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1388135_2 | a cellphone. ''The road is quite long and there are some pitfalls ahead,'' said Alex Slawsby, a research analyst at the International Data Corporation in Framingham, Mass. The BlackBerry's initial success was based on its appeal to the so-called enterprise market -- users in big companies and government agencies. The BlackBerry functions as a mobile version of Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. E-mail messages and organizer entries that originate on a BlackBerry, or are sent to one, are also stored, and their status recorded, on the user's personal computer. ''They were the only ones that understood that e-mail was the killer application,'' said Andrew Seybold, president of Outlook 4Mobility, a consulting firm in Los Gatos, Calif. Aiming at the enterprise market has also meant that many employers pay for their workers' BlackBerries -- about $450 for the device, available in two sizes, plus a $40 monthly service fee. ''You can be anywhere and keep up with your e-mail,'' said David Forest, an information technology manager for an automotive supplier in Oshawa, Ontario, where 3 of the 20 employees in his department use the device. Besides relying on his BlackBerry for regular e-mail, Mr. Forest uses it to receive reports on problems or incidents in the company's data center. Numerous competing products have popped up in recent months, including the Treo, made by Handspring, and Palm's Palm i705. Danger, a two-year-old privately owned company in Palo Alto, Calif., plans to introduce a ''hip-top'' wireless device for the consumer market this summer. Microsoft has also said that it is working on a hand-held wireless communications device. And yet, according to Mr. Slawsby at International Data, ''all these diverse offerings are addressing little bits and pieces'' of RIM's niche. ''None of them,'' he predicted, ''is offering something that will prompt BlackBerry users to toss their products.'' Thomas Sepenzis, an analyst at CIBC World Markets in San Francisco, said he used a Treo for Internet, phone and e-mail communication. The Treo's e-mail function, ''while getting better by the day, still cannot match the BlackBerry,'' he said. But Mr. Sepenzis said it was inevitable that, with greater competition, RIM would lose ''a significant share'' of the enterprise market to companies like Palm, Handspring and Microsoft. And so RIM is trying, among other strategies, to gain a toehold in the consumer market through its partnerships with America Online and Yahoo. The AOL Mobile Communicator, for instance, | Losses Persist As BlackBerry Gains Rival |
1386407_1 | to contradict findings in observational studies, the estrogen studies are leading to a problem. Some would call the disparity a crisis. The conclusions that hormonal therapy may have important benefits arose from observational studies that were models in medicine. If those studies were wrong, then why? How many other widely held beliefs that emerged from the same studies or ones like them have to be held up to question? It is, Dr. Robins said, ''a research question,'' one whose outcome affects almost everything that is known about public health and preventive medicine. The most recent turn in the estrogen debate occurred when a prestigious group of 28 scientists and doctors, authors of the International Position Paper on Women's Health and Menopause, said hormone replacement therapy's established benefits were much more limited than many doctors and women had believed. Estrogen can ease hot flashes and night sweats in women going through or who have passed through menopause, and it can stem the bone loss that accelerates with menopause. But, the group said, it remains to be established whether it protects against heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, broken bones from osteoporosis, severe depression and urinary incontinence, theories that observational studies suggested. Committee members said they were absolutely convinced that they were right to voice their skepticism, given that so many women are taking hormone therapy in the belief that it has been proved to be helpful. ''It is mind boggling to give 20 million American women a drug with major side effects without definitive proof that it works,'' said Dr. Deborah Grady, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco. Others say they are deeply troubled and puzzled. They note that observational studies are hardly trivial research and that they are in any event the only way scientists can ethically address questions questions like whether day care affects children's development, whether watching violence on television leads to criminal behavior or whether environmental or occupational exposure to chemicals like benzene, arsenic, asbestos and lead is dangerous. ''For the majority of questions, we have no choice but to use observational studies,'' Dr. Karin B. Michels, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Medical School, said. ''They are our most important tool in public health.'' But such studies have a fundamental drawback. People choose their treatments or behaviors, and those who choose to take vitamin pills or exercise, for example, are quite | In Public Health, Definitive Data Can Be Elusive |
1386507_0 | To the Editor: Re ''John Paul II and His Cardinals'' (Op-Ed, April 22): John L. Allen Jr. characterizes obligatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests as a matter of ''church doctrine.'' In fact, it is a matter of changeable church discipline only. It cannot be a doctrinal issue when thousands of Catholic priests in Eastern rite churches are married and some former Episcopal clergymen are serving in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States as married priests. In ''Vatican Meeting on Abuse Issue Is Set to Confront Thorny Topics'' (front page, April 19), Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, an American serving in the Roman Curia, was in error in referring to the church's prohibition against women priests as being ''clearly a part of the faith and we can't, we don't have the power to change it even if we'd like to.'' At best, his assertion is debatable. But the great majority of Catholic theologians would strongly disagree with him on the point. RICHARD P. MCBRIEN Notre Dame, Ind., April 22, 2002 The writer is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. | A Delicate Week for the Church |
1386372_0 | ''The Frailty Myth,'' by Colette Downing, Random House, $13.95 In an 1879 textbook, an American gynecologist advised that girls ''spend the year before and two years after puberty at rest.'' Each menstrual period, he added, should be endured in ''the recumbent position'' until the girls' systems could adjust to ''the new order of life.'' Another medical specialist wrote that excessive exercise by women would have a negative effect on ''the genital organs, for they tend to decay.'' For centuries, the author of this provocative and inspirational book reminds us, such ideas kept women ''shackled to a perception of themselves as weak and ineffectual.'' It is hardly surprising, she writes, ''that girls retreated to the drawing room, preferring to train themselves in needlework and other feminine arts rather than lend themselves to the possibility of genital decay.'' Sad to note, the myth of female frailty has not disappeared, and the misinformed, gender-biased attitudes that keep it alive have also strengthened another unfortunate myth, that of the mannish woman, loosely defined as any woman who excels in sports or ''man's'' activities. Both fictions, the author writes, have kept many women from using their bodies -- either by reinforcing the notion that they are weak by nature, or by the threat of ridicule, of being ''reduced to little more than sideshow freaks'' if they proved that they weren't frail by becoming too athletic. Ms. Dowling, author of ''The Cinderella Complex,'' suggests that by adolescence ''girls feel compelled to exaggerate their difference from boys, believing their social acceptance depends on it.'' Trained to halt the development of their bodies at puberty because of cultural proscriptions against strong women, ''girls weaken themselves unnaturally.'' Fortunately, the notion that women are unable to achieve the same levels of physical development as men is being challenged. Strength and physical skill have much to do with training, and the potential for improvement, Ms. Dowling notes, ''has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with know-how.'' BOOKS ON HEALTH | Dispelling the Fictions That Can Keep Women Weak |
1383128_1 | to their users, both by e-mail and by older means, is an important source of revenue that can help make up for the rapid decline in sales of online advertising. ''It has been our orientation from the beginning to be straightforward with the user,'' said Bill Daugherty, the co-chief executive of the Excite Network. ''They are getting free content and utility that is unparalleled, and in return we will be marketing products to them.'' But even many marketing experts say that the risk to the reputations of these companies may outweigh any revenue they may receive. ''What Yahoo has done is unconscionable,'' said Seth Godin, Yahoo's former vice president for direct marketing. ''It's a bad thing, and it's bad for business. They would be better off sending offers to a million people who said they want to receive a coupon each day than to send them to 10 million people and worry about whether you have offended them by finally going too far.'' While at Yahoo, Mr. Godin published ''Permission Marketing'' (Simon & Schuster, 1999), which argued that marketing messages should be sent only to people who ask to see them. Both Yahoo and Excite say they are not loosening their privacy policies, just making them more explicit. In the past, both companies simply asked users to check a box authorizing the Web sites to ''contact'' them with marketing messages. The sites assert that such wording did not rule out mail and telephone contacts in addition to e-mail messages. Privacy experts say such a legalistic interpretation of the privacy policy is at best misleading because, in practice, almost all contact from the sites has been by e-mail. ''It's unfair,'' said Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. ''People thought they were going to get e-mail solicitations. They didn't expect that their dealings with Yahoo would cause them to receive phone calls.'' Both Yahoo and Excite say they have not actually used users' phone numbers for any marketing programs so far and have made relatively few mailings to members. Other sites have been much more liberal in renting customer names. America Online, the biggest Internet service, has long rented customer addresses, and it also calls users to promote its services and those of its business partners. Lycos, the big Internet portal, and CNET's ZDNet, a technology site, also rent users' names through mailing-list brokers. For example, Direct Media, | Privacy Policy On Web Shifts As Profits Ebb |
1383007_1 | technology,'' said Adam Guy, a senior analyst at Strategis Group, a telecommunications research firm in Washington. ''No one wants to send a page when you can just call someone on their cellphone.'' But if one-way pagers are a dying breed, some people plan to hold on to theirs to the bitter end. As a pager owner wrote on a bulletin board at Geek.com after Motorola's announcement in December, he will keep his pager ''until they pry it from my cold dead body.'' Although the number of pager users is down from nearly 45 million in 1998, Strategis says, some 37 million people were still carrying the tiny devices in 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available. (Another 850,000 people had two-way pagers, a small but growing part of the wireless industry.) Analysts say that the number of one-way pagers undoubtedly declined further last year. Users say that in comparison with cellphones, beepers are inconspicuous and allow people to talk with callers at their convenience rather than feel compelled to answer a ringing phone. What's more, they say, pagers are more reliable and less expensive than wireless phones. The average monthly paging bill is about $12, according to Strategis, compared with $61 for a cellphone. Free pagers are often included with service plans, and the devices can last several weeks on a single set of batteries. ''My pager battery seems to last forever, and that's good since I always forget to charge my cellphone battery,'' said Sam Evans, a computer technician in Boston. Hospitals remain one of the biggest users of pagers. Sinai Hospital, one of the hospitals where Ms. Bloom works, for instance, has 1,300 pagers in service. Because pagers operate on a much lower radio frequency than cellphones, particularly digital phones, they penetrate buildings more easily, and they do not interfere with certain medical equipment as mobile phones do. The lower frequency also means that pagers have fewer gaps in coverage, since paging signals travel farther than those from cellular towers. In fact, pager users who also carry a mobile phone say they sometimes get beeped only to discover that their cellphone is in a dead zone when they go to return the call. ''It seems stupid, but here I am carrying both a cellphone and a pager, and I'm searching for a pay phone to return a page,'' Mr. Evans said. For those who have | The Bell Is Tolling For the Beeper |
1388330_0 | Delta Executives Get an Earful A shareholder activist, Evelyn Y. Davis, gave Delta Air Lines executives an earful about boorish airport security guards and how they are scaring air travelers away. Mrs. Davis, a philanthropist who flies to dozens of corporate annual meetings a year to share critical observations with company brass, complained at Delta's meeting in Washington on Friday that ''ridiculous'' and rude airport security checks of passengers hurt airline profits. Well-dressed women are often singled out for aggressive searches by some guards, she said. ''They like to pick on women who have a few more bucks than themselves,'' she groused. Security problems are also hurting the Delta Shuttle, where ''a lot of people, they go through this one time and they figure, 'I don't need this; I can take the train,' '' she said. Leo F. Mullin, Delta's chairman, conceded there was a problem. Though passenger confidence in air safety is being rebuilt, he said, ''the so-called hassle factor associated with air travel has unquestionably increased significantly.'' ''That may rate as the most significant obstacle to getting the full complement of passengers back on the plane,'' he said. Travelers in Europe Take to the Trains Business travelers in Europe are switching to trains from planes even faster than Americans. In the United States, airlines with routes matched by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line are noting a significant loss of revenue from passengers switching to trains for short-haul business trips. In Western Europe, where high-speed rail systems are far more advanced, the trend is even more pronounced. For example, Aéroports de Paris, the French company that operates 14 airports in the Paris region, including Orly and Charles de Gaulle, said last week that its earnings for 2001 plunged 94 percent from 2000. The company blamed competition from high-speed rail, as well as the growing use of European low-fare carriers, which generate less revenue for airports. Hotel Rates Are Headed Higher This space recently warned readers that a revised forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers of unexpected growth for the hotel industry could mean higher hotel room rates. Sure enough, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which owns Sheraton, Westin and other brands popular with business travelers, announced last week a 5 percent nationwide price increase effective tomorrow.. Hong Kong Airport Is a Favorite International business travelers voted Hong Kong their favorite airport. Skytrax, the British research firm, released the results last week of its annual | MEMO PAD |
1388283_0 | I vividly remember the first time I was hijacked on the radio. I had agreed to participate in a debate for a Florida radio program that specialized in alien visits and U.F.O. sightings. My better judgment suggested that I should be wary. But I thought if I kept my focus purely on the physics challenges involved in space travel, I might be able to persuade some listeners to be skeptical of the claims that aliens were regularly visiting, abducting and experimenting with our fellow earthlings. I should have known better. After 45 minutes defending myself against the claim that I was close-minded, when I argued that science did in fact impose constraints on what is possible, and politely responding to demands that I must first scrupulously review all the specific claims of alien sightings before I could possibly have the temerity to make general statements about plausibility or implausibility, I felt that any uninformed listeners who might have been waiting to be swayed probably found themselves merely confused at the end of the show. In a debate that confronts the results of science with pseudoscience, from alien abductions and crop circles on one hand to the health benefits of weak magnetic fields or young earth creationism on the other, the odds are stacked against science. Part of the problem is uniquely American. We in the United States are constantly regaled by stories about the limitless possibilities open to those with know-how and a spirit of enterprise. Combine that with a public that perceives the limits of science as targets that are constantly being overcome, and the suggestion that anything is absolutely impossible seems like an affront. Indeed, modern technology has made the seemingly impossible almost ordinary. How often have I heard the cry from an audience, ''Yeah, but 300 years ago people would have said it would be impossible to fly!'' Although true, the problem with that assertion is that 300 years ago people did not know enough about the laws of physics to make the assertion, so the claim would have been improper. Had they made a simpler claim like, ''Three hundred years from now, if you drop this cannonball off the Tower of Pisa, it will fall down,'' they would have been right. Although it is probably true that there is far more that we do not know about nature than that we do know, we do know | Odds Are Stacked When Science Tries to Debate Pseudoscience |
1388295_3 | would help resolve scientific conflicts about global warming and how much of it could be attributed to human activity. The comprehensive, uniform information provided by this system will give policy makers more confidence in making decisions about influencing global warming that can have worldwide economic impact, he said. Dr. Parkinson, the Aqua project scientist, says some of the uncertainties about global warming and climate change arise from conflicting data gathered by different instruments at different times in different parts of the world. ''Satellites are the best way to get a good global view,'' she said. Aqua is to be launched on Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket. The spacecraft, weighing 6,468 pounds at launching, is to be placed in a low polar orbit 428 miles high that has it circling the earth top to bottom every 99 minutes. Flying in this orbit, Aqua will take readings of every part of the globe every 16 days, building a comprehensive database that allows scientists to assess changes and drastically improving computer models for long-term forecasting. In space, the big satellite, built by TRW Inc., will deploy antennas and booms to measure 16 feet by 26 feet, with solar power panels unfurling to stretch 55 feet across. Aqua's suite of instruments include devices that will measure cloud properties, the wetness of land surfaces, land and sea temperatures, humidity and temperature at different levels of the atmosphere, the properties of particles in the air, fluctuations in solar energy absorption and many other parameters. Two instruments are provided by other countries. The National Space Development Agency of Japan contributed a microwave scanning radiometer to measure water vapor content and precipitation rates, and Brazil's space agency provided a device to measure atmospheric humidity. While Aqua's measurements are geared toward understanding long-term problems like global climate change, the satellite is also likely to have an immediate effect on everyone. The spacecraft's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, an instrument that measures infrared heat radiation as it leaves the atmosphere, is expected to provide vastly more and better temperature and humidity readings worldwide than are available now from weather satellites and other sources. These readings in 2,378 infrared wavelengths, compared with 24 from most other satellites, will give forecasters greater quantities of more accurate data to put into their computer models. Dr. Asrar said five major forecasting groups around the world, including the | NASA to View Interaction of Earth's Water and Climate |
1388458_0 | To the Editor: In the article ''In Public Health, Definitive Data Can Be Elusive'' (April 23) an important point was left out. We do not yet know the reason for the apparent inconsistency between the early results of the continuing randomized Hormone Replacement Therapy, or H.R.T., trial of the Women's Health Initiative and the results of observational studies. It may be that the apparent protective effect on the heart found in the observational studies is attributable to differences in the health behaviors of women who take the therapy and those who do not. But in the observational studies, most women began taking hormones soon after menopause; in contrast, the H.R.T. trial includes many who began the therapy years after menopause. Thus, an alternative hypothesis consistent with the data is that the replacement therapy protects against heart disease, begun soon after menopause. In several years, when final results of the trial are published, we should have sufficient data to discriminate between these hypotheses. Making this discrimination will have important implications both for women's health and for our understanding of the reliability of observational studies. DR.JAMES ROBINS Boston The writer is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. | Public Health by the Numbers |
1388278_1 | barnacles, mollusks, worms and hydroids. Some of these organisms have no other apparent means for being dispersed than by debris or ships. Above 60 degrees latitude (north or south), no debris was found to carry organisms, probably because of the persistently low water temperatures. But many climate models predict that polar waters will warm, and this, Dr. Barnes suggests, could lead to invasion of polar ecosystems by alien species, rafting along on civilization's discards. The Neanderthal Blotter No one ever said that the Neanderthals were one big happy family, or that daily life tens of thousands of years ago was a garden party. Still, a new report on the bones of a Neanderthal found in France illustrates how violent life could be: the poor thing was bashed in the head with a sharp weapon. The skull, of a young, probably male, adult, is 36,000 years old and was found in west-central France. It was examined by scientists from the University of Zurich and University of Bordeaux using computer tomographic, or CT, imaging, and found to have a bone scar, slightly less than 3 inches long, on the right top. The structure of the scar, the scientists report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is consistent with a blow from a sharp implement, perhaps a stone tool, ''during an act of interpersonal violence'' involving someone from the same group. Only one other case of weapon use among Neanderthals has been clearly found, involving a spear or arrow to the chest. If there is a silver lining in the new finding, it is that the wound had partially healed, indicating that the victim lived at least several months after the attack. The victim had to have been treated and cared for by other members of the group. From Pest to Plague Little things mean a lot. A little genetic change, for example, apparently turned a strain of bacteria into one of the world's great killers. Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, is a recent offshoot of Y. pseudotuberculosis, a much milder bug that causes salmonella-like illness. Scientists with the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases have discovered that the difference between the two lies in a single gene that Y. pestis picked up along the way. The researchers, writing in Science, said that the gene was responsible for the production of an enzyme that allows the | OBSERVATORY |
1388307_1 | those images over and over on computer screens, as they hope to learn from the sequence and manner of the collapse. The head of the engineering team, Eugene Corley, performed the same task in Oklahoma City, after the bombing there. ''I have now looked at two terrorist attacks,'' he says, ''and I never want to look at another one in the future.'' The program doesn't avoid the human aspects, including stories of escape as well as a poignant interview with Leslie Robertson, who was 34 when he was chief engineer in charge of building the World Trade Center. But it concentrates on the mechanics, examining how the towers' construction contributed to how they came apart. Their unusual design helped them withstand the explosive blows of the airplanes, but it may have also made them harder to evacuate and more susceptible to collapse from fire. Traditional skyscrapers like the Empire State Building are supported by a dense mass of steel girders, which requires columns that take up floor space. The World Trade Center's design moved the supporting columns to the exterior walls, providing more rentable space and also making the towers sway less in the wind. With smart computer graphics, the ''Nova'' program shows how these exterior columns were linked to a core of vertical columns with steel trusses. The little pieces clamping to the big ones look like a cool Lego structure. But these were real buildings, gathering places for tens of thousands of people every day. So all the trusses holding the World Trade Center buildings together had to be fireproofed, and the method used has been called into question. The twin towers were built in an era when buildings were getting taller and lighter, so the metal was fireproofed with lightweight foam and walled off with sheetrock instead of concrete. When the planes hit the fireproofing went flying, leaving the steel naked and vulnerable to the intense heat produced by the ignited jet fuel. A man who escaped describes pushing aside drywall that had been blown apart by the blast and was blocking the fire exits. Film taken by people in an architectural firm near the trade center shows the outer wall collapsing as the trusses fell and the supporting columns buckled. An engineer likens the effect to a sheet of paper crumpling. Others describe the floors collapsing on one another as ''pancaking'' down. At the junk yard | A Detective-Story Approach To the Twin Towers' Collapse |
