school until first grade. So even after the mother refused, the school system had no reason to call the state central register on child abuse and neglect, Ms. Feinberg | Contact With a Web of Agencies Failed to Prevent a Disabled Girl's Death |
1196994_0 | The death of Cardinal John O'Connor, archbishop of New York, makes it increasingly likely that other church leaders will become more visible and influential nationally, helping fill a vacuum left by the passing of one of the most dominant figures in the American church. Two men to watch in particular, say some authorities on the Roman Catholic Church, are the archbishops of Chicago and Los Angeles, Cardinal Francis George and Cardinal Roger Mahony, respectively. The church in which their influence (and that of others) will be felt is different from what it was in 1984, when Cardinal O'Connor was appointed to New York. Major demographic trends -- the arrival of new immigrants from Latin America and Asia and the coming of age of a generation of men and women whose sense of being Catholic is often less defined than their parents' -- pose fresh and daunting challenges. When Cardinal O'Connor was appointed, American Catholics were still caught up in questions that arose in the 1960's, amid the Second Vatican Council's reforms and thereafter. Liberals and conservatives squared off over Rome's rejection of the use of birth control and such questions as how much authority women should have in the church. These days, the issues seem more complicated, less open to ideological in-fighting. Cardinal O'Connor bridged these two periods when he was appointed, immediately establishing himself as the Vatican's point man in America on moral issues, and increasingly becoming known for supporting the rights of immigrants and improved relations between Catholics and Jews. Of the major concerns now facing the church, said Chester Gillis, associate professor of theology and Catholic studies at Georgetown University in Washington and author of ''Roman Catholicism in America'' (Columbia, 1999), the continuing decline in the number of priests ''is an immediate, practical concern,'' because it threatens to reduce Catholics' access to church sacraments and pastoral care. Another challenge lies in how younger members relate to their faith. The ''young generation is extremely, poignantly concerned with their own welfare, in terms of success,'' he said, ''and that energy certainly distracts them from certain elements of the Gospel about self-sacrifice.'' In all these challenges, Professor Gillis said, ''Catholic identity is at stake, in some ways.'' With Cardinal O'Connor's death, some see the strongest voices in the church likely to emerge in Catholic strongholds in the Midwest and California -- at least until New York's next archbishop begins to | Other Prelates May Now Gain National Influence |
1196918_0 | To the Editor: ''Recalling a Victory for the Disabled'' (news article, May 3) gives the impression that there has been little progress in services for people with developmental disabilities after the closing of Willowbrook State School. Before the closing, children like my son, who has significant developmental disabilities, were warehoused, starved, left filthy, beaten. Now, 25 years later, people with disabilities live in small group homes, alongside non-disabled neighbors. They shop at their local supermarket, go to the movies, hold jobs. True, there is still plenty of room for improvement. But on the whole, the quality of life for most people with developmental disabilities has improved tremendously. And incidents of abuse are now the exception, not the rule. MARGARET PUDDINGTON New York, May 3, 2000 | Gains for the Disabled |
1196990_5 | the university Web site. Thousands of users received the infectious e-mail, according to Rick Botts, a university systems analyst, but calls to the help desk were no greater than normal, and only a few people seemed to have opened the file. ''I haven't heard from anyone who hasn't gotten it,'' he said. ''I've gotten it -- I haven't looked lately -- probably a dozen times. But by 9 o'clock, word was out all across campus that this was something not to touch.'' On Wall Street, the most noticeable effect was that workers spent more time than usual on the phone as some firms, and institutions shut down e-mail systems. At Merrill Lynch & Company, the e-mail system was out for much of the day as technicians worked to eradicate the virus. Brokers and other Merrill employees use e-mail to communicate with clients and co-workers but the firm's businesses are not dependent on e-mail, a Merrill spokesman said. ''It has had no impact on our business,'' he said. The Goldman Sachs Group restricted its e-mail system to internal communication early yesterday as a precaution, a spokeswoman said. Some other big firms, including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Company and J. P. Morgan & Company, reported no problems. AT&T started shutting down its e-mail system yesterday morning, and by 3 p.m. the company's 145,000 employees had to use telephones to communicate. The shutdown severed the main artery of communication with headquarters for the 10 percent of AT&T managers who work from home. AT&T, based in Basking Ridge, N.J., said it hoped to restore the system by midnight. Traffic on the company's communication network was about 2 percent higher than normal yesterday, said Burke Stinson, a company spokesman. The increase may have resulted from workers' switching to phone calls and using fax machines to send documents they would otherwise have sent by computer, he said. ''I have not heard of it having a dramatic impact on business,'' Mr. Stinson said. ''I suspect that some people discovered today that not receiving missives from headquarters could result in a pleasant day at the office.'' Some victims seemed amused or even faintly pleased. ''I found 64 messages saying 'I love you' on my computer this morning,'' said Dr. Matthew Naythons, a vice president of PlanetRx, an Internet drugstore based in South San Francisco, Calif. ''Given the state of of e-commerce these days, I was strangely moved.'' | A Disruptive Virus Invades Computers Around the World |
1201948_1 | researchers use basic crossbreeding techniques to improve them, developing, for example, wheat better suited to drought in Africa, or corn more resistant to Latin American insects. Now, what some see as a new threat that could be far more dangerous than any pest has emerged. Private companies and universities are busy patenting plant genes and claiming intellectual property rights to biotechnology advances. Suddenly, the free exchange of plant resources is in question as discoveries representing millions of dollars in profits are patented, potentially keeping poor farmers from using them. The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, the nonprofit agency that runs the corn and wheat banks here, surprised some supporters by putting into place this month its own policy to patent work that was traditionally made available to everyone. The center has been a leader in the so-called Green Revolution, and its breakthroughs have been applied in roughly two-thirds of the wheat and half of all the improved corn grown in poor countries. Directors say the policy change was a defensive tactic to block attempts to patent the center's discoveries and thus keep small farmers from using them. Although the center's focus remains helping the poor, not making money, the move has dismayed some supporters. ''To us it's a slippery slope,'' said Pat Roy Mooney, executive director of the Rural Advancement Foundation International, a conservation organization in Winnipeg that focuses on agricultural issues. ''Once patents or profits become motivation for their work, they'll find it very hard to sort out what their research priorities are going to be.'' Mr. Mooney worries that the center is overly eager to work with big biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Novartis. Those companies have progressed rapidly in biotechnology, genetically modifying tomatoes to make them last longer and creating soybeans resistant to a herbicide. But such advances benefit developed countries, not the poor. Biotechnology for poor countries is done at centers like the one here. In some instances, the big private companies have shared genes with the center's researchers. But since the center makes its work available to all, the big companies sometimes hold back, worried that secrets might slip into competitors' hands. Timothy G. Reeves, the center's director general, said most foreign countries that finance its projects now demand patents. He also said patents may actually ensure the availability of new varieties by preventing private companies that use the center's genetic material from patenting | Texcoco Journal; The 'Slippery Slope' of Patenting Farmers' Crops |
1201943_0 | Under pressure from farmers to open new markets, Congress is considering softening the United States trade embargo against Cuba to permit the export of food, medicine and medical products. Powerful farm groups, sensing a swing in momentum this election year, are pushing lawmakers to reconsider the 38-year-old embargo, arguing that it does more harm than good. Business groups and pharmaceutical companies are also rallying for change. The effort even got unexpected support this year from the Elian Gonzalez saga as some Americans, deluged with stories about Cuba and Cuban-Americans, began to re-evaluate whether the United States' cold war strategy toward the Communist island nation still made sense. Economically, the proposed measure is largely symbolic: It specifically rules out purchase of food using United States government credit, making it unlikely that cash-starved Cuba would be able to buy much from American farmers. And it