25.7.07
Your plant just called to say ... I'm thirsty!
Imagine answering your cell
phone to hear your Scotch Moss plant telling you in a fake Glaswegian accent
that it needs a drink.
This scenario is not far from
reality with a group of postgraduate students at
The "Botanicalls"
project uses moisture sensors placed in the soil which can send a signal over a
wireless network to a gateway that places a call if the plant's too dry or wet.
Recorded voices are assigned
to each plant to match its biological characteristics and to help increase the
charm of the phone message and give plants their own personality.
Interactive communications
student Rebecca Bray, who developed the concept with three colleagues, said the
technology was not new but it's the way of communicating by voice and adding
personality to the plants that's different.
"They will call and tell
you they are thirsty and need a lot of water. They are also really
polite," Bray told Reuters.
"We wanted to make sure
that you weren't just getting phone calls that were really needy. So we have
them calling you back when you've watered them to say thank you for watering
me."
For example, the Scots Moss
is given a fake Scottish accent as it was not originally from
"We wanted to provide a
system so that the plants could actually survive by communicating to
people," said Bray who developed the system with Rob Faludi,
Kati London and Kate Hartman.
She said they were surprised
how many people have approached them to acquire this service for homes and
businesses but didn't expect the system to become available commercially for at
least another six months.
"We hope that the system
will help people learn how to take better care of their plants over time and
maybe not even need the phone calls after a while," Bray said.
Obesity Can Spread, Study Says
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus,
researchers are reporting today. When one person gained weight, their close
friends tended to gain weight, too.
Their study, published in the New England Journal of
Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067
people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003. The
investigators knew who was friends with whom, as well as who was a spouse or
sibling or neighbor, and they knew how much each person weighed at various
times over three decades. That let them examine what happened over the years as
some individuals became obese. Did their friends also become obese? Did family
members or neighbors?
The answer, the researchers report, was that people were
most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a
person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.
There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight,
however, and family members had less influence than friends.
Proximity did not seem to matter: the influence of the
friend remained even if the friend was hundreds of miles away. And the greatest
influence of all was between mutual close friends. There, if one became obese,
the odds of the other becoming obese were nearly tripled.
The same effect seemed to occur for weight loss, the
investigators say. But since most people were gaining, not losing, over the 32
years of the study, the result was an obesity epidemic.
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of medical
sociology at
“You change your idea of what is an acceptable body type by
looking at the people around you,” Dr. Christakis said.
The investigators say their findings can help explain why
Americans have become fatter in recent years — each person who became obese was
likely to drag some friends with them.
Their analysis was unique, Dr. Christakis said, because it
moved beyond a simple analysis of one person and his or her social contacts,
and instead examined an entire social network at once, looking at how a
person’s friend’s friend’s friends, or spouse’s
sibling’s friends, could have an influence on a person’s weight. The effects,
Dr. Christakis said, “highlight the importance of a spreading process, a kind
of social contagion, that spreads through the
network.”
Of course, the investigators say, social networks are not
the only factors that affect body weight. There is a strong genetic component
at work as well.
Science has shown that individuals have genetically
determined ranges of weights, spanning perhaps 30 or so pounds for each person.
But that leaves a large role for the environment in determining whether a
person’s weight is near the top of his or her range or near the bottom. As
people have gotten fatter, it appears that many are edging toward the top of
their ranges. The question has been why.
If the new research is correct, it may mean that something
in the environment seeded what many call an obesity epidemic, leading a few
people to gain weight. Then social networks let the obesity spread rapidly.
It also may mean that the way to avoid becoming fat is to
avoid having fat friends.
That is not the message they meant to convey, say the study
investigators, Dr. Christakis and his colleague, James Fowler, an associate
professor of political science at the
You don’t want to lose a friend who becomes obese, Dr.
Christakis said. Friends are good for your overall health, he explains. So why
not make friends with a thin person, he suggests, and let the thin person’s
behavior influence you and your obese friend?
