Watching the World

Product Downsizing

“In an era of Super Sizes and SUVs, some goods are actually getting smaller,” reports Time magazine. “Manufacturers are quietly trimming the content of their packaged products​—from yogurt and ice cream to laundry detergent and diapers—​and often they aren’t dropping prices to match.” The tactic is not new, but because of the sagging economy and more careful and cost-conscious consumers, many manufacturers are now downsizing their products more aggressively to maintain their profit margin. Most shoppers do not notice that the weights or measures have changed by a few ounces or feet, but the result is that customers end up spending more for less. “Consumers really don’t have in their minds that they have to check the net weight or net count every time they buy something,” says Edgar Dworsky, founder of a consumer-advocacy Web site. “It’s the perfect consumer scam​—when consumers don’t know they’ve been taken.”

 Soap Saves Lives

Simply washing hands with soap could save a million lives a year because it would help people avoid diarrheic diseases, according to Val Curtis, a lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. At the Third World Water Forum, held in Kyoto, Japan, Curtis characterized the pathogens in human waste as “public enemy number one,” reports The Daily Yomiuri. “In some communities,” notes the newspaper, “it is common for women to wash infants after they have been to the toilet and then prepare food without washing their own hands.” Washing one’s hands with soap and water can prevent the spread of deadly viruses and bacteria. And in developing countries, according to Curtis, hand washing with soap would be three times more cost-efficient for lowering the risk of diarrheal diseases than improving water quality.

The Alpine Way

Via Alpina, which is a series of walking trails, was recently inaugurated in Europe in 2002. “The Alpine Way offers walkers 5,000 kilometres (3,100 miles) of the most ravishing countryside in Europe along traditional paths,” says The Independent of London. Linking eight Alpine countries, the walk starts at sea level in Trieste, on Italy’s northeast coast, and finishes, again at sea level, in Monte Carlo, Monaco. It climbs gently through the mountains to a maximum altitude of 9,800 feet [3,000 m], skirting the highest peaks. The carefully chosen paths are “close to the most renowned sites of natural and cultural interest,” claims the French tourist organization La Grande Traversée des Alpes. Few walkers are expected to cover the trail’s entire length. Instead, says the newspaper, “you can take the family; you can try a few kilometres then go home. But the Via Alpina opens new horizons for those seeking healthy, peaceful, escapist holidays [vacations] not far from home.” Walkers can stay overnight at any of the 300 hotels, pensions, or mountain retreats along the way.

Ocean Species Disappearing

The global ocean is no longer a blue frontier with vast populations of uncaught fish, according to marine biologists Dr. Ransom Myers of Dalhousie University in Halifax and Dr. Boris Worm of the Institute for Marine Science in Kiel, Germany. They say that ocean species, one by one, are being pushed to extinction, a phenomenon driven by the advances in satellite and sonar technology, which ocean-going fishing fleets use to locate fish. As reported in The Globe and Mail of Toronto, “every single species of large wild fish has been caught so systematically over the past 50 years that 90 per cent of each type have disappeared.” Dr. Myers believes that the loss of these fish, as well as those prized most for eating, such as tuna, cod, halibut, marlin, and swordfish, will profoundly affect the ecosystem of the global ocean. Dr. Worm adds: “We are tampering with the life-support system of the planet and that’s not a good thing to do.”

Malaria Tightens Its Grip on Africa

Malaria kills “3,000 children on the African continent every day,” states the French newspaper Le Figaro. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 300 million acute malarial infections occur in Africa yearly, leading to death in at least one million people. In the year 2000, Burundi suffered one of the worst malaria attacks ever. In seven months, half of its population​—some 3.5 million people—​were infected. The problem is that drug-resistant parasites have rendered quinine treatments ineffective. Fearing the high costs, many African countries refuse to replace quinine with newer antimalarial drugs derived from Artemisia annua, a Chinese plant. As a result, “malaria continues to tighten its grip on Africa,” said one WHO official.

Keeping Latin Alive

Although Latin is considered by many to be a dead language, the Vatican is endeavoring to keep it alive and up-to-date. Why? Because although Italian is the working language of the Vatican, Latin is its official language and is still used in encyclicals and other documents. The use of Latin seriously declined back in the 1970’s after it was decreed that the Mass could be celebrated in local languages. It was then that Pope Paul VI set up the Latin Foundation to keep the language alive. One step taken was the publishing of a Latin-Italian dictionary in two separate volumes, which sold out. Now a new combined edition has been published, to sell for $115. It contains about 15,000 modernized Latin terms, such as “escariorum lavator” (dishwasher). A new volume “is expected in two or three years,” says The New York Times. For the most part, words added will be “from the computer and information fields.”

Explanations Not Absorbed

“Patients forget up to 80 percent of what the doctor tells them while they are in the hospital, and almost half of what they remember is wrong,” reports the science newsletter wissenschaft.de, reporting on a study conducted in several countries. According to Roy Kessels, a researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the main reasons for the forgetfulness are advanced age, preconceived opinions, stress, and a lack of visual explanations. To help patients remember vital information, medical doctors are advised to speak clearly and unambiguously, to mention the most important information first, and to use pictorial aids, such as X rays.