does little to expand a current provision on exporting medicine and medical products to Cuba. The measure's true significance is political, in its newfound popularity on the Hill among both conservatives and liberals. That marks an important shift in Congress, indicating a growing impatience with the embargo's failure and a desire to explore different approaches to dealing with the government of Fidel Castro. ''I think Castro has used this scapegoat argument against the United States for years,'' said Representative George R. Nethercutt Jr., a Washington Republican who faces a tough re-election battle this year. ''If we take this argument away from him, we export not only food and medicine but also democracy. He can't then say that America is inhumane. It works to our advantage. We can't do any worse.'' The measure, tucked inside a mammoth agriculture spending bill, was approved by the Appropriations Committee this month. It has attracted so many allies that it withstood an attempt by the majority whip, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, to strip the measure from the larger bill. Last year, Mr. DeLay killed the measure before it could be voted on in the House. The provision has also cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee, and faces little opposition there, although Senator Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican and Castro foe, has expressed his displeasure. Last year, the Senate approved a similar measure in a 70-to-30 vote. Although the measure stands its best chance ever this year, it faces a few hurdles in the House, where Republican leaders could still defeat the | U.S. Farm Groups Join Move to Ease Cuba Embargo |
1201971_2 | more in a research setting than in everyday medical practice ''because we do not yet know how to use that prognostic information to improve'' survival. Although the finding is discouraging for women with high insulin levels, Dr. Goodwin sought in an interview to assure such women. ''Just because someone has an eightfold increased risk of death, it does not necessarily mean they are going to die,'' Dr. Goodwin said. ''It means they are at greater risk for a bad outcome.'' Of the women with the highest levels of insulin in the study, 70 percent were alive after seven years, she said. Of the women with the lowest insulin levels, about 95 percent were alive after seven years. ''This is not the answer to breast cancer,'' Dr. Goodwin said, but information about insulin levels could be used to develop new treatment strategies to lower the risk for affected women. One research step would be to conduct a series of trials to determine whether more aggressive chemotherapy and interventions in patients' way of life, like exercise and weight loss, could improve survival among women with high insulin levels. The study focused on insulin, not diabetes, although some diabetics have increased insulin. Insulin is critical for controlling the blood levels of the sugar glucose. Diabetes can result from a lack of insulin, but it can also result when a body develops resistance to normal amounts of insulin, leaving more insulin in the body. Also, insulin plays an important role in cell growth. Cells have a specific area on their surface, known as a receptor, to which insulin attaches. Dr. Goodwin said her team at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto ''believes that insulin is acting on the surface of breast cancer cells and turning on the pathway'' to promote the growth of cancer cells. Earlier evidence has shown that insulin receptors in breast tissue differ from those elsewhere in the body, and laboratory studies have suggested that insulin can cause breast cells to grow and undergo transformation to cancerous cells, Dr. Goodwin said. Another line of research would be to develop novel drugs to impede insulin's effect on breast cells. That is a formidable challenge because insulin is needed to maintain normal blood sugar. But drugs might be developed to block insulin receptor sites the way tamoxifen blocks receptor sites for the hormone estrogen. A second way would be to disrupt insulin's metabolic actions | High Level of Insulin Linked To Breast Cancer's Advance |
