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1174088_2 | .cruisecritic.com. The site contains detailed critiques of selected ships, from the design of cabins and public rooms to the quality of food and entertainment and deportment of fellow passengers; the reviews are by professionals as well as travelers. Frequent cruisers may want to consider a subscription to www.cruise-report .com, which rates ships in a number of categories, for $39.95, $49.95 and $69.95, depending on the level of service. For a more folksy approach, www.sealetter.com offers photos and cruise diaries, reviews and articles (one issue includes an eyewitness account and photos of the 1998 fire aboard the Carnival ship Ecstasy.) For those who can sail on short notice, there are a number of sites posting last-minute bargains. For a $25 membership fee, you can join an online discount travel club called Moment's Notice (www.moments-notice .com/cruises.htm), which serves as a clearinghouse for tour operators and cruise lines. Another site called www.cruisestar.com, which lets you search by date and destination, has a good selection of repositioning cruises (sailings from one seasonal location to another) that offer the usual shipboard amenities but at a lower cost. Hard-core bargain hunters can bid on last-minute cruises on such travel auction sites as www.bid4vacations.com. If you are looking for ''wired'' ships that allow you to connect with the Internet and communicate by e-mail while on board, you will have a bigger selection to choose from every month. Trends seem to sweep across cruise lines like typhoons, and the Internet is the latest hot attraction. Passengers apparently like to keep track of potential storms at sea (www.weather.com), as well as a volatile stock market, and any tempests that might be brewing back home. The first shipboard Internet cafe was introduced last year as a novelty on the maiden voyage of the Norwegian Sky. Since then, two more ships in the Norwegian line have been wired, and the rest of the fleet is scheduled to go online soon. Most of the other major cruise lines are also in various stages of progress in improving their telecommunications capability. (The Cruise Lines International Association Web site, at www.cruising.org, includes information on how to obtain a chart listing ships' electronic capability.) One of the innovations in the works is wireless Internet access, which means you will be able to use your laptop to surf the Web at poolside (though there may be some who might prefer that such Webaholics walk the plank). | Surfing for options before you sail |
1179861_0 | Monumental Failure Q. Decades before the Washington Monument was erected in Washington, construction of a similar memorial was undertaken in New York City. What happened to it? A. After a parade from City Hall to a rural hilltop site five miles north, a four-foot slab of marble was lowered into the ground on Oct. 19, 1847, as brass bands, uniformed troops and top-hatted dignitaries looked on solemnly. Construction of New York City's Washington Monument, first proposed in 1843, went no further. Designed by Calvin Pollard, a self-taught architect, the monument was to be a soaring, five-sided Gothic tower of granite, containing a library, a monumental rotunda, a university and, within the spire, a ''National Observatory,'' according to ''The City That Never Was'' by Rebecca Read Shanor (Viking, 1988). The site was an 18-acre tract at what is now Fifth Avenue and East 65th Street, called Hamilton Square. Pollard's plan for the memorial -- which at 425 feet would have been roughly twice as tall as any building in the city -- proved unpopular, and his choice of the ecclesiastical style was galling to a public accustomed to monuments based on Greek and Roman styles. Two months after the cornerstone was dedicated, as protests reached a crescendo, the association sponsored another competition. In 1848, unable to choose a winner, the committee asked contributors to vote on their favorite plan. Minard Lafever's proposal, one of six originally passed over by the Washington Monument Committee, was the victor. Consisting of a 500-foot Egyptian obelisk rising from a stepped, two-story pedestal, it was similar in form and scale to the one erected in Washington 40 years later. Funds for the monument were so depleted by that time that the committee was forced to pursue a far more modest tribute. In 1856, a bronze equestrian statue of General Washington by the sculptor Henry Kirke Brown was finally unveiled. It stands today in Union Square Park. When Hamilton Park was cut into streets years later, the cornerstone of Pollard's tower was forgotten, and presumably left in place. Wall Street Booms Q. When a small bomb exploded two weeks ago outside 75 Wall Street, I was immediately reminded of the blast at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets in 1920, which killed almost 40 people. Was anyone ever charged? A. Though it was widely assumed that anarchists had planted the bomb, which was left in the | F.Y.I. |
1179594_1 | and to clarify Mr. Jospin's position, Reuters reported. ''We must protest because Hezbollah is a resistance movement, not a terrorist movement,'' said Ziad, one demonstrator, who would not give his last name. ''It's not only a Lebanese matter. It's an Arab matter.'' Israel is a colonial occupation force. If anyone should be criticized, it should be Israel.'' The violence greatly embarrassed the academic leaders of Bir Zeit, whose new law school was financed by the French government. And it angered Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, who was playing host to Mr. Jospin and had loaned the French leader his silver Mercedes, which ended up dented by stones. Mr. Jospin was struck by at least one stone and received a small scratch on the head, despite the Palestinian security officials who formed a human shield and held a plastic bullet guard above his head. After the incident, Mr. Jospin continued on to Gaza as planned and dismissed the demonstrators as a small, unruly group. But Palestinians saw it differently. They saw the physical attack on a leader of France -- a guest of the Palestinian Authority -- as an outburst of frustration. Students at Bir Zeit, expressing a deep-seated feeling in their communities, said they believed that the peace effort is going nowhere and that Palestinians can no longer trust even the French, the Palestinians' closest ally in Europe. After issuing an apology to Mr. Jospin, the university announced that it was shutting down for three days. Palestinian police arrested at least 15 students who had participated in the melee, and an investigation was personally opened by senior Palestinian security officials who came to the campus. When Mr. Jospin arrived, students began yelling in French, ''Barak terrorist, Jospin accomplice.'' Ehud Barak is the prime minister of Israel, who has been severely criticized in the Arab world for bombing Lebanese power stations in reponse to Hezbollah attacks earlier this month. The protests escalated in tone and intensity, and Mr. Jospin was harangued throughout his visit, despite his attempts to proclaim France a friend of Lebanon and a critic of the Israeli occupation zone. As he was leaving, the demonstrators started by throwing leaflets, then small stones, then larger ones. Stones also flew at Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official who accompanied Mr. Jospin. The students followed their car, kicking it and pelleting it, even when Palestinian university officials stood on the car. | Students in West Bank Throw Stones at the French Prime Minister |
1179672_8 | prowl the campsites, and can be linked to cables and helicoptered out to more remote areas. Bears are a pervasive subtext around here as elsewhere in the north, almost always out of sight, never altogether out of mind. Signs and pamphlets, especially around hot bear habitats like Meziadin Lake, spell out evasion techniques for hikers and campers: Make noise, wear bells, don't try to outrun the creatures, which can do 35 miles an hour in open country. Black bears have been known to engage in rare predatory attacks on humans. If a bear fails to desist when the victim covers up and goes limp, bear warning literature indicates this may indicate a predatory attack. Helpful to the end, it advises that individuals subjected to predatory attack ''fight back vigorously.'' Park rangers will provide campers with available information about the local wildlife. At Meziadin Lake in July 1999, a female black and her two cubs appeared near the shore each morning shortly before dawn. Bypassing the occupied sites, the family would lumber into the water and swim to an offshore island to forage as dawn lighted the lake. Silently observing them became a sunrise ritual for the dozens of campers around the lake, the kind of connection to the wild that is never forgotten. Near Meziadin Lake Provincial Park is a general store providing groceries and gas along with camping and fishing gear and licenses. Meziadin Lake Junction, north of the lake at Mile 96, has a service station that does basic repairs and a coin-operated laundry. About 70 miles north of Meziadin Lake Junction, the highway crosses Ningunsaw Pass, at an elevation of 1,500 feet, where it leaves the Nass watershed to enter an area dominated by one of the spectacular rivers of the continent, the Stikine. The road here is confined by canyon walls. At Mile 178, a marker commemorates the route of the Yukon telegraph line. The wires ran between Vancouver and Dawson City and the right of way was pressed into service by travelers in Gold Rush days. The rockfaces of the Skeena Mountains to the east stand above the Iskut Valley. The Iskut is the largest tributary of the Stikine, which rises in the Cassiar wilderness and flows into the Pacific near Wrangell, Alaska. Around Bob Quinn Lake, Route 37 comes into the Stikine watershed and the landscape subtly but visibly takes on a different cast. | British Columbia's Long Road to the Far North |
1179896_1 | Monique frowns. ''He keeps jumping,'' she says. But she gets to her feet and, disregarding Joshua, starts up again. Soon the two -- one blind, one sighted -- are bouncing in tandem. The scene is part of an experiment undertaken by Garth White, principal of the preschool at Helen Keller Services for the Blind, 57 Willoughby Street in downtown Brooklyn. For the last year, Monique and another 4-year-old girl who attends the preschool have been taking classes two days a week at the Montessori School in Brooklyn Heights. Joshua's visit to Helen Keller was the first in a series of reciprocal visits. Mr. White said he hoped that regular exposure to children who are not blind would help prepare the blind children for entering regular classes at public school. Children with disabilities are assessed by a committee of the Board of Education when they come into the public school system, said Margie Feinberg, a board spokeswoman. If a child seems able to function in general education classes, he or she goes there, she said. But most stay in special education groups. There are currently 146,790 special education students citywide, she added, 1,166 of whom are visually impaired. Among Helen Keller children whose only handicap is blindness, about 20 percent go on to public school, said Antoinette Richards, a social worker. Mr. White said he hoped that programs like the Montessori experiment, by making blind children more capable of functioning in a mainstream environment, would increase this number. ''The best case scenario would be getting them into a general-ed situation in their local schools,'' Mr. White said. ''What's more probable, and what we're hoping for, is getting them into a kindergarten-plus program. That's still in their local district and it combines general ed with special ed and vision services in an integrated setting.'' He said a third option could be a school like P.S. 102 in Bay Ridge, which is equipped to teach Braille and other special skills alongside the regular curriculum. Mr. White said the biggest obstacle to integration was that children in a small, specialized school are often socially or emotionally unprepared for the impersonal outside world. ''Here they're a star,'' Mr. White said. ''In regular school they're just one of many. This is a way to get them used to being with normally developed kids, with all the pushing, shoving and screaming.'' TARA BAHRAMPOUR NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: COBBLE HILL | Blind Children Take a Small Step Toward Public School |
1176641_3 | boats are always on patrol around the cruise ships, and their crews can enter the tour vessels at any time to search them. Changjon is a strategic military port for North Korea, and visitors are forbidden to take photos of any military installation or personnel. If a tourist breaks that rule, the film may be confiscated or the offender may be fined or even detained. After coming ashore and passing through immigration, the visitors were taken by tour bus through a winding road leading to the village of Onjongi, once a hot spring resort that is now the starting point for these Mount Kumgang tours. The road was lined with barbed- wire fencing and grim-faced North Korean soldiers dressed in green military uniforms and carrying automatic rifles. Tour guides said that during the initial tours in 1998, there were no fences and that tourists often had contact with the residents of Onjongi. North Korea installed the fences after South Korean tourists started giving milk, snacks and clothing to the North Koreans, especially children, who looked malnourished, the guides said. Beyond the fences was a bleak landscape of unkempt fields and rows of prefabricated concrete houses that tour guides said belong to farmers. Tour buses and military vehicles were the only automobiles on the roads. Village residents, dressed in drab black and blue clothing, were walking or riding bicycles. Most smiled and waved at the tour buses. On what tour guides described as municipal buildings, there were pictures of President Kim Jung Il, who assumed control of North Korea after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, in 1994. Immigration and other government officials wore small red pins bearing the image of North Korea's leader. While tourists have almost no contact with local residents, they are permitted to speak with North Korean officials, especially the environmental guards and inspectors who monitor the mountain paths and attractions. The guards and inspectors were generally friendly and seemed happy to meet non-Koreans, although most of them did not speak any English and tried to communicate in Korean or Russian. But South Korean tourists said they had difficulty speaking with some North Koreans because they used ''old fashioned words'' and did not understand many of modern terms like instant noodles, compact disc and microwave oven. Some North Korean officials monitoring the mountain trails reacted with great surprise at meeting this visitor -- a person | North and South Koreans Meet on a Mountain Path |
1179101_3 | Africa, inevitably takes observers away from their own troubles, Ms. Hefley added. ''It's a present you give yourself,'' she said, ''to see the children of Uganda.'' ''Children of Uganda: Tour of Light 2000,'' tomorrow at 3 and 8 p.m. at Queens Theater in the Park, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, off Exit 9E of the Grand Central Parkway, (718) 760-0064. Tickets: adults, $24; ages 17 and under, $15. Also March 5 at 3 p.m. at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, Manhattan, (212) 864-5400. Tickets: adults, $26; children, $5. A Sweet Retreat Wouldn't it be wonderful if chocolate grew on trees? Well, in the rain forest it does. This is one of the tasty tidbits from the ''Chocolate, Please!'' celebration at the New York Botanical Garden. Children visiting this week not only learn about the cacao tree, whose seeds are used to make chocolate, but also investigate other tropical plants and their contributions to their kitchens -- and closets. At 10:30 a.m. every day, young visitors learn the layers of the rain forest. ''Then we have a grab bag, in which they find things they either wear, eat or use that are derived from the rain forest,'' said Larissa Fawkner, the manager of programs in the children's education department of the garden. Typical are a sneaker (the rubber tree) and vanilla ice cream (the vanilla bean). These activities, which take place at the Everett Children's Adventure Garden, are followed by experiments on rain-forest plants. They include results that are good enough to eat. Children grind up the nibs (the kernels) of the cacao seeds and make hot chocolate, using, if they wish, South American flavorings, like chili beans, white corn and honey. They are also invited to make their own chewing gum from the chicle (sap) of the sapodilla tree. ''We thought during school vacation week, we'd give children the opportunity to do something they're never allowed to do at school,'' Ms. Fawkner said. At 2 p.m. Ibrahim Gonzalez leads a rain-forest rhythms percussion workshop, demonstrating that the tropics yield great sounds as well as great tastes. ''Chocolate, Please!'' Through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the New York Botanical Garden, 200th Street and Southern Boulevard, Bedford Park, the Bronx, (718) 817-8700. Everett admission: $3; students and the elderly, $2; ages 2 to 12, $1; under 2, free; grounds admission free on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon. | FAMILY FARE |
1179172_7 | largely of Pathan students from religious schools popular with refugees and the poor. They were welcomed by the masses who saw them as an overdue answer to the prevailing lawlessness. But the price for this semblance of peace was paid with forfeited rights. The Taliban refused to allow women to work. They banned girls from schools. They whipped or imprisoned anyone who defied their strict dress codes. They outlawed television and popular music. This pious wrath was far too extreme for most others to accept. And aid agencies working in Afghanistan criticized the Taliban as impossibly obstinate. Recently, however, many of those criticisms have become tempered. ''We've painted such a bleak picture of Afghanistan that nobody in their right mind wants anything to do with it,'' said Mr. Leslie of the United Nations. ''But there is a transformation going on within the Taliban, and we'd do better by stepping off the high ground to meet them in the middle. This country was in decline long before the Taliban.'' There are signs of moderation. Most significant, about 10,000 girls in Kabul have been allowed to attend schools in mosques or private homes. The classes are financed by aid groups, including one headed by a German, Peter Schwittek. ''The Taliban are a very heterogeneous movement,'' he said, chosing his words carefully. ''They are not united about the treatment of women or education for girls.'' He offered an example: In 1998, he was approached by some of the clergy who wanted to offer their mosques as schools for both boys and girls. Approval had been won from the Ministry of Education. But once classes began, the minister of Islamic affairs took umbrage and raised objections; he ruled that while it was O.K. for girls to read, they should not be permitted to write. He wanted their pencils and notebooks taken away. ''But the ministry's second deputy was on our side, and he made a little trick,'' Mr. Schwittek said. ''He told me, 'I will invite the minister to a class and have a girl write a religious statement on the blackboard. Then we will ask: Tell us what is wrong with this.' '' Interestingly, that second deputy was al-Haj Maulavi Qalamuddin, who had been considered infamously harsh when he was head of the Taliban's moral police force known as the General Department for the Preservation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. ''Of course, | An Afghan Mosaic of Misery: Hunger, War and Repression |
1177068_5 | School in Douglasville, Ga., said that her main job was operating the photocopier and supervising the school's Opportunity Room, a newfangled name for a detention room. Ms. O'Neal said she used her free time to maintain the school's extensive Web site, including typing in the daily homework assignments. Teachers say feedback from parents has been overwhelmingly positive, and Ms. O'Neal said the phone calls and e-mail messages that take her to task for typos -- the school was flooded with questions and complaints after she typed teriyaki beer instead of teriyaki beef on the lunch menu -- proved that parents were paying attention. ''The lunch menus and sports schedules are going to be an important hook,'' said Mr. Grunwald, who noted that parents who found blank sites or out-of-date sites would visit them only a few times before writing them off as a waste of time. ''The challenge for educators and companies is creating a vibrant community around the information,'' he added. For now, though, Dorothy Dike, a mother of a fifth grader in Suzanne Marcus's class at the Cardinal Forest Elementary School in Springfield, Va., appreciates the nightly homework posting at Copernicus's free SchoolNotes.com site. Mrs. Dike checks her daughter's homework assignments nightly before heading home from work. Her daughter used to say little about school, Mrs. Dike said, but she is now more than happy to volunteer information about her day at school because she knows her mother is paying attention. NOTES FROM HOME E-Mail Flood From Parents To Teachers Hasn't Arrived IN September, Tricia Zarro, a first-grade teacher at Springhurst Elementary School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., furnished her e-mail address to the parents of her 19 pupils in the hope of making herself more accessible. Since then, only four parents have sent her e-mail messages. Mrs. Zarro's experience is not atypical. Though many teachers have been quick to supply their e-mail addresses to students and parents, parents have not been using them. Even David Leahy, a fifth-grade teacher at Greenaway Elementary School in Beaverton, Ore., whose Web-based activities are well publicized in his school, said that on average, he receives only one e-mail message every other week from parents of his students. Some teachers, though, may be secretly relieved by the parental silence. ''A teacher's worst nightmare is that they get 30 e-mails from all the parents they never had to respond to before,'' said Jonathan Carson, | Logging On to Find Out What's Going On at School |
1177137_0 | Early in the Peloponnesian War, the remains of Athenian soldiers killed in battle against the Spartans were interred in communal tombs outside Athens's west gate, off the road to the academy where Plato taught. It was at this cemetery in 431 B.C. that the statesman Pericles, speaking from a high platform at the funeral, described the greatness of Athens in one of history's most eloquent orations. ''It is for such a city, then, that these men nobly died in battle,'' Pericles declared, ''thinking it right not to be deprived of her, just as each of their survivors should be willing to toil for her sake.'' Archaeologists think they have found remains of 200 to 250 Athenian citizen-soldiers from that time, perhaps the very ones memorialized by Pericles. Their ashes and bones were excavated three years ago at a construction site in Athens, but now they have been delivered to Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., for the first detailed analysis. The examination of the remains, expected to take several years, is being done at a university laboratory by Dr. Anagnostis Agelarakis, a forensic anthropologist at Adelphi and specialist in Greek archaeology. The excavations were directed by Dr. Charis Stoupa of the Department of Classical Antiquities in Greece. ''The discovery of state burials containing bones dating from the early years of the Peloponnesian War brings a new sense of reality to the story of that crucial time in Greek history,'' said Dr. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, a scholar of classical studies at Wesleyan University. He was quoted in an article on the new findings in the current issue of Archaeology magazine. Although the bodies had been cremated, as was the custom for heroes, the remains are not all ash. Many recognizable pieces of arm and leg bones, skull and jaw and vertebra and pelvis fragments are among the 200 pounds of bone being studied by Dr. Agelarakis. A preliminary investigation has already showed that all the bones that could be so classified were from men. Dr. Agelarakis said yesterday that further analysis would concentrate on what the bones could reveal about the age and physical size range of the soldiers, their diets, the diseases and accidents they suffered, any evidence of surgical intervention in treating broken bones, and traces of heavy metals possibly ingested from vessels they ate and drank from. An early inspection of the bones, Dr. Agelarakis said, hinted at damage | Bones May Be Those of Ancient Athenians in Pericles' Funeral Oration |
1177113_2 | and British governments could put the peace settlement back on track rapidly with cooperation, but, he added, ''I can't put it back if only one part goes back on the track -- it has to be all the parts.'' His words may go some way toward closing a rift that had developed between Britain and Ireland, the two sponsors of the Ulster peace talks, over the British action suspending the government in Belfast. Britain took the action, it said, because the I.R.A. had failed to begin disarming even after members of Sinn Fein had been admitted to their ministerial positions in the Northern Ireland Assembly. On Tuesday evening while speaking to the Irish Parliament, Mr. Ahern had been surprised by an announcement by the I.R.A. that it was ending its contact with weapons mediators and withdrawing from negotiating fresh proposals it had made to consider disarming for the first time. The deputy leader of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party, Seamus Mallon, who like Mr. Ahern had been opposed to the suspension, joined in the criticism of the I.R.A. today for pulling out of the consultations with the disarmament commission. He said he found it incredible that the clandestine organization had made its announcement at a time when Mr. Ahern was before his own legislators in Dublin. ''Not only have they made a studied insult to Bertie Ahern, but to the entire political process in Ireland as a whole and to the Irish people,'' he said. The I.R.A., he said, was ''prepared to use and abuse anybody in their own interests.'' The I.R.A. action was a dismaying development for supporters of the peace plan who had been holding meetings throughout recent days hoping that the new I.R.A. arms initiative would be a basis for restoring the home rule government. The I.R.A. had offered late Friday to consider putting its arms ''beyond use'' and suggested that it would consider a timetable that would see full disarmament by the May date fixed in the peace agreement. Then on Tuesday it took those words off the negotiating table. Today's meeting was scheduled to come up with a way to keep the staggering peace process on its feet, and the consensus that emerged was that the vexing issue of paramilitary disarmament had to be confronted before any progress could be made on restarting the mothballed Northern Ireland government. ''There is this issue | Crisis Session on Ulster Ends, Still Divided on Arms Issue |
1177047_3 | the authors stress, among other points, how Nietzsche's extreme irony can often be misleading, they offer ''Nietzsche ad Hominem (Nietzsche's Top 10),'' in which they list both the philosopher's favorite and unfavorite writers, some of whom, like Socrates, Wagner, Kant and Schopenhauer, appear on both lists, as Nietzsche's best and worst. Such playfulness is not only witty and entertaining, it also allows the authors to approach the same points from several directions, shading in the varying nuances that Nietzsche brought to his crucial ideas in different contexts. Yet interspersed with these faintly gimmicky sections are chapters that try to reach deeper into Nietzsche's thinking and stress the positive aspects of his most famous attacks. Two of these take up his wars against Christianity and morality, emphasizing that he tore them down only in the hope of replacing them with something better. What was that to be? In answering this question, the authors engage Nietzsche's most elusive ideas, his exhortation that individuals strive to become more themselves (Be all that they can be, in the words of the United States Army's advertising slogan), by learning to love their fates (''Amor fati'') and embracing what he called ''eternal recurrence.'' This last, most difficult-to-define idea the authors see not as ''a theory about the basic structure of time, but a psychological test'' in which you ask yourself how you feel about repeating your life. They continue: ''Relishing one's life, with all of its pains as well as its pleasures, is the affirmation of life. Resentment, regret and remorse, by contrast, suggest an unwillingness to live one's life again, exactly as it has been.'' They conclude, ''Life is suffering, Nietzsche asserts (with Schopenhauer), but the proper response to this is not resentment or disengagement (as Schopenhauer proposed), but instead wholehearted 'Dionysian' acceptance.'' Of Nietzsche's love of fate, the authors write, ''It is a judicious outlook for a writer wracked with infirmity, wholly ignored by the public, to dream of a generation of future readers, 'philosophers of the future,' who would appreciate him.'' This book is simply further evidence that Nietzsche's dream has come true. Mr. Solomon and Ms. Higgins not only appreciate him; they also help us share their understanding. ON THE WEB Thousands of first chapters, including those of new books by Ben Yagoda, Sheri Holman and others, are available from The New York Times on the Web: www.nytimes.com/books BOOKS OF THE TIMES | A High-End Top 30 List: Myths About Nietzsche |