That answer does not satisfy obesity researchers like Kelly
Brownell, director of the
“I think there’s a great risk here in blaming obese people
even more for things that are caused by a terrible environment,” Dr. Brownell
said.
On average, the investigators said, their rough calculations
show that a person who became obese gained 17 pounds,
and the newly obese person’s friend gained 5. But some gained less or did not
gain weight at all, while others gained much more.
Those extra pounds were added onto the natural increases in
weight that occur when people get older. What usually happened was that
peoples’ weights got high enough to push them over the boundary, a body mass
index of 30, that divides overweight and obese. (For
example, a six-foot-tall man who went from 220 pounds to 225 would go from
being overweight to obese.)
While other researchers were surprised by the findings, Dr.
Christakis said the big surprise for him was that he could do the study at all.
He got the idea from talk of an obesity epidemic.
“One day I said, ‘Maybe it really is an epidemic. Maybe it
spreads from person to person,’ ” Dr. Christakis recalled.
It was only by chance that he discovered a way to find out.
He learned that the data he needed were contained in a large federal study of
heart disease, the Framingham Study, that had followed
the population of
The study’s records included each participant’s address and
the names of family members. In order for the researchers to be sure they did
not lose track of their subjects, each was asked to name a close friend who
would know where they were at the time of their next exam, in roughly four
years. Since much of the town and most of the subjects’ relatives were
participating, the data contained all that Dr. Christakis and his colleagues
needed to reconstruct the social network and follow it for 32 years.
Their research has taken obesity specialists and social
scientists aback. But many say the finding is pathbreaking,
and can shed new light on how and why people have gotten so fat so fast.
“It is an extraordinarily subtle and sophisticated way of
getting a handle on aspects of the environment that are not normally
considered,” said Dr. Rudolph Leibel, an obesity
researcher at
Dr. Richard Suzman, who directs
the office of behavioral and social research programs at the National Institute
on Aging, called it “one of the most exciting studies to come out of medical
sociology in decades.” The institute financed the study.
But Dr. Stephen O’Rahilly, an
obesity researcher at the
“I don’t want to look like an old curmudgeon, but when you
come upon things that inherently look a bit implausible, you raise the bar for
standards of proof,” Dr. O’Rahilly says. “Good
science is all about replication, but it is hard to see how science will ever
replicate this.”
Women Take Off the Gloves and Come Out Multitasking
What intrinsic qualities do women have that give them a
competitive edge over men? By an overwhelming margin, the trait touted most was
their multitasking expertise.
“I challenge any man to talk on the phone, send a fax, reply
to an e-mail, change a diaper, get a toddler a snack, monitor what your
school-age children are watching on TV and add to the grocery list — all at the
same time,”
Aside from their juggling prowess, women say they are more
intuitive than men, and thus more sensitive to nuance; are better problems
solvers; have more energy; are more patient, and are more likely to share their
know-how with one another.
They even turned a common dig against them, their supposed
emotionalism, on its head, saying it is a manifestation of a compassionate
nature that motivates employees, attracts customers and enables them to keep
their priorities straight.
How about that, guys?
True, the doctrine of female superiority wasn’t unanimous.
“There are no magic qualities that women possess ‘over’ men,” one woman wrote.
But she was in a minority of two skeptics.
The second question was whether women should try to imitate
men’s tough management style. Answer: No way. “Kindness goes a long way” and
“the gentle approach wins people over” were typical comments, though nobody
urged treating malingers with kid gloves.
“A woman should stand her ground and not be a pushover, but
she doesn’t have to save face like men do and be ‘tough’,” one mom wrote.
A few respondents acknowledged that men seem to have innate
advantages, like moving more quickly to put out workplace fires and paying more
attention to the bottom line. Others pointed out that a lot of men are great
bosses, and, on the flip side, women who emulate the tough-guy management style
can be nightmares.