1201927_0 | The story of the uninspired student who goes on to make a name for himself is practically a cliche. Winston Churchill was a nortoriously poor test-taker. Martin Luther King Jr. scored below average on every section of the graduate school boards, including verbal aptitude. Like many other corporate leaders, Richard Branson of the Virgin Group had trouble with standardized admission tests. It is a paradox that has long frustrated educators. They know that test scores often predict applicants' academic performance on campus but are unreliable guides to career success. As a result, psychologists and corporate recruiters alike have longed for a systematic way to identify the campus goof-off who is destined to become a corporate chief executive or the class brain who is doomed to languish in middle management. Now, for what may be the first time, a major university is usings its own students and applicants in a concerted effort to unlock the mystery. In a challenge to the primacy of the standardized tests that millions of Americans have sweated over, the University of Michigan Business School is developing a test of practical intelligence, or common sense, that it hopes will do a better job of identifying future leaders than the Graduate Management Admission Test, or G.M.A.T., does. Michigan's new test leads students through an elaborate series of business scenarios that present hypothetical financial statements, press releases, news articles and other information. It then poses a central problem and asks students either open-ended or multiple-choice questions: What do you see as the main problem in this situation? What information did you focus on? What obstacles, if any, do you anticipate? The test aims to gauge who is able to learn from mistakes, handle changing situations and cope with less-than-perfect information - the same challenges, its designers say, that working people face every day. Michigan officials gave the test to M.B.A. students entering last fall, and they plan to do so again this year. The school will the compare the students' performance on the test to their track records at the school, from grades to extracurricular leadership positions to job offers, to see whether it is a valid measure of their ability to function in the workplace. Once the correlations are more clear, Michigan intends to require applicants to take the test, possibly as soon as the fall of 2001, in addition to the G.M.A.T. ''We need a better, fairer, | MANAGEMENT: On Testing for Common Sense; A Business School Thinks It Makes Sense. Yes? No? |
1201921_2 | organic by neglect and it's not the same. Wild does need more recognition, but allowing wild fish to piggyback on organic is going to water down organic.'' For those who have watched organic grow from a much mocked description of the weeds and seeds sold in grungy stores and eaten by hippies in Birkenstocks in the 1970's to one that confers a premium price, this triumphal moment, when federal organic standards will become a reality, is bringing a new set of problems. Alaska is not the only entity that wants to cash in on the organic cachet. Large food companies are increasingly buying up small organic companies, not to improve the environment but to improve their bottom lines. Organic sales have increased about 20 percent annually for the last 10 years. ''Organic is a useful marketing tool,'' said Kate Troll, the fisheries specialist at the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development. ''This is a way to sell at a better price.'' Our salmon ''is beyond organic,'' said Doug Mecum, director of commercial fisheries in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. ''It's totally natural and wild. It's a healthy product, free of pollutants.'' In the past, the state has promoted its wild salmon as superior to farmed in flavor and quality. But few people know the difference between wild and farmed salmon and have no idea which kind they are eating. Farmed salmon now account for 60 percent of the world's market and have seriously depressed the price of wild salmon. Like commercial chickens, farmed fish live in not particularly sanitary conditions. They are fed dye pellets to give them the pink color that occurs naturally in free-swimming salmon. They eat manufactured food that may contain genetically modified ingredients. They are treated with antibiotics because of fish lice. Ironically, because the farmed fish live their entire lives in controlled waters, they could be certified organic if changes were made in their environment and food. Certified organic farmed fish are already being sold in Britain. That label for farmed salmon is seen as an additional threat to wild Alaskan salmon. ''We saw that the door was going to be opened to farm-raised salmon,'' Ms. Troll said, ''and we thought we needed a level playing field.'' Two Pacific Northwest fish processors are now certified organic by two independent organic certifying agencies. Prime Select Seafood in Cordova, Alaska, is selling certified organic | Is Salmon Organic? Not Yet |
