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My girlfriend is in Pakistan right now, working on a project that, she hopes, will allow even the poorest people in urban areas of developing countries to have clean drinking water and avoid debilitating diarrhea. But a story of water-borne disease in Botswana shows how basic the need for clean water is, and how accessibility affects attemts to stop AIDS. An article on ScienceNOW by Jon Cohen describes how in Botswana, mothers with HIV were told to use formula to avoid passing the virus on to their children, and this recommendation had its own disastrous effects: ... a study of a deadly outbreak of diarrheal disease in children under 5 in that southern African country has found that infant formula, as compared to breast-feeding, increased a child's risk of death by 50 times, likely because of contaminated water used to make the formula. In 2005, a third of the pregnant women in Botswana were infected with HIV, making it one of the hardest-hit countries in the world. Previous studies have shown that breast-feeding, depending on how long it's done, accounts for 5% to 20% of the transmissions from infected mother to their children. To help curb such transmission rates, the Botswanan government advised in 1998 that all HIV-infected women use infant formula as part of a comprehensive strategy that also included the use of anti-HIV drugs during labor and delivery. The formula recommendation goes a step beyond World Health Organization (WHO) advice, which cautions that HIV-infected women should use formula only when it is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable, and safe.
What's the cause of the contaminated water? Creek suspects that the severe flooding in Botswana in 2005 contributed to the outbreak by increasing the levels of microorganisms in the water supply. Because Botswanan mothers use this water to make infant formula, the "safety [of infant formula] may vary dramatically with the weather," Creek warned.
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This is even wilder than the Birdman flying suits I blogged about before. From National Geographic News: It sounds crazy, and it probably is: Skydive from 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) and land safely—without a parachute—wearing a getup that resembles a flying squirrel costume (wallpaper: flying squirrel). "It's pretty much considered impossible," said Maria von Egidy, a designer with Jii-Wings in Cape Town, South Africa. Von Egidy isn't interested in trying the stunt herself. But she aims to design the first wingsuit that will help pull it off....
Read more of this article by Sean Markey on the NGN site. |
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The Boston Globe has a funny review of Atwood's , the pub that's about 50 feet from my front door and is a cool, mellow place early in the evening, with great food, and gets hopping with bluesy-folksy music later in the evening. Liam, a burly teddy bear of a bartender at Atwood's Tavern, comes with a disclaimer on the restaurant's website. "Most 'Ask Liam' material is inappropriate for most audiences." Well, that's truth in advertisting. You're encouraged to ask Liam questions, anything from fashion advice to matters of the heart. He'll answer them all in a gruff, uncensored manner . We mention Liam because he loomed large when we visited Atwood's earlier this week. In a T-shirt that read "What the Fluff" (a gift from his mother), he tended the bar, and called out at least twice, "I don't mind eating the leftovers!" to patrons who didn't finish their plates. Liam perfectly embodies the spirit of Atwood's: lovable, townie, a little rough around the edges, and not quite ready for prime time. (We mean that lovingly, Liam.) It's the kind of place that can divide a party, depending on what ambience you desire. One of us felt at home straight away ("I love this place already!" she enthused); another hated his chilled (!) red wine at the bar and thought the service was too creaky for a nine-month-old establishment.
What they say about Liam is true. The first time we met him there, when we were leaving, he said (loudly, of course), "There's always time for coitus!" The funniest part of the review is: But no matter how ambitious the menu gets, Atwood's is not a haute boite. In fact, don't even think of uttering the word boite upon entering this place.
And now they have a sign in front that says, "Atwoods. Haute boite everyday." I didn't know what that meant, so I googled "haute boite" and that's actually how I found this review in the first place! It is now second out of all Google hits for that phrase, the rest of which are all mentions of pretentious restaurants, or ones pretentiously saying they're not. |
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I wanted to write about this study but didn't get a chance. So check out this story on ScienceNOW's site, by Gisela Telis, instead: Alliances, deceptions, and even some shoving: It could be reality television, or it could be insect expert Laurent Keller's lab at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Keller and his interdisciplinary team of researchers have condensed thousands of years of evolution into a weeklong battle of the bots that demonstrates for the first time how social creatures evolve to communicate--and how, in a pinch, they evolve to deceive as well. Experts disagree over exactly when and how communication arose among social animals. Evolutionary biologists suspect that early communication may have developed as a way for closely related individuals to boost each other's chances for survival. Studying such evolution in the lab is practically impossible, however, because most socially sophisticated creatures, such as bees or monkeys, can take hundreds of generations to show substantial behavioral changes....
Read the rest on ScienceNOW. |
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If you've ever been pining to do particle physics experiments in your own home, to see visible marks of electrons or other particles whizzing through space, then pick up one of these: CloudTracker, a little desktop cloud chamber. If you've ever read anything about particle physics, you've probably seen a photo like the one below from a cloud chamber, showing the tracks left by charged particles—like contrails from a plane—as they spiral around in a magnetic field: 
Now you can buy a mini cloud chamber that looks like this: 
Or here's instructions on how to make your own, which seems to work on the same principle as the CloudTracker. Physicists retired cloud chambers a long time ago in favor of wire detectors (which won someone a Nobel Prize for their invention) and silicon detectors, which are incredibly complicated. So I was kind of surprised that it doesn't seem too hard to make the old kind of detector, and you can actually use it for experiments good enough for a high school science fair, at least. |
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