1388325_2 | officials estimate that 50 percent of Palestinians now live below the poverty line and that up to 60 percent are unemployed. There is a glut of tomatoes and cucumbers, products that Palestinians normally sell to Israelis, while prices soar for products imported from Israel, like sugar and flour. ''Basically, the Palestinian economy is linked to the Israeli economy, not the other way around,'' said Ephraim Kleiman, an economics professor at Hebrew University. ''It's been hit in a much more serious way.'' That can be seen in Mr. Shanty's bakery. His oven comes from Israel, along with the wheat, flour and sugar he bakes in them. The light bulb over his desk, the fish tank behind it and a nearby microwave were all imported through Israeli distributors. Only the workers and the bakery's plastic bags are from Gaza, a strip of land about 25 miles long and 4 to 6 miles wide on which more than a million people live, mostly in a maze of cinder-block hovels. ''If they don't supply the flour, we'll close,'' he said. But Israeli companies are also suffering. The closure keeps Mr. Shanty and other Palestinian bakers from buying flour from an Israeli flour mill in nearby Ashdod. The revenues of the Tel Aviv company that sold Mr. Shanty his baking machines have also collapsed. ''Fifty percent of my business is in the territories,'' said Yitzhak Gabai, the owner of the company. ''Ten people used to work for me. I had to fire four of them.'' Even so, Professor Kleiman said, the Israeli economy has diversified to the point where exports to the United States and the European Union are far more important than exports to the occupied territories. Salem Aljuni, an economic consultant for the United Nations, said that although Palestinian officials tried to diversify their economy during the late 1990's and import goods from Jordan, Egypt and Europe, Israel continues to dwarf the territories economically. Ninety percent of Palestinian exports go to Israel, while only 10 percent of Israeli exports go to the occupied territories. The impact can been seen on Miriam Alton, a 65-year-old Palestinian tomato farmer. This afternoon, she stood in the central market desperate to sell scores of tomatoes she usually ships to Israel. Before the closing of the border, she sold two kilos (4.4 pounds) for $3.75. Today, she offered up two kilos for 75 cents. MIDEAST TURMOIL: THE MARKETPLACE | Both Economies Drained. Palestinians' Is Worse. |
1388306_2 | higher in women who already have coronary artery disease. Estrogen increases the risk by stimulating the liver to produce more of the substances that it normally makes to promote clotting. Estrogen's risks have long been recognized, but until recently many doctors and patients assumed the risks were outweighed by benefits, which were thought to include a decreased risk of heart attacks, strokes, broken bones, urinary incontinence, severe depression and Alzheimer's disease. But rigorous studies in recent years have cast doubt on some of the benefits that many women and their doctors took for granted. Most of the data comes from studies involving the type of estrogen in the drug Premarin, the most widely used brand of hormone replacement in the United States. The hormone, conjugated equine estrogen, is extracted from the urine of pregnant horses. An international panel of experts who evaluated hormone therapy released part of a position paper last month stating that clinical trials had found no evidence that estrogen could treat or prevent urinary incontinence, major depression or memory loss in Alzheimer's disease. It is still being studied in Alzheimer's, however, the paper noted. And the paper added that although estrogen clearly prevents bone loss, whether that translates into preventing fractures has not been studied in a large controlled trial. For treating osteoporosis and preventing fractures, there is stronger evidence for other drugs: raloxifene and a class of drugs called bisphosphonates, which includes Fosamax. As for cardiovascular disease, three studies have suggested that rather than protecting women from heart attacks and strokes, hormone therapy may increase their risk in the first few years. Women with heart disease or risk factors for it, like high blood pressure or high cholesterol, are now advised not to depend on estrogen but to take drugs meant specifically to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. But one of the studies that found signs of a heart risk, the Women's Health Initiative, a clinical trial involving more than 27,000 women, is still under way and is expected to provide more information about cardiovascular disease and hormones in 2006. ''We haven't had the last word on this,'' said Dr. Nanette Wenger, chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and an editor of the International Position Paper on Women's Health and Menopause, to be issued in June by the National Institutes of Health and the private Giovanni Lorenzini Medical Science Foundation of Italy. But | Weighing Risks and Benefits of Hormone Therapy |
1380716_0 | A tiny blip appeared on the radar screen of a German surveillance plane patrolling the Somali coastline. It was a faint green dot, which meant something small was out there on the water. Was this a boatload of fleeing Al Qaeda fighters? The pilot maneuvered the plane for a close look. Two spotters with high-powered binoculars scoured the sea. Another sat inside the plane's nose, which was made of clear plastic. Minutes passed. Nothing. Then, the man in the nose spotted something. But it was not Osama bin Laden or his men. ''Dolphins,'' the spotter said, pointing down at a dozen of the mammals frolicking in the sea. The German patrol missions are a small part of what defense officials are calling the largest maritime patrol mission since World War II. Dozens of ships now ring vast stretches of the Horn of Africa in an attempt to block Al Qaeda fighters from seeking refuge in Somalia or Yemen. The air patrols assess the situation from above, sending information by radio to the allied ships. But hunting down terrorists in an area so vast is a monotonous task fraught with false alarms. The surveillance flights begin before dawn and go on for 10 hours. Even when the radar screen does come to life it can send the plane chasing everything from whales to waves. Actual ships resemble tiny specks on the horizon from afar. Gradually, their outlines appear. When the plane swoops in low near the ship, people on the deck are sometimes visible. The German spotters squint down until they can read the names and home ports on the sides of the vessels. On one recent outing, they spotted four large container ships with the names Tiger River, Colombo, Lucy and Bougainville. All appeared to be legitimate. The plane, a cold war-era Breguet Atlantic BR 1150, photographs each boat and sends the identifying information to United States Navy commanders in Bahrain. It becomes part of the intelligence database for the United States war on terrorism. The German Parliament set conditions last November when it agreed to allow German forces to take part in the campaign. First, the deployment would last no more than a year without further approval. And second, Germany could not penetrate any national borders without that country's permission. In the case of Somalia, that means the air force must operate 12 miles off the coast, in international | Hunting for Elusive Terrorists Off Somalia's Coast |
1380696_4 | twice a day to collect the fees. It is a job that he does not like much. But Mr. Parfitt said a lot of the people in town thought that, as an Englishman, he would know a lot about fishing. He does not. Mr. Parfitt and his wife, who taught high school, discovered Montrollet through Mr. Parfitt's childhood pen pal. One summer, they wanted to visit him and rented a cottage in a neighboring town. The next year, they bought the cottage. After years of coming here in the summer, they both took early retirement and moved here. ''One day, I realized I wasn't the young Turk anymore,'' he said. ''I was the old Turk. So we took the offer.'' The Parfitts say they feel generally welcomed in the village. For his first council meeting, one of the other council members came by their house to escort Mr. Parfitt to the town hall. But there are still moments when Mr. Parfitt's sense of being an outsider prevails. At a recent meeting to interview a contractor to work on the roads, everyone talked at the same time and asked questions of the candidate whenever they saw fit. ''It was quite something,'' Mr. Parfitt said. ''I am used to a certain order. At the university you had to address the chair before you spoke.'' And at a planning meeting, he found everybody laughing at him when he insisted that he had never fished in his life. The verbs to fish and to sin are the same in French -- but he did not catch on. The more he insisted, the more everyone else enjoyed themselves. Mayor Jean-Claude Gillet shrugs when asked about what it is like having an Englishman on the council. ''Oh, he can translate for us,'' Mr. Gillet said amiably. Mr. Gillet said he would not have been elected either except that his wife was born here and is related to almost everyone in the village. Mr. Parfitt wonders sometimes if life is not even harder for Mr. Gillet, who has come under fire for some extremely petty issues, like using the town tractor to clear a clogged drain that was technically on private property, though it was causing problems on public paths. ''I think it is actually better around here to be an Englishman than to be French from some other part of the country,'' he said. Montrollet Journal | Conquering France: A Briton Makes Town Council |
1380662_0 | Drivers distracted by a task devised to simulate using a ''hands free'' cellphone sometimes failed to stop properly at red lights and, when they recognized the light in time to stop, braked much harder than usual, increasing the chance of accidents, researchers report in a new study. In the study, 36 drivers on a test track stopped before the white line about 95 percent of the time when the light showed red. But with the distraction of a device similar to a cellphone, they stopped properly only 80 percent of the time. Older people, especially older women, were especially susceptible to failing when distracted, although the women tended to leave themselves more safety margin than older men or younger drivers, the researchers found. The study, by a University of Central Florida psychologist and two researchers from the insurance company Liberty Mutual, has been accepted for publication in Accident Analysis & Prevention, a peer-reviewed journal. Dr. Peter A. Hancock, the psychologist and the lead author, said the study suggested that banning hand-held phones did not solve the problem of driver distraction. Previous studies have suggested that cellphone use contributes to accidents. Some recent studies of driver distraction have used laboratory techniques, including driving simulators and CAT scans, to see what parts of the brain were engaged by the use of cellphones. This test was unusual because it used a real car, a 1991 Crown Victoria with automatic transmission, on a real road, a half-mile test track in Hopkinton, Mass. Adding to the drama, it used Boston-area drivers. The car had a touch-screen computer installed on the dashboard, which showed a picture of a cellphone. Drivers were given a seven-digit number to memorize before they began driving. As they approached the traffic light, which was controlled by the researchers, the phone would ''ring'' and show a number on its screen. If the first digit was the same as the number the driver had memorized, the driver was supposed to push a button. Most driving, Dr. Hancock said, consisted of ''fairly undemanding situations.'' ''The problem with driving comes with the fact there are short periods of time when the driving task demands everything you've got,'' he said. In the study, the ''ring'' was timed to come at a demanding moment, when the driver had to decide whether to stop. Some jurisdictions have banned the use of hand-held phones but permit hands-free phones, which | 'Hands Free' Cellphones May Still Be Road Risk |
1380736_3 | time to work.'' After the city fire code was changed in 1968, allowing a widespread shift from masonry fireproofing to a light, spray-on product, Mr. Winberry said, ''we could not understand how this was going to work; we had no faith in it.'' Over the past century, calls for reform in the byzantine world of fire protection and building standards have far exceeded substantive changes. Yet there are already signs that the calls for change may be heard this time. In New York City, a post-Sept. 11 task force began meeting last month to examine the adequacy of city codes and regulations on fire protection, structural integrity of buildings and emergency exits. David A. Lucht, director of the Center for Fire Safety Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said economic pressures along with the effectiveness of sprinkler systems for smaller fires had actually led to a weakening of standards for fireproofing that is applied as insulation to structural steel. ''The trend towards cutting back'' on such fireproofing has been there for several decades, Professor Lucht said, describing the combination of steel insulation and sprinklers as ''belt and suspenders.'' High-rise disasters are rare. But the particular vulnerabilities identified at the trade center and in other high-rise fires might force modifications that could greatly reduce catastrophes, perhaps even in terrorist attacks. Conclusions drawn from extensive data gathered from damaged or destroyed buildings around the twin towers -- structures that caught fire but were not hit by an airplane -- are reinforcing the case for changes. ''It may be decided that we need to go back and heavy up the belt and heavy up the suspenders,'' Professor Lucht said. The most frightful confirmation of that view might be seen from inside a burning tower. Shortly before 6 p.m. on Aug. 5, 1970, an elevator carrying two security guards and a telephone technician opened unexpectedly on the 33rd floor of 1 New York Plaza, a 50-story skyscraper so new that some tenants were still moving in. The elevator had been called to the floor by one of the old-style buttons that lighted up from the touch of a warm finger. Flames and smoke rushed into the elevator and forced the men to the floor. Two died before rescuers could arrive. The fire rushed up ventilation shafts from the 33rd floor, where it melted the metallic bases of typists' chairs, reaching the 35th floor. Light, spray-on | Tower Disaster Echoes Lessons Of Earlier Fires |
1380736_5 | fireproofing, which at some point had been knocked away, left steel supports for the floors exposed to the blaze. They twisted and pulled away from their connections, initiating collapses that stopped only because the concrete slabs of the floors refused to give way. Although the building stood, the fire burned for more than six hours. The heat-activated elevator call buttons were phased out after the investigative report cited their dangers, but not all of its warnings were heeded. ''The protection of steel members in a really fire-resistive building must be accomplished by materials that cannot be readily removed or damaged,'' the report said in a harbinger of language that has reappeared in the trade center draft, even though the formula for the twin towers spray-on fireproofing was somewhat different. ''It is apparent that sprayed fiber may not be universally applied to the proper thickness, that proper adhesion to steel may not take place and that the protection may be removed in many locations,'' the report on the 1970 fire said. A 1988 high-rise fire in Los Angeles sounded another prescient alarm. Flames from the blaze at the 62-story First Interstate Bank building, then the tallest tower west of the Sears Tower in Chicago, lapped up the side of the building, gutting offices from the 12th to the 16th floor. By all accounts, the response was fast and well organized, as firefighters quickly eliminated a water-supply problem by linking mobile pumpers into the building's system. But radios did not transmit clear signals because of the skyscraper's steel frame. And with so many firefighters responding, the radio system was overwhelmed. At the height of the blaze, a firefighter had to smash open a 10th-floor window to communicate with a commander at the street level. The fire burned for three and a half hours, killing a maintenance worker and injuring 35 others. Engineers later discovered that the building survived the fire with surprisingly limited structural damage; credit was given to especially thick layers of a relatively heavy, cementlike fireproofing that had been applied to structural steel. The World Trade Center had the much lighter, easily dislodged fireproofing on the floor braces whose failure probably initiated the collapse. And despite the warning on radios in high-rises, the problems still were not completely solved, at least in New York: radio transmissions were spotty in the twin towers, and an order to evacuate the towers before | Tower Disaster Echoes Lessons Of Earlier Fires |
1382421_5 | the institute's work is successful, Dr. Sunder said, ''we'll have the tools for engineers to design and retrofit for fire safety.'' ''Fire and emergency service personnel will have a better understanding of the performance to be expected from buildings,'' he added. A draft of the FEMA report, which has been obtained by The New York Times, has already placed a sharp focus on the ASTM E-119 test, though the report is careful not to imply that the test is somehow responsible for the collapses. The test ''does not provide tools to determine how long a building component can expect to perform in an actual fire,'' the report says. An Oversized Barbecue At the Underwriters Laboratory campus in this northern Chicago suburb, where workers carry out those blazing tests in a yawning building reminiscent of an airplane hangar, forklifts shuttle back and forth, moving huge columns, while cranes suspended from overhead rails slowly lift giant sections of roof into the furnaces and technicians mill about in front of a forest of dials, gauges and controls. Three huge furnaces, each in a separate corner of the hangar, are designed to handle three different tests: one for steel columns, one for wall assemblies, and one for ceilings and floors. Little about the setup is high-tech. ''Do you need the torch, Bill?'' Eckhard Brodde, an assistant, yelled to the foreman, Bill Joy, as the two prepared the cube-shaped furnace for testing columns last week. ''Let's close the door first,'' Mr. Joy yelled back. Both gave it a heavy push. ''It is not moving,'' Mr. Joy said, before an extra shove was applied. ''There you go,'' he said, as the door clicked into place. As if lighting an oversized barbecue, Mr. Joy sets fire to a kerosene-soaked rag and sticks it through a small opening in the furnace. ''Three, two, one -- gas on,'' he shouts, as the flames burst into life. With this inferno of flames racing from dozens of gas jets, these workers are determining just how long the steel column and its fireproofing can hold up under this thermal assault. The result is a fire rating, expressed in hours, for this column, and eventually for countless different components that make up a building, from sections of roofing to walls for emergency exit stairways to assemblies of glass, brick and plaster that make up a building facade. A column might be given a | TOWERS' COLLAPSE RAISES NEW DOUBTS ABOUT FIRE TESTS |
1382349_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Washington Is Criticized for Growing Reluctance to Sign Treaties'' (news article, April 4): Among the treaties that the United States has signed but not ratified is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which is regarded as an international bill of rights for women. More than 20 years have passed since the United Nations unanimously adopted this convention, which has been ratified by virtually every country but the United States. The United States government's efforts to promote the human rights of women, in Afghanistan and around the world, are severely handicapped by its refusal to support international human rights law, and particularly by its refusal to ratify this treaty. AMANDA SULLIVAN New York, April 4, 2002 The writer is director, Women's Action Network, Equality Now. | Rights of Women |
1381384_0 | Though we think of the early Quakers in Pennsylvania as modest people leading modest lives, there certainly were exceptions. An outstanding example of that was James Logan (1674-1751), a Philadelphia gentleman, merchant, politician, justice, botanist, astronomer, scholar and book collector. Logan may have been a Quaker, but his taste was anything but simple. His home was furnished with all the symbols of worldliness and wealth. He imported an ornate, signed silver tea set, porcelain, furniture, 2,000 books and luxurious textiles from England. He also owned a yellow walnut settee that is the only known fully upholstered Philadelphia settee in the Queen Anne style; a large English Queen Anne double-arched parlor mirror; and four tea tables, the ultimate status symbol. Logan was born in Ireland to Scottish parents. His family moved to England, where Logan worked as a teaching assistant to his father, a schoolmaster, while mastering Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Syrian and Hebrew. He taught himself mathematics and became interested in natural philosophy, astronomy and botany. In 1698 he unsuccessfully tried to set himself up as a linen merchant. Then he met William Penn, a fellow Quaker who founded the colony of Pennsylvania. In 1699 Logan accompanied Penn on Penn's last trip to the colonies, as his secretary. In 1701 Penn returned to England to fight the government's efforts to take away his charter, leaving Logan to administer the colony and serve the Penn family interests, which Logan did faithfully for the next 50 years. ''Logan was Philadelphia's most respected, but not always its most beloved, citizen,'' said Stephen Hague, the director of Stenton, Logan's house, a National Historic Landmark five miles north of downtown Philadelphia, and a museum since 1899. The house is owned by the city of Philadelphia and has been administered since 1910 by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. ''Penn was the idealist; Logan was the pragmatist,'' said Laura Keim Stutman, the curator of Stenton. Ms. Stutman recently wrote an essay about Logan's furnishings for the catalog of the 2002 Philadelphia Antiques Show, which opens tonight and continues through Wednesday, to accompany the show's loan exhibition: 55 pieces of Logan family furniture and household goods. The pieces come from Stenton, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Library Company, the Fairmount Park Commission, the Atwater Kent Museum and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, all in Philadelphia, and | This Quaker Had Rich Tastes |
1384562_0 | Monsanto and Aventis CropScience said yesterday that some genetically modified canola seeds that have not been approved in the United States might have found their way to farmers' fields. The two companies are now seeking regulatory approval of those seeds to prevent possible recalls of seeds or food. The canola does not appear to present a health threat. While the Aventis canola has not been approved for planting in the United States, it is approved for food use when imported directly to food processing factories from Canada. The Monsanto crop has not been approved for food use, but the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that it deemed the canola safe. Still, the incidents are expected to raise further concerns about the difficulty of isolating genetically modified crops from others because of cross-pollination or the mixing of seeds in processing or during shipment. The biotechnology and agriculture industries are still reeling from the costly food recalls that ensued when a type of genetically engineered corn not approved for human consumption found its way into taco shells and other foods in 2000. A Monsanto spokesman said the company had not detected the unapproved canola seeds in the seeds it sells in the United States. Aventis CropScience, which developed the corn involved in the recalls two years ago, would not say whether it had found its unapproved canola in the seeds it was selling in this country. The Monsanto canola, known as GT-200, is resistant to its Roundup herbicide, enabling farmers to spray herbicide on the crop to kill weeds without harming the crop. Monsanto decided not to commercialize GT-200 in favor of a slightly different version of Roundup Ready canola. But the GT-200 seeds keep showing up anyway. In 1997, Monsanto recalled thousands of bags of canola seed in Canada, which grows far more canola than the United States, because they contained GT-200. By last year, GT-200 had been approved in Canada, but not in overseas markets, potentially hurting Canadian exports, so Monsanto recalled more canola seed in Canada because it contained GT-200. At that time, Monsanto said it would work to get GT-200 approved in other markets. It is now following through, asking the Department of Agriculture to allow the seeds to be planted, not because Monsanto intends to market them but to prevent disruptions to the food system. Monsanto's actions were first reported yesterday by The Wall Street Journal. | Unapproved Canola Seed May Be on Farms, Makers Say |
1384509_3 | on their awareness of the malady. ''I think we've done more than enough to properly inform the traveling public,'' said Michael Wascom, a spokesman with the Air Transport Association, a trade group in Washington that represents major United States airlines. Whether the plaintiffs' lawyers have a good case is questionable. Mark Dombroff, an expert in aviation law and managing partner at the Dombroff & Gilmore law firm in Washington, is skeptical. For airlines to be held responsible, he said, lawyers would have to demonstrate that the onset of the disorder while airborne constitutes an ''accident'' under international law that governs air travel between countries. In recent years, various studies have looked at whether air travel itself is a significant risk factor in D.V.T. Russell Rayman, executive director for the Aerospace Medical Association in Virginia, said most concluded that prolonged immobility, not the act of flying itself, was the primary contributing factor. A few studies, however, found possible links to the flying environment itself. ''I think everyone agrees it happens on flights,'' Dr. Rayman said. ''The conflict is what causes it.'' In any case, airborne D.V.T. is rare, given the roughly 1.6 billion people who fly each year. Dr. Rayman estimates the number of victims at well below 1,000 a year, a figure he described as ''vanishingly small.'' Still, it remains a scary possibility for business travelers. Highly publicized cases, like the death of a 57-year-old British woman from D.V.T.-related pulmonary embolism after a six-hour Miami-to-London flight in February, only stoke their fears. And media accounts of other passengers reportedly stricken by it have multiplied recently. Regardless of steps airlines are taking, lobbyists for travelers want them to do more. Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition in Radnor, Pa., agrees that fliers should educate themselves, but said cabin crews on flights longer than five hours should address the problem in preflight announcements. ''Is it too much to ask on those flights to point out what the risks and safeguards are?'' Mr. Mitchell asked. ''The airlines have known about the issue for years, and they have failed to really come straight out and let passengers know.'' Mr. Coon, whose business takes him to distant destinations like Turkey and China, thinks airlines should feature a tutorial about the disorder on the TV monitors mounted above airport waiting areas. ''If they spent three minutes of the precious time they give to CNN, | Hidden Danger of Long-Haul Flying, or Sitting |