1177098_1 | in the long run to help educate a new generation of doctors who would return to their impoverished countries and work in remote communities where medical care was spotty and expensive. ''Life has shown us some lessons that we cannot forget,'' said Juan Carizo Estevez, the school's rector. ''That is the necessity of the right to health care that these countries have. We have a responsibility that these students return to their own countries with a solid foundation for dealing with the problems of public health they will find.'' The new medical school is the culmination of the Cuban government's decades of reliance on its reputation as a medically advanced society to burnish its international image. Starting in 1963, when it sent a team of doctors and nurses to Algeria, the government has gone on to establish medical schools in the third world, send thousands of Cuban doctors for long-term overseas assignments and offer scholarships to study alongside Cuban students in the island's medical schools. Medical aid was as important an aspect of President Fidel Castro's aid to the third world as his nation's training of guerrilla and terrorist groups was during the cold war. While cold-war conflicts have died down, Cuba's latest experiment in medical education is still tinged with the passions from that era. ''By doing good, particularly in the field of health and education, Cuba would look better than the United States,'' said Julie Feinsilver, author of ''Healing the Masses'' (Berkeley, 1993), which examined the role of health care in Cuba's foreign and domestic policy. ''This is a symbolic war, not that the U.S. looks at it that way. But Fidel said when he finished the revolution, his real destiny was war against the U.S. The war is not a material war, but a symbolic war. Anything that Cuba does that enhances its prestige on the world stage, which medical diplomacy and providing scholarships does, is a battle won for Cuba versus the United States.'' The school's very location is a sign of the changing battleground -- it occupies 82 blue-and-white buildings that hug the ocean along the campus of what was an academy for naval officers and merchant mariners. Students were selected through tests and interviews and are mostly chosen by their home countries. The first contingent, from Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the areas hit hardest by the hurricanes, arrived almost a year ago. Cuban | Havana Journal; To Latin Neighbors, Cuba Plays the Good Doctor |
1175020_0 | FOR nearly a decade, genetically engineered food has been sold in the United States just like any other food. There are no labels telling consumers that their tortilla chips contain genetically altered corn -- about a third of the total crop -- or that almost all canola oil is made from genetically altered rapeseed. But two weeks ago the United States signed an international trade agreement on genetically altered foods, and some environmental advocates are interpreting that as an enormous shift in position. By agreeing to specific regulations for genetically altered foods, they say, the United States has acknowledged for the first time that such foods are different. And that may be the first step toward more stringent regulations and labeling in this country. ''This treaty completely undercuts the idea that the technology and crossbreeding are so similar they should be treated the same way,'' said Dr. Margaret Mellon, the director of the agriculture and biotechnology program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental watchdog group in Washington. ''The U.S. has now signed on to a protocol that these foods are different, which makes it much harder for them to resist strengthening the U.S. domestic regulatory framework.'' David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of state for oceans, environment and science, would not comment on Dr. Mellon's assertion. ''I would not speculate on trends in domestic regulations,'' he said. The treaty, with more than 130 countries, will allow any of them to bar the import of genetically altered foods even though there is no conclusive scientific evidence that they are harmful. The agreement also increases the likelihood, advocates say, that gene-altered crops meant for commercial processing will be labeled abroad. European countries already require labeling at the retail level. The decision would also pressure American farmers to separate their gene-altered crops from the overall supply in order to sell them abroad, which could pave the way for labeling for the domestic market. Foods created by genetic engineering -- the insertion of the DNA from one species into another -- have been controversial since 1992, when a bacterial gene was inserted into a tomato to make it ripen more slowly. Supporters say that the process is not substantially different from crossbreeding a tangerine and a grapefruit to produce a tangelo, and that it offers enormous potential benefits like higher nutrient value and less dependence on pesticides. Opponents of genetically altered food are | What Labels Don't Tell You (Yet) |
1175037_1 | three-dimensional rendering of the Parthenon, an accompanying book by Paul Cartledge, a Cambridge professor of classics who is one of the on-camera academics. A digital videodisc will contain ''much more material, a sort of virtual museum,'' Mr. Geffen said. Perhaps the most unusual computer aid attached to the film is a chance to take one's own tour of the Parthenon, by manipulating from a home computer a camera permanently mounted on the site. The program itself is, by Mr. Geffen's description, an effort to ''bring the techniques of historical storytelling used by Ken Burns to tell the story of 'The Civil War' to pre-archival history.'' But in addition to kinetic camera shots of static subjects, like ancient Greek columns and friezes from the Acropolis, ''The Greeks'' dabbles in computer animation, recreating Greek furniture, writing and eating implements and most ambitiously the inside of an intact Parthenon, from the first shaft of light from an open door to a walk through the columns as they might have been. Mr. Geffen said the film cost no more than a typical PBS documentary, about $650,000 an hour. But beyond its technological elements it also includes the use of actors as stand-ins for Greek figures like Pericles and Socrates (they are literally stand-ins; they do not speak), an original score and narration read by Liam Neeson. Mr. Neeson, who had worked with Mr. Geffen on a documentary about Jerusalem, said he took on the project because ''the films were of such high quality.'' Besides, he said, ''it was a chance to learn so much.'' Mr. Geffen, who said he recognized that American students rarely study Greece anymore, said he chose to tell the story through various Greek personalities as a way of making the story come alive. The best way, of course, is by convincing viewers that they can have some kind of three-dimensional experience of the ancient world through these new technologies. But Mr. Geffen also argued that the technologies need stories like the one of ancient Greece. ''These big platforms need fabulous stories like this one,'' he said. And fabulous storytellers can use the new platforms, he said. ''There has never been a more exciting time to be a storyteller.'' As for those plans Mr. Geffen was hatching four years ago, he still has many of them. ''The Romans may be down the road,'' he said. But one idea that has been | Wonders Old And New |
1175408_3 | a retail site, and eBay.com, an auction site, E*Trade began discussing what steps it might take to defend its site against a similar attack. Though he said unnamed measures were taken, the company was unable to prevent the attack, which hit at 5 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and slowed access to the site for about three hours, according to Keynote Systems. The company did have several contingency plans in place, including directing customers who called E*Trade to an alternate Web site. One reason it is difficult to defend against such an attack is that finding and cutting off the responsible parties requires a cooperative, concerted effort between the affected Web site and its network service provider -- the company that connects the site's own computers to the Internet. Paul Vixie, senior vice president of Internet services for AboveNet, a network service provider whose clients include eBay and CNet, said the attackers appeared to have installed widely available software that, when secretly planted on other people's computers, flood a target site with instructions to perform meaningless tasks. Mr. Vixie said that AboveNet was hit with as much as 800 megabits of ''spurious traffic'' a second, a level that could cost $400,000 a month to transport if it continued. ''It would cost us $400,000 a month just because some teenager with a $300 Linux box doesn't like one of our customers,'' Mr. Vixie said. ''It makes us a little testy.'' An earlier incarnation of this type of attack emerged two years ago, but new illicit software has circulated that makes such an attack easier to start and more difficult to defend against. The attacks themselves have intensified in the last nine months, striking not just the well-publicized major sites, but also smaller sites. CERT, a federally financed computer security organization based at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, along with private computer security companies have released numerous warnings in recent months describing the attacks and suggesting ways to combat them. Ron Dick, chief of the F.B.I.'s computer investigations and operations section, acknowledged that tools for this type of attack, known as a distributed denial of service attack, are so readily available on the Web that ''a 15-year-old could use them to launch these attacks.'' ''It doesn't take a great deal of sophistication,'' Mr. Dick said. ''In a relatively short period of time an unsophisticated intruder or unsophisticated computer user can take advantage of | Spread of Attacks on Web Sites Is Slowing Traffic on the Internet |
1175310_1 | sending it into a slow spin before a re-entry maneuver. Another is to rely on Sun sensors and magnetometers, instead of gyroscopes, in orienting the spacecraft for re-entry. Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, the Compton observatory was not built to be serviced by visiting astronauts in the space shuttle. In December, astronauts delivered new gyroscopes, among other replacement parts, to the Hubble. Engineers expressed cautious optimism about the prospects of coming up with an acceptable spacecraft-saving plan in time for a meeting with NASA officials on Feb. 24. Dr. Donald Kniffen, the deputy program scientist for the Compton project, called both options ''realistic ideas,'' but said that engineers might be hard pressed to develop and test the procedures for such maneuvers before time ran out. ''We are not going to take any risk on safety,'' Dr. Kniffen said in an interview. ''If Goddard can't have tested procedures in place by April, then the Compton will have to be brought down.'' The gyroscope failure, which occurred in December, has not affected the spacecraft's normal operations. Even if a second one failed, Dr. Kniffen said, Sun sensors and the magnetometer could be used to orient the spacecraft for astronomical observations. But mission safety rules dictate that flight controllers must always have the ability to direct the spacecraft's re-entry where they want to, over a remote ocean far from people. Even though nearly all of the truck-size spacecraft would burn up in the atmosphere, some debris could survive and be dangerous, as in the case of a Soviet satellite that scattered wreckage over the Northwest Territories in Canada. The preferred aiming point for the Compton, if it comes to that, would be in the wide spaces of the Indian Ocean. Launched by a space shuttle in April 1991, the observatory has already outlived its planned lifetime by seven years. It gave astronomers their most sensitive and comprehensive views thus far of the powerful radiations at the most energetic end of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Compton provided the first reliable clues on the true nature of those mystifying flashes of energy known as gamma-ray bursts, some of which appear to come from the most powerful known cosmic explosions. The spacecraft's four telescopes have also given scientists new insights into the fascinating phenomenon of black holes, objects with gravitation forces so power that nothing, not even light can escape them. Dr. Hurley said the premature | Faulty Gyroscope Threatens To Doom Science Satellite |
1175263_1 | messages is an issue that has become more complicated with the growing use of e-mail. For those who use e-mail to communicate with groups of friends or business contacts, the question is one of the appropriateness of revealing or of hiding all of the recipients' e-mail addresses. Stories like Mr. Grey's suggest that increasingly, the latter option is gaining momentum. To hide the addresses in most e-mail programs, users type all of the them into the Bcc, or blind Cc, field, instead of the To or Cc areas. In business-related messages to a colleague, the blind Cc option is often used to send copies to other individuals without the colleague's knowledge. For that reason, using Bcc can be devious in the workplace. But anecdotal evidence suggests that the Bcc feature is gaining popularity for personal correspondence sent to a large group of people, especially among those who have had their Cc lists reused without their consent. Joy Tadaki, a banker in London, said she has been more careful about group messages since an incident last year when a colleague from business school used the e-mail addresses from a message Ms. Tadaki had sent informing friends about her new address. In this case, the purpose of the message was more commercial than social: the colleague sent Ms. Tadaki's list a message advertising a couch for sale in London. ''It was a bit annoying for a lot of people,'' Ms. Tadaki said, particularly since she has lived in various countries and her e-mail list included friends in the United States, Singapore and Japan -- it was not a list of people who were likely to buy a couch in England. Like Mr. Grey, Ms. Tadaki said having her e-mail list borrowed made her rethink how she addresses messages to a large list. ''Next time I send out a change of address, I will definitely do Bcc,'' she said. Even so, Ms. Tadaki said there were still cases when she would use the To field for group messages -- namely, an invitation to a party or some other social gathering. ''It allows people to see who else is coming or who is invited,'' she said. And that issue, at least in terms of social correspondence, is what presents the ''to Cc or to Bcc'' dilemma. On one hand, privacy concerns have increasingly made Internet users skittish about sharing their e-mail addresses -- a | Increasingly, E-Mail Users Find They Have Something to Hide |
1178476_4 | in an effort to destabilize the country and to give the conservative Parliament an excuse to oust Mr. Khatami. Mr. Valeh's statement about the demonstration is just one sign of the new confidence felt by Mr. Khatami's team to confront their opponents head on. He also spoke of the president's goal of controlling the hard-line institutions that have grown up in the last 15 years but that, in his view, have no legal basis. One is the Organization for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice -- in effect, morals police -- that hauls in women whose headscarves slip to show some of their hair, nabs couples on a stroll through the park if they cannot prove they are married and marches into private homes to confiscate illegal satellite dishes or Western videotapes. Another is the Special Court for Clergy, which has been particularly active since Mr. Khatami's election encouraged the independent press to take on sensitive topics and sometimes to treat them with irreverence. The judges have closed newspapers and jailed editors, among them Abdullah Nouri, a cerebral cleric who is a personal friend of Mr. Khatami and is serving a five-year prison term imposed by the court. But Mr. Valeh said the reformers around Mr. Khatami do not want to destroy the religious order or dispense with Islamic law; they only want to organize them in line with democratic principles. ''What Mr. Khatami is trying to say is there should be one rule of law,'' he said. ''You have to coordinate everything according to this single criterion. Logically it means that all institutions should be brought to obey the legal order. There is a duality but it doesn't mean the constitutional setup is necessarily contrary to the traditional religious setup.'' What Mr. Valeh described as the President's agenda would test the true limits of his power and the power of the Parliament more severely than ever before. In a remarkable admission of how deeply the reactionary groups have burrowed themselves into the state structure, Mr. Valeh said that even Mr. Khatami does not have a clear idea of who are his opponents within the system. While the confession may be an attempt to distance Mr. Khatami from these actions, Mr. Valeh said that, for example, some of the actions in the past two years that have soured Iran's relations with other countries have been carried out by | As Iran Counts The Vote, Some Fear Backlash |
1178512_2 | sliding scale ranging from 2 to 20 percent, depending on the size of the sale. Weeks later Sotheby's did the same. Before the auction houses changed the commission for sellers they ran the risk of cutting into their profits by agreeing to cut or eliminate fees to get business from many of the world's most important sellers. Sotheby's said yesterday that it had ''recently met with the Department of Justice in order to discuss a prompt and appropriate resolution of this investigation.'' Neither house has admitted or denied wrongdoing. Although nobody at Sotheby's would comment on why the two executives gave up their posts, it appeared to be an effort to close the door on past practices and maintain a corporate image of integrity. In an e-mail to the staff, Mr. Ruprecht said ''these decisions have been very difficult ones for Alfred and Dede, and they have made them in the best interests of Sotheby's.'' The art world was flush with rumors yesterday that prosecutors have documents delineating collusive behavior between the two houses. Mr. Taubman, 75, a Detroit shopping center magnate credited with transforming plain suburban shopping centers known as strip malls into playgrounds for the rich with designer shops like Yves St. Laurent, Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton, bought Sotheby's in 1983 and took it public. Mr. Taubman, a 6-foot-3-inch bear of a man, owns 22.5 percent of the outstanding shares of the company and has 63 percent of voting power on the board. He used his flair for retailing to turn Sotheby's from a sleepy auction house that catered primarily to art dealers to a full-service art business that offers customers everything from financing and insurance to storage and art education. Mr. Taubman has been involved with Sotheby's $110 million expansion, overseeing the construction himself. In 1979, he hired Ms. Brooks, an outgoing woman with a mind for numbers, who started in the finance department and worked her way up to president of Sotheby's in America in 1987 and its worldwide chief executive seven years later. Last year, Ms. Brooks, 49, led a $40 million investment in the Internet, joining with Amazon.com and starting Sotheby's own Internet site. Mr. Sovern, 69, has held several high-profile assignments that have called on his legal expertise. He was chairman of the New York State-New York City Commission on Integrity in Government, known as the Sovern Commission, after municipal scandals in | Top Executives Quit Sotheby's As Art World Inquiry Widens |
1178415_4 | lists Kidd's properties as corresponding to 56 Wall Street, 86-90 and 119-21 Pearl Street, 52-56 Water Street and 25, 27 and 29 Pine Street. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his growing domestic responsibilities, Kidd sailed for London. In 1695 he received a royal commission and investors, including some of King William's ministers, to go fight pirates attacking ships of the British East India Company in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. When he got there, however, he avoided doing battle with the brigands and instead became one himself. He still had a conscience, of sorts. His refusal to attack a Dutch ship roused his crew to near mutiny, and Kidd in an angry exchange hit his gunner so hard the blow proved fatal. After capturing up to a half dozen ships, including ones of Indian and Portuguese origin, he sailed his increasingly leaky flagship into Ste. Marie's harbor, the sea lapping at the decks. The crew emptied much of the sinking ship, which was then burned, apparently by Kidd to save some metal parts for trade and sale. He then sailed a captured merchant ship for home. In New York, Boston and London, Kidd explained his thievery as forced by rowdy crews lusting for gold. But the British government dismissed evidence of rebellion and had Kidd hanged -- twice, it turned out. The rope broke the first time. Kenneth J. Kinkor, a historian who works with Mr. Clifford, said Kidd was a fall guy. ''It wouldn't have made nearly such a stir'' but for Kidd's government investors. ''They needed a scapegoat to pacify the Mogul empire in India, and the East India Company.'' The authorities recovered some of Kidd's treasure. But stories persist about missing hoards, the loot allegedly buried in places like Hispaniola, Long Island at Hempstead Harbor and off the Connecticut coast on the Charles and Thimble Islands. So far, all fortune seekers have apparently come up empty-handed. Today, scholars know of no authenticated personal property of Captain Kidd or his men, only accounts of his life and adventures, which are often contradictory or frustratingly vague. Mr. Clifford's bid to find the pirate's flagship was largely financed by the Discovery Channel, which plans a half-hour news special on the hunt on Friday at 9 p.m. and a documentary later this year or next. The venture's scholarly side was aided by John de Bry, a doctoral | Seeking Pirate Treasure: Captain Kidd's Sunken Ship |
1178408_3 | cancers are advanced. ''But nobody argues that poor white women are genetically different from rich white women,'' Dr. Brawley said. ''A lot of these problems are related to being poor, and being black may be a surrogate for being poor.'' Yet some disparities may arise from differences in tumor biology. Federal studies have shown that black women are more likely than whites to have aggressive tumors that grow without the help of estrogen, meaning that estrogen blockers like tamoxifen are less effective in combating them. Tumors that are ''estrogen-receptor positive,'' latching onto estrogen and feeding off it, can be fooled into latching onto look-alike tamoxifen instead, and starved. From 60 percent to 70 percent of estrogen-receptor positive women benefit from tamoxifen. Women who are ''estrogen-receptor negative,'' meaning they have far fewer estrogen receptors, have tumors that do not need to feed off estrogen and, for reasons that are still unknown, grow more rapidly. Only 15 percent to 20 percent of these women benefit from tamoxifen. And blacks with breast cancer are twice as likely as whites to have a form of the disease that is estrogen-receptor negative. Scientists and public health researchers are looking at every piece of the puzzle, including increasing the use of mammography and understanding the mechanisms that bring about tumor growth. But each new study raises more questions. Early detection is only part of the problem. Increasingly, black women are just as likely as whites to have received mammograms. But researchers suspect that they are not getting them regularly, and, perhaps most important, are not receiving follow-up care after suspicious ones. A recent federal study found that a black woman is less likely to have an abnormal finding evaluated than a white woman. And once the disease is diagnosed, African-American women are more likely than whites to get inadequate care for their breast cancers, a National Cancer Institute study shows. Fewer are given the proper surgical treatment and the appropriate level of chemotherapy or radiation after surgery, Dr. Brawley said. When African-Americans get equal access to health care, their survival rate can approximate that of whites. One long-term survey monitored the survival rate of women who received similar care for their breast cancers in Hyde Park, an affluent, integrated community in Chicago. From 1946 to 1987, the 20-year survival rate did not differ by race for women receiving a diagnosis at the same stage of disease. | Breast Cancer in Blacks Spurs Hunt for Answers |
1176468_0 | He became famous for his appearance -- the sideline stoicism, the courtly attire, self-restraint in the midst of a brutal sport and, of course, his hat. But to his players, to his colleagues in National Football League and to the state of Texas, Tom Landry, the longtime Dallas Cowboys coach, represented much more. He was a father figure, a football innovator, even the gentlemanly and noble symbol who helped buoy Texans at a time when a state's identity seemed all too wrapped in the stigma of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Landry was the coach of what came to be known as America's Team, and if he appeared more professor or bank president than football coach, then that set a standard, too. ''He conducted himself with such dignity and poise, it set the example for how you should live your life,'' Charlie Waters, a Cowboys safety for 11 seasons, said of his former coach, who died of leukemia at the age of 75 Saturday night. ''People didn't understand the weight of his influence. Because he wasn't a yeller and screamer, people thought he didn't motivate or make people better with his approach and his presence. ''But he had, for example, a look he gave his players, and we all hated it when he gave us that look. It was haunting, because the look said: 'Why are you letting yourself down? Why are you letting me down?' Tell me that didn't motivate. None of us wanted to disappoint Coach Landry.'' The diverse, lengthy Hall of Fame career of Landry inspired many -- contemporaries and competitors alike. ''People search for heroes in this world,'' Gil Brandt, a longtime Cowboys executive, said in a recent interview. ''And years ago, some of those people turned on their television every Sunday and saw a guy who wasn't dissolving into fits of anger, who wasn't using bad language, who was mannerly and well dressed. ''And yet, he was still driven and competitive and won championships. Is that not a worthy hero?'' Wellington Mara, the Giants' co-owner, knew Landry as a former Giants assistant coach and later as the head coach of a chief rival. For 29 years, when the Cowboys came to the New York area to play the Giants, the two would have dinner on the eve of the game. ''I guess his reputation is someone who's aloof,'' Mara said. ''But there was | Remembering Landry, the Thinker and Motivator |
1177566_4 | would have little effect on its stock. Transkaryotic Therapies is a small, publicly traded company, but gene therapy is not its main attraction for investors. Other companies using the adenovirus, such as Genovo and GenVec, are privately held. The one public gene therapy company that does inject adenoviruses into patients is Collateral Therapeutics of San Diego, which is using gene therapy to try to grow blood vessels as an alternative to bypass surgery in treating heart disease. Collateral's stock has been erratic and has risen from $17 at the end of September to $33 now, a smaller rise than the other gene therapy stocks. A company spokeswoman said the controversy has had no effect on Collateral. Targeted Genetics, Vical Inc. and Avigen, do not use the adenovirus and have managed to distance themselves from the controversy. To some extent the controversy has vindicated their choice of technologies. ''They have in a funny sort of way benefited,'' said James McCamant, publisher of The Medical Technology Stock Letter. Vical Inc., based in San Diego, injects genes without putting them into any kind of virus. When the company met with investors last month before issuing new shares to the public, it was peppered with questions about the controversy. ''I kept telling them, 'Can you spell nonviral?' '' said Alain B. Schreiber, president and chief executive. Vical ended up raising $125 million, twice as much as it expected. Targeted Genetics and Avigen use adeno-associated viruses, which, despite their name, are not related to adenoviruses. Cell Genesys does use adenovirus in efforts to treat lung cancer but it injects the viruses into tumor cells outside the body, which the company says is a safer technique. Cell Genesys shares have been driven up by the mushrooming in value of its minority stake in Abgenix, a biotechnology company not involved in gene therapy. Still, while investors seem to be drawing a distinction between the different techniques of gene therapy, regulators, politicians and the general public might not. There is already talk of expanding the investigation to trials that used other techniques aside from adenoviruses. And new regulations might cover all gene therapy. ''My concern is the overall general public perception that gene therapy is dangerous,'' said H. Stewart Parker, president and chief executive of Targeted Genetics, based in Seattle. ''Have we created the situation where people are going to be afraid to enter into gene therapy trials?'' | Concerns on Human Testing Don't Seem to Faze Biotech Investors |
