Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

Grain, meat and even energy are roped together in a way that could have dire results. More meat means a corresponding increase in demand for feed, especially corn and soy, which some experts say will contribute to higher prices.

This will be inconvenient for citizens of wealthier nations, but it could have tragic consequences for those of poorer ones, especially if higher prices for feed divert production away from food crops. The demand for ethanol is already pushing up prices, and explains, in part, the 40 percent rise last year in the food price index calculated by the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.

The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.

Great Drug, but Does It Prolong Life?

Some patients do receive significant benefits from statins, like Lipitor (from Pfizer), Crestor (AstraZeneca) and Pravachol (Bristol-Myers Squibb). In studies of middle-aged men with cardiovascular disease, statin users were less likely to die than those who were given a placebo.

But many statin users don’t have established heart disease; they simply have high cholesterol. For healthy men, for women with or without heart disease and for people over 70, there is little evidence, if any, that taking a statin will make a meaningful difference in how long they live.

(..)

How is this possible, if statins lower the risk of heart attack? Because preventing a heart attack is not the same thing as saving a life. In many statin studies that show lower heart attack risk, the same number of patients end up dying, whether they are taking statins or not.

Hitting It Off, Thanks to Algorithms of Love

Once upon a time, finding a mate was considered too important to be entrusted to people under the influence of raging hormones. Their parents, sometimes assisted by astrologers and matchmakers, supervised courtship until customs changed in the West because of what was called the Romeo and Juliet revolution. Grown-ups, leave the kids alone.

But now some social scientists have rediscovered the appeal of adult supervision — provided the adults have doctorates and vast caches of psychometric data. Online matchmaking has become a boom industry as rival scientists test their algorithms for finding love.

Work Out and Drink Up

If you want to live a long and healthy life, you're probably trying to eat right, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. Good steps. Now how about adding a little alcohol to your regimen?
(..)
"You shouldn't even think about doing it until age 45 or 50. There's absolutely no proof of a preventative and protective effect before age 45."

Cell Phone Can Read Documents for Blind

The Nokia cell phone is loaded with software that turns text on photographed documents into speech. In addition to telling whether a bill is worth $1, $5, $10 or $20, it also allows users to read anything that is photographed, whether it's a restaurant menu, a phone book or a fax. While the technology is not new, the NFB and the software's developer say the cell phone is the first to incorporate the text-to-speech ability.

Agustin Barrios: La Catedral, III. Allegro solemne

Incredible Precision!

Think Your Job is Tough?

Think your job is tough?

Mapping the Most Complex Structure in the Universe: Your Brain

By mapping every synapse in the brain, researchers hope to create a "connectome" -- a diagram that would elucidate the brain's activity at a level of detail far outstripping today's most advanced brain-monitoring tools like fMRI.

"You're going to see things you didn't expect," said Jeff Lichtman, a Harvard professor of molecular and cellular biology. "It gives us an opportunity to witness this vast complicated universe that has been largely inaccessible until now."

The effort is part of a new field of scientific research called connectomics. The field is so new that the first course ever taught on it recently ended at MIT. It is to neuroscience what genomics is to genetics.

Wealth of Ideas: Bill Gates Issues Call for a Benevolent Capitalism

Davos Speech Sets a Plan to Use Market Forces
To Help Poor Countries; 'We Have to Find a Way'

Mr. Gates isn't abandoning his belief in capitalism as the best economic system. But in an interview with the Journal last week at his Microsoft office in Redmond, Washington, Mr. Gates said he has grown impatient with the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he has seen those failings first-hand on trips for Microsoft to places like the South African slum of Soweto, and discussed them with dozens of experts on disease and poverty. He has voraciously read about those failings in books that propose new approaches to narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

In particular, he said, he is troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. "The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid," he said. "The part that's unsatisfactory is for the bottom third -- two billion of six billion."
(..)

With Thursday's speech, Mr. Gates adds his high-profile name to the ranks of those who argue that unfettered capitalism can't solve broad social problems. Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work providing small loans to the poor, is traversing the U.S. this month promoting a new book that calls capitalism "half developed" because it focuses only on the profit-oriented side of human nature, not on the satisfaction derived from helping others.