1384532_0 | Botox, a wildly popular treatment for wrinkles, was approved yesterday by the Food and Drug Administration for cosmetic use to treat frown lines. The approval permits Allergan, the maker of Botox, to begin a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign aimed at doctors and consumers. Until now, because Botox had received regulatory approval as a treatment only for eye spasms and other neurological disorders, the drug's use as a cosmetic treatment has grown largely through word of mouth. The agency's approval, which was expected, gives Allergan the ability to market the drug for cosmetic use and should help Allergan to increase Botox sales significantly over the next few years, analysts said. Allergan's stock, which had declined about 18 percent this year, gained $3.80 yesterday to close at $65.71. ''There's a big portion of the country that doesn't know what Botox is,'' said Gregory B. Gilbert, an analyst for Merrill Lynch, noting the effectiveness of other advertising campaigns aimed at consumers. He is recommending the stock. Botox, which is the commercial name for botulinum toxin A, the neurotoxin that causes botulism, will be injected directly into face muscles, paralyzing them and therefore eliminating wrinkles. The effects of the shots, which cost $300 to more than $1,000, last three to four months. While botulism can be fatal, the treatment is considered safe because it uses very diluted amounts of the toxin. Botox shots and similar treatments are already the most popular cosmetic treatment in the United States, based on the number of procedures, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. It estimated that more than 1.6 million procedures were performed last year. While some doctors have already been giving their patients shots of Botox to smooth their brows, the F.D.A. approval will increase demand for the treatment, Malcolm Paul, the society's president, said. As in the case of other drugs marketed directly to consumers, like Claritin or Prozac, ''patients are going to ask for it,'' he predicted. Allergan, which is based in Irvine, Calif., said it expected to spend $50 million over the rest of this year to promote the drug, which is expected to be used mainly by women ages 35 to 64. While the company would not discuss the specifics of its campaign, it said it planned to begin advertising on television and in print within a few months. ''We're going to see a big campaign by Allergan,'' Mr. Gilbert said. | F.D.A. Approves Allergan Drug for Fighting Wrinkles |
1386718_1 | committee chairman, Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois, offering to meet legislators the next time he was in Washington. Mr. Adams said he was satisfied with the I.R.A.'s denial that it had sent anyone to Colombia ''to train or engage in any military cooperation with any group.'' He added, ''Irish Republicans pose no threat to U.S. national security interests in Colombia.'' In a telephone interview from Washington, the committee spokesman, Sam Stratman, retorted, ''Terrorism imperils Colombian democracy, and the alleged I.R.A. role in helping groups like the FARC perpetuate this violence poses a direct threat to U.S. national interests.'' The committee issued a summary of a nine-month investigation in which it concluded that links between the I.R.A. and the Colombian guerrillas went back to 1998. The study said that after the three suspects arrived in Colombia, the rebels became proficient in the kinds of urban terror techniques used by the I.R.A. in Northern Ireland. The committee said two of the Irishmen were the I.R.A.'s leading explosives and mortar experts. The disclosure of the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein activity in Colombia infuriated Bush administration officials last fall and compromised support among Irish-Americans and on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. Soon afterward, the I.R.A. made its long-awaited first move toward disarmament. Today's action came as Sinn Fein and the republican movement are under new pressure over allegations that they were behind a break-in on St. Patrick's Day at Belfast's top-security Castlereagh police complex and the discovery last week in West Belfast of a hit list with the names of a number of British Conservative politicians on it. Such targeting of individuals is a violation of the 1998 Northern Ireland peace pact. In a rare public response to criticism, the I.R.A. on Sunday issued a denial of any involvement in the two incidents and offered assurance that it was still committed to the peace process. This month, the I.R.A. made its second disarmament move. Mr. Adams has been a familiar figure in Washington in recent years and John Bruton, a former prime minister of Ireland, said tonight: ''For the last century and a half, Irish nationalists have looked for help to Washington. This week, Washington looked for help to an Irish political leader in its inquiry into the sources of terrorism, and that Irish political leader, Gerry Adams, turned them down flat.'' | Adams Delays Testifying in U.S. About I.R.A. Action in Colombia |
1386731_0 | New York State education officials reported yesterday that the proportion of public school students placed in special education has been leveling off in recent years, to 11.9 percent last year, although black and Hispanic minority students are still more likely than whites to be placed there. A report released by the State Education Department credited the state for channeling a higher percentage of its special education students in general education classes than the national average. While 47.3 percent of special education students are placed in general education classrooms for more than 80 percent of the day, New York State puts 49.5 percent of its special education students in general classroom settings for that time. Special education students are more likely to perform better academically when placed in mainstream education classes than in separate settings. Slightly fewer than 10 percent of all public school students were placed in special education in 1992-93 academic year, but the proportion rose sharply over the next four years later to 11.6 percent in 1996-97. Over the following four years, the rise was far slower, and in the 2000-1 academic year, 11.9 percent of the entire student population were classified as students with disability, only 0.1 percent higher than the previous year. State officials said there remained significant racial disparities in the program's enrollment. While black students make up 19.5 percent of all school students in New York State, they make up 24 percent of all special education students within the state. Hispanic students account for 17.5 percent of the total and 20.1 percent of special education students. A black student is 1.3 times as likely to be placed in special education as a white student, and a Hispanic student is 1.2 times as likely, the report said. New York State also puts a bigger chunk -- 7.7 percent of all special education students -- in entirely separate classroom settings than the national average, which stands at 4.1 percent. Placement in a separate setting is a predictor of poor academic performance, last year's results on the fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading and math tests showed. Of the fourth graders placed in general classrooms for more than 80 percent of the school days, 33.3 percent scored at Level 3 or above in the statewide English test and 49.8 percent in the similar math test. But of the fourth-grade special education students placed in general classrooms for less than | Students' Placement in Special Education Is Leveling Off |
1394046_1 | and her health educator co-author, direct their attention to women. Through interviews with women and professionals in human sexuality, and with unabashed instructions on how to wake up sexually (''Go to bed naked.''), they cover a wide range of subjects including which drugs encourage sexual response, whether cosmetic surgery will make a woman sexier and the benefits of masturbation. ''The New Love and Sex After 60'' teams two writers with impressive credentials. Dr. Butler is a renowned geriatrics specialist who was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging and was a Pulitzer Prize winner for for his book ''Why Survive? Being Old in America'' (1976). Dr. Lewis is a psychotherapist, a social worker and a gerontologist. Their book is far more subdued. The authors build an intelligent case around the premise that the need for love and sex does not diminish, although bodies and emotions change with age. And, they argue, love and sex play major roles in giving meaning to later life. They also address questions like, How do you keep a romance going through 50 or more years of a relationship? And they discuss ways to start all over after divorce or the death of a partner. They point out that except for the effects of estrogen loss after menopause, the normal physical changes that accompany aging appear to interfere very little with a female's sexual ability and that reports of a decline in elderly women's sexual interest are controversial. Buttressing that, they offer this quote from a 72-year-old who lives in an apartment building for older people, where 95 percent of the tenants are women: ''There are four or five widowers here, but none of them is currently being pursued by a woman. Isn't that pathetic? Unfortunately, none of these men is personally appealing to me or I would take action. At my age I still consider myself attractive enough for any man, maybe even one a few years younger than myself. All I need to know now is 'where the boys are.' '' A 91-year-old man, whose wife died years before, echoes the sentiment. ''I have been on the shelf as they say for the past four years -- no more sex, just thinking about it, which is not sufficient. If I could find a lady friend who would accept a guy in a wheelchair, I might give it another try.'' BOOKS ON HEALTH | Guides to Help Revive The Sexually Inactive |
1391978_0 | ''In the old days, people robbed stagecoaches and knocked off armored trucks. Now they're knocking off servers.'' RICHARD POWER, on computer crime and security. [A14] | QUOTATION OF THE DAY |
1393417_0 | NORTH CASTLE, the sprawling 27-square-mile township that embraces urban North White Plains, suburban Armonk and the Vermont-like rural East End of Banksville, has a reputation for being McMansion-friendly. ''This town has a big red bull's eye painted on its forehead,'' said Rod Christie, executive director of the Mianus River Gorge Preserve in Banksville. ''Come here if you want to develop. You can do anything in North Castle. Nobody will do anything about it.'' Last year, alarmed residents formed the North Castle Coalition to look into the situation. They learned, among other things, that in the last 30 years, the only open space the town had acquired was from developers paying their $3,500-per-lot recreation taxes with scraps and slivers of land. The coalition also learned that compared with its neighbors, including Greenwich, North Castle's housing regulations and their enforcement made it easier for developers to build big. Harry White, director of the coalition, said, ''That catalyzed us to realize we wanted to do something.'' While other towns were passing referendums, buying up open land and locking it away from development, the North Castle Coalition identified its own urgent mission: update vague, loopholed ordinances and help the town enforce them. When it comes to a local government protecting its character , North Castle has all the conventional weapons in place: boards for planning, zoning, architectural review, conservation, even a recently formed open space committee. ''Regulation enforcement is the growing hot potato,'' said Mr. White. ''Whether it's landfills or steep slopes, in some cases the town doesn't have regulations, in other cases there is a track record of recurring violations that get policed eventually.'' Another director of the coalition, Stan Penkin, agreed. ''The personnel just doesn't seem to be sufficient to cover the wide area,'' said Mr. Penkin, who moved to Armonk five years ago, ''particularly in light of the amount of growth that's been taking place in recent years. Things just happen so quickly.'' Two years ago, for example, residents were alarmed about a caravan of dump trucks snaking along sleepy, windy Mianus River Road with landfill used to level a plot upon which a large house was built, just uphill from the Mianus River Gorge Preserve. Although calls were made in protest and tests for toxicity of the landfill were performed, neighbors were concerned that the permit process and the enforcement of any restrictions had been too lax. There are litanies | A Town Wrestles With Development |
1393764_0 | THE MAKING OF A PHILOSOPHER My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. By Colin McGinn. 241 pp. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. $25.95. SOCRATES always insisted that what he knew was worth little or nothing, even though no less an authority than the Delphic oracle said that there was no one wiser than he. Philosophers are not ''lovers of wisdom,'' in the literal meaning of the word, but lovers of the search for understanding. They cannot rest until they can determine for themselves and explain to their colleagues how they know what can be known, and why it is worth knowing. Not everyone would be happy living this kind of intensely examined life. But in his brief memoir, ''The Making of a Philosopher,'' Colin McGinn makes it sound as if philosophy can even be fun, especially if one is the kind of person McGinn represents himself as being: tough, determined, amusing, combative and very clever. In the English port city of Blackpool, McGinn, as a teenager, was an indifferent student who played drums in a rock band and looked forward without much enthusiasm to a life in middle management. Then a teacher introduced him to St. Anselm's ''ontological proof'' of the existence of God. He says he ''found the argument hard to follow but absolutely riveting (a lot of philosophy is like that).'' He discovered that thinking about problems like this propelled him outside of himself and his drab environment. From now on he could be in contact with great thinkers of the past, even sitting by himself in his unheated bedroom. He began to read avidly. He became the first member of his family to go to college. If we can believe him, he sat on a bench in Blackpool staring at a mailbox, asking what made it a mailbox: was its substance (mailbox-ness) the sum of its individual qualities (red, cylindrical, metal)? He had started to ask himself difficult questions about the nature of reality. Despite his unconventional background (he studied psychology at the University of Manchester), in 1972 McGinn managed to get into Oxford as a graduate student in philosophy. Oxford was the center of philosophical discourse at the time, with some 70 philosophers on the faculty. But it was an entirely different world from the utilitarian atmosphere of Manchester, with long-established traditions. McGinn found himself in competition against students who had been studying philosophy for years. But, in part | Analyze This, This and This |
1393471_1 | is a musician, and he hopes to raise a family someday. As an estimated 1.2 million new college graduates enter one of the bleakest, most competitive job markets in a decade, they may want to pay attention to Mr. Cohen's story. Some people can be satisfied in an ordinary job. A recent report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that companies expect to hire 36 percent fewer new college graduates than they did last year. It's no surprise that graduate schools are reporting increases in applications; what else is there to do? Of course, there are jobs out there. It's just going to take longer to find them. ''Students are going to have to be more creative at their job search, but there are entry-level jobs around -- in health care, social services and legal services, especially,'' said Joanne Cordano, a career adviser at St. John's University. The search, she said, will often require flexibility. Instead of aiming at a high-paying position at a large accounting firm, for example, a job seeker may have to use his skills elsewhere -- say, in the accounting department of a supermarket chain. ''You just need to be open to new things,'' Ms. Cordano said. ''You might find you like what you're doing, even if it wasn't what you expected.'' Lynn Rosetta-Cusick received a degree in theater in 1994 from Columbia University. When she was between jobs seven years ago, Ms. Rosetta-Cusick, now 29, took a position as a word processor at a law firm in Manhattan, working from midnight to 8 a.m. She is pleased with her job, which pays around $60,000 a year. For one thing, it gives her plenty of time with her husband, Janson, 30, a bartender in New York. Sometimes, though, she wonders if she shouldn't be doing something else. She briefly considered going to law school, she said, but ''then I wouldn't be able to read my fun books'' during the day. Some of her friends, she added, do not understand how she can be happy without a career that uses her theater training. They think she's not ''living up to her potential,'' she said. ''It gets annoying when people ask 'What's new?' because nothing's new,'' she said. ''I don't go from new project to new project. My life is about every day, not long-term plans. I'm not writing the great American novel in my | Labors of Love (if Not of Current Fashion) |
1393399_4 | particular odor. ''An odor that is associated with a stressful circumstance has the potential to activate stress when it is smelled even under different circumstances,'' Dr. Dalton said. ''If people can overcome this type of odor-stress association, maybe it will help them overcome the stress.'' Monell was hired by the federal government to help develop an odor that would be repellant to everyone in the hope of developing a nonlethal stink bomb that could flush people out of caves or be used to disperse crowds. Monell researchers found that natural odors like decaying flesh, feces or rotting garbage were more effective than odors created in a laboratory. Conversely, natural odors of honeysuckle, wisteria or even the coconut smell associated with suntan lotion remind most people of summer, even if the people grew up far from any area that grows coconuts, Dr. Dalton said. Whether natural or artificial odors are more appealing can depend in part on a person's age, according to Dr. Hirsch's study. People born in the 1920's through 1940's reported feeling nostalgic when catching whiffs of natural odors of cut grass, ocean air, honeysuckle or pine. People born during the 1960's and 1970's reported nostalgic feelings from the smell of candy, Play-Doh, fabric softeners, crayons and even airplane fuel. ''Older people may care more about the natural environment and be more environmentally concerned, because nature reminds them of their childhood,'' Dr. Hirsch said. ''Younger people may not be as involved.'' Not only are there odors that remind people of summer, but people's sense of smell is also intensified in the summer. ''The sense of smell is better in the summer because people have fewer colds, but also because warmer air moves molecules faster so there is more in the air to smell,'' Dr. Hirsch said. This may help explain why so many people associate particular odors with summer, which product manufacturers like candle makers, then try to duplicate. Victoria Elliott, a candle maker in Dallas who markets her candles on her Web site, www.candlesbyvictoria.com, has developed floral, fruity scents fore candles she markets in spring and summer, like one called Ocean Mist. ''It is a sensual fragrance with a hint of that salty mist you only smell when you're at the ocean,'' she said. ''That and Summer Nites, a scent of fruit and soft wood, are two popular summertime fragrances. People feel lighter when it gets lighter outside | Nasal Academy |
1393753_2 | a stiff-legged walk, marked with urine, and approached me with a soft repetitive moan. I greeted her, nose to nose, and offered her a bag of kibble.'' The book is at its best in describing such encounters and the behavior of bears. At times it can be slow going, as when Kilham lists his many theoretical questions about bear behavior, but it is always compelling when the bears are in action. Kilham started out raising orphaned bear cubs at the request of wildlife officials. And he decided to do it in an entirely unconventional way. He took the cubs into the woods with him, without leash or collar or any restraint, and tried to be a mother bear, teaching them what he could and letting them explore and discover how to fare in the wild. His exploits have been described in magazine articles and television documentaries, and ''Among the Bears'' is his chance to tell of his adventures and research. Kilham catalogs a variety of sounds and movements bears make, like the pigeon coo, ''made while falling asleep or during times of quiet joy,'' and the roar, ''indicating severe anger. Made every time I provoked a cub to do something against its will.'' He also offers some conclusions, which he admits are not fully proved scientifically. He argues that bears have an awareness of self, that they are highly social, and cooperative and altruistic beyond anything before observed. THERE is no disputing the strength of the bonds Kilham forged with these animals. One of the times he met Squirty in the woods, he also encountered her suitor, a large, wild male bear who didn't take to Kilham and began to move toward him aggressively. Squirty came to his defense. ''She pinned her ears and rose on her feet and lunged at the big bear with a forceful 'Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh!' that stopped him in his tracks.'' Kilham hid behind Squirty, the only place he was safe. ''A feeling of helplessness came over me,'' he says. ''I was under arrest. I had been collared by a bear. And there wasn't anything I could do about it.'' Moments like these make the book. Imagine -- a human being protected in the wild by a bear he raised as a cub. It's straight from a fable or folk tale. But it's true. James Gorman writes about the outdoors for The Times. | Pursued by a Man |
1392201_1 | the cubs are players in a new kind of turf war in the Rocky Mountain West, one that pits the soaring population of humans against a recovering population of grizzlies. Similar battles between people and resurgent predators are taking place in many parts of the country, but nowhere else are the risks so great. If startled or injured, grizzlies will sometimes attack and kill humans. Since the traditional human method for winning wars with grizzlies -- shooting them all -- is no longer on the table, wildlife experts have had to improvise a Plan B. Here in northwest Montana, that plan is adult education; for the grizzlies, as well as for the people who cross their paths. It is hardly foolproof. Yet many grizzly experts agree that teaching the bears to associate human settlements with unrelenting hard times is probably the best approach for long-term coexistence. ''There are not a lot of other options,'' said John Waller, a research biologist who for 15 years has worked for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. ''Back before Tim Manley started experimenting with this stuff, there were just two options: kill the bear or move them far away. But we have learned you cannot move bears far enough away. Hunger will always draw them back to where they know there is food. Then you often have to kill the bear.'' Thanks to more than a quarter- century of protection under the Endangered Species Act, the population of grizzly bears in the United States outside Alaska has stabilized at an estimated 800 to 1,200. The densest concentration is just east of Whitefish in Glacier National Park, home to an estimated 300 to 400 grizzlies, some of which range outside the park. Grizzlies in the park in the last century have killed about 10 people. Last fall in western Montana, a grizzly killed a hunter who was field dressing an elk. Compared to the black bear that is common in eastern parts of the United States, grizzlies are much more likely to be defensive of their young and aggressive when surprised. Not everyone in Montana is delighted with the grizzly comeback. Some people attribute the decline in logging and mining to federal and state laws that close off logging roads to protect grizzly habitat. One local militia, which calls itself Project 56, opposes ''road closures, the New World Order and grizzly bears.'' There is, | In Fight Over Turf In Montana Valley, It's Man vs. Grizzly |
1395338_10 | Island, a large, dimly lighted room where about 20 black-and-white video screens and 16 color monitors track every vessel that enters the port. ''We're taking a look at the risks associated with each vessel, and basically on that information -- where they're coming from, what was the last port of call, what cargoes are on there, who are the shipping companies, where are the crew members from, are they from a country that were concerned about, Middle East counties, somewhere else that would cause us some concern,'' he said. ''We determine what their risk is and who we're boarding.'' Since Sept. 11, 700 of the 4,000 ''high-interest'' vessels boarded nationwide were in the New York area. But Cmdr. Michael McAllister, the chief of the marine response division in the New York command, said the new program had sharply reduced the number of ships boarded. ''If it's a particularly high-interest vessel, we'll get the U.S. Customs Service involved,'' Commander McAllister said. ''We'll get the Immigration and Naturalization Service involved.'' In other situations, the Coast Guard might dispatch boats to escort vessels to shore, or call in the Sea Marshals, a new unit created after Sept. 11 to guard vessels' engine rooms and bridges against hijackers. ''Vessels carrying liquefied natural gas and other explosive elements are routinely boarded,'' said Chief Warrant Officer Lyons of the Sandy Hook station. ''Like an aircraft, one of these things can be used as a weapon of mass destruction.'' After a three- to four-hour check of the ship's crew and inspecting safety features like its gas detection system, a 110-foot cutter takes up an escort position at the bow while a utility boat follows at the stern, ready to warn other vessels off or in a worse-case situation, attack an other vessel trying to ram the fuel-carrying ship, Mr. Lyons said. Containers stacked in holds -- like the ones in which the two dozen Middle Eastern men are said to have entered the United States illegally -- are not easily accessible at sea; once in port, only 3 percent of the containers get opened by the Customs Service, which says it does not have the manpower to open every container. For now, the authorities are exploring ways to make sure that weapons and stowaways are intercepted at the port of origin, and they are trying to develop new technology to track each piece of cargo along the | A Line in the Water |
1395360_11 | a look at the risks associated with each vessel, and basically on that information -- where they're coming from, what was the last port of call, what cargoes are on there, who are the shipping companies, where are the crew members from, are they from a country that we're concerned about, Middle East countries, somewhere else that would cause us some concern,'' he said. ''We determine what their risk is and who we're boarding.'' As a result, said Cmdr. Michael McAllister, chief of the marine response division in the New York command, where 700 of the 4,000 high-interest vessels nationwide were boarded since Sept. 11, the number of ships boarded has been sharply reduced. ''If it's a particularly high-interest vessel, we'll get the U.S. Customs Serviced involved,'' said Commander McAllister. ''We'll get the Immigration and Naturalization Service involved.'' In other situations, the Coast Guard might dispatch boats to escort vessels to shore, or call in the Sea Marshals, a new unit created after Sept. 11, to take positions in the engine room and on the bridge to make sure a vessel cannot be taken over and used as a means of destruction. Looking for Weapons Vessels carrying liquefied natural gas and other explosive elements are routinely boarded, said Chief Warrant Officer Lyons of Sandy Hook station. ''Like an aircraft, one of these things can be used as a weapon of mass destruction,'' Mr. Lyons said. After a three- to four-hour check of the crew and inspection of such features as the gas detection system, a 110-foot cutter takes up an escort position at the bow while a utility boat follows at the stern, ready to warn other vessels off or, in a worse-case scenario, deflect any vessel trying to ram the fuel-carrying ship, Mr. Lyons said. However, containers stacked in holds -- like the ones in which two dozen Middle Eastern men are said to have entered this country -- are not easily accessible for opening at sea; once in port, only 3 percent of the containers get opened by Customs, which said it does not have the manpower to open every container. For now, the authorities are exploring ways to make sure that weapons -- and suspected terrorists -- are kept from containers at the port of origin, and they are trying to develop new technology and systems to track each piece of cargo along the way to insure | A Line in the Water |