1177591_0 | Lending political momentum to an idea that would have been unthinkable in a different era of Pacific Northwest history, Gov. John A. Kitzhaber of Oregon announced today that he favored breaching four large federal dams on the Snake River in Washington State in an effort to restore endangered salmon populations. Mr. Kitzhaber, a Democrat, became the first major political figure to endorse the controversial dam-removal proposal, which is passionately favored by many environmental groups, American Indians and commercial fishers, but opposed with equal fervor by farmers and many others in the interior Northwest who now rely on the tamed Snake River for barge shipping and electricity. The debate will almost surely wind up in Congress, sometime after the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams, issues its own opinion on the proposal next year. Just how much influence Governor Kitzhaber's stand will have remains to be seen, but it is nonetheless an intriguing reflection of change in man's relationship with the rivers of the Northwest, where some hydroelectric dams generate enormous amounts of power but have also proven lethal on a major scale to the region's fabled salmon runs. ''In the end, the answer will be a political one -- informed by good science -- but based on a set of values and on the degree of economic and ecological risks the region is willing to accept,'' Governor Kitzhaber said in a speech to the American Fisheries Society in Eugene, Ore. ''It is time that we shoulder our responsibilities and develop a blueprint for action.'' Construction of Northwest dams was an undeniably epic engineering achievement, celebrated in Woody Guthrie's songs more than a half-century ago. But for the last several decades, the Corps of Engineers has been laboring under federal requirements to help dams and the salmon coexist on the Snake but has met little success. Despite spending more than $3 billion on projects like fish ladders, hatcheries and even a truck-and-barging system that a Corps brochure describes as ''custom-made to make the trip as safe and comfortable as possible'' for the fish, the salmon populations have declined. The Snake's coho salmon have already been declared extinct, and every other species of salmon and steelhead in the Snake River is now listed under the Endangered Species Act. In the early 1800's, when the explorer William Clark discovered a river crowded with salmon, about 2 million adult salmon a year | Oregon's Governor Favors Breaching 4 Major Dams |
1177550_3 | gas prices by summer, as inventories have fallen sharply in recent months. Some analysts say that even if OPEC lifts production, oil prices could still rise. Philip K. Verleger, a senior adviser to the Brattle Group, an economic consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass., said $40 oil would still be feasible later this year if Iraq cut off its supply to protest United Nations sanctions. ''It's almost too late to avoid this impending dependence on Iraq, barring an economic slowdown,'' Mr. Verleger said. And even if domestic oil producers reverse course and seek out new sources aggressively, it would not have much of an effect on world supply and demand anytime soon: Total domestic oil production is about 6 million barrels a day, out of more than 70 million worldwide. Aside from skepticism about OPEC's resolve, other temporary factors have led oil companies to rein in spending, like the rapid pace of mergers forcing producers to focus on integrating newly bought companies. But the restraint also has deeper reasons, analysts and industry executives say. Some producers, rethinking the growth-at-all-costs strategy, now preach ''capital discipline.'' That means giving careful consideration to options like debt repayment and stock buybacks. Investors, meanwhile, have shut off the flow of fresh capital to many exploration and production companies. And some producers say the huge recent price swings have shaken out many longtime drilling and service workers, leading to labor shortages. All that could change quickly if oil prices keep rising, or if OPEC continues to curb production and the industry persuades itself that this time the cartel can keep its members from cheating. But for now, signs are that capital spending growth will be soft. John S. Herold Inc., an industry researcher in Stamford, Conn., forecasts that worldwide spending on oil and gas exploration, development and proved acquisitions will rise 14 percent this year, to $86 billion -- far less than the $108 billion spent as recently as 1998. The number of active rotary drilling oil rigs in the United States has risen 38 percent in the last year, to 153, according to Baker Hughes, a Houston oil services concern, and is still far below its highs for the decade. ''What you're seeing is companies being a whole lot more discriminating in the projects they pursue with excess capital,'' said Bobby S. Shackouls, chief executive of Burlington Resources, a large independent exploration and production company in | The Other Oil Economy; Barrel Costs $30 but the Benefits Aren't Trickling Down |
1176256_4 | online, the potential toll rises. ''The biggest risk is not what we've seen so far, it's if hackers start to attack business-to-business sites,'' said David Pecaut, head of Boston Consulting's e-commerce practice. That's partly why consultants urge their Internet clients to go the ''clicks and mortar'' route, operating through multiple channels. Charles Schwab, the brokerage firm, which has call centers and physical branches as well as a Web service, is often held up as a model. Whether confidence in the Internet as an economic engine declines at all after last week's brazen attacks may depend on whether law enforcement authorities are able to apprehend whoever orchestrated the electronic incursions. Yet even if the rule of law prevails in this instance, Internet executives acknowledge that there is little they can do to prevent similar assaults in the future. ''There's no way today to stop the attack from occurring if it gets launched,'' said Greg Hawkins, chief executive of Buy.com, one of the sites disabled by a deluge of data on Tuesday, the day it went public. ''All we believe we can really do is to ensure that we can deal with it as rapidly and efficiently as possible.'' The form of assault on the sites last week, known as denial of service, is particularly difficult to defend against. Essentially, intruders use third-party machines to overwhelm the victim's servers, preventing customers from gaining access to the site. As a result, lax security on any of the millions of computers connected to the Internet leaves every other one exposed. E-commerce executives prefer to compare their security risks to those of real-world retailers. On the Internet, they note, stores are open all day, they do not worry about shoplifting, and they can operate much more efficiently. Occasional interruptions of service are unfortunate, but hardly cataclysmic. But Web retailers offer vandals a single target to attack instead of a series of separate stores. Critics argue that such attacks are likely to increase both because of the network's inherent security flaws and because vandals will discover they are able to achieve a dramatic effect with comparatively little effort. ''The French farmers blockading the McDonald's were not that effective,'' said Tom Eisenmann, who teaches e-commerce at the Harvard Business School. 'What's different here is the scale.' The Internet's scale -- and its sheer ubiquity -- are why even disgruntled Internet users are hanging tough. After being shut | Secure or Not, the Internet Has Become a Part of Life's Routine |
1176100_0 | Eating peanut butter or applesauce may not sound like science. But Rutgers is looking for snackers in a study of what tastes good, or not so good, to different people. Cook College's sensory evaluation laboratory first tests whether people are sensitive to a chemical compound called 6-n-propylthiouracil, which 70 percent of people find bitter and the rest cannot detect, according to Dr. Beverly Tepper, director of the study. Then they sample ordinary foods and rate them. The idea is to see whether likes or dislikes are tied to the sensitivity to the chemical. The findings could be used to make healthy foods more appealing or, commercially, to develop products consumers will, well, consume. About 125 volunteers have been tested during the past year and at least another 30 are needed, mainly men aged 21 to 50, in two 45-minute sessions. Dr. Tepper would not reveal the amount subjects are paid -- it's small, she said -- because she wants to gauge their interest in taking part in research. Information: (732) 932-9611 extension 227. BY THE WAY | Noshing for Research |
1176063_0 | PEOPLE in Central and South America have eaten chocolate for more than a thousand years and even used cocoa beans as currency. Local chocolate devotees can celebrate the bean at ''Chocolate, Please!'' week, starting on Saturday at the New York Botanical Garden. One can see the red pods of a live Theobroma cacao plant, taste-test the nib, or meat of the bean, crush cocoa beans and warm up with a mug of hot chocolate. In an audio tour of the garden's galleries, scientists will talk about their own explorations through the lowland rain forests where chocolate comes from. Children of all ages can participate in the Rain Forest Rhythms percussion workshop with Ibrahim Gonzalez (shown at left, above), a member of the South American Music Project. The workshop will use instruments, voices and hands to create the rhythms and spirit of the tropics. ''Chocolate, Please!'' Saturday through Feb. 27, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; percussion workshops Saturday through Feb. 21 and Feb. 24 through 27, at 2 p.m., Feb. 22 and 23 at 10:30 a.m.; New York Botanical Garden, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard, the Bronx; admission to Everett Children's Adventure Garden and the garden grounds: adults, $7; students and people over 65, $4.50; children 2 to 12, $2; (718) 817-8700. NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BEDFORD PARK | The Deep, Dark Secrets Of How We Get Chocolate |
1176268_2 | would allow the I.R.A. to disarm in a way that did not constitute surrender in its eyes. A subsequent reference in the report to ''the removal of the causes of conflict'' might mean the actual departure of the British from Northern Ireland. Mr. Mandelson said: ''The significance of the latest report is that the I.R.A's position has shifted. Now there are certain aspects which are unclear about the I.R.A's position, and further clarification is needed about what it amounts to.'' He said the I.R.A. had still not answered the critical questions of whether it intended to disarm and how and when it proposed to do so. But he said the new report contained the ''potential'' to restore home rule to Northern Ireland. The two sponsors of the peace agreement, London and Dublin, and its most vigorous international booster, Washington, issued statements calling the new I.R.A. stance constructive. The sense of optimism today was fueled by the realization that the peace settlement had been extricated from its most serious threat, that Mr. Trimble was still in place and that Sinn Fein was still on board. There also was no hint that the paramilitary cease-fires, now in their third year, might end. Unionists, mostly Protestants, want to see the province remain part of Britain, while Republicans, who tend to be Catholics, want better ties with Dublin and eventual union with Ireland. In the small increments by which advances are measured in Northern Ireland, it appears significant that Mr. Trimble and Mr. Adams go into this stage with a personal association and direct communication they lacked the last time progress stalled last summer. This relationship between two men who had never spoken civilly to one another before was one of the gains of the review conducted in the fall by former Senator George J. Mitchell. Although the home rule government lasted only 10 weeks, it altered the profile of Sinn Fein leaders in the public mind. Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, once an I.R.A. fighter, was pictured in papers every day in a business suit behind his minister's desk at the education department, or chatting up schoolchildren like any other parochial politician. Sir Brian Mawhinney, the Belfast-born spokesman for the former Conservative government of Prime Minister John Major, told the House of Commons in London this week of his changing view of Mr. Adams: ''I surprise myself slightly by saying I am | After Week of Ulster Turmoil, a Glimmer of Hope |
1175955_3 | get lost in meandering alleys, just say ''Houhai?'' (pronounced HO-hi) with a quizzical look and you'll be directed back to the lake's edge, where orientation is easy. For those who prefer organized tours, some of this same territory -- though not Old Pipe Lane, thankfully -- is visited by the Hutong Tours on pedicabs that can be arranged through hotels. These tours have become so popular that in the fall and spring you have to dodge pedicab caravans as you walk the alleys -- with the unfortunate effect that more residents are keeping their compound gates shut. One can make this trek starting from the Drum Tower, just east of Houhai, but I like to start on the west side of Houhai, where you walk in from busy Deshengmennei Street and then almost immediately, as you get to the lake's edge and stroll under the willows next to grizzled fishermen, experience a palpable slowdown in rhythms. The three man-made lakes have their own rich history: during the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, including the time when Marco Polo visited, they were connected up with the Grand Canal and served as ports receiving boatloads of rice from southern China. The surrounding neighborhoods are dotted with homes of the formerly rich and powerful, including Manchu gentlemen of the Qing dynasty, which ended early this century. Today, the lakes are plied by the occasional pedal boat and gondolas that were recently introduced and can be rented at Qianhai. Walking along the southern shore of Houhai you'll soon encounter a little amusement park, where children jump on trampolines and drive small electric cars in a rink. Walk on and a bigger park area opens up along the side. On any day you are apt to see many older men ''walking'' their pet birds, as the Chinese phrase puts it. Mostly, they hang the cages from trees, where the birds sing in the fresh air. Mornings and late afternoon, you'll see elderly men and women from the adjacent alleys practicing tai qi, or perhaps a group of 20 doing mild exercises together. Other clusters of men are huddled around games of mah-jongg or cards. About three-fourths of the way to the east end of Houhai, just after a statue of a bearded man doing exercises, is where I turn off to the south into the alleyways. There is no one thing | Back in Time In Old Beijing |
1176277_2 | and Elaine Wilson, who had been confined to a state institution for years, even though doctors had said they could receive appropriate care for their conditions -- mental retardation and mental illnesses -- in their community. In its 6-to-3 decision last June, the court said ''states are required to provide community-based treatment for persons with mental disabilities when the state's treatment professionals determine that such placement is appropriate,'' considering a state's resources and the needs of other people with mental disabilities. Federal officials contend that the Supreme Court ruling applies to people of all ages with all types of disabilities in all institutions and all state programs. Michael W. Auberger, a co-founder of Adapt, an advocacy group for that often uses civil disobedience as a tactic to promote the rights of disabled people, said: ''State officials are nervous. They see the Olmstead decision as potentially busting the bank.'' William Waldman, who represents state officials as executive director of the American Public Human Services Association, agreed. ''This ruling has deep and profound implications for all states,'' Mr. Waldman said. ''It affects not only people in state psychiatric hospitals and centers for the mentally retarded, but also people in nursing homes and children in institutions who want to live somewhere else. States can redirect spending from institutions to community services. But very likely there will also be new expenses for states.'' The Clinton administration policy, combined with the Supreme Court decision, is likely to lead to tangible changes in the lives of people with disabilities. Even before the court decision, state officials had been moving fitfully to increase community-based care, but the wait for such services exceeds eight years in some states. The new federal policy ''will force states to step up the pace,'' said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. In its letters to state officials, the Clinton administration made these points: *The Supreme Court ruling applies not just to people with mental impairments, but also to those with physical disabilities. *The ruling applies not just to people in state institutions, but also to Medicaid recipients in private nursing homes. *The ruling applies not only to people in institutions, but also to people who are living at home and might have to enter an institution in the future if they do not receive proper services. The Clinton administration told states it expected them to | U.S. Seeks More Care for Disabled Outside Institutions |
1176204_0 | To the Editor: Your Feb. 6 Week in Review article ''We Can Engineer Nature. But Should We?'', about genetically modified foods, says: ''Consumers do not yet see the benefits of genetic modification. The products now out, such as insect-resistant corn and Roundup Ready soybeans, which are impervious to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, are meant to help farmers.'' In fact, Roundup Ready soybeans are less to help people than the profits of its maker, a petrochemical company. Pesticides aren't necessary for raising food when local farmers retain full genetic diversity. But from fuels to till the earth, to the manufacture of fertilizers, from transporting food to preparing it, we are overdependent on petroleum, which is anticipated to run out early this century. JAN LUNDBERG Arcata, Calif., Feb. 8, 2000 The writer is president of Fossil Fuels Policy Action. | Raising Pure Food |
1176201_2 | to one's private life. THOMAS KOCHAN Co-director of the Institute for Work and Employment Research at M.I.T. As long as employees have a voice in how these kinds of benefits are utilized -- and by that I mean a positive but independent voice -- it will serve everyone's interest. If employers approach it in a paternalistic or a self-interested fashion, then it could turn into an intrusion and backfire. I think Ford has got the right institutional setting to make this work. Auto workers know how to take care of their own time and guard their personal and family responsibilities. They traditionally have negotiated for more time off. The kind of positive relationship that Ford and the U.A.W. have will help them find the right balance between the advantages in this opportunity and the intrusion on personal time. The key lesson from research on family benefits is that when employees have a voice in shaping how they are administered day to day, then the benefits are utilized effectively, and it serves everyone well. But when they are announced from the top down, and there isn't a workplace culture that helps employees control the use of these services, there are problems. To employees, it clearly sends a strong message that lifelong learning is important, for all workers and their families. Perhaps a broader cross-section of the work force will be now able to benefit from the new economy and make educational resources available to their children. ROBERT DRAGO Professor of labor studies at Pennsylvania State University and moderator of the Work/Family Newsgroup on the Internet. For most Americans now, access to the Internet allows us to be good citizens, to participate in society and to know what's going on. Children are coming home from school with assignments that can only be completed on the Internet. It's crucial. One worry is that, given modern technology, communications is a more important component of all jobs today. If you can shift that communication from work to home, you've got people working more. That may not be the case here. But I worry that the company will start presuming that all employees have Internet access, and people will be required to be on the Internet to get important information. That's a danger even if it is not the official policy, because supervisors will assume that people have access. That could potentially be a problem. BUSINESS | Weighing the Value of Corporate Largess |
1176337_0 | Only 10 weeks after it began, the power-sharing government of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland was halted, stymied by the continuing conflict over the issue of paramilitary weapons. Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson said he acted because the Irish Republican Army refused to give any sign that it was going to dismantle its arsenal. He expected the government to return ''on an even firmer footing,'' he said, if the long-running dispute could be resolved. By week's end, the I.R.A., which has balked at disarmament, offered a plan to dismantle its arsenal. FEBRUARY 6-12 | A Setback in North Ireland After Delay in Disarmament |
1178357_1 | the reform coalition that brought Mr. Khatami his landslide upset in 1997 and then won a broad victory in last year's municipal elections is likely to gain control of the legislature. Reform candidates attracted support not just among women and young people, but among more traditional voters in provincial towns and religious centers as well. The message of these elections is that an overwhelming majority of Iranians are weary of fundamentalist rule, an ailing economy and an abrasive foreign policy that has left Iran lagging behind at a time of expanding prosperity and freedom around the world. Despite rising oil prices, unemployment and poverty are pressing problems in Iran. Many foreign investors remain skittish, while much domestic industry is controlled by profligate and sometimes corrupt religious foundations. Under these circumstances, job growth has not been able to keep up with Iran's rapidly expanding population. The supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, outranks the elected president and Parliament. He and the conservative clerics allied with him retain considerable power to thwart the reform agenda through their control of the security forces, the courts and special panels that review legislation. But an alliance between a reform majority in Parliament and Mr. Khatami could loosen the clergy's tight grip over Iran's political institutions and allow the president to fulfill his promises to build a society based on tolerance and the rule of law. Mr. Khatami's parliamentary slate has promised to enact a new and more liberal press law, let multiple political parties compete and challenge the clergy's power over the courts, security police and election rules. The new Parliament will also need to come up with an effective economic program that privatizes clerical and government-run companies and attracts increased foreign investment and trade. Some bolder reformers also talk of promoting changes in foreign policy, including improved relations with the United States. Yesterday Washington welcomed the Iranian election results. Iran's clerical leaders have shown themselves to be sophisticated politicians. In recent years they have permitted relatively free elections and have acknowledged their political defeats. Undoubtedly, they will try to use the institutions still under their control to slow the pace of change. But they should have the wisdom to recognize that the Iranian people now expect to see their country governed in a more enlightened way that respects their personal and civil liberties, promotes economic growth and moderates Iran's militant hostility toward the West. | The Reform Tide in Iran |
1178268_2 | Cephren system was proving invaluable, enabling the various parties to communicate ''without all the faxes, without all the calls.'' He estimated the cost savings at $50,000, but said it could have exceeded $200,000 if all the subcontractors and suppliers were online. ''Right now, it's a good tool for us,'' he said. ''Next year, it'll be more necessary for people to have on our projects. In two years, it'll be absolutely mandatory.'' So far, though, e-commerce has barely penetrated the industry's second and third tiers, among companies with less than $100 million in annual revenue, where most communication still occurs the old-fashioned way -- with faxes, voice mail and overnight packages. The result, executives and industry analysts said, is the loss of billions of dollars in potential savings. ''Construction has always been a very fragmented industry because it's so local,'' said Kent Allen, an e-commerce analyst for the Aberdeen Group, a consulting firm in Boston. So far only a fraction -- some $6.3 billion -- of the construction industry's overall business is conducted online, according to Forrester Research, which studies e-commerce. Even by 2004, Forrester expects the online total to reach only $141 billion, or less than 11 percent of total construction spending. Some construction executives cite a stubborn resistance in their industry to any new approaches to business. Others suggest that the Web's continued reliance on the personal computer makes the medium impractical on many job sites (although at Webcor, hand-held Palm computers supplement desktop and laptop machines). And some of the holdouts say that the benefits of e-commerce sites have not been made sufficiently clear to them. Still, enthusiasts say they have noticed a shift in the attitudes of the biggest construction firms in recent months, and they hope a trickle-down effect could compel more subcontractors to catch the Web wave -- or face the prospect of losing work. Mr. Ball says Webcor now uses Cephren in connection with every new construction project. As with other Cephren clients, Webcor pays a start-up fee of $750 and a monthly fee of $1,250 to connect the entire construction team, then receives passwords enabling all parties to enter the portion of the Cephren site devoted to their particular project. Cephren charges an initial $1,500 training fee and offers support to clients during the life of a project, but clients are primarily responsible for the site's content and operation. The passwords allow for | E-Commerce Report: Construction Heads Into the Internet Age; Builders Cut Delays And Lift Efficiency By Online Contacts |
1166692_1 | who died of exposure in Boston, including 6 turned away from shelters, and grim photographs of limbs blackened by frostbite. City lawyers counter that the rules will help motivate people like Mr. Callahan to move toward work, treatment, training and self-reliance. The rules call for those who fail to comply to be denied shelter for up to 180 days, but city officials say such penalties will be used sparingly, with exemptions for those who cannot follow the rules because of mental illness or physical impairment. ''We've bent over backwards in establishing safeguards and interventions at all stages of the process to help to ensure that only those individuals who are demonstrably refusing to abide by these rules will be denied shelter,'' Thomas C. Crane, the city lawyer on the case, said yesterday. ''It's not a punitive intent by any stretch of the imagination.'' But Steven Banks, the Legal Aid lawyer for the Coalition for the Homeless, called the policy ''a combination of both Orwell and Dickens.'' He said, ''If you're too troubled to follow bureaucratic rules, the city will determine that you're not troubled anymore, and throw you onto the streets, where you can suffer serious injury or freeze to death.'' After today's hearing before Justice Stanley L. Sklar, a related hearing will follow at 4 p.m. before Justices Helen E. Freedman and Elliott Wilk, also of the State Supreme Court. Last month, they ordered a temporary halt to enforcement of the rules as they affect homeless families with children. They particularly questioned a measure that would place children in foster care if their parents were ejected from shelters. The city has appealed, contending that the justices had no right to intervene because the rules had already been upheld by a higher court. But city officials agreed to delay enforcement at least until the underlying issues in the Callahan case were debated today. Both sides agree that shelters now are vastly better than the Third Street Men's Shelter, where Mr. Callahan went in winter weather. Hundreds of men slept on concrete floors, and others were turned away. The system now consists mainly of smaller, more specialized shelters, including many with job programs and treatment for substance abuse or mental illness, 80 percent run by nonprofit agencies under contract to the city. It serves about 24,000 single adults in a year and 7,500 at one time, up from 1,500 in 1979. | Stage Is Set for Court Debate On Limiting Right to Shelter |
