Observations on the STS Scene
by Irma S. JarchoLet's see if I can explain this in a way I can understand. According to Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao, a NASA geophysicist, we have built in the last 40 years or so 88 huge reservoirs, most of them in the Northern Hemisphere. They hold about 10 trillion tons of water. We have thus unwittingly altered the rotation rate of Earth, speeding up its rotation and causing the planet to wobble. The shifting of this water from the oceans to the continents has moved mass from near the equator to higher latitudes, closer to the axis on which the Earth spins. The faster spin has shortened the day by about 8 millionths of a second over the past 40 years when the first megareservoirs were built. This speeding up counteracts the natural slowing of the (Earth's rotation, due to tidal friction. Besides speeding up the Earth's rotation the reservoirs are causing the planet to wobble more than usual because these dams are spread unevenly around the globe. The wobbling has changed the location of the axis on which Earth rotates -- the North Pole has moved 24 inches toward Western Canada since the early 1950s. Understanding and measuring such changes may not seem important but they are vital to NASA's efforts to track satellites and distant spacecraft. If you don't correct for these variations when you are tracking a spacecraft that is 100 million miles away, the error can be very large. These may seem small and insignificant distances, but in Duncan Steel's Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets, reviewed in our Winter 1996 issue, it was stated that in order to deflect a threatening asteroid we need only deflect it one centimeter thirty-five years before it is due to hit. A final effect of the reservoirs is ascribable to the fact that the water stored in them has been effectively removed from the oceans. The water in the reservoirs has lowered the sea level by about 1.2 inches. Accounts of the effects of the stored water in the reservoirs have appeared recently. Doug McInnis reported on them in the June 1996 issue of Earth. The New York Times for 3 March 1996 also reported Dr. Fong Chao's findings. The Times, however, hastened to assure its readers that the changes in the motions posed no danger to people or the global environment. We can all "breathe easier.
Everything clear? American Solar Technology Abroad An interesting article in The New York Times Business Section for 5 June 1996 details the myriad ways in which solar power research is paying off -- but not in the United States! The article characterizes solar power in this country as "not much more than a dim light bulb in the nation's energy constellation." The investment is paying off anyway -- abroad -- and the article gives examples of research applications. "From India and Indonesia to Mexico and Brazil, solar panels made in America are sprouting on thousands of rooftops, lighting up jungles, deserts, and other hard-to-wire areas." Cellular phones are being powered, while in areas with transmission grids in place huge solar plants are being designed to provide pollution-free supplemental power. Tiny companies starting up ten years ago now ring in revenues in the millions. One solar panel can power two light bulbs, a television, and a radio. A solar system is virtually maintenance-free, and intensive research aimed at bringing down the price per watt of the panels seems promising. A showcase of solar power applications will be in the Olympics this summer, where the swimming and diving competitions will be held under the world's largest solar rooftop. The article is enriched with graphs of solar energy capacity both in the U.S. and abroad. [Photographs of some wide-flung uses of American-made solar panels include my favorite -- a camel in Somalia carrying a traveling medical clinic which uses a solar panel to provide energy for a refrigerator storing vaccines.
Iodine Deficiency Severe in China The role of iodine -- or, rather, the lack of iodine -- in causing severe health problems has been known for centuries. The deficiency causes goiter -- a huge enlargement of the thyroid gland -- and, in severe cases, where the deficient diets are lifelong, it also causes the extreme mental retardation known as cretinism. Developed countries have practically eliminated this scourge, but now comes a long article in The New York Times for 4 June 1996 detailing the finding that in rural areas of China there may be as many as 500 million cases of iodine deficiency of the most extreme kind. The article describes "villages of idiots," many of whose inhabitants are retarded or suffer from huge goiters. A 1995 survey of newborn infants in every provincial capital showed iodine deficiencies in 35% to 65% of those tested. Field studies in the 1980s found that up to 25% of school children in affected areas were mildly retarded, with IQs of 50 to 69. The millions of Chinese who live near the sea get sufficient iodine in their diets from seafood. It is the farmers on the iodine-deficient soils of inland China who are in trouble -- and their families. Awareness of the staggering consequences of iodine deficiencies is finally dawning on the authorities. The remedy is so simple -- or so it seems. Substitute iodized salt for regular salt and the deficiency can be controlled -- or eliminated entirely. But reaching this goal has proven difficult. A third or more of the salt is not iodized, and sales of treated salt are dropping because noniodized salt remains the cheaper option. Distributing vast quantities of iodized salt to remote regions with poor transportation is a daunting task. It is doubtful that China can reach its goal of elminating iodine deficiency by the year 2000. It seems unattainable. Although authorities are now beginning to understand the scale of the disaster, it will still take many years before this scourge is eliminated.
The End of Science? "Plus a change, plus la mme chose . . . ." One recurring example is "we've gone about as fur as we can go . . . ." These thoughts are prompted by the fanfare that has greeted the publication of John Horgan's The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age. An amusing and perceptive review by Natalie Angier in the Book Review Section of The New York Times for 30 June 1996 characterizes our present state of scientific knowledge as "the first feeble streak of dawn" rather than the twilight the author posits. As for myself, I mention two things. For the first of these I cannot give you chapter and verse, but it is my recollection that, late in the nineteenth century, the proposal was made to abolish the Patent Office, since everything that could be invented had been. The second mention I would make is of a letter to the editors of the aforesaid Book Review Section for 28 July 1996. Matthew C. Kartch of Pompton Plains, NJ, draws our attention to a quotation from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Abraham Michelson's address at the dedication ceremony for the Ryerson Physical 0laboratory at the University of Chicago in 1894: "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. . . . Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."According to Kartch, this arrant piece of nonsense (my characterization, not his) was included in the 14th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations but omitted from the 15th and 16th.