“I’ve worked for a lot of humane men, that were actually
superior to women in their style, because they didn’t get catty, they didn’t
act unprofessional,” wrote Diana Dallal in Everett,
Wash., who left the corporate world and started a music studio in her home six
years ago when she was pregnant with her third child. “I have seen very bad
emotional behavior in the business world by women that I have NEVER seen men
do,” she said, including one who screamed at her in front of other employees.
She vows never to work for a woman again.
Bringing Moos and Oinks Into the Food Debate
THE first farm animal Gene Baur
ever snatched from a stockyard was a lamb he named Hilda.
That was 1986. She’s now buried under a little tombstone
near the center of Farm Sanctuary, 180 acres of vegan nirvana here in the
Finger Lakes region of upstate
Back then, Mr. Baur was living in
a school bus near a tofu factory in
Now, more than a thousand animals once destined for the
slaughterhouse live here and on another Farm Sanctuary property in
As Farm Sanctuary has grown, so too has its influence. Soon,
due in part to the organization’s work, veal calves and pregnant pigs in
And earlier this month, the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed
to hear a case concerning common farming practices that a coalition led by Farm
Sanctuary says are inhumane.
All of these developments reflect the maturation and
sophistication of Mr. Baur and others in a network of
animal activists who have more control over
Among animal rights groups, the 1980s were considered the
decade of grass-roots activism. The 1990s saw the rise of court actions and
ballot initiatives. This decade is about building budgets, influencing policy
and cultivating elected officials, all with a deliberate focus on livestock.
Farm Sanctuary and other groups still know how to make the
most of gory slaughterhouse footage from hidden cameras. The animals they call
“rescued” — some abandoned, some saved from natural disasters, some left for
dead at slaughterhouses — clearly started life as someone else’s property.
But in recent years they have adopted more subtle tactics,
like holding stock in major food corporations, organizing nimble political
campaigns and lobbying lawmakers.
While some groups, like the Animal Welfare Institute, work
with ranchers to codify the best methods of raising animals for meat and eggs,
most, like Farm Sanctuary and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
ultimately want people to stop using even wool and honey because they believe
the products exploit living creatures.
But all of these believers have learned that with less
stridency comes more respect and influence in food politics. So they no longer
concentrate their energy on burning effigies of Colonel Sanders and stealing
chickens. They don’t demonize meat — with the exception of foie
gras and veal — or the people who produce it.
Instead, they use softer rhetoric, focusing on a campaign even committed
carnivores can get behind: better conditions for farm animals.
In some ways, it’s simply a matter of style.
“Instead of telling it like it is, we’re learning to present
things in a more moderate way,” Mr. Baur said. “When
it comes to this vegan ideal, that’s an aspiration. Would I love everyone to be
vegan? Yes. But we want to be respectful and not judgmental.”
Certainly, concerns over health and food safety, and a
growing interest in where food comes from among consumers and chefs, has made
animal welfare an easier sell.
Technology has helped savvy activists deliver their message,
too — specifically mass e-mail, easily concealed cameras and the ability to
quickly distribute images online, like footage of slaughterhouses and the 2004
spoof “The Meatrix.”
They have also learned to harness the power of celebrity in
a tabloid culture, courting as spokespeople anyone famous who might have
recently put down steak tartare in favor of vegetable
carpaccio.
“I think there is a shift in public consciousness,” said
Bruce Friedrich, vice president of international grass-roots campaigns for
PETA. “When Cameron Diaz learns that pigs are smarter than 3-year-olds and
she’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’m eating my niece,’ that has an impact.”
The image makeover has been so successful that a 2006 survey
of 5,000 people ages 13 to 24 showed that PETA was the nonprofit organization
most would like to volunteer for, according to the market research firm Label
Networks. The American Red Cross was second.