1166628_1 | rites of a traditional Catholic consecration. But the bishops, who range in age from 35 to 73, were appointed not by the Vatican, but by the Patriotic Catholic Association -- a sort of parallel church that answers to the Chinese government. China has not recognized the pope's right to appoint bishops since the country's Communist leaders broke ties with the Vatican after taking power in 1949. The Vatican has recently tried to re-establish relations with China, but its recognition of Taiwan has been a sticking point. Today's ceremony may throw up another hurdle. China brushed aside a protest by the Vatican in holding the consecration, and although one of the new bishops asked the congregation to pray for John Paul II, the ceremony -- and its timing -- amounted to a show of defiance. The Chinese authorities seemed well aware of the sensitivity of the ceremony. Plainclothes police were posted outside the cathedral. Inside, the congregation of 300, including representatives of the Communist Party, shivered in the cold as the presiding bishop, Liu Yuanren of Nanjing, bestowed miters and golden staffs on the new bishops. The Patriotic Catholic Association says it has four million members who worship at 5,000 churches. But the Roman Catholic Church remains a potent force here, with as many as 10 million members who worship secretly, risking arrest. The opening of China in the last two decades, however, has opened the church as well. And the line between the official and unofficial church sometimes seems blurred. In the cathedral's gift shop today, a postcard of the pope was displayed alongside portraits of Jesus. ''It's not really two churches,'' said the Rev. John Russell, a Jesuit in Hong Kong who has long worked in China. ''In theology, they differ very slightly. The sticking point is the appointment of bishops, which is why this consecration is seen as a slap in the face to the pope.'' The Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said: ''This decision has been taken at a time when hopes were raised in various quarters of moves toward a normalization of relations between the Holy See and Beijing. This act, however, raises obstacles that will certainly impede this process.'' Church officials said the Vatican and Beijing have held secret talks in the last year about improving relations. But last summer, China rejected a visit to Hong Kong by the pope, citing the Vatican's ties to Taiwan. | Beijing-Backed Church, Defying Vatican, Installs 5 New Bishops |
1166576_0 | DEPENDING on the weather for the rest of the winter, highway crews will spread 10 to 15 million tons of salt to melt ice and snow on highways in the United States and Canada. But the salt will also corrode the metal on bridges, guardrails and steel reinforcing bars, as well as break down the concrete itself and damage the vehicles that travel those roads. Now transportation researchers think they have found a practical replacement de-icer that is far less corrosive than salt, and only about half as corrosive as tap water. In some cases, it may actually inhibit rust. It is made from ordinary limestone and from whey, the stuff that Miss Muffet ate while sitting on her tuffet. The substitute material is calcium magnesium acetate, known to road crews as C.M.A. It has been available since the 1970's but currently costs about $1,000 a ton, compared with $30 or $40 a ton for salt. Salt is cheap because it is a natural product that is mined -- which is why it is called rock salt -- while the acetate comes from acetic acid, a commercial chemical. But researchers at Ohio State University, in work sponsored by the federal Department of Transportation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, have demonstrated a process for making acetic acid using whey, which is the watery part of milk that separates from the curds in the process of making cheese. In the process of making acetic acid, natural bacteria act on lactose in the whey, turning it into lactate, a process that chemists have long understood. A second step, developed by the researchers, uses another kind of bacteria to turn the lactate into acetate. The nice part about using cheese whey, said W. Clayton Ormsby, a research chemist who is a consultant to the Transportation Department, is that ''there's tons and tons and tons of it'' as a byproduct of cheese production. In addition, the portion that is not used as animal feed or for other beneficial purposes is considered a water pollutant. Speaking of cheese whey, the head of the Federal Highway Administration, Kenneth R. Wykle, said in a statement, ''Some of the largest strides in research come from a willingness to find significance in the seemingly insignificant.'' Dr. Ormsby noted that the other ingredient of C.M.A., limestone, is ''cheap as dirt.'' He and others estimated that C.M.A. | AUTOS ON FRIDAY /Safety; Whey (Hold the Curds) For Icy Winter Streets |
1171434_6 | to have a lot of patience,'' she said. ''And you have to have respect for them. Children are great. They make a decision. It's black or white. They like you, they don't like you. They're going to talk to you, they're not going to talk to you. They don't have these sophisticated devices of going around a subject. If you establish eye contact with them, they read you, and they decide whether they like you or not.'' ''You have to set this up,'' she said, ''because you're going to have to ask them, what was it like when your parents died? You're going to ask for these horrible memories.'' The Raymonds found the children of Northern Ireland, where a tenuous peace has now taken hold, and Israel and in the Palestinian territories to be the most politicized because they had never known life without violence. Talking in Gaza with a young veteran of the Intifada, the long Palestinian revolt, the Raymonds got some of their most hard-line answers. ''When you're 10 years old and saw what the Jews did and how they shot at us, we couldn't be numb,'' Bilal, a teenager, said. ''We were shot at many times, but that only made us attack more.'' In Belfast another teenager, Patricia, said war had been going on so long ''that if there is ever a peace, I think it will be a long time before I see it.'' Some children were too emotionally broken to talk, the Raymonds said, particularly those who had been maimed by shelling and snipers. But in most cases in all four war zones children demonstrated a resilience, maturity and sagacity that was often unexpected. When Selma, a girl driven from her home in Bosnia, was asked what she thought of the man who killed her father, she replied, ''If the soldier who killed my father also has a child, I hope his child does not have to suffer the way I had to.'' Ms. Raymond said that how children have handled violent death and the nightmarish disruption of their lives varied from case to case. ''I felt that the child's coping skill was directly related to the mother,'' she said. ''If that mother was coping, if she was not falling apart with all of the stress, then her child was also doing all right. God knows they were tested. In Bosnia the kids had their | When War Steals a Parent, or a Childhood; Filmmakers Explore How Young Victims Fared in Four of the World's Battlegrounds |
1171457_0 | EUROPE BRITAIN: MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE -- A high-ranking Church of England committee recommended that the divorced be permitted to remarry even if former spouses are still living. The move would formalize what is now common practice and would pave the way for the Prince of Wales to marry his longtime companion, Camilla Parker Bowles, left, an event previously seen as impossible for a future supreme governor of the church. To take effect, the recommendation must be adopted by the church Synod, which meets next year. Warren Hoge (NYT) BRITAIN: BELGIUM'S PINOCHET PLEA -- Belgium joined six rights groups in a move in the High Court to keep Britain from letting Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 84, return home to Chile. Belgium is seeking an order blocking his departure until he is examined by Belgian doctors. Home Secretary Jack Straw has refused to make public a report by four British doctors that found the former dictator medically unfit to stand trial in Spain on torture charges. Brussels has filed an extradition bid in behalf of Chileans living in Belgium. Warren Hoge (NYT) BRITAIN: ASYLUM SEEKERS INCREASE -- More refugees sought asylum in Britain in 1999 than in any previous year, the government said. With 89,700 refugees, Britain had the highest number of asylum-seekers in Europe after Germany, which had 95,300. The government said only a quarter of those who applied, the highest number from Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and China, in that order, are expected to be granted asylum. Sarah Lyall (NYT) AUSTRIA: HAIDER IN TALKS -- The right-wing Freedom Party, led by Jorg Haider, will begin talks with the conservative, business-oriented Austrian Peoples Party about forming a coalition government, the Peoples Party leader announced. The parties virtually tied for second place in October, but the Peoples Party was unable to form a government with the winning Social Democrats. Mr. Haider opposes immigration and the expansion of the European Union. Donald G. McNeil Jr. (NYT) GERMANY: JOINING LABOR FUND -- S.K.F. of Sweden, the world's largest roller-bearing maker, announced that it would join the German compensation fund for Nazi-era slave and forced laborers but that it had not decided how much it would contribute. S.K.F. had factories in Nazi Germany that used forced labor. Germany agreed last month to pay victims $5.15 billion, with half the money coming from industry and the rest from the government. Victor Homola (NYT) BOSNIA: NATO SEIZES SERB -- | WORLD BRIEFING |
1171465_0 | The Clinton administration released a set of goals today intended to improve the health of the population over the next decade, even as officials acknowledged that the country had failed to meet 85 percent of targets set 10 years ago for such concerns as smoking, obesity and exercise. In releasing the two-volume report, senior officials of the Department of Health and Human Services said the nation had met only 15 percent of 319 targets established in 1990 and was making progress on 45 percent. In some areas, particularly obesity, marijuana use among teenagers, exercise and asthma and diabetes, the health of the American people remained the same, or in some cases worsened. The latest 10-year plan, when read alongside the most recent status update on the previous goals, paints an uneven tableau of the country's health. The reports indicated that while medical advances and some behavioral changes have increased life expectancy and improved the quality of life, much of the population refused to follow two of the most basic recommendations by health professionals: eat nutritious foods and exercise regularly. As a result, the report described a population that is sedentary, more prone to diabetes and asthma and simply fatter. It is in these areas where health and human services officials have had the most difficulty meeting their goals. Still, officials said the country had made progress in several high-profile areas, like homicide and suicide rates, violence among adolescents, drinking, use of illicit drugs, contraceptive use, immunization rates and infant mortality. ''The teen birth rate has fallen for seven years in a row; the overall immunization rate for preschool children has increased to a record 80 percent; tobacco and illicit drug use among teenagers has declined,'' said Dr. Donna E. Shalala, secretary of health and human services. ''We've made major investments in the health of our children, increased life expectancy and prenatal care. And we've taken steps in the battle against disease, including AIDS and cancer.'' The report, ''Healthy People 2010,'' was the latest in a series of 10-year plans that have been published by the government since 1980. It lays out objectives on subjects as varied as oral hygiene and hearing problems to cancer and stroke. The Health and Human Services Department issues annual updates on the country's progress. The new goals call for 30 percent of adults to be exercising regularly by 2010, a target that was supposed to | Noting Shortfalls, U.S. Renews Health Goals |
1171440_1 | may be an increased risk of cancer associated with consuming the components of soy called isoflavones in supplement form, particularly for post-menopausal women; and for these women, there may also be hazards in adding soy foods to their diets. Isoflavones, particularly genistein and daidzein, are phytoestrogens. These plant chemicals, which have estrogen-like hormonal effects on the body, occur naturally in soybeans and foods made from them. Compared with chemical estrogens, the kind taken by women to reduce the symptoms of menopause, phytoestrogens are weak, but they act the same way: they can both inhibit and stimulate the growth of certain types of cells. Not one of the 18 scientists interviewed for this column was willing to say that taking isoflavones was risk free. Some particularly cautioned against it. Dr. Margo Woods, an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, who specializes in nutrition and breast cancer, said: ''As a food, soy does a lot of great things, but once you start looking at different components like phytoestrogens, you are talking about pharmacological things. It's wiser to talk about soy and soy foods. A whole food behaves very differently in the body than when you take one compound. We are looking into the components, but we haven't been studying in the area long enough. I would not recommend to anyone that they take isoflavones.'' Even before the Food and Drug Administration approved the cholesterol-lowering health claim for soy, sales were booming. In 1998, 770,000 metric tons of soybeans were sold in this country to be turned into food products; in 1999 the figure rose to 1.007 million metric tons. Total sales of soy foods in supermarket chains during the 12 months ending in October were almost $420 million, up 45 percent from the previous year's, according to Spins, a natural products market research company in San Francisco. In natural food stores, sales in the six months ending in October were up 37 percent from the previous six-month period. Many large companies like Kellogg's, General Mills, Campbell Soup and ConAgra are developing new soy products in response to the demand. The biggest jump has been in soy supplements, the isoflavone pills, whose sales were up 246 percent in the 12 months ending in October. But the carefully worded health claim the Food and Drug Administration permits for cholesterol reduction is for soy protein, not for isoflavones. To have that | Doubts Cloud Rosy News on Soy |
1171523_1 | InfoBeat, a subsidiary of Sony Music that provides e-mail services to nearly 2.5 million subscribers around the world, has acknowledged that a software error last fall caused it to inadvertently forward personal e-mail addresses to advertisers in violation of a privacy policy posted on its Web site. A company official said today that the problem had been fixed. Chase has denied any wrongdoing but agreed not to disclose any more financial information about its customers to other companies. The two companies have agreed to pay a combined total of $176,500 to the state for the costs of Mr. Spitzer's investigation. ''Certainly, we need to think about what the ground rules should be for gaining access to this information,'' Mr. Spitzer said, adding ''the phone calls we have made, the books we buy, the credit rating that we have, the medicine we buy from the pharmacy -- any one of these pieces of information is available to virtually anybody.'' The settlements come at a time of heightened concern nationwide over financial reforms and technological advances that have made it easier than ever to gather personal details about consumers. Last year, Congress repealed a Depression-era law that had restricted banks from entering the securities and insurance industries, and in doing so, opened the way for multilayered companies to share data on their customers. Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham Law School, said companies could freely share personal and financial information with their affiliates and agents, and also reveal that information to third parties as long as the customer did not ''opt out,'' or specifically request not to be included. ''What's been very clear for the last couple of years, and especially in the last year, is that Congress is throwing up its hands in protecting citizen privacy,'' he said. As the federal government has stepped back, state officials have increasingly sought to enforce the existing patchwork of privacy laws and pass legislation to restrict the free flow of personal information. In June, the Minnesota attorney general's office sued U.S. Bancorp, contending that the Minneapolis bank had illegally sold information on credit reports to a telemarketer without the knowledge of its customers. Darren Dopp, a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, said that while it was unlikely that New York would pursue violations of the settlement in cases involving out-of-state companies or customers, other attorneys general could use the settlement as a basis to pursue | Chase Bank Agrees to Stop Sharing Data |
1171489_3 | most dedicated following is in France -- existed much earlier. ''There is no synergy in Orangina sales and spirits sales,'' Mr. Ricard said, adding that the company's goals are to double its size and profit every seven years. At present, wine and spirits sales account for 43 percent of revenue and 63 percent of profit, and the company has been growing through acquisitions of popular local brands as well, he said. In Eastern Europe, Pernod Ricard has purchased Becherovka, a Czech drink, and plans to distribute it using an existing network of wholesalers. In China, the company started a wine label, Dragon Seal. It distributes a line of Australian wines called Jacob's Creek, in various parts of the globe. ''The big difference between them and Diageo, apart from size, is that Diageo is trying to de-emphasize local brands, and Pernod Ricard is going in the opposite direction,'' said one industry analyst, calling the strategy ''good business, as long as you don't overpay for the assets.'' Recently the company has run into international political problems over its Havana Club rum. It holds the trademark rights to the name in 180 countries, but a federal judge in New York, presiding in a lawsuit brought by Havana Club Holdings, a joint venture between Pernod Ricard and the Castro government in Cuba, maintained in a ruling last summer that trademarks confiscated by the Cuban government cannot be upheld in American courts. Pernod Ricard's position is that the brand was abandoned by its former owners, the Arechabala family, and registered to Havana Club Holdings in 1993, but was illegally sold by the family in 1997 to Bacardi, one of the world's biggest rum producers. Havana Club was the top-selling brand of Cuban rum for decades. Bacardi's version is produced in the Bahamas, but shows a famous seawall in Havana on its label. Pernod Ricard is appealing the judge's ruling. Pernod Ricard also owns Yoo-Hoo, a chocolate drink brand that it plans to sell as well. ''A few companies are looking at it,'' Mr. Ricard said. He expects to announce a sale sometime during the first quarter. The future of Orangina remains murky. ''We will sell it if it makes sense for the company, for Orangina and for us,'' Mr. Ricard said. ''The entire world wants to buy it. But I'm not sure the entire world is prepared to pay for it.'' THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING | Orangina's owner still wants to sell brand, if the price is right. |
1171439_1 | life?'' I always knew I would go into engineering. Just last year, I saw my high school science teacher. He still remembered the title of my project my junior year: ''Ultra Micro-Miniature Thumb-Sized Digital Calculator With a Novel Nematic Liquid Crystal for the Display.'' I almost got it working. I still have it. My master's project at Stanford was a voice-controlled robotic arm for quadriplegics, potentially to serve you a drink or brush your teeth. I used software to link up a robot arm and a voice-recognition system. It's an ongoing project at Stanford today. After Stanford, I got a job as a consultant, saved $2,500 and took three months off to drive around Europe with my girlfriend, who is now my wife. I proposed to her on the northern tip of Scotland. It was 10 p.m. but still light out. We were sitting cross-legged in a field. At the end of the field was a cliff and beyond the cliff was the ocean. I was overcome by where we were. Back in the United States, some friends and I developed the Macintosh mouse for Steve Jobs at Apple Computer. I'm one of four patent holders on it. People ask me how much money I made. I say: Take 400 million mice and multiply by my royalty of zero. We tried to get a royalty, but Apple was too smart to give one to young designers like us. A funny theme in my life is being introduced to important people and spending hours with them without realizing who they are. I once asked a woman, ''So what do you do at your company?'' And she replied, ''Well, since I'm the C.E.O., I guess I run it.'' Another time I had hung out with a guy named Artie. Later on, somebody asked me, ''What was it like spending all that time with Arthur Rock,'' the famous venture capitalist? I said, ''Huh? You mean Artie?'' I have my shortcomings as a boss. I probably avoid confrontation too much. My worst boss was a shouter. I once thought the only reason he didn't make a Business Week list of the 10 Worst Bosses was that the list didn't start at zero. He once screamed at me as we were walking down a hallway that I was overpaid and underperforming. There's no room in American business today for treating people that way. THE BOSS | Born to Take Things Apart |
1168520_0 | In the largest return of public land to American Indians in the continental United States in more than 100 years, the federal government is giving back 84,000 acres in northern Utah that it took from the Utes in 1916 to secure the rights to oil shale reserves. ''We consider this part of the Clinton-Gore environmental legacy,'' Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in an interview today, reflecting the anticipated benefits of the arrangement for President Clinton, as well as for Vice President Al Gore in his quest for the presidency. ''We're trying to do the right thing, returning land to its rightful owners.'' The land transfer is part of a deal Administration officials have been negotiating with tribal leaders for almost seven years, and a major component of the deal will help solve a long-standing pollution problem in another part of the state. Mr. Richardson, who plans to announce the deal on Friday at the tribe's headquarters in Fort Duchesne, Utah, said the Utes would be required to contribute a small percentage of any profits they derived from oil and natural gas production to the cleanup of a long-abandoned uranium site 80 miles south of their reservation. Government officials say more than 10 tons of low-level radioactive waste have sat for decades close to the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, leaching toxic material into the Colorado River, which supplies drinking water to California and other Western states. Cleanup is expected to cost as much as $300 million, and Congress is considering a bill that would pay for the bulk of the work. ''We want to show that the Energy Department can clean up problems, rather than continue to create them,'' Mr. Richardson said. As a third component of the deal, the Utes have agreed to allow a strip along 75 miles of the east bank of the Green River, which borders their reservation, to be designated as wild and scenic, a status that affords it protections it currently lacks. Unlike other recent administration land initiatives, including the designation this week of three new national monuments, the land transfer has won support from many Western Republican lawmakers. Representative Christopher B. Cannon, a Republican whose district includes the land and adjacent reservation, said: ''This is the opposite of the abusive things this administration has done. They recognized common problems and dealt with them.'' O. Roland McCook Sr., chairman of the tribe's governing body, | U.S. Is Returning 84,000 Acres to Indians |
1168192_3 | The not-so-good news is that digital televisions are still more confusing and much more expensive than analog sets, and many of them still require a separate decoder box for receiving the handful of available HDTV programs. But the major satellite television services -- DirecTV and the DiSH Network -- announced that they will be transmitting more high-definition movies this year, which means that many people will not have to wait for local broadcast stations to switch to digital. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, William E. Kennard, warned cable televsion companies at the show that they have until April to stop their bickering and figure out a standard way to provide digital programming to their subscribers. All of the digital sets on display at the show were impressive, compared with analog sets, but a prototype by Sharp Electronics topped them all with a 64-inch display that incorporated a new technology, called continuous grain silicon, that made other digital TV sets -- even HDTV units -- appear drab in comparison. Of course, its $50,000 price tag was as breathtaking as the pictures. The good news is that the new continous grain technology will find its way down to more affordable sets. Dolby Laboratories demonstrated a new technology, Dolby Headphone, that creates the audio illusion of full surround sound in any set of headphones. Unlike traditional stereo headphones that resolve left and right channels and create sound that seems to emanate from a center channel between the user's ears, Dolby Headphone creates the impression of sound coming from forward left, center and right, and rear left and right by using sound principles called psychoacoustics. Researchers study how the brain processes sounds, then modify the electronics to fool the brain into perceiving more sonic information than is actually being delivered. Dolby Headphone, which works with any stereo headphones, is expected to be a feature on selected DVD players, receivers, personal computers and video game consoles later this year. In a similar way, Microsoft is using psychovisual techniques with a technology called Cleartype, which is being incorporated into software called Microsoft Reader. Reader, which was demonstrated at the show, works with laptop PC's, pocket computers and other electronic book devices. Researchers have determined that text on a computer screen approaches the appearance of text on a printed page at a resolution, or sharpness, greater than 300 dots per inch. But the typical | Video, Audio and AOL TV |
1168338_1 | domestic sources of energy, the world's most ambitious user of nuclear energy, providing one-third of its supplies. Strikingly, in a country known for its political quiescence, the sharp movement of public opinion against nuclear power has taken the form of a genuine groundswell, from subway straphangers horrified by stories about safety lapses and small civic groups that have started petition drives against the industry's expansion to local political candidates who are running for office on the issue. Public protest has not been common in Japanese society for well over a generation, having mostly died out since Japan attained the level of affluence of many Western countries, starting in the 1960's. But in recent years -- timidly at first, and then with growing speed -- localized movements have been springing up and asserting themselves more boldly, notably in the courts, to protect consumer interests or the environment. Since the Tokaimura accident, small citizens' groups, encouraged by the spreading awareness of the risks of nuclear energy, have sued regional power companies to prevent the introduction of the new plutonium fuel and petitioned local governments to block plant construction. A scandal involving the falsification of inspection data by the British maker of plutonium pellets has also strengthened resistance. The grassroots activists have put the nuclear industry on the defensive in ways that recall its decline in the United States and much of Europe after the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. In the clearest example of the impact of local mobilization, Mayor Takaaki Sasaguchi of Maki, in the Nigata prefecture, used his announcement of his re-election campaign today to declare his opposition to plans to build a new plant in his city. The industry, citing unflinching support from the national government and Japan's near total dependence on imported fuels, has pledged to stick to its plans for plutonium, which it describes as a step toward developing so-called fast-breeder technology. With fast-breeder reactors, whose development remains, perhaps, decades away, proponents say Japan will be able to produce more plutonium fuel than it consumes and achieve the holy grail of energy independence. In the meantime, industry officials say they merely need to be patient until public passions against nuclear energy die down, and they will proceed with plans to build many plutonium-burning plants. ''There is only enough uranium in the world to last 72 years, and our country is not endowed with fossil fuels,'' | Accident Makes Japan Re-examine A-Plants |