1199897_0 | AstraZeneca P.L.C., a giant pharmaceutical company, said today that it would sell a genetically altered strain of ''golden rice'' in the developed world and also help make the technology freely available to the world's poorest countries. The London-based company, which announced the agreement here in a news conference with one of the scientists who invented the rice, said it would be made available in three years. The rice, which is fortified with beta carotene that converts to vitamin A, would be given away in the developing world in the hopes of improving the health of undernourished people and curing some forms of blindness. The rice, which has been under development for seven years, has been hailed by the biotechnology industry as a symbol of the promise of agricultural biotechnology, which up until now has largely created an array of crops that benefit farmers by increasing yields. These crops have led to controversy in Europe and the United States, with many critics saying the crops have not been properly tested, an accusation the industry denies. The industry hopes that crops like golden rice will be more acceptable to the public, particularly if they serve humanitarian purposes. Scientists said they believed more than 124 million people worldwide suffer from a vitamin A deficiency, and that up to 2 million children die each year in early childhood and another 500,000 become afflicted with an irreversible form of blindness each year because they rely on a rice diet that is deficient in vitamin A. The scientists, Peter Beyer, a professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and Prof. Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich first announced their discovery in January in the journal Science. Today, Mr. Beyer said they had reached a licensing agreement with Zeneca Ag Products, a division of AstraZeneca. Robert Woods, the president of Zeneca, said the crop had great nutritional benefits. ''And if we do the right things in verifying the safety, it will take out the political and emotional issues that have surrounded biotechnology,'' he said. Critics say that however noble the effort, they remain concerned about the safety of genetically altered crops, and see the announcement as an effort by the biotechnology industry to put a more favorable spin on those crops. ''It's a very laudable goal,'' said Joseph Mendelson III, a spokesman at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, an | AstraZeneca to Sell a Genetically Engineered Strain of Rice |
1199887_1 | the superseeds. ''They have to live by their rules, of which there aren't any, and we have to live by ours, which are numerous,'' said Mr. Dyer, 75, who also runs several grain elevators in Iowa and Missouri. ''It's not fair, and I would like for it to be changed, but that's the way it is.'' Brazil is in the process of deciding whether to make the new technology legal. And there is a growing sense that what happens in Brazil -- the world's No. 2 soybean producer, after the United States -- could tip the balance on genetically altered crops around the world. Should Brazil officially reject biotechnology's lure, it would be a big setback for American companies that have already been hurt financially by fierce resistance in Europe from consumers and large companies that refuse to buy modified produce. But if Brazil's huge agricultural sector joins the biotech fold, experts say, it may someday be difficult for consumers anywhere to find any food free of genetically modified material. That is because the United States, Brazil and Argentina, the No. 3 producer, together grow 80 percent of the world's 157 million metric tons of soybeans, an extraordinarily versatile crop that is pressed into oil, processed into food, and added to countless foods. ''Once Brazil starts harvesting transgenic soybeans, there will be no turning back,'' said Joao Carlos Carvalho, president of Agropecuaria Basso, a Brazilian company licensed to sell the seeds if they are approved. The situation in Brazil also shows how difficult it is to control this new technology in the absence of any global regulatory mechanism. The Brazilian government approved the use of modified seeds developed by Monsanto in 1998, but a consumer group challenged the approval in federal court in Brazil. Delmiro Silva, a spokesman for Monsanto in Brazil, expects a ruling sometime this year. Technically, it is still illegal to plant high-technology seeds in Brazil. This is such a sensitive issue that the minister of agriculture, Marcus Vinicius Pratini de Moraes, would respond only to a written question. ''The commercial planting of genetically modified soybeans in Brazil is not permitted,'' he wrote. Frequent government testing, he added, confirmed that the harvest is free of genetically modified organisms. Still, many agricultural experts, Brazilian and American alike, suspect that modified seeds are being smuggled in from Argentina. Dwain L. Ford, chairman for international affairs at the American Soybean | Crop Genetics On the Line In Brazil; A Rule on Seeds May Have Global Impact |