Gender-specific Violence: A Neglected Issue Coming to the Fore One of the most neglected problems in public health -- yes, public health -- is violence against women, so-called "domestic violence." this issue contains a report on the Harvard School of Public Health Alumni Forum on this topic. It seems to be a current concern, and it is difficult to pick up a popular magazine or scientific journal that does not contain some reference to it. Violence against women has been characterized as a "cultural constant." Gender-specific violence emerges from and reinforces the social relationships that give men power over women. For years it has been a neglected concern. Even in conferences devoted to women the subject was taboo. Domestic violence was not even mentioned during the first UN Women's Conference in 1975 nor in the 1979 UN Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women! Change has come slowly, but it has come. The first major reform came in June 1993 at the UN's Second World Conference on Human Rights. In a drive leading up to the Conference, activists collected half a million signatures from 124 countries insisting that the Conference address gender violence. bMore recently, 18 members of the Organization of American States have ratified the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women. This is regarded as the strongest existing piece of international legislation in this field. National agovernments, including Argentina, Australia, the Bahamas, and the United States, have also drawn up legislation to combat gender violence. A common assault on young girls, committed for both religious and/or traditional reasons is the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Although it is being fought against in many countries where the practice exists, progress is meager and it is estimated that two million girls are at risk each year. The effects are life-long, often complicating pregnancy; deaths from infection and bleeding are frequent. a Immigrants to developed countries have imported the practice, but laws against FGM have been for are being passed. At least nine European countries now prohibit the practice, as does Australia. In the U.S. a bill criminalizing FGM was passed by the Senate in May 1996 but has yet to become law. During the same time period a woman from Togo who was fleeing FGM was granted asylum in the U.S. Perhaps more significantly, two African countries, Ghana and Kenya, have both outlawed the practice. If you do not consider Domestic Violence and FGM significant STS problems, let me give you a miscellany of data on importance and consequences, culled from recent articles on the subject. Large-scale surveys in Colombia, Canada, and the United States estimate that as many as one third of women have been physically assaulted by an intimate male partner. In some groups in Latin American, Asia, and Africa the figure may reach 60% or more. In Canada a 1987 study showed 62% of women murdered that year were killed by an intimate male partner. In India, if a man's family considers the wife's dowry inadequate they may douse her in kerosene and set her on fire -- `bride-burning -- so a more lucrative match can be arranged. About 5000 of these "dowry deaths" are believed to occur every year; other writers put the figure at 12,000. Surveys indicate that up to one third of women in Norway, the U.S., New Zealand, Barbados, and the Netherlands are sexually abused during childhood (World Bank,Violence Against Women; the Hidden Health Burden, 1994). In the U.S. a 1993 review of rape studies suggests that between 14 and 20 percent of women will be victims of completed rapes during their lifetimes. In some countries a raped woman is killed by her family -- in Alexandria, Egypt, one study of female homicide found that 47% of murdered women were killed by a family member following a rape. A growing number of women and girls are being forced into prostitution. As fear of AIDS intensifies, ccustomers are demanding ever-younger prostitutes, and the age at which girls are being forced into prostitution is lowering. This is inspired by the mistaken belief that young girls do not contract aAIDS. The problem is everywhere; a recent questionnaire surveying both medical students and full-time faculty at a major medical center in Rochester, NY, revealed a minimum of 17% of the female medical students and faculty have experienced physical abuse or sexual abuse by a partner in their adult life. According to one source from 1973 to 1992 about 2000 women per year died in the U.S. as a result of domestic violence. Recent highly publicized cases in tabloids would indicate #that the problem is not diminished. Whether it takes the form of enforced prostitution, rape, genital mutilation, or domestic abuse, gender-based violence is doing enormous damage -- to the women who experience it and to society as a whole. A few studies have attempted to assign a dollar value to domestic violence. In the U.S. women who had been raped or beaten had medical costs two and a half times higher during the year of the incident. In Pennsylvania, a study indicated that violence against women cost the health care system $326.6 million in 1992. In Canada a 1995 study which included not only health care costs but also the value of support services and lost work put the annual cost at $1.52 billion (Canadian; $1.1 billion U.S.). Women's productivity is affected: a 1993 study in the U.S. found that women who have been abused earn 3-20% less each year. Violence can also prevent women from participating in public life. This was acknowledged in a 1992 UN report, Battered Dreams: Violence Against Women As An Obstacle to Development. Until today human rights concerns have traditionally confined themselves to the public sphere. It is time to concern ourselves with "private sphere" violence.
References E.A. deLahunta and Asher A. Tulsky, "Personal Exposure of Faculty and Medical Students to Family Violence," JAMA, 1903-1906 (26 Jun 96)
Toni Nelson, "Violence Against Women,"World Watch, 33-38 (Jul-Aug 96)
Karen Titus, "When Physicians Ask Women Tell About Domestic Abuse and Violence," JAMA, 1863-64 (26 Jun 96)
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