1165895_0 | Haley Moran-Wollens is not an elite athlete. She is a 13-year-old who, like lots of other teenagers, wants to be fit. And, like a growing number of teenagers whose parents can afford it, she has a personal trainer. In her case, the trainer is Rodica Vranceanu, who charges $75 an hour for after school workouts at Radu Physical Culture, a gym in Midtown Manhattan. ''I don't want to be the skinniest,'' Haley said. ''I just want to work out. But a lot of people do it for the nice bodies, even at my age.'' Though personal training is by no means the norm for American children, a small but growing number of their parents are paying the membership fees to private gyms for aerobics, weight lifting, and body-molding activities once considered for adults only. At the Spectrum Club in Valencia, Calif., children ages 13 to 17 can become Teen Fit members. They tend to go for the stationary bicycles and weights, said Cindy Breakfield, sports manager, who added that personal trainers were available for the younger set. The Eastcoast Athletic Club in Port Washington, N.Y., has a program called Excel, which offers personal training at $45 an hour to children ages 12 to 17, said Christopher Patti, the fitness director. Some health experts hail the trend, saying that too many children do not get enough exercise. But others disagree. ''It's a sad precedent,'' said Richard Killingsworth, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ''We are teaching a behavior that it's O.K. to be sedentary all day except for the one-hour exercise class. In the past decade, our children have lost the idea of what it is to enjoy being young and physically active.'' Other experts wonder if it is healthy for children to exercise in situations designed for adults. Children's bones are more fragile than adults', and the growth plates on children's bones have not yet sealed shut. So some parents are concerned that injuries could stunt growth. But experts say that parents need not worry because damage to the growth plates is unusual and when it occurs, it rarely stops development. ''There's little data that reasonable exercise or even more extreme weights will cause permanent damage, but psychologically and physically children should go for higher reps,'' rather than heavier weights, said Dr. Peter Jokl, vice chairman of the department of orthopedic surgery and head | Kids Need Exercise, but What Kind? |
1165970_2 | both types of smuggling said the containers tended to be more sanitary, with makeshift latrines and better provisions, like bedding and pillows. The detainees in the recent cases were also better dressed, wearing things like Nike tennis shoes. Some had portable phones and compact disc players. But, Ms. Kice said, it was unknown whether that meant that the passengers were more well-to-do or that they had been provided with items like proper clothing to blend in better on the street. While conditions might be better, the authorities said people who chose such transportation still faced a daunting journey. The trailers can be stacked up to 10 high, which amounts to crossing the ocean in a tractor-trailer 10 stories up. Federal officials have had a working group of agencies examining container smuggling since early last year. The first such case known to officials occurred in April 1998, when a vessel registered in Liberia arrived in Tacoma, Wash., with 18 to 20 stowaways from China. Since then, there have been eight cases, including four this past week. While the federal authorities said they would increase enforcement efforts to combat container smuggling, Ms. Kice said the smugglers' change in approach indicated that other enforcement efforts had been effective. In the early 1990's, the authorities were faced with a spate of smuggling of illegal immigrants on ships. One of the most notable was the Golden Venture, which ran aground in June 1993 on a sandbar near Far Rockaway, Queens. Ten passengers died after jumping into the ocean. ''Chinese smuggling has been on our radar screen for years,'' Ms. Kice said. ''This is the smuggler adjusting their strategy.'' On Dec. 29, the authorities detained 21 people at the Port of Long Beach and 9 at Los Angeles Harbor as they emerged from hiding in cargo containers. On Sunday, crew members found 18 stowaways inside a cargo container on the Zim Shekou as it was coming into the Port of Long Beach. The ship had apparently left Hong Kong about three weeks ago and stopped over in British Columbia. In Seattle, 12 men were found aboard the ship OOCL Faith, which is owned by the Orient Overseas Container Line of Hong Kong. Officials said all those detained in the last week remained in custody and were being interviewed. The process is complicated because there are so many dialects that it can be difficult to find interpreters. | Immigrant Smuggling Draws New Attention |
1165905_5 | were created in human brains, Dr. Raastad said. In 1997, Dr. Elizabeth Gould, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton, and colleagues showed that neurogenesis, or the birth of new cells, occurred in the hippocampuses of tree shrews and marmoset monkeys. But Dr. Rakic and others said this was not possible in humans. In 1998, Dr. Gage demonstrated that the number of brain cells in the hippocampuses of mice raised in stimulating environments increased by 15 percent -- and that the cells were born in the ventricle zone. ''This made us go look for the same in humans,'' Dr. Gage said. Swedish colleagues were using a special substance that integrates into the DNA of dividing cells to track tumor cells in cancer patients, he said. Last year, this substance was found in the hippocampuses of five cancer patients whose brains were dissected immediately after they died. This was a ''thrilling'' discovery, Dr. Gage said. It means that the human brain makes new cells in an area already known to be involved in short-term memory. Some sort of neurogenesis may be widespread in the brain and spinal cord for maintenance, he said. Like skin, the brain may be repairing itself all the time. But like a big gash to the skin, a large brain injury like a stroke can overwhelm the repair system. As for the rest of the brain, including the cortex, where complex functions like language and long-term memories reside, Dr. Gould injected the same dye used in the human experiments into macaque monkey brains. By tracing the chemical, she found that neurons had been born in the ventricles and had migrated into the higher cortex, where they made new axons. They appeared to connect up to local circuitry and perhaps extend into wider circuits, she said, adding that the same might be true for human brains. But the most surprising finding about new cell growth in the human brain has been virtually ignored by most neuroscientists. This part of the story began more than two decades ago when a young doctor in training, William Rodman Shankle, salvaged a stack of cardboard boxes containing the largest database ever collected on the developing human cerebral cortex. The data had been collected from 1939 to 1967 by Dr. Jesse L. Conel of Boston Children's Hospital, who examined the brains of infants and children up to age 6 who had died from | A Decade Of Discovery Yields a Shock About the Brain |
1165923_0 | To the Editor: Bob Herbert's Dec. 30 column on mentally ill children awaiting placement in residential treatment centers exposes a little-known problem, but little known, too, is what happens to children who go to these centers. Some receive very thorough medical, psychiatric and neurologic evaluations and skilled care, but there are extraordinary variations in quality of care. Families, if they exist for these children, are too seldom actively involved in learning how to work with the child's problem after discharge. Regression is common. What is needed is uniform state-of-the-art treatment for the most emotionally handicapped children and integrated preparation of all those caregivers, including families, for a successful re-entry into the home community. STEWART BRAMSON, M.D. Grasonville, Md., Dec. 30, 1999 The writer is a child and adolescent psychiatrist. | Mentally Ill Youth |
1171210_6 | data. ''The 30-meter data will be available, but I will have to ask for it,'' he said, ''Their only request is that I don't publish the raw data itself with my results. I'm perfectly happy with this arrangement we have.'' Thomas A. Hennig, the military agency's program manager for the project, pointed out that only about 60 to 70 percent of the world was now mapped at 90-meter resolution and in some places, even this is restricted information. Releasing data of this resolution for the world, along with the radar image mosaic, amounts to a huge increase in topographical information benefiting people worldwide, he said. John E. Pike, a space and military policy expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said the military agency had legitimate concerns about releasing the detailed data. ''This information is potentially useful to other militaries, also,'' he said, ''The Defense Department wants to see that the data doesn't fall into hostile hands.'' Space shuttles have flown radar-mapping instruments on five previous occasions, culminating in two flights in 1994 that demonstrated three-dimensional mapping by flying over the area twice to take slightly offset images that were later combined into pictures showing elevation differences. Dr. Kobrick and Edward Caro, an engineer also with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, came up with the idea of getting three-dimensional topographical images from the shuttle in a single pass by putting additional radar receivers on a boom extending from the spacecraft. Once Endeavour reaches orbit, it is to deploy the boom almost immediately from a canister in its cargo bay. Flying with modifications to the same equipment used in 1994, Endeavour is to orbit 145 miles above Earth, making radar scans in swaths 140 miles wide. The international mission features radar equipment made by the German Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The shuttle, flying upside-down and tail first, will sweep the path with C-Band and X-Band signals transmitted by antennas that are part of its 29,000-pound cargo of radar equipment. The signals will bounce off Earth and back to the shuttle, where they will be picked up by receiving antennas in the cargo bay and at the end of the 640-pound mast almost 200 feet away. Using a technique called interferometry, each antenna will record almost identical data to form images, but the offset distance will cause slight phase variations in the signal that allow creation of three-dimensional images when | Mapping the Earth, Swath by Swath |
1167583_4 | attacked the Russian lines. The rebels were repulsed by Russian 122-millimeter self-propelled artillery and tank fire, and the Russians say 150 rebels were killed. ''They did not think we would come here, and we did not think they would try to break through,'' Colonel Budanov said. There are three cemeteries near Duba-Yurt. The Russians say Chechens take many bodies that the Russians believe are those of rebels there for proper Islamic burial. The Russian soldiers keep their distance and do not interfere. ''They come and bury the dead,'' the colonel said. ''What can we do? We are not monsters. Let them go and bury.'' The gesture is also a way to gather intelligence, since according to tradition here, a Muslim who has been killed in a battle must be buried on the same day before sunset. Although the Russians are proud of their New Year's victory, some tough fighting appears to lie ahead. Trying to control the opening to the gorge, Russian infantry has already moved into the mountains and seized many of the heights. But the Russian forces here have yet to take back two key peaks from the rebels, including one they have nicknamed Devil's Peak because it is 666 meters (2,185 feet) high and the number 666 is associated with a satanic beast in the Book of Revelation. Even resupplying the Russian soldiers in the mountains can be a dangerous adventure. ''Every mission to deliver food, water and ammunition is essentially a combat operation,'' said Roman Bagreyev, a senior lieutenant and the deputy chief of staff of a tank battalion. ''They make good use of the terrain and are constantly on the move,'' he said of the rebels. On Saturday, Lieutenant Bagreyev's battalions were making a supply run when an armored personnel carrier set off a rebel booby trap. The militants had attached a tripwire to a grenade launcher. The grenade just missed the armored personnel carrier before exploding. Supplies strapped to the top of the vehicle were destroyed, but the crew survived. As the artillery boomed, Colonel Budanov joked about the rebels' New Year's Eve attack and the ongoing clashes during the Christian and Muslim religious holiday season. ''They congratulated us on the New Year, and we are congratulating them,'' he said. ''We really don't have holidays here.'' The colonel apparently thought one congratulation was not enough. So he ordered another barrage: ''Salvo. One shell. Fire.'' | Russian Troops in Chechnya Find Little Quiet on the Southern Front |
1167575_5 | football jersey. ''The pigeon's whole back and rear flanks, where a predator would grab them, are made for the feathers to break away very easily,'' Dr. Fitzpatrick said. ''If you grab a pigeon from the back, you get a big fluff of feathers as the pigeon flies away. It will fill a fox's mouth full of feathers, as opposed to full of dove.'' For students living in a culturally diverse city, he said, it is relevant that the birds come in so many colors and varieties. For this project, the patterns are narrowed down to eight: blue bar, the pattern of the original wild pigeons, with a dark head, neck and chest, light gray breast and belly, and two black stripes on each wing; checker, with checkered patterns on the wings; red-bar, with rust-colored wing bars; red, for rusty red or brown; spread, all black or dark gray; white; pied-splash, with patches of white; and pied-white flight, with white tail feathers. ''When they start seeing all the basic features of a living critter, and getting involved in answering a question, that is what science is about,'' Dr. Fitzpatrick said. ''It gives them a sense of curiosity. What this does is supplies a genuine, scientifically valid reason to watch these birds.'' It also causes the students to start noticing other aspects of animal behavior, he said. Sure enough, Mrs. Sanabria's students started asking questions about starlings and the mating habits of the house sparrow. ''There's one that was wagging his tail, but we don't know who he was wagging his tail at,'' Sean Newman reported. Mrs. Sanabria said the bird could have been trying to attract any female bird. Sabrina Wolf made her own observations: ''None of the females were interested,'' she said. ''The male keeps puffing up, and she'll ignore him.'' The students will collect the results of this and other bird-watching trips this school year, and send them to Cornell to be tabulated. Very early results suggest that males tend to favor mates that do not look like them, said Mindy LaBranche, project leader for PigeonWatch. Back in the warmth of the classroom, the students discussed how pigeons can hear sounds humans cannot, which explains why they may suddenly take off as a group. Mrs. Sanabria told the class that pigeons have only 37 taste buds, compared to humans, who have 9,000. ''What does that tell you?'' she asked. | From Lowly Pigeon, Lessons in Birds (and Bees); In Study of Mating Habits, Third Graders Seek Key to the Diversity of a Species |
1172006_0 | Around midnight last night, Juan Mayr, who is chairman of the global biosafety talks here, told delegates after a long day of negotiations to go back to their hotel rooms and ''dream about the precautionary approach.'' It was a reference to one of the most important issues remaining in the effort to formulate the world's first treaty regulating trade in genetically modified products: Must a nation have scientific proof before it can ban a genetically engineered crop or animal? Or can it act even in the absence of scientific certainty? The ''precautionary principle,'' which allows erring on the side of safety in the absence of scientific certainty, has been enshrined in numerous environmental laws and treaties since the 1970's, but often more as a vague statement of philosophy than as a recipe for action. Depending on the outcome of negotiations here, an agreement on bio safety might contain a strong formulation authorizing the precautionary principle to be used in decision making, setting a precedent for other international agreements. It could also set a precedent for domestic debates in the United States, where controversy over food made using biotechnology is growing. Virtually no evidence exists that such foods are harmful. But critics say there is not enough information about possible health effects, so the foods should be banned or more tightly regulated. In negotiations over the biosafety agreement, the United States and several other big agricultural exporting nations say that incorporating the precautionary principle too strongly would allow countries to ban imports of genetically modified corn, soybeans or other crops simply based on fear or protectionism. ''There have been some proposals that we think would redefine the concept,'' Frank E. Loy, under secretary of state for global affairs, said today. ''It would have the effect of justifying restrictions on biotechnology, including import bans, without any scientific basis.'' But European countries and the developing countries, which have been pitted against the United States and a handful of its allies all week, say precaution is justified because not enough is known about the environmental effects of genetic engineering. And if a ''superweed'' or dangerous bacteria were to get loose in the environment, it could not be recalled like a defective car. ''Countries must be able to have the freedom, the sovereign right to take precautionary measures,'' said Christoph Bail, the lead negotiator for the European Union. Once damage occurs, he said, ''it would | Talks on Biotech Food Turn on a Safety Principle |
1171963_1 | goal of lifting the embargo that has yet to topple President Fidel Castro. ''Why should we lose out?'' said Tony DeLio, the president of ADM Nutraceutical, a division of Archer Daniels Midland, a sponsor of the exhibition. ''The economic embargo has not worked. It has not accomplished its political objectives. Opening up trade and normalizing relations with Cuba would be in the best interests of America economically and politically. We trade openly with Vietnam, with whom we had a war.'' Working for the Cuban health care system, which is an often-invoked accomplishment of the very revolution that eventually provoked the embargo, the Cubans crowded around demonstrations of optical equipment, tried on leg braces and chatted about the latest technologies and techniques that remain tantalizingly beyond their reach. ''Now we only need two things,'' concluded one Cuban as he left the exhibition hall. ''More equipment. And the money to buy it.'' Both things are in short supply here, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union pushed Cuba into an economic slide from which it has yet to recover fully. Replacement parts for medical equipment can be scarce, as are some medicines at pharmacies. Cubans with relatives in the United States treasure their regular shipments of vitamins and aspirin, poring over bottle labels as if they were deciphering scriptures. Medical goods and food are eligible for sale despite the embargo because they are considered humanitarian aid. American officials said that in the last 18 months they had licensed $45 million in medical sales to Cuba, although that only means companies were approved to begin negotiations. They said they did not know how many sales had taken place, but Cuban officials insisted none had because the deals fell through after delays or because financing or transport could not be obtained. Cuban officials chafe at other American regulations, like the requirement to document that medicines and equipment supplies have not been used to treat foreigners and hence earn hard currency from hospital charges. ''How can I ensure that every patient is a Cuban?'' said Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, the director of the Frank Pais International Orthopedic Complex, where almost a third of the patients are indeed foreigners. ''They want a clinical history. That is crazy. If we pay for it, what does it matter if we give it to a Cuban or a foreigner? If you get hurt and come here, do I have | Havana Journal; On Show in Cuba: Marvels of American Medicine |
1171954_2 | TO SAINTHOOD Pope John Paul II recognized a miracle by Pope John XXIII, crediting him with curing an Italian nun of a dangerous illness. The move opens the way to beatification of the progressive pope, the penultimate step before sainthood. John Paul also recognized a second miracle by Katherine Drexel, a 20th-century American heiress who championed the rights of native and African-Americans. She may be canonized this year. Alessandra Stanley (NYT) ASIA PAKISTAN: RUSSIAN ANGER Moscow accused Pakistan of encouraging international terrorism after the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, close allies of Pakistan, last week extended diplomatic recognition to rebels in Chechnya. ''The unhindered activity of a whole array of extremist organizations openly calling for jihad against sovereign states continues on Pakistani territory,'' the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Barry Bearak (NYT) NEPAL: REPERCUSSIONS OF HIJACKING Eighteen civil aviation and security officials will be punished for failing to stop the hijacking of an Indian airliner from Katmandu international airport on Dec. 24, the civil aviation minister, Bijaya Gachchedar, said. He said the action could include dismissals or criminal charges. (AP) CHINA: COHEN TO VISIT Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, after meeting with Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the deputy chief of staff of China's army, said he would visit China later this year. Three days of talks between General Xiong and Pentagon officials produced an agreement to resume military exchanges between the two countries. Steven Lee Myers (NYT) MIDDLE EAST IRAN: MORE CANDIDATES BANNED Some 650 out of 7,000 potential candidates have been barred from competing in legislative elections next month, the hard-line Guardians Council that screens candidates said. The council has been accused of resorting to underhand tactics to ensure that reformists do not take control of Parliament. (AP) AFRICA SENEGAL: FORMER CHAD LEADER ON TRIAL A public prosecutor in Senegal opened the way for Hissene Habre, who took power in Chad in 1982 and has been living in Senegal since his ouster in 1990, to be tried on torture charges. ''This is the first time that an African court has opened a case based on human-rights crimes committed by a former head of state in a foreign country,'' said Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch, one of the groups spearheading the action. (Reuters) NIGERIA: STATE ADOPTS ISLAMIC LAW Thousands of Muslims marched in the capital of the northern state of Zamfara after Gov. Ahmed Sani signed two bills making it | WORLD BRIEFING |
1167095_0 | EACH fall, birds crash by the millions into radio and telecommunications towers as they try to migrate south through the United States, and ornithologists are convinced that many of the collisions happen along the East Coast. As more and more towers go up each year with the proliferation of cellular telephones, the problem is likely to grow worse. And some experts worry it could be especially acute in southeastern Connecticut, where more than a dozen radio and cellular towers are built beneath a major bird migration route. No one is sure how many birds die this way in Connecticut, because no one has studied it in detail in this region. Scientists haven't studied towers here, and the evidence is sometimes hard to come by since animals or owls probably eat the dead birds quickly and many tower bases are out of general view. But bird collisions have been well documented in other parts of the country. ''We've got about 50,000 towers on the lower 48 states now,'' said William Evans, an ornithologist from Ithaca, N.Y., who organized a conference in August at Cornell University on bird-tower collisions. ''That number is expected to double over the next 10 years. If the towers hadn't been proliferating, people might not have worried about it,'' he said. But where studies have been done, the numbers are dramatic. Scientists studying a tower near Tallahassee, Fla., counted 42,386 dead birds, made up of 190 species, around the tower between 1955 and 1980. A tower in Eau Claire, Wis., killed 121,560 birds between 1957 and 1994. Connecticut has about 300 towers over 300 feet tall, but also hundreds that are shorter, according to the Connecticut Siting Council, which gives out permits to companies that build them. The council has recently begun to consider birds when it looks at new tower applications, said Joel Rinebold, the executive director. The council ordered Bell Atlantic Mobile to collect any dead birds it finds for one year once it's finished building a telecommunications tower on Sunny Lane in Westport. Birds die two ways around towers, said Mr. Evans, who has studied birds and towers for Cornell University, power companies, and the federal Fish & Wildlife Service. They can run into them before they can stop, especially fast-flying shorebirds. Songbirds tend to die by the handfuls on foggy nights when, lacking stars or moonlight to guide them, they are attracted to the | Bird-Tower Collisions Are on the Rise Throughout the Country |
1167261_11 | That's very reassuring.'' Apart from setting their child's financial house in order, families should also prepare a letter of intent -- a biographical profile that describes the precise nature of the child's disability, medical history, capabilities and limitations, likes and dislikes, daily routine and relevant behavioral quirks and nuances. If the child has a favorite TV show or breakfast cereal, or an aversion to broccoli, it should be duly noted. ''I've seen letters of intent that say things like, 'If our son has an episode and gets upset, you can calm him down by putting on a Scooby-Doo video,' '' said Mr. Cotto, the financial consultant in Mount Kisco. ''That can be very helpful to future caregivers.'' Although a letter of intent is not legally binding, ''in many ways it's the most important document of all,'' Mr. Stevens added. ''It's the voice of mom and dad instructing what they want for their child and how to meet his or her needs after they're no longer around.'' The letter should be updated regularly as the child grows and changes, ''and shared with any family members and friends, so they can ask questions while mom and dad are around.'' If the child lives in a residential facility or otherwise spends time away from home, ideas from staff members can be enlightening, ''since kids tend to behave differently when their parents aren't around,'' Mr. Stevens said. ''In fact,'' he added, ''it's not a bad idea to observe the child in that setting, and record what you see in the document.'' A LETTER of intent can be especially important in the case of individuals who cannot communicate their needs in an understandable way. Ms. Williams recalled meeting with a married couple and the wife's 46-year-old brother, who had suffered an oxygen deficit at birth, leaving him at the cognitive level of an 18-month-old. ''Suddenly, he started rocking back and forth and smiling, saying 'bubba, bubba,' '' Ms. Williams said. ''His sister told me he was saying 'bubbles,' which meant Pepsi-Cola. He wanted a drink.'' But unless those who cared for him knew that, she said, ''he would become increasingly frustrated, and after a week he'd stop communicating with the outside world. That's the kind of tragic outcome that can be averted with a letter of intent.'' In fact, few families caring for children with disabilities take the time to map out a formal financial | Facing Hard Choices As the Disabled Age |