1202487_1 | letter to Speaker Dennis Hastert, urging him to expedite the consideration of this amendment. The letter noted that that unilateral sanctions of food and medicine do not work. Because sanctioned states can easily buy the same supplies from our allies, American farmers are the only ones punished; they are denied access to significant international markets. Moreover, denying innocent civilians access to food and medicine, if only in principle, is an abhorrent foreign policy tool. The logic is straightforward: support American farmers and American values by allowing the export of food and medicine to currently sanctioned countries. The amendment merely allows sanctioned states to buy food and medicine on a commercial basis, nothing more. If a normal trading relationship with China is a home run for America, then lifting these sanctions is the equivalent of a grand slam. What, then, could be the problem? Despite the clear parallels with arguments it made in favor of the China deal, the Republican leadership is opposed to the amendment's inclusion of Cuba and seems intent on blocking even the sale of food to the world's smallest Communist regime. This week, Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, defended the position. ''It's very easy to see the distinction'' between trade with China and Cuba, he said, adding: ''And if you all can't see it, I don't know. Maybe you're just blind to it.'' In reflecting on the arguments in the China debate, I don't see the difference. Those who promoted normal trading relations with China said that trade promotes democratization. Change in Communist regimes is slow, but eventually democratic norms take hold. Dialogue and engagement with the United States are central to this transition, as is exposure to our processes. If this is true for China, then why not for Cuba? Advocates of China trade note that trade talks are not the appropriate venue for resolving differences on human rights or security. These issues can be pursued in parallel discussions. If this is true for China, why not for Cuba? In his closing arguments in the China trade debate, Speaker Hastert asked the House to weigh the significance of the Chinese market, noting the intense interest of our global competitors. ''The question is, who will be there when the door opens?'' he asked. This week's vote demonstrates that America will be in China. Then why not Cuba? George R. Nethercutt Jr. is a Republican Congressman from | What's Good for China Is Good for Cuba |
1202406_0 | SUGAR RISES. Sugar climbed almost 3 percent on expectations for continued low exports from Brazil, the world's top grower. In New York, sugar for July delivery rose 0.2 cent, or 2.7 percent, to 7.76 cents a pound. | THE MARKETS: COMMODITIES |
1199142_1 | on American history, suggested at a dinner at his home near Paris that a monument be built, in America, to the ideals that had inspired the American and French revolutions. In America, Curlee writes, these ideals had led to stable democracy, while in France the revolution had been followed by ''a bloody Reign of Terror, the disastrous wars of Napoleon and decades of bad government.'' Creating a monument to American independence might help the French understand how they had gone wrong. Laboulaye imagined a ''united effort'' that would represent ''the common work of both nations.'' One guest at the dinner, the successful young neoclassical sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, found this idea so compelling that he nurtured it for more than 20 years. Sailing into New York Harbor a few years after the dinner, on his first visit to the United States, Bartholdi felt certain that the perfect spot for the monument he had begun to envisage was ''here where people get their first view of the New World.'' A fine artist with command of narrative text as well, Curlee clearly details the challenges Bartholdi and Laboulaye faced in making their idea a reality. Americans had to be persuaded to accept the gift and to provide the proper location for it; money had to be raised in France to pay for the statue itself, and in America to provide a suitable pedestal to support it. The design had to be conceived, refined and then enlarged by a painstaking process called pointing; and, finally, an internal system had to be designed, which would support the more than 32 tons of copper ''skin'' that made the statue. For help, Bartholdi turned to Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, ''one of the great geniuses in the history of engineering,'' who a few years later would create the tower that has become synonymous with Paris. Eiffel devised a complex iron ''skeleton'' around a double winding staircase to which each plate of copper was individually attached. The system allows the central pylons to support the weight of the copper. It also means the statue can shift slightly in high winds and adjust to temperature changes. ''Liberty'' also contains interesting details of the dedication ceremonies in New York Harbor in October 1886. A group of suffragists ''positioned their boat directly in front of the viewing stand to point out the supreme irony that a statue dedicated to the idea of liberty was | Carrying a Torch |