Key to Mr. Gates's plan will be for businesses to dedicate their top people to poor issues -- an approach he feels is more powerful than traditional corporate donations and volunteer work. Governments should set policies and disburse funds to create financial incentives for businesses to improve the lives of the poor, he said Thursday. "If we can spend the early decades of the 21st century finding approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce poverty in the world," Mr. Gates said.

In the interview, Mr. Gates was emphatic that he isn't calling for a fundamental change in how capitalism works. He cited Adam Smith, whose treatise, "The Wealth of Nations," lays out the rationale for the self-interest that drives capitalism and companies like Microsoft. That shouldn't change, "one iota," Mr. Gates said.

But there is more to Adam Smith, he added. "This was written before 'Wealth of Nations,' " Mr. Gates said, flipping through a copy of Adam Smith's 1759 book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." It argues that humans gain pleasure from taking an interest in the "fortunes of others." Mr. Gates quoted from that book in his speech.
(..)
To a degree, Mr. Gates's speech is an answer to critics of rich-country efforts to help the poor. One perennial critic is Mr. Easterly, the New York University professor, whose 2006 book, "The White Man's Burden," found little evidence of benefit from the $2.3 trillion given in foreign aid over the past five decades.

Mr. Gates said he hated the book. His feelings surfaced in January 2007 during a Davos panel discussion with Mr. Easterly, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and then-World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz. To a packed room of Davos attendees, Mr. Easterly noted that all the aid given to Africa over the years has failed to stimulate economic growth on the continent. Mr. Gates, his voice rising, snapped back that there are measures of success other than economic growth -- such as rising literacy rates or lives saved through smallpox vaccines. "I don't promise that when a kid lives it will cause a GNP increase," he said. "I think life has value."

Brushing off Mr. Gates's comments, Mr. Easterly responds, "The vested interests in aid are so powerful they resist change and they ignore criticism. It is so good to try to help the poor but there is this feeling that [philanthropists] should be immune from criticism."

The 247 lb. Vegan

NFL star Tony Gonzalez is out to answer a question: Can a football player live entirely on plants?

Congo Deaths Remain High

DAKAR, Senegal — Five years after Congo’s catastrophic war officially ended, the rate at which people are dying in the country remains virtually unchanged, according to a new survey, despite the efforts of the world’s largest peacekeeping force, billions of dollars in international aid and a historic election that revived democracy after decades of violence and despotism.

The survey, released Tuesday, estimated that 45,000 people continue to die every month, about the same pace as in 2004, when the international push to rebuild the country had scarcely begun. Almost all the deaths come from hunger and disease, signs that the country is still grappling with the aftermath of a war that gutted its infrastructure, forced millions to flee and flattened its economy.

African Superbugs to the Rescue!

"Brother, can you spare a malaria pill?"
(..)
And while we worry about what might happen to the ecosystem if we release a mosquito with a small change in its genes, millions of people roll in their beds (or on mats on the floor), fevered and ill. We shouldn't release modified mosquitoes before they are ready. But when they are ready and the inevitable invocation of the precautionary principle comes, we should try to weigh the caution we are used to being able to afford against the real suffering of real people whose lives are so different from our own that it is difficult to comprehend.

A New, Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories

This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.
(..)
The food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 percent last year. That was on top of a 14 percent increase in 2006, and the trend has accelerated this winter.

In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages. Egypt has banned rice exports to keep food at home, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

According to the F.A.O., food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

“The urban poor, the rural landless and small and marginal farmers stand to lose,” said He Changchui, the agency’s chief representative for Asia and the Pacific

Antidepressant Studies Unpublished

The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.

New Questions on Treating Cholesterol

For decades, the theory that lowering cholesterol is always beneficial has been a core principle of cardiology. It has been accepted by doctors and used by drug makers to win quick approval for new medicines to reduce cholesterol.

But now some prominent cardiologists say the results of two recent clinical trials have raised serious questions about that theory...

For patients and drug companies, the stakes are enormous. Led by best sellers like Lipitor from Pfizer, cholesterol-lowering medicines, taken by tens of millions of patients daily, are the largest drug category worldwide, with annual sales of $40 billion.

Despite widespread use of the drugs, though, heart disease remains the biggest killer in the United States and other industrialized nations, and many people still have cholesterol levels far higher than doctors recommend.

(..)