1166978_6 | philosophical knowledge, to impress our friends, to have a good time, to feel secure, etc. It is certainly not the case that all human motives reduce to the desire for offspring. Having children is just one reason to value what we possess. The problem here is that Low is interpreting her biological perspective as a theory of conscious human motives, trying to reduce them all to the motive of reproduction. But human motivation is indefinitely various. And the distinction between motive and biology is particularly stark once contraception breaks the link between sex and babies. Maybe it is true that we ultimately want sex because sex is the genes' method of getting themselves copied, but sexual desire is not the desire for genetic profit. A man may want both sex and children, but he may also want the former without the latter -- and contraception cuts the Gordian knot. (So does homosexuality, which Low appears to mention not once.) It may be that in the future the man with more copulations will be the man with fewer children -- certainly in developed countries an active sex life does not always go with a large family. If this trend persists, the genes for promiscuity could die out. LOW ends her book with a discussion of population and reproductive strategies. Population growth is the inevitable result of carrying out the genes' instructions. But the solution, as she argues, is not simply to limit the size of the population, it is to limit the population's per capita consumption. It is not necessarily the large family that puts pressure on the earth's resources, but the family that consumes too much. Rich small families are as much of a population problem as large poor ones. Bobbi Low's book is a useful survey of what is known about behavioral sex differences in animals and humans, covering biology, anthropology, sociology and history. It is clear and informative. There is, admittedly, hardly an elegant sentence in the book, the themes are not particularly original and it can be leaden in its recitation of facts; but as a sobering dip into the grim reality of sexual behavior, it serves its disillusioning purpose. Nature is indeed red in tooth and claw, and it is not much better where other organs are concerned. Colin McGinn, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, is the author most recently of ''The Mysterious Flame.'' | Some Guys Have All the Luck |
1167188_1 | conversations to and from a cell phone stashed in a pocket. Why? To a certain degree, because people are worried about brain tumors. My friend Bob has been talking about the boiled egg trick for weeks now. ''They put an egg between two cell phones and in a few minutes. . . .'' He pauses dramatically. ''In a few minutes the egg has boiled!'' You will not be able to duplicate these results at home; cell phones don't really boil eggs. But you might take note, as Bob and others have, of the genesis of the egg myth, which is rooted in increasing uneasiness about the health effects of cellular phone use. Or you might just respond, as I did, by pointing out that the egg didn't get cancer, so why worry? The fuss over cell phones and brain tumors, which has been present in some form almost since the phones' invention, traces to the fact that their antennae emit radiation, or microwaves, which is how they find and receive signals from network beacons. Recent news reports have stirred a new round of jumpiness over the idea of microwaves pouring into peoples' heads, and thus the craze in some cities for headsets, which allow the phones to be somewhere other than next to the ear. No studies directly link cell phone use to brain cancer. But all sorts of weird data is accumulating, said Dr. George L. Carlo, a lawyer with a Ph.D. in pathology, who was hired by the wireless phone industry's trade association to head up research in the area. Last fall Dr. Carlo broke ranks with the industry, announcing that study results he had marshaled from around the world added up to one big question mark. He has scolded cell phone makers for saying their technology is safe without qualification, and urges further investigation. In late November, the ABC News program ''20/20'' broadcast a report detailing tests that it said were independently conducted and measured the amount of radiation that penetrated the head from different cell phone models being used in different positions. Radiation from four of the five phones tested exceeded a Federal Communications Commission guideline in at least one position in analog mode, ''20/20'' said, except when headsets were used. The wireless telecommunications industry quickly denounced the ''20/20'' methodology, along with Dr. Carlo's apostasy, but by then many people had jumped to their own conclusions. | Fearing Rads, Cell Addicts Sprout Wires |
1167164_0 | In his introduction to ''Souper Tomatoes,'' (Rutgers University Press, $24) Andrew F. Smith writes that he set out to confirm the story that ''Robert Gibbon Johnson ate the first tomato in America on the courthouse steps of Salem, N.J.'' to prove the fruit was not poisonous. Didn't happen, Mr. Smith found. Nonetheless he became consumed with tomatoes, writing books on the history of the tomato in America and of ketchup in America. His third tomato tome, on tbe history of tomato soup in America, will appear in bookstores this month. Not surprisingly, the Garden State figures in much of that story, especially with the development of condensed soup by the Campbell Preserve Company in 1897. Mr. Smith goes on to discuss the marketing of tomato soup, the breeding of soup tomatoes, the establishment of tomato soup as American icon (Andy Warhol's mother served him tomato soup for lunch for 20 years), and finishes with a collection of old recipes. ''Take a dozen unpealed tamatas,'' begins an 1846 recipe for Tamata Soup. BY THE WAY | History: the Condensed Version |
1167343_1 | hunts in sight. Miscalculations and happenstance were responsible for this. I had planned a hunt with my sons on our newly acquired land in Maine and had canceled a trip to Minnesota because of that. But a visit that I made to the Maine holdings during a snowy, wet and cold week in October revealed that the cavernous lodge on that property couldn't be adequately heated for winter hunting. Then I came down with the flu. My friends, including my brother, each got a deer in Minnesota. A few weeks later, Ruth and I were on our way to New Hampshire. There was a trace of snow when we drove up the logging road that runs for about 11 miles along the Dead Diamond from the Grant's Gate Camp to Hellgate Gorge. The temperature was in the teens, and there was ice along the edges of the river and in its oxbows. At the Gate Camp I had learned from the Grant's caretaker, Lorraine Turner, that Put Blodgett of Lyme, N.H., had a party of eight at Merrill Brook cabin, which is about halfway up the road to Hellgate. Over the years, the Blodgett clan always included Put's uncle, Pete Blodgett of Dover, Mass. Pete, who hunted the Grant over a span of more than 70 years, died this summer in his late 90's. I also learned from the deer log at the Gate Camp that, with only four more days of the deer season left, 17 deer had been taken from the Grant since the season opened on Nov. 10. Ruth and I arrived at the Hellgate Gorge cabin shortly after noon on Dec. 2 and spent most of the remaining daylight hours getting our gear inside and setting up camp, lugging water from the river and kindling a good fire in the wood stove. She immediately succumbed to the magic of the place and as the light was dying made a few sketches of the river rushing through the gorge while I turned on the gas lamps and set about preparing supper. The weather turned around that night. The temperature rose to above freezing, and save for brief periods we never saw the sun again during our remaining three days. Early on, Put Blodgett and his oldest son, Peter, paid us a visit. They then departed to hike up to Hellgate and Lamb Valley Ponds. They were the | The Yield of a Gorge In New Hampshire |
1167211_1 | in their fields help students in those areas. But iMentor, which was founded and is financed largely by John Griffin, chief executive of a hedge fund called Blue Ridge Capital, uses the Internet for friendship as well as education. This broader role is a tough one for the Internet. There is the pressing question of the safety of e-mail communication between a stranger and a child, and the challenge of creating meaningful relationships online, without the reassurance of body language, verbal cues and facial expressions. ''Everything is a work in progress,'' said Rich Buery, the other executive director of iMentor. Since the group is so new, he said, ''Everything we do, we evaluate.'' The group furnishes mentors for 58 Christ the King students, all eighth graders. So far, the mentors like the experience. ''I don't necessarily have to leave my office to be of assistance to another,'' said Rose Registre, a lawyer at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, who works from 60 to 120 hours a week. She feels comfortable, she said, writing her student an e-mail saying, ''Will write later.'' Like most of the iMentor staff and volunteers, Ms. Registre, 26, has been a mentor for years, volunteering first through her church and then through her sorority. Mentors are given sample scripts to guide them in their e-mails, and they have assignments, such as describing their own hopes and dreams for the students. The mentors also voice their concerns to each other in an online forum, which iMentor monitors for warning signs that a child might need professional intervention, by a child welfare agency, for example. The students work on the iMentor curriculum three times a week, in computer class. Among the tasks are researching their potential careers, sending e-mail to their mentors with career questions and drawing a cartoon of their future. Students are asked to compose their e-mails carefully, with attention to tone and style. Angie Dorette, a teacher who has known the eighth graders since third grade, said this training is essential for success. In the beginning, Ronni, Mr. Klein's student, had image problems. ''I didn't know how to present myself,'' he said, looking over his rectangular glasses. ''Ditto,'' Mr. Klein said in a separate interview. But, like the mentors, the students seem to be warming up to the program. After several e-mails back and forth with Mr. Klein, Ronni was easing into a rhythm. | A Shoulder to Lean On, Via E-Mail |
1167264_0 | These resources may prove useful to families of children with disabilities: National Institute on Life Planning for Persons With Disabilities 447 E. College Ave. Jacksonville, Ill. 62650-2590 E-mail: refeec.edu. Web site: http://thunder.sonic.net/nilp/ Clearinghouse for information housing, employment, guardianship, wills, trusts and long-range planning. Families of Children With Disabilities Program Merrill Lynch 800 Scudders Mill Rd. Plainsboro, N.J. 08536 (800)637-7455, extension 4528. www.plan.ml.com/specialneeds Estate, financial and quality-of-life planning. The Arc of the United States 1010 Wayne Ave., Suite 650 Silver Spring, Md. 20910 (301)565-3842 www.thearc.org National voluntary organization dedicated to the needs of children and adults with mental retardation and their families. Web site includes useful links and a list of planning resources. BOOKS ''A Family Handbook on Future Planning,'' by Rick Berkobien (The Ar, $15, 301-565-3842). Step-by-step planning for families of children with mental retardation. ''Disability and the Family: A Guide to Decisions for Adulthood,'' by H.R. Turnbull and others (Paul H. Brookes Company, $29, 800-638-3775). Information and advice on determining mental competence, guardianship, financial planning and government benefits. ''Planning for the Future: Providing a Meaningful Life for a Child With a Disability After Your Death,'' by L. Mark Russell, Arnold E. Grant, Suzanne M. Joseph and Richard W. Fee (Book Masters, $24.95, 800-247-6553). How to work with lawyers, financial planners and other professionals in creating life and estate plans. ''Laying Community Foundations for Your Child with a Disability: How to Establish Relationships That Will Support Your Child After You're Gone,'' by Linda J. Stengle (Woodbine House, $15.95). Advice from a long-term-care consultant. | Planning Ahead |
1166987_8 | to make comparisons. ''Integrating technology's resources and tools means first of all getting it to the classroom,'' Ms. Roberts said. ''You have to drive the technology down to where the teachers and the kids are.'' In his classes, Mr. Nellen is convinced that e-mail provides advantages over traditional discussions with a large number of students. Typically, he explained, teachers ask a question and wait for students' hands to shoot into the air. ''You have the kids who don't say anything,'' he said, ''and the kids who won't shut up.'' Isa Lopez is also confident that the computer is having a positive effect. ''This is better,'' she said, scanning the half-dozen messages that had just appeared on her screen. ''We can't talk to everybody in a regular English class. You never talk about what people think; you just don't have time.'' That worries David Abram, a cultural ecologist and author of ''The Spell of the Sensuous,'' a 1996 book that delves into the need for learning through physical experience. ''We are skipping over a layer of experience that can only be cultivated through face-to-face speaking, conversation, storytelling,'' Mr. Abram said. Encouraging students to use e-mail in class brings new distractions as well. ''I send e-mail, but it's mostly to my friends,'' admitted Nepheny Garcia. Besides, ''I already know the answers,'' she added, pointing to the dozens of responses to Mr. Nellen's questions that her peers had already posted. Eighty miles away, in South Philadelphia, another inner-city school is experimenting with technology. Thirty-five juniors and seniors in St. Maria Goretti High School are sitting in front of 35 computers in a computer applications course. The girls, each wearing a uniform of black, red and white, are staring intently at their screens. Their backs are straight. Their hands grip the mice at their keyboards. Sister Rita Lenihan strides past the rows. She wants her students to demonstrate what they have learned in the last week: the art of setting tabs in the popular word-processing program Microsoft Word. ''Shrink the margins,'' she said loudly. ''Space up.'' ''Be careful of your tabulations,'' she continued. ''Let's try to get this on one sheet of paper.'' The girls click obediently. The task is to put three charts, full of tabulated figures, into one document. Among other skills they have learned are how to open documents, how to set margins on the ruler, how to cut and paste | O.K., Schools Are Wired. Now What? |
1167119_1 | distances, between one and about eight miles, so it's possible to look ahead to a time when cell antennas 80 to 160 feet high will stretch a few miles apart throughout the state. The problem for homeowners is that the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 guarantees companies the right to erect antennas. The law says its aim is to encourage competition and limit regulation. It says cities and towns may control where telecommunications towers go as long as they let them go somewhere. It says local regulations ''shall not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services.'' Although many municipalities, caught by surprise at the cell antennas going up around town, have scrambled to pass regulations to control their placement, the federal law makes taking action difficult. While the towns can dicker over a location, invoke zoning rules, and urge companies to try commercial locations first, they ultimately can't say no. Those who believe cell towers can cause health problems find that the federal telecommunications law says towns can't forbid towers based on health data. The federal government has said it has found no conclusive link between the antennas and health problems. B. Blake Levitt, the author of a book, ''Electromagnetic Fields,'' and a resident of Litchfield who often consults with towns on cellular towers, said the antennas give off high frequency radio and microwave currents that some doctors have linked to disease. ''People don't understand there's another side to this issue,'' Ms. Levitt said. Because the technology has changed so rapidly, the Connecticut Siting Council, an agency that controls the placement of utility structures, has watched its control over the placement of towers dwindle to almost nil. The state law requiring the council's approval doesn't extend to the new digital technology -- the so-called Personal Communications Systems towers, which use a different frequency than the traditional cellular towers. The state law calling for the council's review of applications to install antennas predates the newer technology, which means that companies installing antennas for their digital service don't have to apply to the state at all. ''If you were to ask me if our jurisdiction is obsolete, I would agree,'' said Joel Rinebold, executive director of the siting council. Mr. Rinebold said the council wants the state law changed to give it more control. But he noted that most people don't think about cell towers. ''People | Cell Phone Towers Are Sprouting In Unlikely Places |
1167274_1 | who are discovering with a certain anguish the globalization of their economy, these pension funds from abroad are the masters of this new world.'' In the United States, pension funds have been long-term investors in business for decades. They are an accepted, even welcomed, part of the financial landscape, seen as protectors of the savings of millions of working individuals and as more conservative and reliable than many other investment funds. But in Europe, where retirees have long relied on pay-as-you-go public pension systems and many industries have been financed by government or through cozy relationships with local banks, the mounting influence of such outside and outsized institutional investors is creating serious tensions. In Germany, the government recently assailed a hostile takeover bid by Vodafone AirTouch of Britain for Mannesmann, the German telecommunications conglomerate, as tantamount to an attack on German sovereignty. The bid had been favored by several institutional investors. In Italy, the government has expressed unease at the free flow of investment, declaring the former national telecommunications company, Telecom Italia, off limits to foreign hostile takeover bids and putting the brakes on banking deals. But nowhere have pension funds and other foreign investment firms set off more fury than in France. As French industry restructures to improve its global competitiveness, it has attracted billions of dollars in investment capital, much of it from American and British pension funds. Now, the funds' role in the French economy is spawning the latest in a series of fierce conflicts that pit French cultural values against the demands of international finance. Even the president of France, Jacques Chirac, complained publicly that French workers were being asked to sacrifice simply to ''safeguard the investment benefits of Scottish widows and California pensioners.'' Jean-Claude Trichet, governor of the Bank of France, the central bank, tried to explain what he called ''a French paradox.'' While France has emerged lately as the strongest locomotive of Europe's economy, he said in an interview, ''the image that is displayed might be misleading, since the rear-guard part of the economy is more eloquent than the successful part.'' THE issue weighs on French-American relations, already burdened by various squabbles. They include an American ban on French luxury foods, to protest French unwillingness to import hormone-treated American beef, and a refusal by France to buy genetically modified American crops. But the investment debate also complicates life for the government of Prime Minister | Resisting Those Ugly Americans; Contempt in France for U.S. Funds and Investors |
1167035_0 | John Lloyd's article (Dec. 12) about paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland was deeply disappointing. It consisted largely of four anecdotes, three of which involved horrible acts of violence. While it is true that in recent years there has not been a decline in ''punishment beatings,'' there has been a sharp decline in other important measures of paramilitary activity, including the number of deaths, injuries and firearms-and-explosives offenses. How could these and the many other facts that document the decline in political violence not be relevant to an article about political violence? The statement ''Peace is for the politicians and the media'' was shocking in its cynicism. I have been involved in Northern Ireland for five years and can assure your readers that peace is the intensely felt concern of the people. What is taking place now is the product of that concern. The politicians and the media are following the people, not the other way around. There is not yet a durable peace; genuine reconciliation will take time. But contrary to your article, life is better for most people. Of course, paramilitary violence remains a serious problem; it must be condemned and opposed. And other problems remain; unfortunately, there are criminals doing bad things in Northern Ireland. But that is true in every society. Suppose that a magazine in Northern Ireland published an article that consisted largely of descriptions of the brutalization of Abner Louima, the killing of Amadou Diallo and the pushing of Kendra Webdale under a subway train. Would the readers of that article be well informed about New York, or even about recent trends in crime in New York? Would they have a fair sense of daily life for most New Yorkers? Obviously not. Understandably, space doesn't allow you to give a complete history of every society described in your magazine. But The Times prides itself on its fairness and balance. In this instance you have failed to meet those standards. George J. Mitchell Washington | The Troubles That Won't Go Away |
1165798_0 | For Luggage, Whatever Works | |
1172839_1 | to security breaches or mishandling by the employees of the company or organization that operates the server. Furthermore, the courts can force Internet service providers to retrieve messages if they are deemed relevant to a case. More menacing than the courts, many employees have found, is the system administrators hired by corporations to screen offensive or sensitive e-mail in the workplace. The creativity of hackers and corporate sleuths in their e-mail surveillance, however, has been matched in recent months by services meant to make e-mail as private as a confession booth. ''This is becoming a very big category,'' said Steven Robins, an analyst with the Yankee Group, a technology consulting firm. ''As more and more business goes onto the Internet, people want the same safeguards as they get in any other medium.'' According to Forrester Research, the number of e-mail messages sent each day in the United States will grow to 1.5 billion by 2002. Among the first to see opportunity in this category was Tumbleweed Communications Inc., which was founded in 1993 and went public last fall. Tumbleweed's technology allows a user to send e-mail and inform recipients that they have received a document or a message that has been encrypted and stored on the sender's server computer. When a recipient clicks on a link inside the e-mail message, she is sent to that server site, where the encrypted document can be viewed on or retrieved from a secure Web page to which she alone has access. For instance, Datek, which licenses Tumbleweed's service, offers users the opportunity to receive confirmation of stock trades by e-mail. Because the correspondence is secure and documented, it meets requirements set by the Securities and Exchange Commission for the transmittal of trading information -- and spares Datek and its customers the expense and hassle of handling paper confirmation orders. Michael Dunn, a Datek spokesman, declined to say how much the company has saved in mailing costs. But he said 30 percent of the firm's confirmations were now handled electronically. ''The cost savings are significant,'' he said. Companies that license Tumbleweed's service typically pay in the ''mid-six figures'' upfront and between 3 cents and 50 cents for each e-mail message sent, according to Mark Pastore, Tumbleweed's vice president of corporate development. Tumbleweed ''is the leader right now,'' according to Alan Weintraub, research director of the Gartner Group, a consulting firm. ''But they won't be | E-Commerce Report; Wary of hackers and the courts, e-mail users are turning to services that keep their messages secure. |
1165058_7 | millennium is a new reverence for the environment. Until the most recent moment in human history, our relationship toward nature was always carelessly rapacious. But only since the Industrial Revolution have we been capable of doing irreparable damage to the land, water and air. We are the first generation to accept ecological stewardship as a duty to unborn generations. Yet we cannot ignore the fact that our desire to see poor countries reach prosperity is colliding with our need to curb fossil fuels, deforestation and the depletion of an all too exhaustible sea. Resolving those conflicts early in the new millennium may well be the test by which posterity most stringently grades us. If managed properly, capitalism, with its roots in individual self-interest, can be a powerful tool for creating the wealth that allows developing nations to cleanse the air, earth and water. Future generations will also measure what we did with the world's knowledge reserves. One of the rules for the next millennium must be that we have an obligation to disseminate, not hoard, new information about science, health and technology. The Internet has given us the tools for sharing. The will must still come from the human heart. In the end, the democratization of wealth and health depend on the worldwide democratization of knowledge. The Light of a New Day We will turn soon enough to the tasks that await us. Even now, the monumentality of this moment fades in the old familiarity of morning and afternoon. The sun has barely begun to gather itself after the winter solstice, and the light over the city and the country is so fragile that it threatens to splinter and fall in flakes to the ground, as it always threatens to do in January. And yet something about the sound of 2000 draws past and future near in a way that we have never quite known before. So here we are now, all of us, just next door to yesterday and yet somehow in a different world. This day's firstborn are already with us, and the first of us to die in this new calendar have already gone. Soon we will have slept a full night in this strange-sounding year, and then another. We cannot know how the new millennium will end, but we do have the power to determine how it begins and, perhaps, what it will remember of us. | 2000 and Beyond -- The Shape of an Age to Come |
1165217_0 | So far, most of the inventions of agricultural biotechnology have been new weapons for farmers in their fight against insects and weeds. A few make processes like making cheese more efficient. One big seller, a cow hormone produced in genetically altered bacteria, increases milk production. But many consumers think that there may be unacceptable health and environmental risks in biotechnology. The food industry is under pressure to show that it can produce not just more food, but also food so obviously improved that the benefits to consumers clearly outweigh any risks. Researchers say an impressive array of such products will become available in just a few years. Some will be the result of the kind of biotechnology that makes consumers most nervous -- namely, moving genes between organisms that would never mate naturally. Others will be created through traditional breeding and food production. BARNABY J. FEDER Rice THE ALTERATION: Enriched with beta carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. HOW IT'S DONE: Three genes -- two from the daffodil and one from a bacterium -- are inserted into the rice. THE BENEFITS: Would reduce the one million deaths of children and millions of cases of blindness that are attributed to vitamin A deficiency in developing countries each year. WHEN AVAILABLE: In 2003, to farmers. THE RESEARCHERS: The Institute of Plant Sciences in Zurich and the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, the Philippines, which will coordinate breeding and distribution. Milk THE ALTERATION: Elimination of the most common allergen. HOW IT'S DONE: Exposure to an enzyme during processing breaks down beta lactoglobulin, the allergenic protein that occurs naturally in milk. THE BENEFITS: Would help the 1 in 20 children with this allergy avoid vomiting and diarrhea; would reduce the risk of occasional deaths from the allergy. WHEN AVAILABLE: In 2005, to consumers. THE RESEARCHERS: Basic research led by Bob B. Buchanan at the University of California at Berkeley. Produce THE ALTERATION: Adding vaccines for diseases like hepatitis B. HOW IT'S DONE: Viral genes are inserted into the seeds. THE BENEFITS: Would replace injections with a cheaper, more convenient means of distributing vaccines. WHEN AVAILABLE: In 2005, probably first in powdered potatoes and tomatoes. THE RESEARCHERS: Initial research by Charles J. Arntzen and Hugh Mason of Cornell University's Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. Eggs THE ALTERATION: Enriched with appetite-reducing antibodies. HOW IT'S DONE: Hens are immunized to stimulate | Science Invades the Pantry |