1199545_0 | Raw potatoes might not be most people's idea of a delicious meal, especially if the potatoes have been genetically modified to contain a protein from the Norwalk virus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea. But when 20 volunteers in Baltimore ate such potatoes, the viral protein not only did no harm; it stimulated an immune response in 19 of them that might prevent them from becoming sick if they ever encounter the real virus. The test, conducted last year, was one of the first clinical trials of a so-called edible vaccine. Some day, some scientists say, people might be protected from disease by eating special bananas, tomato paste or crackers. ''Would you rather eat a candy bar or would you rather get a needle?'' said John A. Howard, chief executive of ProdiGene, a company in College Station, Tex., that is working on edible vaccines in corn. Edible vaccines could be especially important for developing countries, which often lack resources to distribute and preserve injectable vaccines. The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., developed the anti-Norwalk-virus potato and has done early clinical trials on potatoes containing vaccines for hepatitis B and for the diarrhea-causing illness known as travelers disease. Scientists in Poland working with Dr. Hilary Koprowski of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have tested a hepatitis B vaccine contained in lettuce. Numerous obstacles must still be overcome, so it is likely to be several years before such vaccines reach the market. One challenge will be to shift to foods that are more commonly eaten raw, since cooking could destroy the vaccine. In addition, the desired protein is often produced in the food at extremely low levels, and proteins are destroyed by acids in the stomach. Such factors could make it hard, particularly for infants, to eat enough to get a proper dose. Assuring a consistent dose is another problem. For these reasons, some scientists say that using a raw fruit or vegetable as a vaccine is impractical. Some processing will be necessary to concentrate the vaccine and assure a consistent dose, said Dr. Hugh S. Mason, who has been developing the vaccines at Boyce Thompson. Its next trials will use tomatoes ground into powder and then turned into a paste or juice by adding water. This concentrated tomato juice would have to be pasteurized and maybe refrigerated to keep out other harmful organisms. That could | Vaccine Delivered by Fork, Not Needle |
1199495_0 | COLLEGE may be the last official stop for mulling over life's eternal questions. You know: Who am I? Where am I? And, of course, what is the meaning of life? Then again, maybe not. Philosophy, the discipline for students intent on becoming philosophers until their parents ask how much it pays, is now within reach and available without the deep pain of tuition. For the past few years, the writer Paul Strathern, who earned his own philosophy degree at Trinity College in Dublin, has been distilling most of the world's best-known philosophers to 90 minutes, which, he said, is the length of a soccer game. A godsend in this era of the short attention span, his series, published by Ivan R. Dee, begins with ''Socrates in 90 Minutes,'' wittily compressing his life and works, and proceeds to Locke, St. Augustine, Descartes and Sartre, among others. New books on George Berkeley and Paul-Michel Foucault are scheduled to be published next month. Mr. Strathern wanted to write about the philosophers' lives, he said, adding in a few of their ideas. ''If you fix it that way, people do get it,'' he said. ''It gets to them, like garlic: it sticks to them.'' Still, in this breathless age of day-trading, online banking, gym for lunch and the New York minute, who has 90 minutes? Let's whittle this philosophy thing down to 90 seconds. Excerpts from the books follow. DARYL ROYSTER ALEXANDER Bearing a Gift Socrates developed a method of negatively aggressive questioning called dialectic (the forerunner of logic). This he used in conversation to cut through the twaddle of his adversaries and arrive at the truth. . . . Socrates went on to study under the philosopher Archelaus, ''by whom he was beloved in the worse sense.'' . . . It wasn't long before Socrates had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the so-called wise men of Athens in fact knew nothing -- just like him. So he concluded that the Delphic Oracle had been right: he was the wisest man -- because he knew that he knew nothing. . . . One of his best-remembered remarks is, ''The unexamined life is not worth living.'' -- ''Socrates in 90 Minutes'' The First Republican Plato explains that most human beings live as if in a dim cave . . . In more philosophical terms, Plato believed that everything we perceive around us -- the | Word for Word/90-Second Philosophy; In Bite-Size Portions, The Wise Men Made Easy |