Because the link between excessive LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular disease has been so widely accepted, the Food and Drug Administration generally has not required drug companies to prove that cholesterol medicines actually reduce heart attacks before approval.

The Single Best Way to Lose Weight

Keep a food diary. Studies show that a journal doesn't just aid weight loss — it turbo-charges it. When researchers from Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research followed more than 2,000 dieters who were encouraged to record meals and snacks, they found that the single best predictor of whether a participant would drop weight was whether the person kept a food diary.

Guest Post: “We Got Out of Kenya, But What About the People Who Live There?”

From the "How to Change the World Blog:
An account of an American Humanitarian who was in in Kenya when post-election rioting broke out.
At the bottom of the post she provides highlights of some of her Kenyan friends--and in doing so pointing out the important fact that, similar to my experiences in Africa, there are many, many citizens dedicated to improving the lot of their countrymen, often at significant financial loss and (esp. now in Kenya) risk...

But that’s just our story. It matters less than the stories of countless people who now must reshape their lives to the devastating changes they face in Kenya today.

Allow me to provide some examples.

First, there’s Carol, a willowy, confident young woman who serves as an interpreter for her extended family, many whom have been afflicted by congenital blindness and deafness. She uses a sign language that has evolved over generations, and with it she helps her siblings run a home-based knitting business that produces sweaters, hats, and other clothing items for babies and children. Carol planned to enter university in Nairobi this spring with the dream of studying special education. Her family’s sustenance, and her educational options will be affected by Kenya’s sudden plummet from stability, and these developments weigh heavily on her mind.

(..)

In a crisis like this, in a country like Kenya, any small token of support can work wonders. Even if you don’t support Kenya with your wallet, support it in your heart. Think of the highly-educated, industrious people of Kenya, half of whom are twenty years of age or younger, and of the hopes, security, and actual prospects that they have lost in the last two weeks. Imagine yourself, or your child, in a similar situation, and ask yourself what you would do. And what you would want others to do to help you through this time.

Whether you send a prayer or a wish or an even more tangible form of support, put yourself in their shoes. Use the freedom that you have—so similar to that which the people of Kenya truly believed was theirs—to wish the people of Kenya the safety and strength to survive what is likely to be a very hard times ahead.
Ellen Petry Leanse
Menlo Park, California

----------------------------------------------------------------


Here is another excellent article on the current state affairs in Keyna:




Kenya isn't Rwanda

Experiments in malaria prevention

A link from the excellent PSD Blog on the economics of malaria bed net pricing....


Does raising the price of long lasting anti-malarial insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) from $0 to a $0.75 kill the demand? At least in theory, cost sharing can help reduce wastefulness and save money without serious adverse effects of healthcare of most people.

Based on a field experiment in Kenya, a new paper explores the effects that cost sharing of the price of ITNs charged to pregnant women had on infant mortality.

Only in Zimbabwe: 10 - Million - Dollar Bill

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabweans will be soon lining their pockets with 10-million-dollar bills.

The central bank annouced Thursday it would increase the denomination of the nation's highest bank note more than tenfold to keep pace with the world's highest inflation rate, officially estimated at 25,000 percent annually. Independent financial institutions say real inflation is closer to 150,000 percent.

The new 10-million note is the equivalent of about $4 at the dominant black market exchange rate.

He said special arrangements were being made to pay soldiers, police and other uniformed services ''because it is not desirable to see them queuing for cash.''

Generation Me vs. You Revisited

Conventional wisdom, supported by academic studies using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, maintains that today’s young people — schooled in the church of self-esteem, vying for spots on reality television, promoting themselves on YouTube — are more narcissistic than their predecessors. Heck, they join Facebook groups like the Association for Justified Narcissism. A study released last year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press dubbed Americans age 18 to 25 as the “Look at Me” generation and reported that this group said that their top goals were fortune and fame.
(..)
Ms. Twenge attributed her findings in part to a change in core cultural beliefs that arose when baby-boom parents and educators fixated on instilling self-esteem in children beginning in the ’70s. “We think feeling good about yourself is very, very important,” she said in an interview. “Well, that never used to be the case back in the ’50s and ’60s, when people thought about ‘What do we need to teach young people?’ ” She points to cultural sayings as well — “believe in yourself and anything is possible” and “do what’s right for you.” “All of them are narcissistic,” she said.

However, some scholars argue that a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a myth.