1165196_1 | and a sign of hope from God. ''The main attraction,'' said Harvey Cox, a professor at Harvard Divinity School who has studied worldwide Pentecostalism, ''seems to be that it holds out the possibility of a very direct experience of the holy, the sacred and the transcendent.'' To Professor Cox, it is ''Everyman's mysticism.'' Estimates are that more than 200 million people belong to Pentecostal denominations and that more than 300 million others can be classified as ''charismatics'' and ''third wavers'' -- people who stay in mainstream Protestant or Catholic churches that have adopted Pentecostal practices like healings, speaking in tongues, casting out demons and laying on of hands upon the sick. Pentecostalism is most potent in the developing world and in places where only a century ago Christianity was regarded as a foreign intruder: in Africa and in Asia, especially South Korea and China. In other parts of the world it is encroaching on the dominant Christian traditions. In Latin and Central America, Pentecostalists are winning millions of converts from Roman Catholicism, and in Russia and other former communist countries, Pentecostalists are challenging the monopoly of Orthodox Christianity. The movement has spread fastest among displaced people and immigrants. In cities like Rio de Janeiro and Nairobi, disoriented immigrants from the countryside find that Pentecostal congregations offer a social network and connections to jobs and housing. In the United States, it is growing fastest among newcomers from Central and South America. ''In many countries, rapid changes brought about by urbanization and technology have shaken people loose of their traditional religious moorings,'' Professor Cox said. ''And this is a highly available, very portable religion which is uncannily suited to urban life and appeals to people who are cut off from their previous religious expressions.'' Tessie DeVore, the editor of Vida Cristiana, a Pentecostal magazine for Spanish speakers, discovered Pentecostalism after moving from Puerto Rico, where she was brought up a Roman Catholic, to attend college in Alabama. While there, she learned that her mother had cancer, and she says that the only person who really offered her comfort was the wife of one of her professors, who prayed with her and invited her to a Bible study and then to a Pentecostal church. Mrs. DeVore says she soon found herself at a service speaking in tongues. ''It felt natural, like it was something I should have been doing all the time, like | A Direct Line to God In an Impersonal Era |
1165048_0 | The centruy's turn has been a time of retrospectives: what was the most important event, who was the most influential thinker? Arts & Ideas decided to take a look ahead at what some of today's researchers are working on. From the most raked-over field, like the history of the ancient world, to the latest medical technology, scholars are coming up with fresh insights. Some ideas may turn into breakthroughs, and others may turn out to be dead-ends, but the journey is rarely boring. Here is a handful of works in progress. With scholars poring over the same texts for centuries, ancient history would appear to be a field in which it is difficult to plow new ground. But Sarah B. Pomeroy, distinguished professor of classics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, says there is much to be learned about the women of Sparta, the ancient city-state in southern Greece that defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War. ''It's very difficult in my field to find a subject that nobody has taken seriously,'' Ms. Pomeroy said. ''This subject has been around for 2,500 years but has turned out to be totally fresh.'' Sparta, which existed from 800 B.C. until A.D. 200, was renowned in the ancient world as a stoic, martial city-state that practiced eugenics. It was the society that inspired the modern English word ''laconic'' (after Laconia, the region surrounding Sparta), not to mention the adjective ''spartan.'' Spartan men were raised to be soldiers from an early age. Indeed, to build and maintain esprit de corps in the ranks, they were not allowed to live apart from their military units until age 30, even if they were married. Spartan women are often portrayed as having been as grim as the men. But Ms. Pomeroy, whose previous books include ''Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity,'' said that impression is wrong. ''The conventional wisdom was that they were the most oppressed women in the ancient world because they were simply baby-making machines,'' she said. ''But there is much more to it than that.'' Spartan women were in many ways among the most liberated of the ancient Greek world, she added. Sparta was one of the few Greek states where women received formal instruction in poetry, music, dancing and physical education. Spartan women drank wine and were famous for their beauty, Ms. Pomeroy | Works In Progress From All Over; Spartan Women, Liberated |
1165186_2 | have been widely used to transmit torrents of data between fixed points employing pulses of light rather than pulses of electricity. Now, Bell Labs engineers are trying to perfect a concept largely articulated by British Telecommunications P.L.C.: small wireless communications devices -- essentially antennas -- attached to fiber-optic lines every few hundred feet. Anyone within range of these transmitters could wirelessly tap into the fibers' vast capacity with their camera, or their video unit, or their living room remote control as easily as people use cell phones today. With thousands of miles of optical fiber being deployed around the globe every day, if not every hour, according to many analysts, the industrial world could soon be encased in a literal web of communications. But such a web is of little use if people still must link to the network with clunky, largely fixed devices like today's computers and telephones. That is why Bell Labs is developing new devices and new ways of interacting with them. In Holmdel, N.J., for instance, researchers at Bell Labs have developed what they call the world's smallest camera. It is on a microchip the size of a fingernail. Coupled with a lens and some supporting circuitry, an entire camera unit could be sewn into a lapel, perhaps as a security device. Were you mugged? The offender's picture could be on its way to the police within moments. Similarly small circuitry, coupled with the power of ubiquitous high-speed wireless connections, could allow doctors to continutally monitor the health of chronically ill people, using wireless biomonitors in a wristwatch. All of this is meant to facilitiate communication with people. Currently, communicating with someone who is not in the same room requires linking a set of electronic codes -- home phone numbers, work phone numbers, cellular numbers, fax numbers, pager numbers and e-mail addresses -- with the time to find the right code for the right moment. In a few years, you may be able to tell your watch, ''Call Bob,'' and not have to worry about where Bob is or what sorts of devices he has handy. Using technologies like those being developed at Bell Labs, the network will handle those chores -- finding Bob, if Bob wants to be found. Sound like science fiction? That's what many would have called the Internet just a decade ago. VISIONS: TECHNOLOGY: QUANTUM COMPUTERS AND CARS SMARTER THAN YOU ARE | Giving the Globe A Networked Skin |
1165136_1 | than half the number of planes that flew last New Year's Eve, as airlines around the world canceled thousands of flights because of low demand. United Airlines and American Airlines, the world's two largest carriers, said they had canceled about one-third of their flights yesterday. As a result, airports across the United States appeared desolate. The three New York airports -- Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark -- were expecting to handle only 270,000 passengers yesterday, compared with 430,000 on the same day last year. Many airline executives and aviation officials around the world had hoped to reassure the public by being passengers themselves on New Year's Eve. Jane Garvey, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, booked herself on several flights that were subsequently canceled. Yesterday afternoon, flanked by the head of the F.A.A.'s year 2000 effort, two public affairs officers, Senator Slade Gorton of Washington and a score of journalists, Ms. Garvey boarded an American Airlines flight from Washington to Dallas. With 100 empty seats available on the jetliner, one of a handful of passengers not directly connected to Ms. Garvey's efforts was Janet S. Rhodes of Long Beach, Calif., who said she came to Washington yesterday so that she could greet the new millennium aloft and tell her grandchildren about it. Ms. Rhodes said she had told her four sons, ''Just follow Jane Garvey's progress on television and you'll know where I am.'' The world's airlines and air traffic control centers spent an estimated $2.5 billion to assure that their computers could read the year 2000 correctly. But experts did not consider air safety to be particularly vulnerable. The only glitch reported yesterday occurred when printers in Alaska, California and Long Island that are used to relay information to controllers from airplanes flying over the ocean all went on the blink at midnight Greenwich time. The failure lasted only about 30 minutes and had no operational effect, the F.A.A. said, adding that it was not even clear that the problem was caused by the date change. Nevertheless, many passengers said they were not taking any chances by being in the air at the witching hour. ''I think it will probably be O.K., but I'm trying to get home before midnight,'' said Del Turner, who was waiting for a flight at Los Angeles International Airport. ''Something will happen. They haven't fixed everything.'' 1/1/00: TECHNOLOGY AND 2000 -- MOMENTOUS RELIEF | Fear of Computer Glitch Grounds Thousands of Air Travelers |
1165184_0 | LADIES and gentlemen, welcome to Shanghai,'' said China's president, greeting leaders of the world's powers as they gathered on Jan. 1, 2100. ''A century ago, our predecessors worried that the world was headed for a Malthusian meltdown -- that we could not feed, clothe or find enough energy for an overpopulated earth. This city was a symbol of their fears. ''Now we know the truth: there is a population crisis, but not the kind they had in mind. We are simply running out of educated, capable workers. In fact, in the places around the world that matter most to our prosperity and political stability, there are just too few babies.'' Far-fetched? Maybe so. After all, demographers and environmentalists spent much of the 20th century worrying that unrelenting growth in the world population would ignite social and political upheaval. But in crunching the numbers, it seems possible that the ticking population bomb of 2100 could indeed be a people shortage in the most advanced countries, even as the nations that now rank among the poorest continue to grow. And that prospect is driving a rethinking of the economic destiny of nations and speculation about who will best be able to exercise global power in a century. It is a humbling exercise. ''Just about everybody got it wrong in 1900,'' said Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer who has spent his professional life trying to figure out what population projections portend for the world. A century ago, when there were roughly 1.65 billion souls, almost no one predicted the near quadrupling of the world population, he noted. The projections for 2100 are equally susceptible to the unpredictability of plagues, wars and enthusiasm for procreation. ''Yet it seems pretty safe to say now that the population surge is almost over,'' Mr. Eberstadt said. ''A lot of countries are going to start shrinking soon -- Japan, Europe, China in 30 years or so. And that means that sooner than we think, we could be headed into the end of surplus manpower.'' Such conclusions fly in the face of all our experience. The story of the last half-century has been a terrifying acceleration in population growth. In 1850, there were slightly more than one billion people on earth, and by 1950 the figure had barely passed 2.5 billion. But then came the post-World War II explosion, in which another billion people were added to the world's population | In Leading Nations, A Population Bust? |
1165115_0 | As the world slid nervously yesterday through the shadow of its first global technology challenge, many year 2000 experts took special comfort in the relatively stable behavior of one of their principal tools in dealing with the problem: the not-always-reliable Internet. Service in the vast network of networks linking 60 million computers and more than 150 million users sagged at times in isolated sites as Internet users turned to e-mail messages, Web sites, newsgroups and electronic chat rooms to track the Year 2000's arrival in more and more time zones. But experts who mounted the most extensive effort ever to monitor the Internet's global reliability said that the overall performance was impressive and crossed their fingers as the Internet headed into peak usage hours last night. ''We might look back on this as graduation day for the Internet,'' said Michael L. Todd, a computer consultant in Irvine, Calif., who heads the Los Angeles chapter of the Internet Society, an international organization of Internet users and developers. The sense that the Internet was facing a trial of sorts during the Year 2000 rollover had grown steadily in recent weeks. Some hospitals, government agencies and manufacturers decided to close World Wide Web sites or cut off e-mail messaging during the rollover after hearing predictions that hackers would be treating the year 2000 as an occasion to spread computer viruses. And a poll last week by the Information Technology Association of America, done over the Internet, reported that technology managers viewed the Internet as more likely to be hit by problems than any other computer system or public utility. But organizations monitoring performance yesterday said there were no signs yet of major problems. One broad measure of all equipment on the Internet, including local service providers and some customers, showed a slow decline in the percentage of sites reachable during the day on the Internet as a whole and the World Wide Web in particular, but that may have happened because some Internet users disconnected as a precautionary measure, said John S. Quarterman, chief executive of Matrix Information and Directory Services, which publishes Internet performance data. Most users stayed wired, though, and the unsubstantiated computer rumors and anecdotes for which the Internet is infamous began flowing within hours of the arrival of Jan. 1 in Asia. One breathless e-mail message, signed ''familyman,'' claimed that an I.B.M. emergency parts center (later said to be | Internet's Cheering Squad Nervously Watches Clock |
1167986_2 | in their field find them within six months of graduation. DeVry differs from traditional colleges in other ways, too. It uses market research to help choose the fields it offers and television advertisements to attract students. And its faculty in Queens -- a mix of of 25 full-time and 41 part-time teachers -- is on contract (there is no tenure), and all teachers are evaluated annually. The only criterion is teaching, not research, although many members of the faculty -- more than half of whom have doctorates -- conduct research on their own time. ''There is a much more vigorous accountability system than at other colleges,'' said Roger C. Andersen, president of the Queens campus. Laboratory work is at the heart of what the college offers. Other colleges assign homework, but for students at DeVry, projects, problems and papers are commonly done during class on computers or machines. After three years of study and less than $40,000 in tuition (less for programs like accounting that require only eight semesters), students emerge with a bachelor's degree, a smattering of humanities and social sciences, and hands-on training in a business or technical field like electronics, computer information systems or accounting. DeVry's businesslike approach, which some see as a threat to more traditional, not-for-profit colleges, has paid dividends not only in steadily rising revenues and earnings (DeVry Inc. earned a record $39 million last fiscal year on revenues of $421 million), but also in an expanding student body. In November, the company had 43,063 undergraduates, and another 6,180 graduate students at its graduate school of management. While the formula may be efficient, some educators at more traditional colleges are concerned that students are shortchanged. ''The purpose of college should be to expand horizons and allow students to explore,'' said Joanne Reitano, a history professor at CUNY's La Guardia Community College, just a block from DeVry. ''The purpose of education is to nurture, not to narrow.'' In an old industrial neighborhood near the 59th Street Bridge, the Queens campus is DeVry's first in New York City, but Mr. Taylor envisions two or three eventually. And despite abundant competition, the 14-month-old campus is ahead of projections, DeVry executives say. With 1,248 students this term -- three-quarters of them black or Hispanic -- the college has already exercised its option to expand to three floors from two in its building, the former International Design Center of | DeVry Gives Career Training the Old College Try |
1169540_0 | The Transportation Department is re-thinking a plan to test whether an airport security measure discriminates against members of minorities after the Arab American Institute complained that the test was worse than the problem it was supposed to detect. The institute objected to the department's plan to ask passengers about their religion and ethnic background to help determine whether they were being unfairly singled out by security officers. The institute complained that asking the questions would contribute to the perception that Arabs were unfairly viewed as suspects. The security measure, adopted by the Federal Aviation Administration in late 1997, is called the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. Using secret criteria, it identifies passengers about whom enough is known so that they are not subjected to extra security measures, including searches of checked baggage or more careful scanning of carry-on luggage. Before the system was introduced, Arab-Americans and others complained that it might unfairly single out people because of their race, ethnic background or religious beliefs. The F.A.A. said that for security reasons it would not say what the selection criteria were. But the agency said the criteria did not include race or religion, and the Justice Department, after conducting a review, agreed. In December 1999, however, the Transportation Department, the F.A.A.'s parent, said it would test the prescreening system for what it called ''disparate impact,'' meaning that certain ethic groups received disparate treatment. To do that, the department said it would survey planeloads of people at six or seven airports, starting with Detroit, beginning as early as April, and focusing on flights to Europe that connected with flights to the Middle East. The idea was to determine the ethnicity and religion of everyone on the flight, to get from the airlines data on who had been subjected to extra screening and then to determine ''whether the selection criteria in fact have a disparate impact,'' according to a plan the department sent the Arab group. The department drafted a form asking passengers for their name, sex, race, ''ethnicity/national origin,'' religion and citizenship. It asked the Arab group for help in winning the cooperation of Arab and Arab American passengers. But James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said he had asked the department to drop the survey idea. ''Everybody knows we're already viewed as suspect,'' Mr. Zogby said. ''If you live in a country where you feel you are judged guilty because | Objections Stall Test to Detect Prejudice in Airport Screenings |
1169534_3 | Countries adopting the dollar ''may lose some flexibility in domestic policy issues,'' John S. Reed, the co-chairman of Citigroup, acknowledged in a speech to a Mexican bankers' group last year. But he and several other analysts argue that any relinquishing of autonomy would be offset by increased investment and capital flows and other gains. ''Full dollarization, if credible, eliminates devaluation risk, and, consequently, will likely result in interest rates which are both lower and less sensitive to crisis in other countries,'' Guillermo Calvo, director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland and a former adviser to the International Monetary Fund, said in recent testimony before Congress. ''In other words, the incidence of contagion will diminish.'' Those who advocate formal adoption of the American dollar argue that it would also benefit countries in which wage-earners are used to seeing their purchasing power eroded by high inflation and a weak currency. ''I don't know of a single worker who would complain if he were paid in dollars,'' Alberto Fernandez Garza, president of the Mexican Employers' Federation, said recently. Indeed, some analysts even suggest that dollarization could be a tool to reduce income inequality. Today, Mr. Hausmann said, ''workers are paid in pesos and executives in dollars, and workers can see the advantage of that; they want exchange-rate stability, too.'' The United States position on the issue is one that former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin once described as ''agnostic.'' While the Clinton administration sees potential advantages and opportunities to extend American interests and power, it has also expressed concern about the mechanics of the process and the added burdens it might generate. ''We would never put ourselves in a position where we envisioned actions that we would take would be of assistance to the rest of the world but to the detriment of the United States,'' Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, told a Congressional panel last year. To Latin American economists, that meant Washington is unwilling to extend the safety net of the Federal Reserve system to any dollarized countries that get into economic trouble. Nor would the Fed conduct monetary policy to take account of cyclical differences between Latin America and the United States. One clear benefit to the United States would come from ''seignorage'' fees that would have to be paid by countries that abandon their own currencies. Though it costs only pennies | Using the Dollar To Hold the Line; U.S. Currency Becomes Ecuador's |
1169568_4 | ''in the study of the liberal arts through the great books,'' a rigorous endeavor that requires them to take a two-semester survey course in Western civilization and five courses in ''the great books.'' The program, which withstood a yearlong battle in various faculty committees, emphasizes Homer, Plato and Dante, among other Western writers, although there have been one-time courses in the Koran and in Sanskrit epics. At Delta State, a university of about 4,000 students midway between Jackson, Miss., and Memphis, a new minor in the ''great books'' centers on four courses: the classical tradition (Herodotus, Euripides), the Judeo-Christian tradition (St. Augustine, Chaucer), the early modern world (Hume, Jane Austen) and the modern world (Freud, Darwin). ''There was some discussion at one time that we could add a non-Western section, 'great works of the Asian tradition,' or something like that,'' said Miriam C. Davis, an assistant professor of history. ''The problem is we don't have anyone who feels qualified to teach it.'' As Professor Gans of Wright College sees it, virtually all the writers who have asked the most profound questions about life -- and posited the most eloquent answers -- did so at least 50 years ago, and more likely centuries earlier. That theirs happens to be an overwhelmingly white male club, he said, is no reason to counterbalance their works with those of more contemporary writers, many of them minorities, who have yet to pass the test of time -- no matter that some, like Mr. Garcia Marquez, have won the Nobel Prize. Professor Gans added: ''I wanted these kids to have a certificate where they could go to a four-year institution and say: 'When I was at Wright College, I read the best that was thought and said. I learned about Thucydides. I learned about Schopenhauer, Plato, Mill, Aristophanes, Kant.' '' One of Professor Gans's students, Keith Morgan, 31, who enrolled at Wright after he left the Army as a sergeant in 1996, said he had seen much of himself in the story of another returning veteran: Jay Gatsby. No matter that ''The Great Gatsby'' and its creator, F. Scott Fitzgerald, were white, and Mr. Morgan is black. ''I have a dream, just like Gatsby, to be successful,'' said Mr. Morgan, who hopes to become a guidance counselor and thinks a knowledge of the Western classics will help. ''To me, as a black man, you have to | After Bitter Campus Battles, The 'Great Books' Rise Again |
1170012_3 | two years old and whether it will last for a full 20 or 30 years remains to be seen. If a longer-term shift has occurred, and La Nina materializes more frequently as a result, this winter's highly variable pattern of weather in the United States would probably become more familiar. In it, the positions of warm and cold air masses and storm tracks shift so that the eastern part of the country is often exposed to warm weather. Then the masses drift and sudden cold hits the East. Meanwhile, the Northwest becomes stormier. Then the pattern repeats. The Climate Prediction Center has forecast that La Nina will persist into the spring, then fade. What will happen after that is unclear. There is an additional complication just now: Atmospheric conditions in the North Atlantic have shifted in recent days to a new pattern in which the Northeast and Middle Atlantic are exposed to the likelihood of cold, stormy weather. How that will play out over the next few weeks is not certain; but government forecasters predict that February will be warmer than normal in the southern tier of the country but colder than normal in the northern tier, with above-normal precipitation in the Northeast, Ohio Valley, Midwest and Pacific Northwest. If the Pacific Decadal Oscillation persists in its new state, experts say, it might also portend drier weather and more frequent droughts in the southern tier. Moreover, increased hurricane activity is associated with this phase of the oscillation, and there has been such an increase in the last five years. Scientists believe that large-scale climatic fluctuations like the Pacific oscillation affect the global temperature. The last time the oscillation was in its present state, from about 1945 to about 1976, a global warming trend that had begun early in the century leveled off. Then it resumed when the oscillation flipped to its opposite state, rising in the 1990's to the highest level ever recorded. Since the mid-1970's, federal scientists say, the average global surface temperature has risen at a rate equal to 3.5 degrees per century. (The world is 5 to 9 degrees warmer now than in the depths of the last ice age 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.) The dominant view among experts is that emissions of heat-trapping industrial waste gases like carbon dioxide are responsible for at least part of the last century's global warming of about one degree. | Ocean Change Making Winter More Volatile |
1169916_1 | high. But many had grown to more than 120 feet, and with roots close to the surface because the water table is so high, they were particularly vulnerable to high winds. Still, a lack of funds and a general disinclination to do anything too abrupt that might upset the public had slowed major replanting efforts. Even when park officials had to replace 182 diseased chestnut trees, their press operation went into high gear to explain why it was necessary. ''The storms of 1999, however, have forced everyone's hand,'' said Hubert Astier, the president of the state-run museum and park. ''A lot of work has to be done. The only real issue is getting the money.'' The Christmas storms toppled trees throughout the park, from the groves carefully laid out near the chateau where footmen once raced ahead of the king to make sure the fountains were on, to the more woody areas surrounding the Trianon and the Petit Trianon. One of the park's chief gardeners, Alain Baraton, likened the destruction to a World War I battlefield. ''It actually looks like Verdun,'' Mr. Baraton said. ''Every space is touched. All kinds of trees are down.'' The government will pay some of the nearly $40 million that repairing the chateau and the grounds is expected to cost, and the public will help as well. What will be done with the funds, however, is already decided. Officials developed a program for the park nine years ago, after a 1990 storm took down 1,600 trees. The plan aims to restore much of the park to the way it was under Louis XIV, the flamboyant Sun King, who hovered over every intricate detail. The gardens were at their peak under Louis XIV and have never since been so carefully, and expensively, maintained. In fact, major renovations of the gardens have taken place about every hundred years, usually spurred by fierce storms. As a result, a messy collection of partial restorations accreted on top of changing royal visions. Louis XIV himself redid parts of the park more than once in his lifetime. The restoration plan that was developed by a committee of 20 experts generated little controversy. Restorations in France generally aim to go back to the earliest version that can be authenticated through plans, documents or paintings. ''There really wasn't much argument about restoring the garden that Louis XIV built,'' said Olivier de Rohan Chabot, | An Ill Wind Gives Versailles the Push It Needs |