1395377_11 | and cargo at least 96 hours before docking. A new office within the Coast Guard, the National Vessel Movement Center in Martinsburg, W. Va., -- created after Sept. 11 to track vessels -- receives the information, which it shares with Coast Guard intelligence in Maryland and checks it against criminal and immigrant databases of other agencies. With this information, the Coast Guard decides which ships to board based on risk management, said Commander Ronan as he stood in the Vessel Traffic Service Center on Staten Island, a large, dimly lighted room where about 20 black-and-white video screens and 16 color monitors track every vessel that enters the port. ''We're taking a look at the risks associated with each vessel, and basically on that information -- where they're coming from, what was the last port of call, what cargoes are on there, who are the shipping companies, where are the crew members from, are they from a country that were concerned about, Middle East countries, somewhere else that would cause us some concern,'' he said. ''We determine what their risk is and who we're boarding.'' As a result, said Cmdr. Michael McAllister, chief of the marine response division in the New York command -- where 700 of the 4,000 high-interest vessels nationwide were boarded since Sept. 11 -- the number of ships boarded has been sharply reduced. ''If it's a particularly high-interest vessel, we'll get the U.S. Customs Serviced involved,'' said Commander McAllister. ''We'll get the Immigration and Naturalization Service involved.'' In other situations, the Coast Guard might dispatch boats to escort vessels to shore, or call in the Sea Marshals, a new unit created after Sept. 11, to take positions in the engine room and on the bridge. Vessels carrying liquified natural gas and other explosive elements are routinely boarded, said Chief Warrant Officer Lyons of the Sandy Hook station. ''Like an aircraft,'' Mr. Lyons said, ''one of these things can be used as a weapon of mass destruction.'' After a three- to four-hour check of the crew and inspection of features like the gas detection system, a 110-foot cutter takes up an escort position at the bow while a utility boat follows at the stern, ready to warn other vessels off or, in a worse-case scenario, deflect any vessel trying to ram the fuel-carrying ship, Mr. Lyons said. However, containers stacked in holds -- like the ones in which | A Line in the Water |
1395647_0 | President Bush refused to lift a 40-year-old trade embargo against Cuba unless Fidel Castro undertakes democratic and economic reforms. In Miami, in front of thousands of wildly cheering Cuban-Americans -- voters critical to the president's reelection -- Mr. Bush also called Mr. Castro a brutal dictator who had done nothing for the Cuban people. Even so, Mr. Bush and former President Jimmy Carter, who urged easing the embargo during his recent visit to Cuba, met quietly at the White House. There was no other word from the White House on the tenor of the talk. Elisabeth Bumiller | May 19-25: INTERNATIONAL; TOUGH ON CUBA |
1395579_2 | want to be a doctor,' but they wouldn't know what to do.'' The fund helps students with the college- application process, with preparing for the College Boards and with seeking financial aid. ''We help them find out what interests them and what they need to do. It empowers them.'' About 500 participants have graduated from the Career Awareness Program. The graduates become eligible for the PreOccupations Club, in which they can continue to build on the tools that will help them go to college and find employment. They can participate in that program, which began five years ago, through the 12th grade. Teenagers in the club meet with mentors in New York; they also visit Camp Mariah twice a year. The themes for this month's weekend visit were outdoor education and independent living. Though an unexpected snow flurry limited outdoor activities, the members kept busy, splitting into four groups for a variety of exercises. Inside the warm cabin, one group took part in a lesson in living within their means. They assumed an annual income of about $34,000 that provided $2,000 to spend each month. When they went over that amount by $750, it was time for some sacrifices; they eliminated jewelry purchases, decided to use a supermarket discount card to cut grocery costs and reconsidered expensive hairdos. That left them with $100 as they began to discuss health insurance, impulse buying, saving and investing. A second group learned how to use compasses and maps, then competed outside with their newly acquired skills, searching for various campground destinations. A third group focused on lessons in trust. In the dining hall, members took turns falling backward, having faith that other campers would catch them. Mixed in with the smiles were occasional over-the-shoulder glances -- just to make sure. Meanwhile, a fourth group prepared lunch. ''The activities help them learn to work with the people around them, to use everyone's talents and skills to the best advantage,'' said Doug Weitz, the director for the Career Awareness Program. Teena Torres, 18, a graduate of the Career Awareness Program and a member of the PreOccupation Club, said she plans to room with another career awareness graduate, April Thompson, next fall at Howard University in Washington. ''Camp Mariah was an excellent program,'' she said. ''We did mock interviews that were videotaped, then we viewed them with criticism. We learned a lot about interviewing. For instance, | At Camp, Survival Skills Include a Solid Résumé |
1395233_0 | EIGHT months into the war on terrorism, airport security guards treat everyone as a possible terrorist until proved otherwise -- unless the traveler is selected for additional inspection, in which case previous inspections are irrelevant. The procedures have become so cumbersome that some travel experts are calling for a new approach. The possibilities include heavier reliance on profiling, which before Sept. 11 was a dirty word; a ''trusted traveler'' plan; and even common sense. At the moment, the first two have the inside track. Either profiling or a trusted-traveler system would reduce the number of people to be inspected. ''Everyone gets all freaked out'' when they hear the term profiling, said Todd Hauptli, a spokesman for the American Association of Airport Executives. But finding someone who intends to hijack or blow up a plane is like looking for a needle in a haystack, he said, and ''you've got to figure out how to make the haystack smaller.'' A computer-assisted passenger profiling system has been in place for several years at the major airlines. Before Sept. 11, it was used at check-in to decide whose luggage should be more closely screened. Now, it is used at the boarding gates to check passengers and their carry-ons, but not at the main screening checkpoints, where screeners do not know the identities of the people they are searching. The attributes that subject people to closer scrutiny are secret. Government officials have said that a large part of the system is based on ruling people out; if enough is known about travelers, from their travel history, for example, they are not profiled. While many people believe that a factor is the buying of a one-way ticket at the last minute and paying cash for it, it seems difficult to imagine that sophisticated terrorists would call attention to themselves that way. But no security expert trusts the existing profiling system enough to make it the sole basis of security. Partly as a result, security checks have a random factor thrown in, with some people selected simply to give terrorists the idea that there is always a chance of being singled out. As described by security officials, the randomness also adds an element of fairness: they assert that the profiling system does not take race or religion into account, while adding passengers chosen at random assures that people of every race, religion and background are among those | At Airports, a Search For Better Security |
1395389_0 | EACH day, thousands of cargo ships and tankers from around the globe glide into and out of ports from Delaware Bay to Napatree Point in Rhode Island -- each with the capacity to be the vehicle of the next terrorism disaster. In the Port of New York and New Jersey alone, about 11,000 vessels haul three million shipping containers and nearly 30 million gallons of oil and petroleum products every year. And with the Memorial Day weekend here, and the summer boating season about to get into full swing, pleasure craft by the thousands will be slicing through the region's ocean and bays, coves and inlets -- some undoubtedly under the questionable control of weekend sailors keeping the summer sun at bay with a six-pack not far from the helm. Other craft may be under the control of far more dangerous hands. Yet the Coast Guard -- the long-ignored relation of the military establishment that now finds itself on the nation's front line in this new kind of war on terrorism -- is finding itself stretched thin. Only time will tell if the Coast Guard will be called on -- and prove itself able -- to prevent a terrorism attack in this country's ports and waterways. At the least, given the diversion of personnel and equipment to prevent a new attack, it seems clear that this summer's recreational boating season is going to be even wilder than usual, with reduced law enforcement and spotty maintenance of navigational aids. ''Do we have all the people we need? No,'' Vice Admiral James D. Hull, the Commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic area, said in a telephone interview. ''But we have prioritized our missions.'' Vice Admiral Hull added: ''We've cut back significantly in fisheries enforcement in the Northeast, we've taken our vessels out of the drug missions down South. Some of the migrant interdiction, instead of catching them down further south, we're catching them closer to shore.'' Or as Chief Warrant Officer Stephen Lyons, the commander of the station at Sandy Hook, put it: ''We've been doing a service almost around the world with an organization that is smaller than the New York City Police Department.'' Administered by the Department of Transportation, not the Department of Defense like its military siblings, the Coast Guard is finding itself overburdened. With aging equipment that frequently breaks down and only 37,000 military personnel on active duty | Is the Coast Clear? |
1395527_1 | commodities companies like Archer Daniels Midland, Riceland Foods, Gold Kist Inc. and about 18 others that have sold food to Cuba since late last year. There also are branded food companies that haven't sold anything yet but are likely to do so. They include RJR Nabisco, PepsiCo and Mars, which owns Uncle Ben's Rice, a prerevolutionary favorite in Cuba. Other American companies that have affiliates or relationships with companies in Cuba will be well positioned to move fast. They include General Motors, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, G.E., Microsoft and the Carlson Companies, which control Radisson hotels and T.G.I. Friday's restaurants. Western Union, AT&T, WorldCom and Sprint all provide some communications services today. And while McDonald's has no operations in Cuba now, its global corporate strategy to always be first into new markets means that it can be expected to be among the first to go in. Q. You mentioned resumption of cash-only American food sales. How does Cuba pay? A. The $90 million worth of food and agricultural products purchased by Cuba during the last seven months have reduced Cuba's overall purchases from its existing suppliers by $90 million. Some of the funds that Cuba has used to pay U.S. companies have come from funds that were supposed to have been directed toward paying current creditors. That means suppliers in Canada, France, Brazil, Argentina, Spain and other countries are not enthusiastic about having some of what is owed to them being used to gain political influence in the United States. Q. Cuba has 11.2 million people and poverty is serious. What makes Cuba so attractive to American companies? A. Cuban awareness of U.S. brand names is among the highest for any non-English-speaking country, which makes the Cuban market immensely attractive for some U.S. companies. And because so many Cubans have family members in the U.S., their purchasing decisions are going to be influenced by that familiarity with certain brands. The unrestricted trade relationship between the U.S. and Cuba will likely be 80 percent U.S. exports to Cuba. Only certain products, like beverages, tobacco, citrus, coffee and perhaps some health care products will be exported to the United States. Sugar producers in Florida and Louisiana, along with citrus producers in Florida and California, are not going to be enthusiastic about additional competition. Q. President Bush said trading with Cuba helps keep Mr. Castro in power. Are American sellers of food to Cuba aiding | FIVE QUESTIONS for JOHN S. KAVULICH II; Room for Whom on Cuba's Ground Floor? |
1390251_0 | The federal investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11 has been unable to pinpoint what engineering elements were critical in the disintegration of the buildings or how best to resist a recurrence. Even so, the six-month study -- conducted by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- has revealed some disturbing facts about modern skyscrapers that are potentially worrisome for those who work or live in high-rise buildings around the country. The most encouraging finding was that the impact forces of the huge jets that rammed into the towers would not have been enough, by themselves, to cause the collapse. Although the twin towers were designed to handle only the crash of a Boeing 707 flying at low approach speeds, the study says, when put to the test on Sept. 11 they absorbed the shock of slightly heavier Boeing 767's flying at much higher speeds. Had no other stress been imposed on the structures, the study concluded, they could have remained standing indefinitely. Unfortunately there was added stress, in the form of extremely hot fires that resulted when jet fuel ignited the contents of the buildings and planes. The flames softened the structural steel, triggering events that allowed the upper floors to cascade downward. All three major defenses against fire proved unequal to the task. The sprinkler systems were disabled by the impact of the planes. Firemen were unable to reach the inferno because emergency elevators were damaged, and even if they had arrived in force, the standpipes they needed were almost certainly disabled. Finally, the fireproofing material sprayed on steel beams and trusses to protect against overheating failed to do so, probably because most of it was blasted off by the planes' impact. Whether better insulation is needed, at least for the most critical structural elements, will be one focus of additional inquiry. The experts were unable to determine whether the fires alone, without the impact of the airplanes, could have brought the towers down. But it is disquieting to learn that an adjacent 47-story building collapsed completely as a result of a fierce fire fed by diesel oil on the premises, and that another building suffered a partial collapse from fire. These are the first known instances of protected steel-frame structures collapsing from severe fire, suggesting that many modern buildings may be more vulnerable than anyone | How the Towers Collapsed |
1390218_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Greater Share of Income Is Committed to College'' (news article, May 2): The rising cost of running a university has little to do with ''bidding wars'' for the best professors. Yes, there are well-paid stars at many universities, but their salaries are more than balanced by the highly underpaid graduate teaching assistants and adjunct faculty who now provide much of the instruction. There are many other factors that have increased costs over the last 20 years, among them the cost of building and maintaining a computer infrastructure; the costs of litigation over everything from intellectual property suits to grade disputes; and the vast increase in the number of highly paid upper-level administrators. As many of these costs cannot easily be controlled, more attention must be given to student aid. JENNIFER SHERIDAN MOSS Huntington Woods, Mich., May 2, 2002 The writer is an associate professor of classics, Wayne State University. | High Cost of College |
1390193_3 | are harming the most basic field work, even observational studies of wildlife in which nothing is taken away. The restrictions not only affect northern scientists' probing southern forests, but also local scientists. Dr. Ricardo Callejas, a professor at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, specializes in the 2,000 species in the black pepper family. Dr. Callejas said fears of biological theft seemed particularly intense in South America, adding that it was ''much, much easier to get permits for collecting in the Philippines and Vietnam'' than in Colombia. His discipline is taxonomy, basic analysis of the subtle differences among species and a field with little commercial appeal. Even so, Dr. Callejas said, he and his graduate students had been accused of biopiracy and booted from one village while on a collecting trip. He added that he longed to collect in a dizzyingly rich area in western Colombia, the Choco forests, but that the treaty had made the effort impossible. ''If you request a permit,'' Dr. Callejas said, ''you have to provide coordinates for all sites to be visited and have to have the approval from all the communities that live in those areas. Otherwise, go back to your home and watch on Discovery Channel the new exciting program on dinosaurs from Argentina. I am still waiting after 14 months for a permit for collecting in Choco.'' Delays, fees and research restrictions in countries like Brazil and provinces like Sarawak, the Malaysian part of Borneo, have caused many scientists simply to abandon the critical, difficult work of charting the still largely unexplored maze of species. In some cases, scientists have been detained and their collections destroyed. In the Brazilian Amazon in 1998, an American geographer studying the forest for hints of ancient cultivation methods was placed under house arrest by the federal police in Santarem, and his boat, equipment and samples were seized. The scientist, Joseph M. McCann, who now teaches at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, had all the appropriate permits and visas. He said that he eventually got back his gear and the title to his old riverboat, but that most of the collection of pressed plants rotted because the police had stored it outside. The plants had been destined for a Brazilian herbarium, not a pharmaceutical laboratory, he said. Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers have been affected most of all, from both developing countries and | Biologists Sought a Treaty; Now They Fault It |
1390178_4 | research on low-dose estrogen is mostly positive, Ms. Allina said, girls and women still need to know the benefits and risks of hormonal contraception so that they can then make informed choices. While adolescents seem to suffer from menstrual pain more than older women, it is not clear whether that is because dysmenorrhea eases over time or because adult women are better at dealing with it, Dr. Davis said. ''Older women probably cope a little better,'' she said. ''They know how to get hold of a medication, how to anticipate that it'll happen.'' Over all, the number of teenagers using oral contraceptives for birth control has been declining. One reason may be side effects, including breast tenderness, break-through bleeding and headaches, which are rare with lower-dose formulations. And the stigma of the pill's early history of health risks lingers on. ''The latest polls do indicate that a number of women and adolescents still harbor fears about birth control pills, as they harbor fears about many contraception methods that are deemed medically safe,'' said Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood. One persistent concern among women and adolescents is the causal link between oral contraceptives and breast cancer. A 1999 bulletin published by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists identifies this issue as one reason teenagers do not use the pill. Summarizing the findings of more than 50 studies, it stated that ''no increased risk of breast cancer'' was associated with past oral contraceptive use, ''regardless of duration of use.'' However, the bulletin noted, controversy continues because one large study has indicated a slightly increased breast cancer risk at a young age related to oral contraceptives. For Kathy and Lori Rice, the question of the pill's safety was more than academic. ''We have a history of gynecological problems and cancer in my family,'' Kathy Rice said. ''My mother had uterine and breast cancer. But Dr. Sucato said she wasn't worried about that because of the low dosage.'' Lori said she considered the increased risk for breast cancer, and ''It worries me a bit.'' Weighing her worries against the freedom from her monthly ordeal, she opted for the pill. Slightly more difficult to persuade was Lori's father. ''My husband wasn't happy about it,'' Kathy Rice said. ''He's old-fashioned. But Dr. Sucato told him, 'Don't think of it as birth control. Think of it as hormonal therapy.' '' | Beyond Birth Control: The Pill Tackles New Duties |
1390328_14 | students. These early letters and spring receptions are increasingly popular among college admissions officers, as yet another way to improve their yield and look better in college rankings. The Ivy League and other select colleges moved their notification date from mid- to early April a decade ago to give them more time to roll out the red carpet. And since then, more and more money is being spent wooing prospective freshmen. The early letter from Bucknell pleased Reuben but did not free him to celebrate. ''I still have to worry about money,'' he said. ''If another school gives me more . . . I'll go where I get the most aid.'' At Bucknell, a typical financial aid package covers $19,000 of the annual $32,000 cost of tuition, room and board, leaving a gap of $13,000. But when Reuben visited last fall with a group of inner-city students, Mark Davies, the dean of admissions, told them that ''typical'' means just that. Some students ''pay next to nothing.'' Bucknell, Mr. Davies told them, ''works hard to meet the demonstrated level of need.'' Then he went further: An initial financial aid offer was not the last word. ''I want to hear from you if there's something else we can do,'' he said. This time, no further appeal was needed. When Reuben and his mother arrived at Bucknell for the accepted students' festivities they were handed his financial aid information. His was a ''preferential package,'' the document said, because of his ''outstanding academic credentials'' and the contribution he would make to ''cultural pluralism.'' Reuben's costs each year, including tuition, room and board, books, travel and incidentals, would be $33,583, Bucknell estimated. The school would pay $28,500 of that; $2,750 more would come from a federal Pell grant and $2,625 more from a federal Stafford loan. In addition, he was eligible for an on-campus job that paid at least $1,500. That totaled almost $2,000 more than he needed. This was as good as it gets, Mr. Lessa told him. ''All he's been doing is smiling,'' Ms. Dowouna-Nortey said. Reuben, grinning ear to ear, ducked his head. Getting In Articles in this series follow three New York City students through the college application process. DAY 1: Rules of the Game DAY 2: The Rush to Apply DAY 3: The Decisions Online audio interviews: The three students share their experiences applying to college, at nytimes.com/education. Getting In | At Last, Colleges Answer, And New Questions Arise |
1390239_1 | when American farm groups, who view Cuba as a natural market, and their allies advocate loosening the four-decade American trade embargo. He added that Mr. Bolton had produced no evidence to substantiate his allegations. Mr. Bolton's office would not elaborate on the charges. But other administration officials say the United States now believes that Cuba has been experimenting with anthrax, as well as a small number of other deadly pathogens that they declined to identify. Ken Alibek, the most senior scientist who defected from the Soviet Union's biological weapons program, told a Congressional committee last October that he believed that Cuba was capable of making genetically modified germ weapons that might be able to defeat American vaccines and antibiotics. He said the Cuban military was conducting genetic research at ''several centers,'' one of them close to Havana. Officials say intelligence analysts have long focused on Cuba partly because its huge investment in biotechnology has produced what is regarded as Latin America's most sophisticated biomedical capabilities. According to a report on Cuba and germ weapons posted on the Web site of the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, Mr. Castro intensified concern among American officials about Cuba's germ-related activities in February 1997. He compared the United States to a dragon and Cuba to a lamb, warning that the dragon would find its meal poisoned if it tried to eat the lamb. Cuba, in fact, is one of the few developing nations to play a significant role in drug and biotechnology activities. The Web posting calls Cuba's effort ''unmatched elsewhere in the developing world.'' Cuban biotechnological research is far advanced in genetic engineering. That has enabled Cuba to make new vaccines for its comprehensive immunization program, which is widely admired by scientists and physicians. Cuba also makes drugs like recombinant streptokinase, the ''clot buster'' for heart attack victims. In 1995 Cuba sold $125 million worth of these products, primarily to other developing countries, especially to former Soviet states. In a breakthrough for Cuba in late 1999, SmithKline Beecham, the British-American health care group, announced an agreement to test and market a new Cuban meningitis vaccine, first in Europe and eventually in the United States. Mr. Bolton's office declined to specify what Cuban cooperative effort with another country concerned the United States most. But José de la Fuente, the former director of research at Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote in the | Washington Accuses Cuba Of Germ-Warfare Research |