1199150_1 | they had thought me acceptable.'' ''The Consolations of Philosophy'' supposedly issues from an existential change of heart. My problem as a reader is that the book has persuaded me that the conversion story, though charming, isn't true. There is no love of truth in this book, and thus no real change of character could have led to its production. There is a need for someone to bring that joyful activity of mind we call philosophy to the wider reading public. And de Botton, the author of ''How Proust Can Change Your Life,'' writes with verve. Academic philosophy in the United States has virtually abandoned the attempt to speak to the culture at large, but philosophy professors are doing something of incredible importance: they are trying to get things right. That is the thread that connects them back to Socrates -- even if they are not willing to follow him into the marketplace -- and that is the thread that ''The Consolations of Philosophy'' cuts. Indeed, de Botton's Socrates, for all the huffing and puffing about his greatness, is indistinguishable from a second-rate sophist. He is merely someone who questioned common-sense conventions and got people angry. How could anyone think that a world-historical figure could emerge by taking such a small step from timid conformity? The picture not only flattens Socrates, it trivializes the concerns of the populace. The ancient Greeks, de Botton says, ''would have been confounded and angered to be asked exactly why they sacrificed cocks to Asclepius or why men needed to kill to be virtuous.'' In fact, the Greeks had plenty to say about why sacrifice was important and why it was important to achieve glory in war. Generalizing to today, de Botton continues, ''If we refrain from questioning the status quo, it is -- aside from the weather and the size of our cities -- primarily because we associate what is popular with what is right.'' But who, then, are we? In Britain, where de Botton lives part of the time, the election of Margaret Thatcher brought about a giant transformation of social, economic and educational structure. There is very little that one could continue to call ''the status quo.'' The United States has seen huge shifts in social and economic opportunities for women, changes in race relations; the Internet may be ushering in an economic revolution. Above all, we are a country that allows social | The Socratic Method |
1199539_4 | go over well,'' he said. Some companies producing drugs in plants are already being hit. Axis Genetics of Britain went out of business a few months ago, saying the protests over bioengineered food had scared off investors. Groupe Limagrain, a French seed company, says it has been conducting its field tests in the United States because the dispute over modified crops is greater in Europe. And Planet Biotechnology Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., keeps the location of its greenhouses secret to prevent vandalism by protesters, as has happened to companies growing modified food products. Companies are considering various techniques to keep drug-producing crops from accidentally entering the food supply, including the implanting of a gene to turn drug-producing crops a different color from other crops. Techniques are also being developed to prevent cross-pollination. CropTech, for instance, said its tobacco would be harvested before sexual maturity. Some drugs needed in small quantities might be grown only in greenhouses, rather than open fields. Just as with food, biocrops should be able to produce large quantities of drugs at low cost, advocates say. The newest factories now used to produce pharmaceutical proteins in genetically modified mammalian cells can cost $100 million or more and can produce a few hundred kilograms a year at most. Drugs made in such factories can cost thousands of dollars per gram to produce. For many biotechnology drugs already on the market, this is not a problem because prices are high and only minuscule amounts are needed. But some drugs under development, like an antibody-containing cream for herpes, are likely to require much larger quantities and not to be able to command high prices. ''They cannot make these drugs using the old technologies,'' said Mr. White of Monsanto's Integrated Protein Technologies. ''It's just not going to be cost effective to do so.'' Mr. White said his company could produce 300 kilograms of a purified drug for a $10 million capital investment and a cost of $200 a gram. Planet Biotechnology is in clinical trials of an antibody, produced in genetically altered tobacco, that blocks the bacteria that cause tooth decay. Elliott L. Fineman, the chief executive, said it would be impossible to use mammalian cells to produce the 600 kilograms a year that might be needed in a cost-effective way. But the entire supply could be affordably produced on a single large tobacco farm. Still, the companies wanting to | New Ventures Aim to Put Farms In Vanguard of Drug Production |
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