Beyond image polishing, animal rights groups also learned
how to marshal resources and set up a classic “good-cop, bad-cop” dynamic to
put farm animal welfare on legislative agendas. The
The game was on. Farm Sanctuary put one of its lobbyists on
the case. The Humane Society of the
PETA, whose over-the-top protests are considered divisive by
some animal rights groups, stayed away on the day of the vote. The law is now
being reconsidered, and PETA has unleashed its supporters.
PETA uses more than half of its $30 million budget to poke
the meat and fast-food industry in the eye with shock-based educational
campaigns. PETA protesters have handed out Unhappy Meals filled with bloody,
dismembered toy animals and miniature KFC buckets filled with packets of fake
blood and bones.
As factions in the animal rights movement continue to grow
and splinter, sometimes using violence to make their point, the Humane Society,
which is 30 years older than PETA, has emerged as the reasonable, wise big
brother of the farm animal protection movement.
The arrival of Wayne Pacelle as
head of the Humane Society in 2004 both turbo-charged the farm animal welfare
movement and gave it a sheen of respectability.
As the organization’s first vegan president, he quickly
sharpened the group’s focus to farm animals. He also absorbed smaller
organizations, merging with the 180,000-member Doris Day Animal League and the
Fund for Animals. The budget has jumped to $132 million from $75 million, Mr. Pacelle said.
Like PETA, the Humane Society has purchased enough stock in
corporations like Tyson, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and
Mr. Friedrich said PETA had some early success pressuring
stockholders when it was fighting to stop companies from testing soap and
beauty products on animals. It then began buying stock in McDonald’s, attending
a shareholder’s meeting for the first time in 1998.
Like Mr. Baur, Mr. Pacelle understands that not everyone is going to stop
eating animals, so he focuses on what he calls the three R’s: refinement of
farming techniques, reducing meat consumption and replacement of animal
products. That way, he hopes, the Humane Society tent is big enough to include
both ardent meat eaters and hard-core vegans.
The broader-umbrella approach is working. Take the case of
Wolfgang Puck. In March, he announced that he would stop serving foie gras and buy eggs only from
chickens not confined to small cages. Veal, pork and poultry suppliers will have
to abide by stricter standards, too.
For five years before the announcement, Mr. Baur’s group had been pressuring Mr. Puck to change his
meaty ways. Mr. Puck, in an interview in March, said that had nothing to do
with his new policies. He simply came to the conclusion that better standards
were the best thing for his customers, his food and the animals. But he did
credit the Humane Society for his education.
Mr. Puck met Mr. Pacelle through
Sharon Patrick, a branding consultant he had hired. Ms. Patrick, the former
president of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia,
believed animal welfare could be an important component in her plan for Mr.
Puck.
She brokered a meeting between the two men, and eight months
later Mr. Puck presented his new animal welfare plan.
But farmers and corporations are only gingerly endorsing
animal rights groups — if at all.
The flurry of corporate animal welfare policies that began
in 1999 with McDonald’s are simply sound corporate strategy, company
representatives say. The genesis was likely the 1993 E. coli outbreak at Jack
in the Box restaurants, which sickened hundreds and killed four children.
Companies realized they had to get a better handle on where their meat was
coming from.
And they say it had nothing to do with PETA.
“Ask them and they will tell you they are the sole
responsible party for bringing all these changes, but I have yet to see one of
their campaigns produce results where they affected the company in terms of
customer traffic or profitability,” said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy’s.
Like other big fast food companies, Wendy’s has been a
target of animal activists’ campaigns. Earlier this month, it announced a
strengthened animal welfare policy.
Burger King executives say that at
their company, too, change is driven by consumers, not activist pressure.
“If we think consumers are a little more engaged in this,
then so are we,” said Steve Grover, vice president for food safety, quality
assurance and regulatory compliance. “I look at it like a hockey player. I want
to be there before the puck gets there.”