1390239_2 | He compared the United States to a dragon and Cuba to a lamb, warning that the dragon would find its meal poisoned if it tried to eat the lamb. Cuba, in fact, is one of the few developing nations to play a significant role in drug and biotechnology activities. The Web posting calls Cuba's effort ''unmatched elsewhere in the developing world.'' Cuban biotechnological research is far advanced in genetic engineering. That has enabled Cuba to make new vaccines for its comprehensive immunization program, which is widely admired by scientists and physicians. Cuba also makes drugs like recombinant streptokinase, the ''clot buster'' for heart attack victims. In 1995 Cuba sold $125 million worth of these products, primarily to other developing countries, especially to former Soviet states. In a breakthrough for Cuba in late 1999, SmithKline Beecham, the British-American health care group, announced an agreement to test and market a new Cuban meningitis vaccine, first in Europe and eventually in the United States. Mr. Bolton's office declined to specify what Cuban cooperative effort with another country concerned the United States most. But José de la Fuente, the former director of research at Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, wrote in the journal Nature Biotechnology late last year that he was ''profoundly disturbed'' about Cuban sales of dual-use technology to Iran. ''No one believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis,'' he wrote. Mr. Bolton said in his speech that last year, Mr. Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya, all of which Washington has designated as sponsors of terrorism. He noted that at Tehran University, Mr. Castro had said that Iran and Cuba, together, could ''bring America to its knees.'' Though Mr. Bolton's speech focused on Cuba, there were also expressions of concern about Libya and Syria. Mr. Bolton said that although the Libyan germ program was in an earlier stage of development than Cuba's, Libya, too, ''may be capable of producing small quantities of biological agent.'' He also accused Syria of flouting treaties banning chemical and biological weapons. He said Syria had a ''stockpile of the nerve agent sarin'' and was ''engaged in research and development of the more toxic and persistent nerve agent VX.'' Cuba, Libya and Syria have all signed the 1972 treaty banning biological weapons, though Syria has still not ratified it. The treaty | Washington Accuses Cuba Of Germ-Warfare Research |
1390169_0 | After melting holes through the floating ice at the North Pole last month to retrieve an array of instruments tethered to the sea bottom a year ago, a team of scientists left an observer behind. It is an automated digital camera linked by satellite to the Web, allowing the researchers -- and anyone else -- to keep track of conditions at the top of the world. The Internet address is www.arctic.noaa .gov. For the moment, the camera is taking four pictures a day, but it can be adjusted by remote control to zoom in if something unusual is spotted or to take pictures more frequently. The camera sits near several batches of instruments measuring conditions in the air, ice and ocean beneath. Called the North Pole Environmental Observatory, the instruments, atop a floe, will slowly drift with the current in coming months. The project is aimed at deciphering the substantial changes in arctic weather, ocean currents and ice in recent decades. The milling cap of polar sea ice has thinned and shrunk, air temperatures high in the stratosphere have dropped sharply, and air and water at the sea surface have warmed. An important question is whether the changes are related to a 50-year global warming trend that scientists say is mostly caused by emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from smokestacks and tailpipes. There is enough natural variability in the region -- and such a paucity of data -- that the question cannot be answered so far, said Dr. James H. Morison, the University of Washington oceanographer directing the project. | Camera Is Left Behind to Zoom In on North Pole's Weather |
1396575_10 | future World Trade Center. The day after the shooting, an armada of 70 canoes sailed from Pavonia to New Amsterdam, where rampaging Indians killed the landowner and burned the village before moving on and destroying a struggling Dutch settlement on Staten Island. A different sort of terror stalked the waterfronts of New York Harbor in later years, when, according to Herbert Asbury's book ''The Gangs of New York,'' troops of river pirates in rowboats preyed on the ships and businesses that flourished on the Hudson River piers in the 19th century. In 1869 the Charlton Street Gang, led by a vicious woman named Sadie the Goat, flew the Jolly Roger from the mast of a hijacked sloop and terrorized the waterfront. When one Manhattan pirate, Albert E. Hicks, was hanged for murder, as many as 10,000 people floated off Bedloe's Island to watch. A gallows had been erected where Lady Liberty now stands. Waters Calm and Calming Peace reigned in Lower Manhattan on the day the Adirondack made its first sail of the season. By the time we returned to Chelsea Piers, the wind and water surface had calmed considerably. As we coasted toward the cove at Pier 62, a fleet of nine small sloops glided past like a group of belles at an antebellum ball. On shore, to the north and east, the rays of the lowering sun played on the crown of the Empire State Building. As soon as we entered the cove, the familiar noises of the city, though not the city's tensions, returned with the bleat of a car horn and a static blast from a public-address speaker at the adjacent skateboard park. The sounds reminded us of how soothing it was to spend two hours listening to nothing but the rush of the wind and the slap of the waves on the Adirondack's resonant hull. It is a music I won't soon get out of my head. Following in Henry Hudson's Wake A sampling of schooner and sloop cruises around New York Harbor. Schedules are subject to change: THE ADIRONDACK. Designed by Scarano Boat Building Inc. of Albany, the Adirondack docks at Pier 62 in the northernmost cove at Chelsea Piers, at West 23rd Street and the Hudson River. It was modeled after the pilot boats that carried 19th-century ship captains and harbor pilots to oceangoing vessels anchored offshore. ''They were built to go out | Away From the Uproar, Before a Strong Wind |
1396682_0 | A vital instrument on a new billion-dollar satellite designed to resolve questions about the changing climate is malfunctioning, NASA officials said today. The satellite, called Aqua, is the centerpiece of NASA's Earth Observing System, a suite of satellites and projects intended to improve forecasting and gather data on the human role in global warming. The malfunctioning instrument, a radiometer with a five-foot dish, records with resolution far better than previous space-based instruments patterns that trace how water moves from the oceans and soil to the atmosphere and back again. That cycle is a major influence on global weather patterns, and because water vapor is the dominant natural heat-trapping gas, also plays a role in long-term climate change. The satellite is also designed to take detailed measurements of snow cover, rainfall, soil moisture, sea temperatures and winds over the ocean. The radiometer grew out of more than a decade of work by American, European and Japanese researchers and was built by Mitsubishi Electric. At the spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union here, satellite experts involved with the project dipped repeatedly out of presentations on climate science to check with colleagues on any news about the device. Since the launching of Aqua on May 4, scientists had slowly been activating and testing the half-dozen instruments that it carries, NASA officials said. On May 25 and May 28, the stream of data from the scanning radiometer began to stutter. ''It was looking great and just as you got excited -- blip -- it goes off the air,'' said an American scientist involved with Aqua. A spokesman for NASA, David E. Steitz, said it appeared that the problem was isolated to the device and not the satellite. Mr. Steitz said it would be premature to say the instrument had failed. ''When you launch a brand new big spacecraft with a bunch of instruments on it,'' he said, ''naturally it's a birthing process.'' | New Climate Sensors for Earth Malfunction on Aqua Satellite |
1389171_6 | gays in the priesthood than in other walks of life. But American Catholics were divided over whether a gay man should be ordained at all, even if he remained celibate. Men were more likely than women to oppose such ordination, and Catholics older than 64 more likely to oppose it than younger people. American Catholics also overwhelmingly supported the ordination of women; more than 6 in 10 of those polled said they supported female priests, up from more than half who supported the idea in 1987, when a Times/CBS News poll first asked that question. As reflected in previous polls, Catholics disagree with the church's position on artificial methods of birth control: 71 percent of those polled favored it, while the church forbids it. Other areas of disagreement include the death penalty, which is opposed by the church yet supported by most American Catholics. How the Poll Was Conducted The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Sunday through Wednesday with 1,172 adults throughout the United States. Of these, 433 said their current religious preference was Roman Catholic. The sample of telephone exchanges called was randomly selected by a computer from a complete list of more than 42,000 residential exchanges across the country. Within each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to listed and unlisted numbers alike. Within each household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey. The results have been weighted to take account of household size and number of telephone lines into the residence and to adjust for variation in the sample relating to geographic region, sex, race, age and education. Catholics were oversampled and then weighted to their proper proportion of the population. In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, the results based on such samples will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking out all American adults. For smaller subgroups the margin of sampling error is larger. For Catholics it is plus or minus five points. In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of public opinion may introduce other sources of error into the poll. Variation in the wording and order of questions, for example, may lead to somewhat different results. SCANDALS IN THE CHURCH: AMERICAN CATHOLICS | Catholics Back Strong Steps on Abuse, Poll Finds |
1389117_2 | to be organized; Mr. Gebre said many of his attackers were dressed in black with swastika insignias on their arms. And they have been common enough to hold many of Moscow's non-white communities in fear. In April two African-American marine guards from the American Embassy were attacked by skinheads in downtown Moscow. Russian authorities have played down the problem, suggesting that the attacks are part of the growth in street crime, according to diplomats. ''The authorities are shying away from accepting the situation,'' said Nigeria's ambassador, Abdullahi S. Mukhtar. ''It has gone beyond the realm of threats -- it's a reality. People are being attacked; people are being killed. We made private appeals over the last couple of years and did not go public. But when you exhaust every avenue and hit a brick wall, what can you do?'' The police often react slowly, if at all, according to 13 attack victims interviewed over a two-week period. One student from Cameroon, Ghislain Kokam, said two officers looked on while a crowd of at least 40 young people beat him for more than 10 minutes on a subway platform. In another case, an attack was even captured on film. Joseph Peters, a 29-year-old refugee from Sudan, was carrying a video camera when he was attacked last June. He gave his videotape of the attack to the police, but after almost a year, the police said the tape did not work, though Mr. Peters had shown it to several friends, and, he said, to three police officers sent to question him. Paul Massa Mayoni died after young people beat him last autumn just outside a United Nations office in Moscow. His attackers face lesser charges of hooliganism after the state prosecutor's office, referring to a forensic report, found that death was caused when Mr. Mayoni's head hit the ground, and not by blows from the attackers sticks. The government does not keep statistics on hate crimes but the African ambassadors have counted 141 reported attacks since 2000. President Putin's speech produced some interest in the issue, and extra police officers patrolled Moscow streets on April 20, the anniversary of Hitler's birth. The date has become a traditional day for racist attacks; on April 20, 2001, a mob killed a Chechen boy near the Kremlin. But society as a whole has mustered little collective revulsion or sympathy. In part, this may be because | Where 'Living While Black' Means Living in Fear |
1389096_0 | To the Editor: ''A Nun Feels Betrayed in a Male-Led Scandal'' (news article, April 27) leads me to ask: Where are the thousands of religious women in the church crisis? They are respected teachers, witnesses and leaders for many in the church. We need to hear their collective and individual voices, calling for healing for the victims of clergy sexual abuse; justice; honesty; openness; and multifaceted reform within the church, which is long overdue. Their voices are conspicuously absent. Are they not speaking, or are we not listening? THERESE RAGEN New York, April 30, 2002 | Women and the Church |
1390843_0 | An article yesterday about preparations by the United Nations for its special session to discuss the needs of children misstated the number who died of preventable diseases in the 1990's. It is estimated at 130 million, not 10 million. The article also misstated the number of countries that met their pledge to devote an average of 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product to development assistance. It is five, not four. (Luxembourg did, along with Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.) | Corrections |
1390715_8 | people are up and running again. With a PC and an Internet connection, anyone can now be a pirate. The price of hardware has plummeted as competing manufacturers have flooded the market. Equipment that used to cost several thousand dollars has dropped to $100 or $150. ''Everybody and their neighbor has a programmer these days,'' said Rod Freire, a satellite installer in Windsor who has five satellite dishes on his house. Still, the Canadian Supreme Court decision on April 26 changed the picture. The Canadian satellite industry, aggrieved at having to compete with pirated American signals, won a ruling that it was illegal for Canadians to watch American satellite television. Within days, satellite piracy in Canada came to a stumbling halt. Storefronts were shuttered and Web sites were pulled down. Apologetic signs went up. Customers panicked. What would they do without their satellite TV? On the Monday after the Friday ruling, the shelves and tables in one Windsor store were bare. The owner had stripped out all his equipment over the weekend. But customers kept calling. ''I can't talk to you on the phone,'' the owner said. ''You can come here and we can talk face to face.'' Customers wandered into the store one by one. An older man pulled a small envelope out of his pocket and took out a card. ''Do you still . . . ?'' he asked. ''We don't program anymore,'' the proprietor said firmly. Well, at least not officially. The owner then asked the man to leave his name and number on a piece of paper. ''We'll contact you,'' the owner said. ''We'll work something out.'' The owner, who spoke to a reporter on the condition that he not be identified, said he would probably start making house calls but that his prices would go up. There is currently an injunction on the enforcement of the ruling. But no matter the outcome, satellite piracy will continue, dealers say, with Web sites moving to offshore servers and more viewers buying the hardware themselves. For example, Decoder News (decodernews.com), a site that had been operating out of Toronto, plans to move its server to the Caribbean. ''If you never give kids candy in the first place, they'll be O.K.,'' said Mr. Dicker, the owner of Satan's Playhouse. ''But you can't give kids a bunch of candy and then take it away. The same is true for satellite.'' | In Satellite Piracy War, Battles on Many Fronts |
1390689_3 | who isn't expressive,'' she said. '' 'Got your information.' Well, was it informative, was it what you wanted, am I hurting your feelings?'' Not hearing back certainly concludes the exchange. ''Silence is one way we judge that any conversation is over,'' said E. Sean Rintel, a graduate student in sociology at the State University of New York at Albany who has researched openings, closings and silences in communication. But silence in e-mail is ambiguous. It could mean countless things, from ''The kettle is boiling'' to ''I met someone better.'' Then there is the coward's way out: claiming that the computer was down. ''You can always blame it on the technology if you don't want to respond,'' Mr. Rintel said. ''You don't have to accept responsibility as a social being at all.'' Relative status is the greatest determinant of who concludes the exchange. It is nearly always the person of higher status, said Susan C. Herring, associate professor of information science at Indiana University. Rarely does the job seeker or the sales representative fail to reply. ''It is much more likely that my correspondents send me the last message,'' said Dr. Herring, who sometimes forgets to answer if a message has scrolled off the screen. ''I am likely to receive confirming or thanking messages,'' she said. ''People are soliciting me -- they want something from me and I don't want something from them. I try to answer every question and reply in such a way that they do not answer back.'' That includes neither asking questions nor introducing new topics. Dr. Herring sees e-mail endings as unavoidably brusque. Even instant messaging lends itself to a kind of gradual disengagement, with people typically batting goodbye messages back and forth before finally signing off. ''On e-mail, there is no gradient,'' Dr. Herring said. ''Either you respond or you don't.'' Amalia Zea is among those who don't. She is conscious that her failure to respond makes people uncomfortable, but she is too busy to worry about it. As an office manager at Entertainment Weekly magazine in New York, she receives up to 100 e-mail messages a day and answers only those that demand a response. ''A lot of people ask me for something and I don't respond in an e-mail,'' she said. ''Let's say somebody has a request: they need an air purifier. I just order it and they get it on their desk.'' | An E-Mail Affliction: The Long Goodbye |
1395882_1 | lead to new kinds of specialized crystals that could have applications in industry. Thick or Thin Crust? Oddities of topography, not topology, concern a researcher at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Specifically, he is interested in impact craters on Jupiter's moon Europa and what they say about the thickness of the moon's icy shell. The researcher, Dr. Paul Schenk, analyzed images of craters taken by Galileo and Voyager spacecraft and compared them with craters on two other icy Jovian moons, Ganymede and Callisto. He identified several types of craters on the moons, based on depth, whether there was a central peak or dome and other characteristics. Dr. Schenk found that on all three moons, type varied with crater diameter. He identified several transitions, diameters below which craters are of one type and above which they are of another. In one case, the transition is is attributable to how ductile the ice is at shallow depths; in another it is related to the influence of the oceans beneath. He also found that the transitions occurred at much smaller diameters on Europa than on the other two moons. All of this leads him to the conclusion, published in Nature, that the ice on Europa is much thicker than that on Ganymede or Callisto -- a minimum of 12 miles thick. This presents problems for scientists who believed that the ice was a mile or so thinner. (Like lovers of pizza, Europa researchers fall into two camps: those who like their crust thin, and those who like it thick.) A thin crust better supports the idea that life could exist there, as it would be thin enough to allow melting and cracks that would let organisms in the oceans get some sunlight. Dr. Schenk's work does not eliminate the concept that life could exist under Europa's shell. But it does pretty much eliminate the thought that a space probe could carry equipment to drill through the ice to search for it. A Safe Haven for Whales The International Whaling Commission's annual meeting, which ended last week in Japan, foundered in a sea of acrimony over Japans desire to resume commercial whaling. But there was at least one small bright spot, courtesy of Mexico, which announced the creation of a whale sanctuary covering all the waters within its jurisdiction, about a million square miles. All whale species within the sanctuary and about | OBSERVATORY |
1395955_0 | Scientists this week are publishing a wealth of detail about the discovery in March of what could be the frozen remains of once vast oceans on Mars. The finding, by NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, lends support to theories that early in its history Mars was wet and warm -- and possibly amenable to life. It could also simplify a future manned mission to Mars, supplying a source of drinking water and fuel for a return. Scientists who study the present-day surface of Mars, arid and frigid, have long wondered, where did all the water go? The answer appears to be down, and not very far. In the polar regions of Mars, the surface is covered by a foot or two of dry soil. Below that, pores in the soil and rocky debris appear to be encrusted with ice. The concentration of ice is surprisingly high -- one-fifth to one-third by weight, and up to 60 percent by volume, the scientists report. In the equatorial regions, there was little water near the surface. The journal Science will publish three papers on the Odyssey measurements on Thursday on its Web site; some details were reported in the British news media over the weekend. The lead authors of the three papers are Dr. William V. Boynton of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Dr. William C. Feldman of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Dr. Igor G. Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute in Moscow. ''The results, even after only a month of mapping observations, are stunning,'' Dr. James F. Bell, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, writes in an accompanying commentary, which will also appear on Science's Web site. Launched in April last year, the Odyssey arrived at Mars in October. After slowly nudging itself into its final orbit about 200 miles above the surface, the spacecraft began in late February its $300 million mission of mapping the distribution and concentration of chemical elements and minerals on the planet's surface. A week later, scientists announced that they had detected strong signs of subsurface ice. The new papers provide the details and analysis of the initial observations. The presence of ice could reduce the amount of water that needs to be carried to Mars on any manned mission. Water could also be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel for the return trip. Scientists find evidence of water | Scientists Measuring Martian Ice Detect Oceans' Worth |
1395892_2 | issues from the 25-center study, soon to be published in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the researchers found that while higher rates of miscarriage and lower birth weights were observed among the offspring of former patients, ''there are a large number of live births, births of healthy children, a lack of congenital abnormalities and very low cancer rates,'' Dr. Robison said. ''The data are extremely reassuring,'' she added. ''It's a very good news type of report.'' The researchers would not provide details of the findings before publication. Dr. Giuseppe Del Priore, director of gynecologic oncology at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and his colleagues at the New York University School of Medicine noted in the January issue of Contemporary Ob/Gyn: ''Less than a generation ago, reproductive-aged women with cancer generally had little to hope for and even less to look forward to. But things have changed. Many cancers are no longer a death sentence. More and more women with cancer are now becoming pregnant and raising legitimate fertility concerns.'' Today, a doctor could tell Ms. Zea of Minnesota and other women like her that pregnancy is no longer ill-advised. Even women whose breast cancers are discovered during pregnancy should no longer be advised to terminate the pregnancy, because there are no data indicating a therapeutic benefit from such an abortion, the New York experts said. The estrogen produced in pregnancy is weaker than estrogen produced in other women and is less likely to stimulate breast cancer growth, even if the woman's tumor is estrogen-sensitive. Today, too, even cancers directly involving the reproductive organs -- ovaries, uterus and cervix -- can sometimes be treated in ways that permit future pregnancies and the births of healthy babies. Many of the modern chemotherapeutic agents are less damaging to ovarian function than the older drugs and do not induce permanent early menopause. Thus, a woman's fertility may return months or even years after treatment ends. Fears that potent anticancer drugs will damage the DNA of a woman's eggs or a man's sperm and result in birth defects have not been borne out by experience. As Dr. Elyce H. Cardonick, a perinatologist at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, wrote in the March/April issue of Coping magazine, ''The medical literature contains reports of children born of parents previously treated for cancer, including Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, melanoma and breast cancer, and no excess of | Cancer and Childbirth: Mutually Exclusive No Longer |
1395890_4 | that others feel hostile or critical toward them and tend to defend themselves, in the process actually provoking hostility and a vicious cycle of anger. Others operate from a misperception that the world should be other than it is and become enraged when beset by the ordinary hassles and inconveniences of everyday life -- an airport delay, a traffic jam, a person who breaks into a line. Dr. Rosenthal told of a friend who was often angered by long red lights and whose wife ''reminds him gently that the red light doesn't care, so he might as well save his fury.'' The psychiatrist noted that ''it is easier to change your expectations and recognize that life is often neither fair nor easy than it is to change the world.'' Sometimes chemical influences -- like excessive caffeine, steroids, diet drugs and antidepressants -- foster irritability. If medications may be contributing to your anger, discuss this possibility with your physician. Curbing Hostility When small children act up, parents these days are likely to give them a ''timeout.'' Likewise, people prone to anger need time to calm down and collect their thoughts. Sometimes, Dr. Rosenthal said, this literally means turning the other cheek -- ''physically moving away from the person who is provoking the anger.'' Only with time and distance may it be possible to respond appropriately, with wit, diplomacy, or proper assertiveness. ''Sometimes the cause of the anger may need to be addressed; at other times it might be better left alone,'' Dr. Rosenthal said. Just because you fail to respond immediately to a provocation does not mean you are ''giving in'' and allowing the person to offend you again and again. You will be much more effective at changing offensive behavior if you wait until you can discuss things calmly and rationally. Keep in mind that even if your anger is fully justified, blowing your top can still cost you; you may lose your job, your spouse or your health. Once you recognize what makes you mad, change the messages you give yourself, Dr. Rosenthal suggests. For example, you might rehearse the idea that just because some people are rude doesn't mean you must let them get to you. Instead, respect yourself for being a competent and polite person. Finding something funny in the situation and distractions like listening to the radio or to a tape of a book while stuck | Why Angry People Can't Control the Short Fuse |