1169884_1 | access to the databases of operations that sell term papers, they would be able to spot many commercial term papers because they can check databases that professors are starting to use to keep copies of term papers from past semesters. If the service finds similarities, it notifies the teacher, who must then decide whether the similarities are coincidences, justified by proper footnotes or outright dishonesty. Companies that sell anti-plagiarism services say dozens of schools are testing such services. Fees start at about $20 a year for a class of 30, with cheaper per-student or per-class rates for larger contracts. The fees are paid by universities or teachers. Some students criticize the technology, saying it undermines honor codes based on trust between students and faculty. Plagiarism.org was developed by John Barrie, a graduate student in biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley. He said he had developed the site to ''level the playing field for honest students.'' Papers sent to Plagiarism.org are checked by a computer, which looks for phrases matching those from other sources or are partly altered (www.plagiarism .org). The computer compares the term papers with the archives of free online cheating sites. The computer also does Web searches to look for similarities. It also compares essays with papers from previous semesters and other universities. Within 24 hours, the company sends a report of its findings to the teacher by e-mail. Teachers are cautioned by the companies not to use that information as absolute proof of plagiarism. The reports merely point out phrases that should be examined more closely. Teachers must check for themselves whether flagged sentences are attributed. Some cheaters may try to evade detection by stealing only a few paragraphs, changing words or inserting the plagiarized material into the middle of a term paper. But Matt Hunter, founder of the Essay Verification Engine, or EVE (www.canexus.com), an antiplagiarism service based in Sackville, New Brunswick, said that software like his usually uncovered even subtle dishonesty. ''My software takes an essay, fragments it, and if a student has changed the words, it still finds the pieces,'' said Mr. Hunter, who is a college student. This is not the first time that technology has been used to uncover cheating. A system that has been in use for years, the Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program, lets a teacher find out if a student is truly the author of a paper by | Brilliant or Plagiarized? Colleges Use Sites to Expose Cheaters |
1169961_4 | of the lowest in the industry, according to analysts. ''Aventis won't leave life sciences until they get all the savings from the merger,'' said Sergio Traversa, a drug analyst with Mehta Partners. ''But everybody will come to the conclusion that agricultural and pharmaceuticals are good businesses, but they are not good together.'' Several factors may explain why some drugmakers were wrong about the potential of life sciences. First, analysts believe that drug executives, who tend to be very insular, did not fully understand how cyclical agricultural prices could be. ''Agriculture is, by its nature, an unpredictable business,'' said Neil Sweig, a drug analyst with Ryan, Beck & Company. ''The depressed conditions in 1999 grew worse, and there are no signs of a recovery for any time to come.'' But the short-sightedness does not end there. During the last decade, life science companies -- including Monsanto and Novartis -- spent billions of dollars developing seeds that were naturally resistant to pesticides and that could produce food that could lower cholesterol. Life science executives had thought that these genetically modified foods would allow farmers to grow more crops with less effort. Yet, despite being knowledgeable about trends when introducing a prescription drug, these executives were dumbfounded when consumers in Europe refused to eat genetically modified foods. The carnage has been enormous. American farmers lost some $200 million in corn sales to Europe last year because of the backlash over ''Frankenstein foods.'' Monsanto has been especially hard hit. During the last several years, Monsanto has spent $8 billion acquiring seed companies, only to be sued last month by a group of farmers for trying to control the world seed market. The farmers have also accused the company of rushing genetically engineered foods to market without proper testing. Monsanto has said the suit has no merit. ''Given the controversy over genetically engineered foods, there does not seem to be a market for it,'' said Bill Leach, a packaged foods analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. ''People have become very emotional about it. It's like beating your wife. There's nothing you can say to make people happy about it.'' Monsanto may be in for even more trouble. Its stock has tumbled 13 percent since last month's announcement of its $27 billion merger deal with Pharmacia & Upjohn. Analysts have become convinced that shareholders will torpedo the deal. Officials of Monsanto declined to comment; a Pharmacia | Rise, and Fall, of 'Life Sciences'; Drugmakers Scramble to Unload Agricultural Units |
1171843_1 | the unwieldy beast that is the Internet, which has rapidly become a means for Chinese to bypass the state-controlled media to obtain and transmit information. The new regulations for the first time extend the state secrets law to the Web, including chat rooms and personal e-mail. For example, the use of e-mail to transmit what might be regarded as secret information is expressly forbidden. The regulations also put operators of chat rooms on notice that they will be held liable for their content. And Internet sites are required to submit to ''examination and approval by the appropriate secrecy work offices,'' although the rules do not specify what that process involves. A basic principle of the new Computer Information Systems Internet Secrecy Administrative Regulations is that ''whoever puts it on the Internet assumes responsibility.'' The Internet has emerged not only as an effective propaganda tool of the government, but also as a potent means to organize and publicize popular discontent. It has been used by overseas dissidents to communicate with kindred spirits in China and by the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to organize protests. Last year, a computer technician was sentenced to two years in prison for providing 30,000 Chinese e-mail addresses to dissidents abroad. Last week, a group of disgruntled farmers in a small village in Anhui province in central China turned to the Internet and e-mail to expose a corrupt local Communist Party chief. China now has nearly nine million Internet users, up from two million a year ago, according to a survey by the government's China Internet Information Center. But some say the nine million figure may be too low. The information center also said China had 35.6 million e-mail accounts. In recent months, government officials have repeatedly said that they were planning to issue new regulations to impose further controls on both the content of and the financial arrangements behind the Internet in China. The regulations today are the first, but probably not the last, effort to spell out what that might entail. Another law, adopted quietly last fall, requires all the people who use encryption software to register with the government by Monday. The software is used to encode e-mail messages so that they can not be read by anyone but the intended recipient. Financial regulations will follow soon, officials said, and those rules are expected to restrict in some fashion foreign investment in the | China Lists Controls To Restrict the Use Of E-Mail and Web |
1171661_2 | because they use a series of cells, or transmission sites, that are spread out to cover each service area. Early cellular phones transmitted low-power analog radio signals on an 800-megahertz frequency. (Analog refers to the process of sending an audio signal in a continuous wave.) Analog cellular networks, which are much older than the digital networks that are currently gaining ground, also offer wider coverage. Although any type of mobile telephone is often referred to as a cell phone, some people differentiate between phones that use the old analog cellular networks and ones that don't. Phones that don't are often just referred to as wireless. Phones labeled as wireless usually use digital signals to send and receive calls. Digital phones also have their own type of networks, which were built after the old analog networks. Unlike analog phones, which send a continuous sound wave, digital phones work by sampling just parts of the sound wave and then transmitting pieces of data quickly in bursts. Digital networks may not cover as much territory as analog ones, but they boast (in theory) better sound and clearer, more secure signals that are harder to decode by people who may be listening in on phone calls. (You should note that no type of cellular or wireless phone call is completely secure from eavesdroppers.) Roaming -- making calls outside the normal coverage area offered by your service provider's calling plan -- is often easier on an analog network because of the wider coverage area. A dual-band mobile telephone can work with either system. Most large metropolitan areas are covered by digital networks already, and the networks are continuing to expand. If you have a question about coverage in your area, most wireless service providers offer network maps and coverage options right on their Web sites. Many PCS phones (Personal Communications Services) are based on digital technology and usually operate on a frequency of 1900 megahertz. Because of the faster speeds that a digital network can provide for transmitting data, digital phone networks are able to handle such mobile treats as wireless Internet services. Nextel is another type of digital wireless phone technology that can combine telephone functions with two-way radio capability. J. D. BIERSDORFER Circuits invites questions about computer-based technology, by mail to Questions, Circuits, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036-3959 or by e-mail to QandA@nytimes.com. Q & A | Sorting Out All Those Ports On the Back of the Computer |
1171839_2 | how much he can expand. Purchasing power is low in a country where the average per capita income is estimated by international economists to be about $900 a year. Like other importers of goods besides sugar, oil and other commodities, Mr. Samin has no access to credit and can acquire hard currency to pay his Italian supplier only by buying dollars from a Syrian exporter who has earned them. In practice that means he asks around to find, say, a farmer who has sold vegetables for dollars to a neighboring country. The farmer, who may have earned $20,000, is required to sell one-fourth of the dollars to the government. The rest he can sell for Syrian pounds to an importer who tracks him down, but only through the government-owned commercial bank. ''It restricts my ability to grow,'' said Mr. Samin, who knows something of conventional business practices because he worked for an insurance company in the United States for a few years after finishing college. ''Syria just does not have yet the structures necessary to provide financing for import and export.'' But its natural trading partners in the region do have them. In recent years Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and the Persian Gulf states have largely unleashed their entrepreneurs, created capital markets and opened their economies to investment. Unlike most Syrians, products of an insular political regime, many of the new Arab entrepreneurs in those countries have traveled and lived outside. ''Not so long ago, it was the Gulf countries that hired Syrians to come and give technical and business advice,'' said Thaer Laham, the owner of a can factory who was exposed to another way of doing business during his college years in the United States. ''Now look at them. They are ahead of us and export their own products to us.'' In many cases the imports coming from other Arab countries are cheaper than the same Syrian-made goods, which cost more to produce despite the country's low wages. One reason is the government's pricing policy for Syria's own resources. Domestic clothing and textile manufacturers, for example, pay 150 percent more than European importers for the same Syrian-grown cotton. The competition is likely to become tougher in the coming years, regardless of whether Israel is part of the regional trading mix, because of a 1997 agreement among Arab states, including Syria, to gradually eliminate all trade barriers. The effect | Syria Businessmen Yearn for Reforms |
1171663_4 | day last summer. Grizzlies have also made their way to areas at the edge of Whitefish, a resort town, to eat garbage, said Tim Manley, who handles problem grizzlies for the Montana wildlife department. Garbage isn't the only feeding problem. In much of the West, new homes are landscaped with plants like arborvitae that deer find irresistible. Then, as the deer follow a culinary trail of apple trees, tomato plants and azaleas, mountain lions follow along, waiting to cull the herd. Dry weather and poor food crops during last summer's drought in the East sent black bears into suburbs from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania, where they raided barbecue grills and even refrigerators. In New Jersey, where the number of black bear sightings doubled in 1999 from the previous year, children at one bus stop were frightened by an errant bear. Homeowners in Pennsylvania regularly find black bears hibernating under their patios. No matter what the predator, the problem is the same. ''They don't know where a handout ends and a hand begins,'' said Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife researcher who has studied alligators and crocodiles. But if the predator takes too big a bite, it is killed and there is a backlash against the species. ''And that's not the animal's fault,'' he said. The mountain lion, a fast predator with paws the size of a catcher's mitt, poses the most widespread problems throughout the West. Numerous attacks have been fatel -- almost all of them on children or women, because they are similar in size to the lion's natural prey, deer. The lions don't always win. In 1994, an old lion with few teeth attacked Suzanne Groves, 25, a biologist, as she took stream samples in the Mancos River in southern Colorado. The lion bit the back of her head and held her under water for several seconds. The two wrestled, and the woman ended up on top, with her arm in the lion's mouth to hold it down. Then she grabbed a pair of forceps and stabbed the animal, which ran away. It was later shot by wildlife agents. ''The only way you're going to win a fight with a cougar is if it doesn't have any teeth,'' said Todd Malmsbury, a spokesman for the Colorado wildlife division. In South Florida, ''any body of water larger than a puddle can have an alligator in it,'' Mr. Mazzotti | Man vs. Beast: Whose Neighborhood Is It, Anyway? |
1171746_0 | A study of 46,355 women has confirmed earlier findings that long-term use of hormone replacement after menopause can increase the risk of breast cancer. Researchers said the new study, done at the National Cancer Institute and published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, provided relevant information but still did not resolve the dilemma faced by millions of women who are trying to weigh the pros and cons of hormone replacement. Breast cancer is just one of a panoply of serious conditions affected by the hormones. ''There are always issues of competing risks,'' said Dr. Larry Norton, head of the division of solid tumor oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study. ''Every individual has to balance benefit and risk. Individualizing care is the key.'' Hormone replacement eases menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, insomnia and vaginal dryness. It is known to prevent osteoporosis, a serious weakening of the bones, and it is thought to protect women against cardiovascular disease. Preliminary studies suggest that it may also help prevent Alzheimer's disease, colon cancer and macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. The drawbacks of the treatment include an increased risk of breast cancer and of blood clots, which can be life threatening. Women with a strong family history of breast cancer should not use hormone replacement, Dr. Norton said. Those with a low risk of breast cancer and a high risk of fractures from osteoporosis would clearly benefit from the hormones, he said. But the decision is rarely so clear cut. Most women using hormone replacement take two hormones: estrogen and progestin. The estrogen replaces what the body lacks because the ovaries shut down at menopause and provides the treatment's benefits. But given alone, estrogen also increases the risk of uterine cancer. Progestin counters that risk, which is why the hormones are given in combination. The only women advised to take estrogen alone are those who have had hysterectomies and therefore do not have to worry about uterine cancer. Earlier studies had found a small increased risk of breast cancer among women taking estrogen and progestin, but the risk was attributed largely to the estrogen. The new study suggests that some of the risk is due to the progestin. The study included postmenopausal women from 29 breast cancer screening centers who took hormone replacement treatment from 1980 to 1995. The researchers relied on | Study Backs Hormone Link To Cancer For Women |
1171816_0 | To the Editor: Several technologies are rapidly converging where and when many of us spend several hours a week, in our cars. Internet access, navigation and guidance systems, and traveler information systems are reaching the marketplace now. Recent studies have reported that the incidence of accidents increases when drivers are using their mobile phones, even when hands-free. Being more responsible about such activities yourself may not protect you from the next vehicle. I'm not a fan of more regulations, but if we can have laws that you must wear your seatbelt when you are in your car, we have some kind of precedent for addressing the problem. BOB FIELDING Forest Hills, N.Y. INCOMING | Technology on the Road |
1171722_0 | Negotiators trying to forge the first global treaty regulating trade in genetically modified products have tentatively agreed to eliminate some of what the United States government feared would be onerous restrictions on American farm exports. Washington has been opposing a proposal for ''advanced informed agreement,'' which would require exporters of genetically modified crops like corn and soybeans to obtain permission in advance from each importing country, saying that would tie up agricultural trade. But under a preliminarily agreement announced this morning, information about genetically modified crops would be posted to a central clearinghouse, and it would be up to each country to decide whether to ban the imports. ''It's very different from advanced informed agreement,'' David B. Sandalow, an assistant secretary of state and the chief American negotiator, said. Still, Mr. Sandalow and representatives of American biotechnology and agriculture companies stopped far short of declaring victory because major issues remain unsettled. One clause that Washington opposes would allow countries to ask for prior notification of genetically altered crop imports in some cases. How to handle crops is just one issue confronting delegates from more than 130 nations here negotiating a so-called Biosafety Protocol. Many other sticky questions remain, like how much scientific evidence would be required for a country to ban an import. Still, negotiators said progress is being made and that the cooperative atmosphere is far different from the recriminatory mood a year ago in Cartagena, Colombia, when talks collapsed after the United States and some other big agricultural exporting nations rejected a draft approved by the other countries. The mood is raising hopes that an agreement can be reached by the self-imposed deadline of Friday, though that is far from assured. ''I'm very optimistic and my optimism is increasing day by day,'' Juan Mayr, the environment minister of Colombia and chairman of the negotiations, said today. Nearly 50 environmental ministers -- who rank higher than the negotiators here now -- are arriving for the final two days of the talks, a sign, Mr. Mayr said, of political will to make a deal. Europe and the developing countries have said a treaty is needed to allow countries to bar imports of genetically modified organisms that might pose a threat to their environment or health. Washington is willing to have the advanced informed agreement requirements apply to seeds and micro-organisms that would be released into the environment, but not to | Optimism at Global Trade Talks on Genetically Modified Crops |
1168659_4 | South Korea would continue to rely on foreign firms to launch heavier communications satellites that are placed in orbit, he said. ''We don't want to depend on other countries anymore,'' Mr. Choi said. ''We pay a lot of money to outside countries and we have to wait for launching time which is dependent on their schedule and wastes our time and budget.'' Space agency officials said that South Korea needs to place at least 19 new satellites in orbit by the year 2025 and that the country can build its own satellite launching pad for about the same cost of paying a foreign firm to launch four or five satellites. South Korea now has six satellites, three for communications and broadcasting and three for scientific research, and all carried into orbit abroad by foreign-made rockets. If its rocket is cost-efficient, South Korea could also use the technology to compete in the lucrative commercial satellite launching business. The highly competitive industry is currently dominated by three major players: the Boeing Company's Delta rockets and Lockheed Martin's Atlas rockets, both from the United States, and Ariane rockets, made by the European consortium Arianespace. Russia and China have small portions of the market. But space experts said that South Korea faces considerable challenges building a launching vehicle made solely with its own technology, particularly in integrating the various systems of the rocket. Despite years of development and billions of dollars in expenditures, many advanced countries still struggle to master rocket technology. Last month, Japan said that it was abandoning its troubled H-2 rocket project after a series of costly failures, including the loss of an H-2 rocket that plunged into the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff in November. Japanese, which had invested $4.14 billion in the program since 1986, is still investigating the cause of the rocket failure. Still, a growing number of countries are announcing plans to build their own satellites or develop rockets to launch them, partly for the prestige that comes with such capability but also for the possible commercial and technological applications. ''More and more countries are realizing that space is really the next frontier and not just for exploration,'' said Duane Brown, a spokesman for National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States. ''It's expensive and takes a lot of hard work and trial-and-error, but space has become a global venture that makes a lot of sense.'' | South Korea Plans to Begin Rocket Program |
1168652_0 | The Spanish judge behind efforts to try Gen. Augusto Pinochet for human rights abuses asked Britain today for a second medical examination of the former Chilean dictator to determine if earlier tests erred in ruling him unfit to stand trial. The judge, Baltasar Garzon, in a written opinion, appealed to Home Secretary Jack Straw, who announced on Tuesday that he was inclined to release General Pinochet, 84, after nearly 15 months of house arrest in Britain, because four British doctors recently deemed him unfit for trial. The results of that examination, conducted on Jan. 5, were released only to the British government and general's defense lawyers. Judge Garzon said that two forensic doctors appointed by his Madrid court should take part in the new examination and that his court should get the results of both tests. Under Spanish law, General Pinochet could be excused from trial only if he were mentally impaired and could not understand the charges. ''It constitutes a universal negative precedent,'' the judge warned the British government, ''to avoid a criminal proceeding for unknown medical reasons.'' Mr. Straw has set a deadline of next Tuesday to receive comments from Spain and other parties to the case. But in a fresh sign of the political overtones of the proceedings, the Spanish government said it might not send Judge Garzon's petition through diplomatic channels to London if it does not contain new elements for the case. Foreign Minister Abel Matutes said today that the judge's document had arrived at his ministry, but he promised only that it would be studied over the weekend. Spain's conservative government has publicly maintained neutrality in the case, which has put relations with Chile under strain. But many advocates of putting General Pinochet on trial for rights abuses during his 1973-90 military rule charge that Madrid has been working behind the scenes to undercut Judge Garzon's effort. Joan Garces, a Spanish lawyer representing victims of repression in Chile, expressed confidence that Judge Garzon's petition would reach London by next week's deadline. The Chilean government has readied a military jet to whisk General Pinochet home to Chile if Mr. Straw sets him free. Judge Garzon wrote that physical impairment and old age would not be sufficient grounds for exclusion from trial. He cited the cases of Klaus Barbie, a Gestapo official in occupied France, and the French Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, who were tried and | Doubting Pinochet Is Unfit, Spaniard Calls for 2d Opinion |
1166358_3 | the Manhattan Hilton, Mr. Cooper decided to attempt a private call before going to a press conference upstairs in the hotel. He picked up the two-pound Motorola handset called the Dyna-Tac and pushed the ''off hook'' button. The phone came alive, connecting Mr. Cooper with the base station on the roof of the Burlington Consolidated Tower (now the Alliance Capital Building) and into the land-line system. To the bewilderment of some passers-by, he dialed the number and held the phone to his ear. Whom did he call for this historic event? ''The first call I made was to Joel Engel, the Bell Labs head of research,'' Mr. Cooper said. ''I think they were a little bit annoyed. They thought it was impertinent for a company like Motorola to go after them.'' Mr. Engel, now a telecommunications consultant, does not remember the first call so clearly. ''Marty may very well have given me the honor of being the first recipient of a call from that handheld unit, but I just don't remember it,'' he said. Mr. Engel does recall the intense effort by Motorola to make a place for itself in the cellular world: ''Give Marty Cooper credit for the foresight in recognizing that the business was going towards handhelds and not the car. It was as much a marketing insight as it was a technological breakthrough.'' The public demonstration landed Motorola's mobile unit on the July 1973 cover of Popular Science magazine, which referred to it as a ''new type of computerized, walkie-talkie-size portable.'' It also seems to have had some effect on the F.C.C., which decided to give more space to private companies to foster competition in cellular communications. ''I think Ma Bell was impressed that little Motorola could make such a huge P.R. flash against that behemoth,'' Mr. Cooper said. Mr. Cooper grew up in Chicago and earned a degree in electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. After four years in the navy serving on destroyers and a submarine, he worked for a year at a telecommunications company he described as ''100 engineers in a big room with no air conditioning.'' Hired by Motorola in 1954, Mr. Cooper worked on developing portable products, including the first portable handheld police radios, made for the Chicago police department in 1967. He then led Motorola's cellular research. He left Motorola in 1983, the year that the first cellular systems | Cell Phones Ruin the Opera? Meet the Culprit |
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