Cattle ranchers say pressure from PETA and Farm Sanctuary
are not the reason they have started handling animals with more care. As the
owners of Niman Ranch and Coleman Natural discovered,
people are willing to pay more for meat from animals that are better cared for
and whose origins can be traced from birth through processing.
“The groups that don’t want us to eat any animals at all are
so radical and off-the-wall that we don’t even worry about them,” said Scott
Sell, the owner of Quail Ridge Ag and Livestock Services, a
But
“Activist pressure starts it because heat softens steel,”
she said. But she also offered some friendly advice. “What the activists’
groups have to be careful about is that you want to soften the steel and not
vaporize it.”
Activists have only slightly warmer relations with chefs,
despite their recent fascination with farming.
For example, Mr. Trotter said animal welfare has become more
important because American gastronomic consumers increasingly want to do right
by the animals they eat.
“You don’t just have to be a card-carrying PETA member
anymore to go that route,” he said in an e-mail message.
The chefs Mario Batali and Adam
Perry Lang, along with the restaurateur Joe Bastianich,
are creating a company called BBL Beef Brokers to produce humanely raised meat
that is pampered from the farm to the slaughterhouse.
“From the chef’s perspective it comes down to, ‘Yeah, the
steak looks good but why is it not performing?’ ” Mr. Perry Lang said. “It’s
because of how the animal was raised and handled. That’s not animal rights, but
it is animal welfare.”
Although animal rights groups and chefs might agree that
farm animals need to be treated with more care, one side wants to put those
animals on the grill and the other wants to simply hang out with them.
The chasm between the two groups spilled over into the
August edition of VegNews, a glossy magazine that is
a mix of People and Real Simple for the meatless set. The magazine printed a
publisher’s note taking the international gastronomic group Slow Food to task
for not including more vegetarians. The story carried the headline “The
Developmentally Disabled Food Movement” and called the organization’s leaders
“human-centric food snobs.”
Erika Lesser, executive director of Slow Food
“There is a place at the Slow Food table for vegetarians,
for omnivores, whatever your ‘itarian’ persuasion is,
but I haven’t met many vegetarians who are willing to sit at the table with
omnivores,” she said.
The gap between animal lovers and animal lovers who love to
eat them is exactly what Mr. Baur, a man who eats
noodles with margarine, soy sauce and brewer’s yeast and has only barely heard
of Chez Panisse, would like to close.
“We’re not really in philosophical alignment,” he said. “But
I like to think we’re in strategic alliance.”
First Indian Female President Sworn In
Pratibha Patil's black limousine was escorted through the
streets of
Patil, a 72-year-old former lawyer, legislator and governor
of the northwestern state of Rajasthan, was chosen for the largely ceremonial
post by the governing Congress party and elected by national and state
lawmakers on Thursday.
Despite being touted as an important step for gender
equality, Patil's election has elicited only a lukewarm welcome from other
women, with many saying her lackluster political career and rocky road to the
presidency have given them little more than symbol -- and not a leader who
represents them.
''She was chosen for her loyalty and has moved from one post
to another because of that same loyalty,'' said Madhu Kishwar, the editor of
Manushi, a feminist and human rights magazine.
''I have always believed that it's not everything to just
have sari-wearing creatures in politics. It's more important that politics
stands for and enables honest, upright people to survive. But sycophancy is the
only token that works,'' she added.
While India has had several women in positions of power --
most notably Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and her mother-in-law, Indira
Gandhi, who was elected prime minister in 1966 -- women still face a great deal
of discrimination.
Daughters are often seen as a burden mostly because
tradition requires that a bride's family pay the groom's family a large dowry
of cash and gifts. Their education is often neglected, and many don't get
adequate medical treatment when ill.
Last year, an international team of researchers estimated up
to 10 million female fetuses had been aborted in the past 10 in years in
The result is a gender ratio increasingly skewed in favor of
men: There were 927 women for every 1,000 men, according to the 2001 census,
down from 945 women per 1,000 men in 1991.