1394320_1 | clergy leaders, a process that could take years, comes as Catholic dioceses around the country are facing fund-raising shortfalls in the wake of the growing sexual abuse scandals. Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston, who is at the center of the crisis, has been pressured to sell the chancery's 15-acre compound, including his residence, to offset mounting legal expenses. In several other jurisdictions, including Dallas, Denver, Rhode Island and Stockton, Calif., lawyers have struggled to gain access to the church's real estate assets, which in most cases are shielded by separate corporate entities. Michael Hurley, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said many church leaders in older dioceses live in large, historic buildings, but that others live in relatively spare apartments. In New York, Cardinal Edward M. Egan's residence is attached to St. Patrick's Cathedral; in Washington, the bishop has a few rooms on the top of the boxlike Catholic center. ''In many instances, bishops live in reasonably nice homes, but I don't know that many of them live in opulence,'' Mr. Hurley said. ''Some of these older large buildings they use because they otherwise would go unused.'' Here in Chicago, the nation's third-largest diocese with 2.3 million Catholics, the prospect of a For Sale sign in front of the sandstone-and-red-brick mansion, known as the House of 19 Chimneys, was met with horror by preservationists and the Catholic faithful. Though the building's designation in 1975 as part of the Astor Street historic district would keep it from being razed and replaced with a high-rise condominium, many said it is the archbishop's occupancy, as much as the architecture, that makes the mansion special. ''I know we need money, but I think the cardinal needs some niceness around him,'' said Geri Soriano, 63, president of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women. ''If he sells it, he'll have nothing.'' David Bahlman, president of the Landmark Preservation Council of Illinois, said that while any structural changes would be subject to approval of a city commission, a new owner could, say, convert the chapel into a billiards parlor. He likened the situation to the pope deciding to sell St. Peter's to expand the Vatican's charitable work. ''There's a historical continuum that's been in place since the 1880's,'' Mr. Bahlman noted. ''It's a wonderful symbol of the presence of the archdiocese in Chicago. Symbols have always been very important to the Catholic | Chicago Cardinal Proposes Selling His Mansion |
1392921_0 | Dr. Charles M. Rick, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the evolution and genetics of the tomato enabled him and other botanists to produce healthier and tastier tomatoes through crossbreeding, died on May 5 in Davis, Calif., where he was a professor emeritus at the University of California. He was 87. Dr. Rick specialized in cytogenetics, which examines the behavior of chromosomes and genes in cells. He collected the seeds of hundreds of wild tomato species with vast genetic variations, which domestic tomatoes lack. In doing so, he contributed greatly to plant genetics, evolution, genome mapping and archiving the seeds of tomatoes and related plant species. His early efforts helped form the basis for molecular maps that have made the tomato genome one of the best known in the plant world. He provided a model for other scientists seeking to modify plants for commercial use. Dr. Rick contributed greatly to the field of plant evolution, and he advanced the understanding of the relationship between the geographic distribution of plant species and their ability to crossbreed. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Charles Madeira Rick Jr. was born in Reading, Pa., and grew up working in orchards. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in horticulture in 1937 and received a doctorate in genetics at Harvard in 1940. He joined the faculty at the University of California at Davis the same year and soon began his effort to map the tomato's entire collection of genes. He was a founder of the Tomato Genetics Cooperative, an information exchange for researchers, and published its reports from 1951 until 1981. He established the Tomato Genetics Research Center at Davis and was its curator. The center, which now bears Dr. Rick's name, says it has the largest collection of tomato seeds in the world. He formally retired in 1985 but remained active until failing health began to hinder his field and laboratory work about two years ago. Dr. Rick is survived by a daughter, Susan R. Baldi, of Santa Rosa, Calif.; a son, John, of Menlo Park, Calif.; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson. His wife, Martha Overholts Rick, died in 1983. | Charles M. Rick, 87, Botanist; Helped Create Tastier Tomatoes |
1392902_1 | chemical company, selling the same products he would later castigate. Long afterward, Mr. Lutzenberger recalled the incident that transformed him into an ardent, unrelenting defender of the ecosystem. It occurred while he was visiting a 250-acre apple orchard that had been repeatedly sprayed by its French owner with pesticides and herbicides bought from Mr. Lutzenberger. ''I asked him if he wasn't afraid, and he replied with the utmost frankness that he wasn't worried because he wasn't the one who was going to eat the apples,'' Mr. Lutzenberger said. ''To me, who was the one selling the poison, it was so big a shock that I quit my job and returned to Brazil.'' At first Mr. Lutzenberger and Agapan, the environmental group he founded in 1971, concerned themselves primarily with issues near at hand, like the pollution of local rivers. But with the publication in 1976 of his book ''The End of the Future: A Brazilian Ecological Manifesto,'' his focus gradually shifted to broader national causes, in particular that of the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rain forest. In 1987 Mr. Lutzenberger founded a group called Gaia, which focused on global issues, and a year later he won the Right Livelihood Award (sometimes called the Alternative Nobel) in recognition of his work. But it was his appointment as secretary of the environment in 1990 that made him an international figure. In the two years he spent in office, Mr. Lutzenberger worked to reverse longstanding government policies that he thought favored corporate interests and encouraged depredation of the Amazon. Overcoming strong opposition from miners and loggers, for instance, he helped carve out a 36,000-square-mile Amazon sanctuary for the Yanomami Indians and pushed for rigorous enforcement of laws to punish industrial polluters. But his sharp tongue and confrontational tactics offended many of Brazil's most powerful interests, including the military, which accused him of wanting to hand the Amazon over to international supervision. He also tangled repeatedly with the national forest service, which he saw as corrupted by logging companies, and in March 1992, less than three months before the ''Earth Summit'' talks that he had pushed to have held here, he stepped down. After leaving office, Mr. Lutzenberger returned to Gaia and devoted himself to restoring environmentally degraded areas and to financing biodiversity programs, keeping his distance from politics. ''Just to think of Brasília makes me ill,'' he once said of the capital. | José Lutzenberger, Brazilian Environmentalist, Dies at 75 |
1393005_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Bush Plans to Tighten Sanctions on Cuba, Not Ease Them'' (news article, May 15): We trade extensively with China. We have full diplomatic relations with dictatorships. Even in the days of the Soviet Union, we did not let competing ideologies stop the flow of goods. It's time to let go of this 40-year obsession with Cuba and end the embargo. Cubans may lack the civil rights and liberties we often take for granted as Americans, but this should not be an impediment to trade and the exchange of ideas and people. Who suffers from this embargo? The American farmer who needs a market for his crops, and the Cuban girl who needs drugs to treat her illness. Real people suffer real consequences from this outdated policy. STEVE NESICH Seattle, May 15, 2002 | On Crossing the Strait to Cuba |
1395019_1 | the study of stupidity in this book. But Professor Ronell actually risks very little, for though the contemporary academic milieu suffuses every aspect of this work, she does not examine the concept on her home turf. ''Stupidity'' is almost defensively academic in its advocacies and oppositions. It is also ornately opaque in its arguments and citations. It is full of the stylistic eccentricities and obscurities of the work of literary theorists like Paul de Man; reading it is a chore for any reader embracing other orthodoxies. So extreme can these mannerisms become that the experience of reading ''Stupidity'' can be a bit unnerving: the book's central concept often seems as useful to describe the irrelevancies and flaws of the text as, some may find, to describe the limitations of this particular critic.. This critic, at any rate, persisted, partly because, as Professor Ronell points out, stupidity is familiar but not familiarly understood. It has, she asserts, ''largely escaped the screening systems of philosophical inquiry.'' The Greeks thought of it as something that disqualified one from public life and citizenship. Flaubert called it ''something unshakeable.'' ''Nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it,'' he continued. For Rousseau, in his ''Confessions,'' it inspired recurring anxieties: ''People find my stupidity all the more shocking because it disappoints their expectations.'' Professor Ronell also attends to the more transcendent aspects of sacred ''idiocy'' in readings of Dostoyevsky's ''Idiot'' and in overly devotional attentiveness to the writings of de Man. Much of this doesn't build in any systematic way, though there are tantalizing glimpses of what might have been. But the real heart of Professor Ronell's argument, however undeveloped it may be, is intriguing. She traces modern ideas about stupidity to the 18th-century belief that reason had the power to organize the world, that society could be shaped by idealistic and utopian visions, and that education and ethical behavior were inseparable. ''The pedagogy of the Enlightenment,'' she argues , gave stupidity its terrain, ''repeatedly casting brutality, prejudice, superstition and violence as so many manifestations of the eclipse of reason.'' So where reason stopped, stupidity reigned. This meant that stupidity did not just define the dark realm of the irrational; it also became associated with the naïve and innocent -- the holy fool of Dostoyevsky, the schlemiels of folk literature. But in Professor Ronell's readings, the category of the stupid was mostly used to denigrate and ostracize; | A Subject That May Appear, Stupidly, to Need No Explanation |
1389336_2 | and the University of California campuses, a fourth or more of the students receive federal Pell grants, which are limited to students whose family income is roughly in the lower third nationally. If top-ranked colleges, public and private, really want to encourage upward mobility rather than recycle prestige, they might learn from those schools that have been able to do a better job. Public institutions might learn some lessons as well. They could begin by advertising their true price. When working-class kids see that a university's annual tuition rivals a family's total annual income, it is no wonder they don't consider an Ivy League education -- even with talk of big financial-aid awards. But the price isn't really that high for most students. At the need-blind colleges, it is actually a sliding scale, from no tuition (and better, with help for room and board) to $25,000 or more, depending on need. Why not say that up front? Admissions offices should also pursue ethnic and economic diversity more aggressively. Predominantly white institutions need to make minority students feel they belong. Colleges that are successful at recruitment, in athletics or any other field, pay special attention to high schools with strong programs. They pursue students who are interested, befriending their parents and teachers. They should use these same strategies to recruit low-income students of all races. Elite colleges are generally quite effective in ensuring that every student succeeds. But if they are going to enroll more students from low-income families, they need to remember that these students are often the first in their families to attend college and may need guidance and support. This is the time of year when high school seniors are figuring out whether they can afford the colleges they want to attend. To help low-income students find out how well the colleges of their choice can meet their needs, the Department of Education should monitor economic diversity on college campuses. It should publish, on its Web site, the proportion of students at each college who receive federal Pell grants. For their part, college lobbyists should press Congress and the Bush administration for a major increase in Pell grants. Public and private colleges should also accept responsibility for enrolling and supporting more lower-income students. Robert M. Shireman, who served as an education advisor to former President Bill Clinton, is program director for higher education at the James Irvine Foundation. | Enrolling Economic Diversity |
1389317_0 | To the Editor: President Bush is to be commended on his recent statement in support of mental health parity (news article, April 30). He joins the majority of Americans who now realize that mental illnesses are very real illnesses that are also quite common. Fortunately, they are also very treatable. We can now help most children, adolescents and adults who suffer from mental illnesses. The ultimate goal is parity for all mental illnesses, as well as substance abuse disorders. Adequate financing is essential to ensure access to comprehensive intervention, but overcoming stigma and discrimination through public education and improved awareness is equally critical. DAVID FASSLER, M.D. Burlington, Vt., April 30, 2002 The writer is chairman of the Council on Children, Adolescents and their Families, American Psychiatric Association. | Mental Health Parity |
1390068_1 | for France to drop the euro, revive the franc and shut its European borders. He seemed to remind voters of his racist image. In recent remarks, he suggested that illegal immigrants be put in ''transit camps'' and then be sent to Britain on ''a special train'' -- language immediately recognized as an echo of the Third Reich. ''He could have said airplanes, or trucks, he could have said transit center,'' said François Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. ''But he had to talk about World War II. He stopped being careful, and he probably hurt himself.'' A more savvy politician might have visited high-crime areas and been photographed shaking policemen's hands. Instead, Mr. Le Pen made only two more public appearances. One was in Paris after his annual May 1 visit to the gilded statue of Joan of Arc, patron saint of French nationalism. That was seen as a success because it drew a middle-class crowd including mothers with toddlers. At his similar 1995 rally, by contrast, some of his skinhead fans drowned a man of Arab origin by throwing him into the Seine. The second was embarrassing: a Marseille rally that drew only 3,000 people to a space meant for 8,000. In interviews with news organizations, instead of concentrating on his platform, he kept saying that his rival, President Jacques Chirac, was fixing the race. He even suggested that his ballot was on dull off-white paper while Mr. Chirac's was glossy. Tonight, in his concession speech, he sounded persecuted, saying that he had been ''the only incarnation of change'' for France, but that the race ''had become hysterical -- everyone was against me.'' His opposition, he said, ''had hidden behind a mask of democracy but actually was a totalitarian.'' Asked last week if Mr. Le Pen had ever formed a second-round strategy, his campaign manager insisted that he had. Going to Brussels was to ''show that he's the candidate of the outside against the establishment,'' said the manager, Carl Lang. ''No one else was talking about Europe. We wanted to say that we're not just about crime and immigration.'' Asked the same question today, Mr. Le Pen's press spokesman and the vice president of his National Front party both shook their heads. ''No,'' said Martine Lehideux, the vice president. ''His program didn't change after the first round.'' ''He thinks for himself,'' added his spokesman, Alain | Between Voting Days, Le Pen's Fiery Image Returned to Spotlight |
1390096_0 | To the Editor: I am heartened to see the New York City Board of Education identifying children in need of mental health services because of trauma-related disorders from 9/11 (front page, May 2). However, we should not limit these services to children suffering trauma from terrorism. Approximately 30,000 New York City children are in the foster care system because of abuse and neglect; many of them are suffering from unidentified post-traumatic stress syndrome. Similarly, thousands of children who have witnessed domestic violence may have this syndrome. The recommendations of the study should be expanded to include appropriate assessment and services for all children suffering from these disorders. ELISA HYMAN Deputy Dir., Advocates for Children New York, May 2, 2002 | For the Young, Scars of Sept. 11 |
1392418_5 | should engage Cuba at all levels just as it has worked with China and North Korea to improve conditions in those countries. The administration also intends to find new ways to help Cuba's dissidents. The goal is to make resources available for the disparate opposition groups -- including independent journalists, labor groups and the like -- so they can communicate better and use the United States as a conduit, according to a Congressional official who was briefed on the strategy. ''There's going to be a concerted effort to provide access to the Internet and improve communications in the island'' for such people, the official said. American diplomats will also try to raise the profile of dissidents by visiting them in their neighborhoods and native towns, rather than waiting for them to visit the American interests section in Havana, the official said. The top American diplomat in Cuba, Vicki Huddleston, has enraged Cuban officials by distributing short-wave radios that can tune in Radio Martí, an American government broadcast. Officials also hope to find a way to beam TV Martí into Cuba; the television transmission, which costs about $10 million a year, has been jammed by Cuban censors since its inception. Who, and What, Can Get Into Cuba Under the Trading With the Enemy Act, Americans are forbidden to export goods to Cuba, except for publications and informational materials like CD's and works of art; donated food; and Commerce Department-licensed goods like food, medicine and medical supplies. Cuban goods may not be imported into the United States, except for items valued at $100 or less carried by authorized travelers, and publications and artwork. Liquor and Cuban tobacco, including cigars, are forbidden. According to Treasury Department regulations, the following categories of traveler are allowed to visit Cuba without special permission: government officials, journalists, professional researchers, certain athletes and people who visit relatives (which is allowed once a year). The restrictions apply to students, academics and religious workers, but they can visit under licenses specifically granted to their schools or religious organizations. Others must apply the Office of Foreign Assets Control in Washington for permission to travel to Cuba. An exception is travelers sponsored by a non-American government or organization. Criminal penalties for violating the sanctions range up to 10 years in prison, $1 million in corporate fines and $250,000 in individual fines. Civil penalities up to $55,000 per violation may also be imposed. | Bush Plans to Tighten Sanctions on Cuba, Not Ease Them |
1392488_0 | A new rule adopted by federal regulators will force electricity traders to report individual transactions in detail beginning in July, preventing them from concealing the sort of fake ''round-trip'' trades that have allowed large energy producers to inflate their volumes and revenue, regulators say. Separately, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, disclosed today that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigated Enron's online-trading system last year but concluded that the ''chance of Enron failing financially was remote.'' An internal report by the commission in August -- just as Enron's facade was beginning to crumble -- raised serious concerns about Enron's online-trading system, including the ''competitive advantage'' it gave Enron's traders, said Mr. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, who obtained the report through his committee's inquiry into Enron. But the report ''settled for incomplete, unconvincing, or incorrect answers,'' he said, when a ''better investigation may well have exposed the cracks in Enron's foundation sooner.'' ''Though the report identified a number of areas that ought to have troubled FERC as the federal government's lead energy regulator, it found no reason for concern and no cause for action,'' Mr. Lieberman wrote in a letter today to the commission's chairman, Patrick Wood III. ''This, I am afraid, was a critical mistake.'' In another development, the author of the December 2000 memorandums that outlined how Enron traders had increased profits by manipulating the California electricity markets says in testimony prepared for Congress that upon learning of the tactics, he immediately warned Enron officials, including the company's head trader, that the maneuvers were deceptive and should be stopped. The author, Stephen Hall, a lawyer at an outside law firm that was helping Enron prepare for litigation and investigations in California, is expected to deliver the testimony on Wednesday. In it, he said his supervisor edited the memos to make it clear to Enron that deceptive trading tactics may not only be in violation of the rules of the California electricity-grid operator, but ''also possibly of criminal statutes.'' Also tonight, the attorney general of California, Bill Lockyer, disclosed what he said were newly uncovered Enron documents that originated in late 2000 and which he said outlined schemes to manipulate energy prices. The documents discuss the trading strategies described in the Enron memos released last week and include handwritten notes by Enron's head West Coast trader, Mr. Lockyer said. The notes suggest that Enron made large | U.S. Regulators Are Requiring Full Details Of Energy Sales |
1392406_4 | is using the study to guide recruitment. It is focusing on some of the colleges that produced many of last year's teachers, said Joyce Coppin, head of recruitment. The study, by Fred Smith, a retired data analyst for the board, found that 62 percent of this year's recruits attended colleges and universities in New York State. Of those, 21.6 percent graduated from the City University of New York and 11.7 percent graduated from the State University of New York. Thirteen percent of the new recruits received degrees in other countries, and 6 percent attended colleges in Connecticut, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The rest, 20 percent, attended college elsewhere in the country. Recruits with alternative certification -- mostly people changing careers who came in through the teaching fellows program -- were much more likely to have attended out-of-state colleges than were those with traditional certification. Queens College, a CUNY school, educated more of the new teachers (251) than did any other college, followed by Brooklyn College (220), Hunter College (178) and Lehman College (146), also CUNY schools. Among private colleges, the new recruits were most likely to have attended the College of New Rochelle (122) and New York University (137). The Board of Education is not a popular destination for Ivy League graduates: 59 of the 7,405 recruits were graduates of Columbia, 15 of Cornell, 9 went to Princeton, 14 to Yale and 12 to the University of Pennsylvania. (The study did not include figures on Harvard, Brown or Dartmouth because it looked only at colleges in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.) Roughly half of the 109 Ivy League graduates hired last fall were uncertified, a fact that board officials could not immediately explain. Of the 7,405 recruits, only 2,384, or 32 percent, were hired to teach in so-called shortage areas: math, science, Spanish, special education and bilingual education. Of those, only 30 percent, or 700, were certified. In comparison, 66 percent of the recruits hired to teach elementary school grades were certified. The board managed to hire only 267 teachers certified in math and science, the two subjects for which it is most desperate to find skilled instructors. This year, it hopes to increase the number of certified math teachers because the state will allow teaching fellows to teach math after an intensive summer immersion program. Until now, only fellows who had majored in math could teach it. | Half of New Teachers Lack Certificates, Data Say |
1392533_0 | Teach for America, the nonprofit group that places new college graduates in urban schools after a summer of training, received 14,000 applications this year -- nearly three times the number it received last year. Interest was especially high at Yale, where 7 percent of the senior class applied to participate in the two-year program, and at Spelman College in Atlanta, where 14 percent of seniors applied. Ninety-four Yale seniors applied, 44 have been accepted so far and 27 have made commitments to the program. At Spelman, 64 seniors applied, 23 have been accepted and 21 have signed on. Abby Goodnough BULLETIN BOARD | Applications for Urban Teaching Jobs Rise |
1395755_0 | AMERICANS are often accused of having a love affair with their cars. Millions of people spend hours of every day behind the wheel, commuting to work or driving their children to and fro. Most cars, sport-utility vehicles and minivans come equipped with the same standard options, which leaves it to independent inventors to come up with the quirky custom features that the manufacturers omitted. On the assumption that car thieves would be reluctant to drive around in a vehicle with ''STOLEN'' or ''CARJACKED'' emblazoned across the windshield, Jerry Alexander of Memphis has patented a transparent film embedded with such lettering that is invisible unless it receives an electrical signal that illuminates the words. If car thieves hot-wire the vehicle, the windshield warning remains illuminated as long as the car is running. A car owner can also activate the signal with a wireless remote-control device. ''This will be helpful in alerting the police that the car has been stolen or carjacked, and could warn both pedestrians and other vehicles to alert proper authorities to quickly evaluate the situation,'' Mr. Alexander writes in his patent. The film also can be applied to the license plate frame. Mr. Alexander received patent 6,124,783. To tame the treachery of driving in snow and ice, people have long plowed, salted and sanded roads. But Kevin Gray of Philadelphia has patented a thaw-as-you-go approach: a heated tire that he says will melt snow and ice as it rolls along. The heating wires are embedded between the tire tread and the outer steel belt. The system, powered by a control unit connected to the car's battery, is automatically activated whenever the outside temperature drops below freezing. Mr. Gray received patent 6,350,963. In their battles against speeding and other types of reckless driving, many police departments use stationary cameras to photograph cars that run red lights or exceed speed limits. The registered owner then gets a ticket in the mail. Among the people who object to such surveillance is Peter Kaszczak from Yonkers. Mr. Kaszczak has patented an ultraviolet laser emitter that is mounted next to a car's license plate and, according to the patent, ''ensures that the photograph taken by the automatic camera is either inaccurate or blurred, which makes detection of the violation or the violating automobile difficult.'' He says he does not intend to encourage reckless driving but simply wants to protect drivers who make innocent | What every new car needs: snow-melting tires, a pet seat, a partition for squabbling children. |
1395731_1 | people are no different from the Americans or Europeans of today; it is all a matter of education or lack of education.'' By 1910 Japan was almost fully literate, at least for the young, and by 1913, though still very much poorer than Britain or America, Japan was publishing more books than Britain and more than twice as many as the United States. The concentration on education was responsible, to a large extent, for the nature and speed of Japan's economic and social progress. Later on, China, Taiwan, South Korea and other economies in East Asia followed similar routes. Explanations of their rapid economic progress often cite their willingness to make good use of the global market economy, and rightly so. But that process was greatly helped by the emphasis all of these countries placed on basic education. Widespread participation in a global economy would have been hard to accomplish if people could not read or write -- or produce according to specifications or instructions. The contribution of basic education to development is not, however, confined to economic progress. Education has intrinsic importance; the capability to read and write can deeply influence one's quality of life. Also, an educated population can make better use of democratic opportunities than an illiterate one. Further, an ability to read documents and legal provisions can help subjugated women and other oppressed groups make use of their rights and demand more fairness. And female literacy can enhance women's voices in family affairs and reduce gender inequality in other fields, a benefit to men as well as women, since women's empowerment through literacy tends to reduce child mortality and very significantly decrease fertility rates. The lives that are most burdened and impoverished by over-frequent bearing and rearing of children are those of young women. A greater voice of young women in family decisions tends, therefore, to cut down birth rates sharply. For example, the fertility rates in the different districts that make up India vary extremely widely, from almost 5 (roughly, five children per couple) in some districts to less than 1.7 in some others. Empirical investigations by Mamta Murthi and Jean Drèze indicate that only two general variables significantly help to explain these differences: female literacy and female economic participation. In sub-Saharan Africa, 40 percent of primary-age children have no opportunity for schooling. Around the world, there are currently 125 million children who have never, | To Build a Country, Build a Schoolhouse |
1395808_6 | to Russ Bergeron, a spokesman for the immigration service. The service will consider changing a tourist visa to a student visa, but only if the prospective student had announced an intention to study when applying for the tourist visa. In November, even before the visa rules were changed for all foreign students, Congress acted to increase the scrutiny of foreign pilots studying here. The new transportation security law contains a provision requiring flight schools to report to the Justice Department any student training to fly a plane weighing at least 12,500 pounds, a weight level that includes most business jets and airliners. After conducting a background check, the Justice Department can prohibit a foreign student from learning to fly such planes. The weight limit was included after lobbying by the aviation industry and flight schools, which argued that light planes did not pose a significant threat to national security. Even now, the Federal Aviation Administration acknowledges that it has no way to know who is studying to fly a light plane with the nation's 82,000 certified flight instructors, up to the point when a student applies with the agency for permission to fly solo. On Friday, however, the F.B.I. issued an alert about light planes, saying it had received information that terrorists might still be interested in using them for suicide attacks. The alert asked pilots and instructors to remain alert for suspicious activity. Because the federal legislation did not affect light planes, many state legislators have said that Washington did not go far enough. In more than a dozen states, legislators have proposed laws that would impose further restrictions on student pilots or carefully check their backgrounds. Students in Limbo Federal officials say the rules are designed to prevent the abuse of the training system that taught the hijackers how to aim their jetliners at American landmarks. ''The United States of America will not allow our welcome to be abused by those who disguise themselves and their intentions,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft said a few days ago in Washington, announcing the visa changes and a new computer system to track foreign students in this country. But many in the nation's general aviation industry, which has lobbied hard to protect the lucrative practice of teaching foreigners how to fly, are angry that the government has no procedures yet for checking the backgrounds of foreign student pilots. While the Office of | Flight Schools See Downside To Crackdown |
1393947_5 | not deceived her. Most of ''The Three Shades'' had made it to the landfill, although barely: a severed foot and two headless bodies. Several months later, in March, a firefighter taking part in the recovery effort in Lower Manhattan found the bust of Jean d'Aire. It was turned over to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site and which photographed the bust and documented the discovery (''bronze head sculpture'') in its computer logs. A few days later, on March 11, the Port Authority turned the bust over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which stored it in that trailer at Fresh Kills, along with the remnants of ''The Three Shades'' and an engine from the very plane that had struck the north tower. And there these battered Rodins sit, until the day -- possibly this week -- when representatives from Cantor Fitzgerald come to retrieve them. ''It's just absolutely astonishing,'' said Ms. Vincent, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ''It really is incredible to me that they could have survived that sort of inferno, even remotely in recognizable form.'' Even more interesting -- at least to the city's Department of Investigation -- is what is not in that trailer; namely, ''The Thinker.'' Rumors of its survival persisted for months, until investigators sensed that the story was much more than yet another urban myth to rise from the disaster site. A senior law enforcement official said that a firefighter working at ground zero came across ''The Thinker'' sometime late last year, and that there even exists a photograph of a firefighter posing next to the small statue. But when city investigators later questioned the firefighter in the photograph, the official said, he claimed to have last seen the sculpture on Dec. 6, in a temporary headquarters that the Fire Department was operating near the disaster site. Deputy Fire Commissioner Francis X. Gribbon confirmed that investigators have questioned firefighters about ''The Thinker,'' but he would not elaborate. ''The department is aware of this investigation and is cooperating with those conducting it,'' he said. A spokesman at Cantor Fitzgerald who declined to be identified said that the company planned to use the remnants of its Rodin collection to create ''an appropriate memorial to lost friends and colleagues.'' Meanwhile, the hunt continues for a small bronze statue of a man contemplating the meaning of it all. | Born of Hell, Lost After Inferno; Rodin Work From Trade Center Survived, and Vanished |
1393911_1 | drugs. The panel unanimously agreed that the Arimidex findings were encouraging but that 33 months was not long enough to judge the safety and effectiveness of aromatase inhibitors as a standard prevention for recurrence of breast cancer among postmenopausal women. The society said the report, which will be published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology this summer, was the first independent assessment of aromatase inhibitors for the prevention of breast cancer after surgery. The society, which has more than 18,000 members, released the report today at its meeting here, which continues through Tuesday. Dr. Larry Norton, the society's president, said ''there really is a lot more to know'' about aromatase inhibitors. One unknown is whether aromatase drugs will be like tamoxifen, which continues to have beneficial effects after it is stopped, said Dr. Norton, a breast cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dr. Eric P. Winer, who led the oncology society's panel, said a major reason his team did not recommend a shift to aromatase inhibitor drugs was that tamoxifen took five years to gain full effect. So, Dr. Winer said, ''it is conceivable that five years of anastrozole could be inferior to five years of tamoxifen.'' Also, some of tamoxifen's toxic effects, like an increased risk of cancer of the uterus, were not identified until the drug had been in use for many years, the panel said. ''The panel was very sensitive to the fact that it could be criticized as being too conservative and getting in the way of progress,'' said Dr. Winer, who directs the breast oncology center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. But because the initial findings could shift over time, he said, the panel ''was concerned that it could be putting women at risk'' if it acted otherwise. Dr. Gershon Locker of Northwestern University, a member of the steering committee for the Arimidex trial, said he ''could not fault anyone who advised waiting a little while longer'' before recommending aromatase inhibitors. A wealth of information about the role of drugs that inhibit aromatase, an enzyme that the body requires to make estrogen, is expected to come over the next few years from about 10 additional continuing studies. The panel will review the findings annually, Dr. Winer said. Tamoxifen is the only drug the Food and Drug Administration has approved to lower a woman's risk of developing breast cancer. The | For Now, Medical Advisory Panel Rejects Switching to a New Drug for Breast Cancer |
1393941_0 | A proposed natural-gas pipeline across New York has been under federal and state scrutiny since 1997. After all that, it's disheartening to hear that the plan has suddenly stumbled against unexpected environmental and safety problems when it seemed close to getting the go-ahead. Every effort must be made to resolve these roadblocks before they kill off a project that is vital to the city and state. The Millennium Pipeline would carry Canadian gas some 425 miles from Lake Erie to the Hudson River, where it would cross into Westchester County and dip south to Mount Vernon to hook up with the Con Edison network. There is little doubt that the project is needed. New York City will soon run short of energy, and natural gas is the cleanest alternative readily available. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had signed off on all but the last two miles of the pipeline when the latest objections were raised. The federal Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service judged that with proper mitigation measures, the pipeline would not jeopardize various threatened and endangered species, though both had qualms about a last-minute plan for blasting near one shore. The state's Department of Environmental Conservation had no ''conceptual'' problems with the blasting. The City of Mount Vernon, the terminus point, negotiated a route change acceptable to its officials. But last week, when everything seemed to be falling into place, the Pataki administration denied a crucial certification needed to build the pipeline across the Hudson and down into Westchester. Cynics suggest that the governor wants to curry favor with aroused suburban opponents of the project as he runs for re-election, secure in the knowledge that the Columbia Gas Transmission Corporation, the pipeline's builder, can appeal to the secretary of commerce to overrule the denial. But that does not do justice to the very real problems that the state has belatedly identified. One is the site chosen to cross the river. The plan calls for burying the pipeline in a trench across Haverstraw Bay, a wide and shallow stretch that has been designated the most important fish and wildlife habitat in the Hudson River estuary. It is a spawning ground for fish and a foraging area for bald eagles. State officials worry that construction will inevitably foul the waters and damage the habitat. They prefer that other routes be considered. In truth, many such routes | Perils of the Pipeline |
1393144_1 | Ford, he never discussed his sexual orientation, but was open about the matter after his retirement and has been active in fund-raising endeavors, including overseeing an investment fund that supports gay and lesbian groups. ''It is certainly one more milestone and a testament to how some corporations value diversity,'' said David Smith, communications director for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian group that Mr. Gilmour has supported. For Ford, the move is part of an effort to stabilize management after much turmoil. The company's market share slipped with its quality rankings, competitors have inundated the market with newer cars, its huge credit unit has been struggling and its manufacturing operations have lagged in cutting costs. William C. Ford Jr., the 45-year-old scion and chairman who took over as chief executive in October, has been surrounding himself with experienced executives. Many now leading the revival effort came from Ford of Europe, after some success in its turnaround effort. Nicholas V. Scheele, who formerly ran Jaguar and the European operation, serves as chief operating officer. Mr. Ford has also looked to people with knowledge of the company's finances to restore credibility in that part of the operation. Mr. Inglis, 51, had been criticized by analysts as being a salesman when a surgeon is needed. Mr. Gilmour will serve under Carl E. Reichardt, 70, the former chairman of Wells Fargo and longtime Ford director who became Ford's vice chairman for finance after Mr. Nasser's departure. Though the company has a mandatory retirement age of 65, the board can waive it. ''I think they're on a bit of a gray- hair program,'' said David B. Healy, an analyst at Burnham Securities. He said that Mr. Scheele joked at a recent meeting that ''those of us who don't have gray hair, dye it.'' Stephen J. Girsky, an analyst at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said ''investors perceive Ford's management team as thin because there's been a lot of exodus.'' He added that Mr. Gilmour's extensive experience in the company's financial operations provide ''a lot of credibility with the finance staff and the external financial community.'' In the larger corporate world, Mr. Gilmour will stand out as an unusual example of an openly gay executive in the top ranks of one of the five largest American companies. In an interview published in Fortune magazine in 1997, he was quoted as saying, ''What worried me most | Ford Is Said To Reappoint Ex-Executive |
1391677_4 | (''The Dadshuttle'' and ''Down the Shore'') and two full-length plays (''Minutes From the Blue Route'' and ''The Beginning of August''). These plays, along with ''Northeast Local,'' revolve around family dynamics, suburban life and listless young people with dead-end jobs. A roofer's son, Mr. Donaghy is especially attuned to the lives of working people. Like many playwrights, he has supplemented his income by writing and doctoring screenplays that never got filmed. But he has also written and directed one feature film, ''The Story of a Bad Boy,'' an account of a gay high school student's coming-out that toured the festival circuit in 1999, and he is preparing another, a drama about a teenage gunman, called ''The Lion's Share,'' to be shot in digital video later this year. In retrospect, Mr. Donaghy can see that the informal graduate seminar with Mr. Mamet was a valuable apprenticeship. ''The first and best thing I learned from him was what to leave out,'' he said. ''His work appealed to my sense of modesty. He's suspicious of words, too. His plays are so lean. The way I like to work, fewer words lets the audience in. Sometimes I go to the theater and drown in all the words. It's as if the playwright or the collaborators want to make sure you know exactly what they want you to know, and I feel there's no room for me in the audience. You could do the most damage with fewer words -- that's probably the best thing I learned from him.'' WHILE Mr. Donaghy's plays offer oblique social commentary -- the title of ''Boys and Girls'' speaks volumes about the emotional maturity of its 30-something subjects -- they primarily function as nuanced character studies, according to Mr. Gutierrez. ''Tom's plays succeed or fail based on the acting, not on advancing political positions,'' he said. ''There are wonderful actors who can't do this kind of language. It looks like it's easy and natural and slice-of-life, and it's not. It's shaped and selected and filtered. What I love about his plays is that he finds the detail in everyday life and heightens and focuses it so that suddenly that ordinary thing is transformed into art.'' Mr. Donaghy claims to have very little imagination: ''I tend to reflect back what I see in front of me. And I see gay people having babies everywhere. A lot of people in their 30's, | Writing in Circles To Arrive at the Truth |
1391868_1 | But as we head north, stations programmed into the radio start to fade. I spend the next hour trying to tune in other frequencies, using the car's iDrive controller to scroll through menus on a screen. Eventually, I figure it out: Pull the iDrive knob back to select the ''entertainment'' menu. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click ''memory.'' Scroll to the top of the next menu and highlight ''M FM.'' Scroll to the right and click ''manual.'' Twist the knob to tune in a station. Click ''memory'' -- twice -- to store it. In a lesser car, you might simply twist a knob. In the 745i, tuning the radio is an interactive experience at 75 m.p.h. After a bit of this, you may wonder what's the fuss over handheld cellphones. BMW's phone need not be handheld, though there is a handset in the console. There is also a keypad that pops out of the dash, though its buttons are too small. The third, safest option is voice-activated dialing. Redundancy is a recurring theme with the 745i, which has a six-disk CD changer on the dash (controlled by iDrive) just inches from the single-disk player (iDrive-free). There's also a CD-ROM unit in the trunk that reads the navigation disks. There are redundant climate-control switches on the instrument panel, plus radio buttons on the steering wheel and dash (though you can't use them to tune in new stations). You can do some things on your own, but sooner or later you must iDrive. Just a few years ago, German engineers gave lectures on the dangers of cup holders -- concentrate on the road, silly Americans, not on your lattes. Then Mercedes came up with its Comand system, which centralized numerous functions in a small screen at knee level and made driver distraction an issue of urgency. The latest Infiniti Q45 layers on further complications. BMW's iDrive is more intuitive -- its control knob falls right to hand, and it works well enough -- but also more complex, with simple functions buried in menus and obscured by cryptic labels like ''Auto P'' and ''PDC PIC.'' IDrive is capable of managing more than 700 functions, but I can't imagine more than a few dozen things I'd want a car to do. Even if a modern automobile is essentially a mobile computer, its operator's first concern is to keep it from crashing. | Menus Behaving Badly |
1391563_6 | would presumably be cut off from the outside world, and the rapidly fading frescoes are in urgent need of conservation. Small wonder that the Turkish Chamber of Architects has complained, in an Internet publication, with some bitterness, that the entire project was planned without consideration of its cultural and environmental consequences. Turks, of course, do not bear all the blame for the likely despoiling of this dramatically beautiful region. It could not happen without foreign investment. A chief backer has been the French contracting and construction company Spie Batignolle, of which 46 percent is owned by the British company Amec. In March, however, in response to widespread criticism in Britain, Amec pulled out of the deal. This might seem to put the plan in some doubt. But Erol Calimli, head of the dams unit of Turkey's General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works, says: ''It is true that Amec has pulled out. However, its share of the project was only 9 to 10 percent, not 46 percent. I wouldn't know their reasons for this decision since I am involved in the technical aspects of the project. Otherwise, Spie Batignolle is still the main contractor of the project. The project is moving ahead and the Treasury Department is now assessing its financial matters.'' The full environmental impact of the damming lies beyond the scope of this article, and, not surprisingly, very little information has been made public, but climate change seems inevitable. With so many valleys under water, the rains will get heavier, and landslides will increase correspondingly. Roads, and much of the region's scarce arable land, will disappear. Communities will be cut off from the outside world. There is also the question of how feasible the project will be in purely utilitarian terms. The rivers carry vast amounts of silt and debris, more than enough to interfere with the operation of even the most technically advanced hydroelectric plan. Despite this, construction of the first three dams on the lower Coruh is already well advanced. Last year there was no sign of construction at Yusufeli, so there is perhaps a faint hope that the government will yet curtail the project. I am not optimistic. According to some reports, there are plans to bulldoze the town this July, even before it is flooded. ON THE VERGE John Ash is the author of ''To the City,'' a book of poetry forthcoming from Talisman Press. | Death by Drowning |
1391717_1 | York City area are facing what recruiters, personnel executives and college career counselors agree is one of the most competitive job markets in more than a decade. And they are advising graduating seniors who haven't found work to redouble their efforts and lower their expectations. In the current labor market, they say, students should scale back their salary demands, be willing to work for smaller companies and even consider relocating far from home. ''You have to use all your resources,'' said Trudy Steinfeld, the director of New York University's Office of Career Services. ''Sitting around in your slippers, searching on the Internet is not going to cut it.'' Specialists blame the usual suspects -- the sluggish economy; hard times on Wall Street and in the manufacturing and technology industries, and the reverberations of Sept. 11 -- for the bleak outlook in New York. But something of a more existential nature might be at work, too, in the view of one career manager. ''The situation is made more complicated by the world picture,'' said Betty Feehan, senior manager of career services for the American Institute for Chemical Engineers, a trade organization. ''People are edgy about making decisions.'' Employers certainly are. Those who were surveyed last month by the National Association of Colleges and Employers said they expected a 36 percent decline this year in their hiring of college graduates; in the Northeast, they foresaw a 39 percent drop. In such a buyers' market, students who just a couple of years ago watched companies tripping over themselves to entice graduating seniors with fat salaries and other perks are grateful to get even a single job offer. Others are opting out of the job market and heading off to graduate school. ''It's a stark turnaround: high supply and lower demand,'' said Dan Black, the area director of campus recruiting for Ernst & Young, one of the Big Five accounting firms. ''In the recent past, it wasn't unusual for students to have three, four or five offers.'' Mr. Black says Ernst & Young has already filled most of the 300 positions for its New York office, the same number as last year. But this year, it interviewed 10 to 15 percent more candidates and turned away many qualified applicants, he says. He also noticed a shift in attitude in this year's crop of graduates. ''In years past, students were saying, 'What can Ernst & | A Parched Job Market Greets New Graduates |
1388558_2 | who has served as Latin secretary to three popes and who remains an ardent Latin missionary in the face of the precipitous decline that the language has experienced in the wake of the Second Vatican Council's decision in the mid-1960's to try to modernize certain aspects of the Catholic Church. And there's an equally engaging portrait of Rev. Leonard Boyle, the Vatican Library's former prefect who, before being ousted from his job in 1997, worked hard to modernize the institution and usher it into the digital age. One chapter examines the tensions between international environmentalists, intent on protecting the many rare and endangered animal and plant species of Madagascar, and the local farmers, who want to clear forest land in order to plant crops and feed their families. Another chapter documents the efforts in India, led by one Veer Bhadra Mishra -- a holy man, who also happens to be a professor of hydraulic engineering -- to use new scientific techniques to save the Ganges from its dire state of pollution and thereby ensure the survival of ancient rituals based around that holy river. In the strongest pieces, Mr. Stille -- whose earlier books include ''Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism'' (Simon & Schuster, 1991) and ''Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic'' (Pantheon, 1995) -- does not simply describe a person or situation, but uses his insight as an essayist to explore the broader ramifications of his subject. His chapter on the Sphinx -- and the battle between archaeologists and New Agers over the monument's meaning -- provides a window on the modern yearning to connect with ancient civilizations while at the same time underscoring the dangers of people imposing their own fantasies on an ever-receding historical past. As for the chapter on art conservation in China -- arguably the most resonant piece in the book -- it starts with a description of the disappearance of old buildings and ancient art in China and opens out into a meditation upon the very different aesthetics of the West and the East: the first prizing individuality and originality, the second adhering to a cyclical vision of time and the belief that the past can be conserved by copying and rebuilding. Hence, Mr. Stille notes, the Chinese practice of restoring and repainting its ancient monuments, so that edifices like the Summer Palace ''look more | Taking the Long View, The Present Is Epilogue |