With the backing of the Congress party, Patil's victory had
been inevitable. But her presidential campaign was one of the most bitter in
recent history.
She defeated incumbent Vice President Bhairon Singh
Shekhawat, the candidate of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, in a contest
marked by unprecedented mudslinging.
Patil's emergence on the national stage highlighted several
scandals involving family members, including two who are under investigation by
police.
Her comments ahead of the election calling on Indian women
to abandon wearing headscarves were roundly denounced by Muslim leaders and by
historians -- who disputed her assertion that women only started wearing
headscarves in
''I feel that having a woman as the head of state is in some
way reflective of how progressive a society is, but Pratibha Patil is not a
right candidate,'' said Shradha Biyani, a marketing executive.
But there are others who believe a woman occupying the
340-room colonial-era presidential palace will have an impact, even if it's
only symbolic.
''In a democracy like
Computer program can learn baby talk
A computer program that learns to decode sounds from
different languages in the same way that a baby does helps to shed new light on
how people learn to talk, researchers said on Tuesday.
They said the finding casts doubt on theories that babies
are born knowing all the possible sounds in all of the world's languages.
"The debate in language acquisition is around the
question of how much specific information about language is hard-wired into the
brain of the infant and how much of the knowledge that infants acquire about
language is something that can be explained by relatively general purpose
learning systems," said James McClelland, a psychology professor at
McClelland says his computer program supports the theory
that babies systematically sort through sounds until they understand the
structure of a language.
"The problem the child confronts is how many categories
are there and how should I think about it. We're trying to propose a method
that solves that problem," said McClelland, whose work appears in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Expanding on some existing ideas, he and a team of
international researchers developed a computer model that resembles the brain
processes a baby uses when learning about speech.
He and colleagues tested their model by exposing it to
"training sessions" that consisted of analyzing recorded speech in
both English and Japanese between mothers and babies in a lab.
What they found is the computer was able to learn basic
vowel sounds right along with baby.
"It learns how many sounds there are. It figures that
out," he said in a telephone interview.
And if the computer can do it, he said, a baby can, too.
"In the past, people have tried to argue it wasn't possible for any machine to learn these things, and so it had to be hard-wired (in humans)," he said. "Those arguments, in my view, were not particularly well grounded."
Fundraiser to feature machine guns
A planned Republican fundraiser in
The Manchester Republican Committee is inviting party
members and their families to a "Machine Gun Shoot" where, for $25,
supporters can spend a day trying out automatic weapons, said organizer Jerry Thibodeau.
"It's a fun day. It's a family day," said Thibodeau of the August 5 event. "It's quite
exciting."
Local Democrats say the event is in poor taste amid a spike
in violent crime in
"It is downright offensive," Chris Pappas, the
Thibodeau said he invited all the
Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential race to the event at Pelham Fish
and Game Club outside of
Buying a gun in
The state does not require buyers to obtain a handgun license or undergo safety training before buying a handgun, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control lobby group.
Maid jailed for serving up urine
An Indonesian maid has been jailed for six days in
The 29-year-old pleaded guilty to a charge of
"administering poison or other destructive or noxious substance with
intent to injure," but insisted she had used the urine to treat a skin
condition and its appearance in her employer's cup was a mistake.
Her boss, Szeto Ching-han, smelled the urine after asking for a cup of
water, and then asked the maid to drink it -- which she did. Szeto, however, kept the liquid to have it tested in a lab,
the South China Morning Post said.
The defense argued that the maid's employer had not drunk
the urine and the substance was not poisonous.
"The only contact the former employer had with the
so-called poisonous mixture was the smell," her lawyer was quoted as
telling the court.
The magistrate who heard the case said there was no evidence
that the maid had suffered any harm after drinking from the cup, but still gave
the maid a six-day jail sentence, saying the court "must send a message to
the public."
Maids from the
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