1388557_0 | To the Editor: New York State should be commended for reducing the amount of growth in special education (news article, April 24). When children are mistakenly classified with disabilities, it does a tremendous disservice. The article says ''special education students are more likely to perform better academically when placed in mainstream education classes than in separate settings,'' implying that the placement setting is the most important variable. In fact, the severity and type of disability are of primary importance. Seventy-five percent of students at the New York Institute for Special Education were once in public school placements. They are at the institute -- and having great success in passing statewide tests -- because the specialization they needed could not be achieved in their public school settings. EUGENE MCMAHON Bronx, April 25, 2002 The writer is executive director of the New York Institute of Special Education. | Mainstreaming Children |
1388636_0 | When federal investigators began their study of the collapse of the twin towers in October, they planned to evaluate exactly how structural steel, floor supports, fireproofing and other building components gave way in a deadly sequence of failures after hijacked jets first rammed the towers and set them on fire. But six months later, the investigators have concluded that they are unable to provide a comprehensive analysis of how well the buildings and their structural elements performed, and as a result, they cannot say if the buildings had specific weaknesses. That inability to determine if certain weaknesses existed, the investigators have concluded in a formal report, means they cannot responsibly answer the question of whether other buildings across the country might be vulnerable, as well. The investigators are expected to make their findings public when they present their final report to Congress today in Washington. The reason for that frustrating conclusion, the report says, is that national fire tests and standards proved virtually useless in evaluating how building components behaved in the raging fires that followed the plane impacts. Without a meaningful standard against which to measure the performance of the two towers, the investigators decided, there was no way to say fairly whether they held up adequately or failed before they should have. The report is remarkably blunt in deriding the fire tests that assess the safety of virtually every large building constructed in the United States -- a set of tests that rely largely on exposing building parts to natural-gas flames in kiln-like furnaces. The method does not provide sufficient information to determine how long a part of an actual building can be expected to perform in an actual fire, the report says. In part because of those inadequacies, the collapse of the towers and a third skyscraper, 7 World Trade Center, as well as partial failures in another large office building on the site, have exposed a sobering gap in the nation's knowledge of how its buildings will perform in large fires, blasts or other disasters in the future, says the report, prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Before these events, no protected steel-frame structure, the most common form of large commercial construction in the United States, had ever experienced a fire-induced collapse, the report says. Thus, these events may highlight new building vulnerabilities, not previously believed to exist. | Report on Towers' Collapse Ends Mostly in Questions |
1389469_5 | dripping woods, bluebell dells and towering elms, he suffered a gradual and finally spectacular breakdown. When war was declared, he made well-meaning but largely ineffectual efforts to play his part, such as taking a team of bloodhounds to Belgium to search out wounded men. His health betrayed him: manifestly unafraid of death and even suffering, Cherry wished to do his duty, but a condition of colitis kept him out of action. So far so good; and yet the colitis was almost certainly psychosomatic. Was it his body or his spirit -- that mysterious but all-defining attribute he so revered -- that had failed him? From the grounds of Lamer, Cherry observed, stunned, the sweeping changes the war and its aftermath wrought in the world of his childhood. The whoosh of time passing was not so much relentless as astonishing. Already shellshocked, Cherry stood aghast and uncomprehending as labor unions formed, factory sirens intruded on the still air of his estate, and the world spun past him. He became irascible and intolerant of much of the modern landscape. These changes are forcibly depicted by Wheeler, and the bare juxtaposition of the Antarctic experience with this new world explains a great deal about Cherry's post-Antarctic condition. Still, some additional analysis would also have been welcome -- for example, a few more well-placed observations from other ''Antarcticans.'' Key members of this group had shown themselves supportive of Cherry, but it would be interesting to know what they really thought of his ''state''; they themselves, for the most part, went on to forge successful careers. CHERRY'S principal claim on our interest is the book he wrote. The fact that he was aided in this task by his friend and neighbor George Bernard Shaw is similarly an aspect that could have borne more teasing out. Wheeler describes succinctly how Shaw and his wife, Charlotte, were instrumental in the shaping of Cherry's masterwork -- Shaw chose the title -- but one is left wondering how large a role Shaw really played. Excerpts from working drafts would have been helpful, a clue to both the workings of Cherry's enigmatic ''spirit'' and the progress of a remarkable book. At the least, a few Shavian comments, even marginalia, would have been delicious. ''Cherry'' explains much about the Antarctic heroic age and about Cherry. Most of the questions one is left with can never be answered: Would Cherry have broken | The Best Fellows in the World |
1389532_4 | -- Lincoln Center inscribed this potentially unstable set of values into the cityscape with some clarity. Airport terminals on the Campidoglio: not bad. Even critics who attacked the architecture as retrograde understood this intentionality. It's harder to perceive it now, partly because the physical plant is so shockingly degraded. A lack of maintenance, as well as ad hoc ''improvements,'' have contributed equally to a general bludgeoning of the integrity of the complex. Age has caught up with Lincoln Center in another, more significant way: it has outlived two cycles in architectural taste. Not long after Avery Fisher was completed, the order of problems and solutions had reversed. Citywide, the Old was ceasing to be a problem. The New increasingly was one. Its solution, the historical preservation movement, was to reinstate the Old. The linkage of art to social and scientific progress had frayed to the breaking point. Some, in fact, soon came to see classical architecture as a language of accessibility, on the theory that the public preferred traditional forms. And it is true that in New York, at least, modernism had long borne the image of cultivated style in which the mass public would be educated by an informed elite. In due course, postmodernism would be launched on the basis of this belief. I don't know that it was necessary for American taste to become polarized between old and new. Perhaps the linear, 19th-century historicist view of modern times had to put us through these extreme, distorted time-bends before we could finally let it go. Its disappearance leaves us contemplating a relationship that is far more viscerally classical and intellectually far more subtle: the connection between continuity and change. Lincoln Center has now embarked upon a physical transformation similar to that experienced by historically conscious audience members crossing the plaza. I hope that the resident companies are able to grasp the mythical dimension of the undertaking. (And that they will understand that critics having at them are equivalent to the adepts who set upon pilgrims to Eleusis.) In practical terms, the place will remain a consumer delivery system, perhaps of improved efficiency. Philosophically, it should point the way to the Apollonian sphere. Iconographically, it should restate the twin goals of social access and artistic discrimination. Architecture can go only so far toward the realization of these goals. Design and planning can reduce the isolation between Lincoln Center and its | Rethinking New York's Patch of Athens |
1389502_3 | the garb of science has taken so long to acknowledge a principle that every small-town carny understands. When I started practicing medicine in the early 90's, one of my enthusiasms was hormone-replacement therapy. At that time, the observation had been made, repeatedly, that postmenopausal women who happened to take estrogen -- for osteoporosis or hot flashes, for instance -- were less likely to have heart attacks and strokes than women who didn't. I remember telling women in their 50's how premenopausal women were relatively immune to cardiovascular disease, at least compared with men, but that once they had been through menopause, this relative protection disappeared quickly. ''Take the estrogen,'' I suggested over and over. ''Preserve your youthful coronaries.'' This was in Manitoba, and these were pragmatic, sensible prairie women. I insisted to them that the recommendations and the evidence seemed clear. I remember my patients' brows knitting at the thought of menstrual cycles extending into their dotage, but ultimately the argument felt compelling. Certainly it did for me. I remembered being told in medical school that the underuse of estrogen was one of the great crimes of the medical patriarchy, itself an expression of latent misogyny. No misogynist I, off I went to work, my prescription pad leaping to hand at the sight of bifocals or pastel cardigans. Then in 1998, the results of a formal, placebo-controlled clinical trial called the Heart and Estrogen/Progestin Replacement Study (HERS) were published. It showed that estrogen did not prevent heart attacks or strokes and, in fact, it made women more susceptible to blood clots. The net cardiovascular effect therefore was negative. This study astonished most doctors -- for me, it certainly felt like a betrayal. Betrayed by the recommendations, we had in turn betrayed many of the cardigan-clad women of our acquaintance. A few months ago, in the emergency room of one of the hospitals I work in on Vancouver Island, I saw a woman in her mid-70's who was still taking Premarin, a common estrogen preparation. She had been having chest pain, and I was admitting her for observation, to make sure she wasn't having a heart attack. ''So, you take the Premarin because . . . ?'' I asked. ''My sisters all had heart attacks in their 50's,''she said. ''My doctor said the estrogen lowered my risk.'' ''We now think it probably doesn't.'' ''Really.'' ''Yes.'' Me, nodding, smiling weakly. ''What changed?'' | What Doctors Don't Know (Almost Everything) |
1389850_3 | wreckage, and I thought about marrying that to the bells, to form some sort of memorial where people could come for peace and healing,'' he said. ''We wanted to build something positive and hopeful from something very evil.'' As the weeks passed, his idea made more and more sense to him and to those at the retreat, not only because it and its chapel were getting a lot of visitors after the attack, but also because so many victims were from New Jersey. The sign-in book for guests in the lobby of the chapel, which has picturesque views of the nearby mountains, is filled with messages asking for spiritual guidance about the attack. ''This is sacred ground here,'' Mr. Donovan said. The tower is 10 feet by 8 feet at its base. The largest bell, at the bottom, weighs 3,000 pounds and is 54 inches in diameter. The smallest, at the top, weighs 500 pounds and measures 35 inches across. The bells are activated electronically, not by rope, and from largest to smallest, they sound out the notes D, F, A and D. Landscaping continues, but by the time the tower is dedicated in June, there will be a grassy knoll and benches where visitors can sit and reflect. There are also plans to list all the attack victims somewhere on the tower. On a recent day, Mr. Hartman was climbing atop the tower to get the serial numbers on the steel beams, which would tell Mr. Donovan where each beam had been in the twin towers, since all the structural components were marked to help workers get everything in the right place when they built the trade center in the 1960's. Father Krebs talked a bit about the people who stopped by while the bell tower was being erected. One visitor, who arrived on a yellow motorcycle, was plainly interested in what was going on but also wanted to keep to himself. Father Krebs mentioned that it was important to build some sort of memorial to remember what had happened. ''You don't know how important,'' the man said, and then went on to tell them that he had lost loved ones in the attack. He showed pictures of them from his wallet. ''Now I have someplace to come,'' he said. ''We needed no more confirmation after that,'' Father Krebs said, ''that our idea was a good one.'' Stirling Journal | From Towers' Rubble, a Place for Memories |
1389481_6 | all brought up. Of course, cultures vary in many respects, but there are also ways in which our environment is invariant -- just consider our common subjection to gravity, for example. Third, it is not at all clear that we need to take a stand on the existence of an innate universal human nature in order to evaluate the coming technologies. Suppose for a moment that human beings have no such universal nature: we can still ask whether a particular innovation will be good for us. I actually agree with Fukuyama that a great deal of human nature is genetically based, but I don't see that this belief is necessary in order to have legitimate qualms about biotechnology. What is necessary is a set of views about what is valuable in human life -- and ought to be protected -- not a particular theory of what is innate and what acquired. The issue of nature versus nurture is really a red herring. Where I do think Fukuyama is right is in his emphasis on an Aristotelian notion of human flourishing as a guide to public policy, rather than relying on the edict that we should maximize freedom of choice. There is no alternative to figuring out what allows human beings to prosper in deciding what policies to pursue. Freedom unconstrained by a substantive conception of that which makes life worthwhile is a recipe for meaninglessness. And this is where we need our philosophers. As Fukuyama rightly insists, the standard mix of utilitarianism and scientific materialism is not an adequate basis for evaluating the new technologies. What sorts of regulatory bodies are needed to control biotechnology? Fukuyama suggests, plausibly enough, that the decisions cannot be left to the scientists and captains of industry, because they are obviously heavily invested in the technology they are creating. What we require are governmental institutions that oversee industry. Above all, we need to be thinking about all this now, not when the streets are crowded with mutants and supermen and we wonder where we went wrong. ''Our Posthuman Future'' takes on these issues with the kind of philosophical and political scope that they urgently require. After all, we are dealing here with nothing less than the Nature of Man. Colin McGinn is a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. His most recent book is ''The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth Century Philosophy.'' | Machine Dreams |
1392682_1 | this week doesn't mean relations with Havana are about to come out of the ice age, but his trip has shown why it makes far more sense to engage in an open dialogue with Mr. Castro and his nation than to shun them as ideological lepers. It is a shame that President Bush still seems to think that preventing American trade and ideas from crossing the Straits of Florida will loosen Mr. Castro's grip on power. The centerpiece of Mr. Carter's visit was the polite but stern speech he delivered in Spanish on Tuesday night to a national television audience in Cuba. Mr. Carter lamented the lack of democracy in the Communist nation and, in a boost to Cuba's fragile human rights movement, mentioned the Varela Project, a courageous petition drive that seeks a referendum on expanding political rights. In calling for an end to the American embargo of Cuba and more exchanges between Cubans and Americans, Mr. Carter advanced the common-sense idea that prying closed societies open to global commerce and democratic cultural influences -- including outspoken tourists like himself -- tends to undermine a totalitarian regime's power. Cuba's foremost dissident, Elizardo Sanchez, agrees with that assessment. All the embargo has done is give Mr. Castro something he can blame for his failures. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush -- trolling for Cuban-American votes in Florida for himself and his brother, Jeb, who is the state's governor -- continues to exempt Cuban policy from America's approach to the rest of the world. Indeed, the White House next Monday is expected to announce a new initiative aimed at encouraging the democratization of Cuba that will include a tightening of the embargo and travel ban. The heartening news is that even plenty of Republicans are tired of having American foreign policy hijacked by anti-Castro activists in a key electoral state. Congress has already loosened the embargo to allow Cuba to acquire American foodstuffs on a cash basis. A bipartisan Cuba Working Group in the House, which includes farm-state Republicans and thoughtful conservatives like Jeff Flake of Arizona, called yesterday for a further expansion of trade, and a lifting of the travel ban. The House voted by a wide margin last year to lift the ban. The measure has broad support in the Senate, too. One of these days, the Bush brothers will recognize that the isolation of Cuba serves neither American nor Cuban interests. | Journey to Havana |
1392602_1 | they can be remedied. To get even this far, the technology has had to overcome several major obstacles. The biggest is the ''big signal, little signal'' problem. Although a television station puts out a big signal, one that is easy for the phone to receive, it is so big that it could overload the phone, causing a call to fail. At the same time, a cellphone's signal is so weak that a TV-station-based receiver might not be sensitive enough to separate it from other signals. The company's origins stretch back to 1996, when Jimmy Rogers, a former insurance salesman who had the idea of sending cellphone signals to and from TV towers, approached Dallas Nash, a communications consultant who attended the same church. Mr. Rogers naïvely assumed that Dr. Nash would know how to develop the idea because Dr. Nash had put together a multimedia presentation for the church. As it turned out, Dr. Nash was actually the right man for the job. He had been a consultant to the Defense Department on signal processing projects. Dr. Nash had his doubts about the viability of Mr. Rogers's concept but tested it anyway. Using equipment he already owned, Dr. Nash constructed a test system that included $250,000 worth of computers and signaling equipment in a van that would act as a sophisticated mobile phone. ''It was sort of the world's most expensive cellphone,'' Dr. Nash said. ''And it sort of worked. Not well, but I had to start eating some crow.'' There were problems to solve, the foremost being how to make an affordable hand-held phone that could do the same thing as $250,000 of equipment that filled a van. Another problem, that of processing power, solved itself. As chips have become faster and more powerful, SIGFX has been able to get four processors into a unit the size of a brick. Those processors are needed to turn voice into signals that could be sent and received on UHF or VHF and duplicate any of several cellphone standards like T.D.M.A., C.D.M.A. and G.S.M. But those processors consume a lot of power. ''Mobile wasn't a problem because you have a battery in a car or truck that could handle what we need,'' Dr. Nash said. ''The problem was, with hand-held, we didn't want a 30-pound battery you had to carry around.'' The answer may be a polymer lithium-ion battery that can be | Cellphone Chats, Courtesy of the Television Airwaves |
1392587_1 | do to block the spam? A. Spam filters are lists of rules and conditions under which an incoming e-mail message is screened. In addition to scanning for certain words or phrases, spam filters can be written to look for and reject messages that have invalid return addresses, fake domain names or forged headers, or messages from domains or users known to be junk mailers. Filters can also reject messages sent in significant bulk or through an open-relay system. (An open relay is a mail server that allows anyone, not just its registered users, to relay messages through it, and spammers love them.) If your e-mail program allows you to write your own filters or mail rules, you can set up your own custom spam screeners, but this can be time-consuming. There are also plenty of third-party programs and services that offer to help keep the spam out of your mailbox. Most programs require that you have an e-mail account that uses the POP3 or IMAP protocol, and some programs will not work with Web-based mail. (America Online has a proprietary system that usually won't work with third-party filtering programs but offers its own rudimentary set of tools (keyword: Mail Controls). Among the spam-blocking programs for Windows is SpamKiller, newly acquired by the security applications provider McAfee.com. The program, which can filter several different POP3 e-mail accounts, costs $29.95. But a free 30-day trial version can be downloaded at www.spamkiller.com. Basic freeware versions of Spam-Weasel (www.mailgate.com /products/spamweas/sw_feat.asp) and SpamEater (www.spameater.net/spameater.asp) are available for home users with Windows systems. Macintosh users running Mac OS 8 or 9 with the Eudora e-mail program can try Email Magician (available for $35 at www.yav.com/emailmagician.html). Mac OS X devotees can find a list of mail programs and utilities for their systems at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities. Q. Can the Internet Sharing Connection feature in Windows 98 be used to link up the PC to an older Windows 95 computer so the two can share a modem connection? A. It should be possible as long as the gateway computer (the one with the Internet connection) is running Windows 98 or later and has the Internet Connection Sharing feature enabled, and the Windows 95 computer has TCP/IP driver software and the cables and cards needed to connect to a network. Microsoft has an article on the topic at www.microsoft.com/insider/articles /ics.htm. J. D. BIERSDORFER Circuits invites questions about computer-based technology, by e-mail | 'Ha-Ha, I'm in Hawaii': Automatic E-Mail Replies |
1392619_2 | keyboard. Following the pattern of television and telephone ownership, millions of American households own two or more PC's. But for parents who cannot afford to buy each child a computer or who prefer to keep an eye on Internet activity by having just one in a shared room, a technological tool has turned into an old-fashioned game of dibs. The answer in some households is to pay for one Internet-access account but to give each member of the household a different screen name and password. Nicholas Graham, a spokesman for America Online, said households can request up to seven e-mail accounts, with any account holder granting access to up to seven people, each with a screen name and a password. (This way parents can monitor their children's Internet use.) The rush hour typically begins in the late afternoon, building to gridlock at 10 p.m., when parents are through with the dishes and finally have time to check their e-mail messages -- and older students finally begin to focus on assignments due the next day. ''Any arguments? Every night,'' said Dyese Taylor, 15, a sophomore at the Spence School in Manhattan whose family lives in Cambria Heights, Queens. She shares a computer and a single e-mail account with her parents and her brother, Damani, 17, a senior at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. ''He has a lot of work to do; I have a lot of work to do,'' Dyese said. ''We're both under stress and just want to finish it and get to bed.'' Both teenagers are on track teams, so they each scramble for the computer when they get home about 8:30 p.m. Because Dyese is the one who likes to stay up late, Damani gets priority. Sometimes Dyese doesn't sign on until midnight, juggling science projects, other homework and instant messages until 2 a.m. Their mother, Caren Taylor, is sympathetic, saying homework that spills into the witching hours is acceptable because, well, it has to be done. Suzanne Fogarty, the 10th-grade dean and an English teacher at the Berkeley Carroll School in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said, ''You really need a computer to complete the simplest assignments now.'' Though virtually every school, elementary through senior high, offers access to the Internet in the classroom or in a computer lab, nearly all students leave the school grounds after classes and extracurricular activities end. Once students have dinner and go online, | Family Politics Shift to the Keyboard |
1394826_1 | the water,'' said Enrique Martínez governor of the state of Coahuila, which borders Texas. He added a sober prognostication: ''I think the struggle for water will be the gravest problem of this century.'' This same struggle is simmering worldwide: rivers and reservoirs are running dry as a growing population fights over a shrinking source of life. The issue is testing the political friendship between Mr. Fox and President Bush, who knows it well from his days as Texas governor. The two presidents discussed the debt twice in the past two months, once face to face at an economic summit meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, and again by telephone last week. What started as a local dispute along the Rio Grande has turned into an international imbroglio, a question of national security for Mexico and a matter of survival for several million Texans and Mexicans. The crisis is shocking people on both sides of the border into seeing that there may be limits to growth. In the Rio Grande valley, where the population has gone from 200,000 to 20 million since the water treaty was signed in 1944, the United States and Mexico ''have been promoting growth'' -- industrial and agricultural -- ''as if there were no limit,'' said Alberto Szekely, Mexico's national water secretary. ''And water is one,'' he said. ''Both sides were warned long ago that something like this would happen,'' he said. ''But they were working on free trade and avoiding political issues like this.'' Water policy on both sides of the border, he said, has been marked by negligence and wishful thinking. One-third of the water that flows to the Rio Grande above the Falcon dam is supposed to go to south Texas, and the remainder to Mexicans downriver. But with rivers and reservoirs at record lows, people on both sides of the border, dependent on the water for drinking and irrigation, fear their fields and towns will dry up and blow away. [South Texas farmers, who have taken their case to the State Department, blockaded the border at the Pharr international trade bridge today in protest, demanding that Mexico pay back the water. Jo Jo White, the manager of one of the largest irrigation districts in the Texas border region, joined the protest. ''In 30 to 60 days we'll be out of water if Mexico doesn't comply,'' Mr. White, who manages irrigation for 300 farmers and 60,000 | Water Crisis Grows Into a Test of U.S.-Mexico Relations |
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