I am in Cricket Heaven
Apparently, the internets now do cricket highlights!
Video 6ODI-EvI-2Inngs – 6odi, evi, 2inngs – Dailymotion Share Your Videos
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South Asians: Watch your Heart
Seems like us South Asians die earlier from heart attacks.
ScienceDaily: South Asians Have Higher Levels Of Heart Attack Risk Factors At Younger Ages
Deaths related to cardiovascular disease occur 5 to 10 years earlier in South Asian countries than in Western countries, according to background information in the article. This has raised the possibility that South Asians exhibit a special susceptibility for acute myocardial infarction (AMI; heart attack) that is not explained by traditional risk factors.
But why?
The prevalence of protective risk factors (leisure time physical activity, regular alcohol intake, and daily intake of fruits and vegetables) were markedly lower in South Asian study participants compared with those from other countries.
Um, it is mainly behavioral, not genetic according to the authors, and hence can be mitigated by lifestyle changes.
Well, I guess it is time to take a personal stock as of 1-18-2007:
- Weight – Well, I am in the lower end of the healthy BMI.
- Exercise – 4-5 days of 45 minutes – 1 hour per day, pretty good.
- Food – Well, mostly good, especially if the candy can be avoided. I need to eat more vegetables, but I eat a lot of high fibre, and whole wheat food, probably not enough protein, mostly vegetarian.
- Alcohol (1-2 drinks is apparently a heart protector) – Amen, I am a religious one drink a day partaker, more on weekends :-;
- Smoking – Well, gave that up a while back, now to quit that occasional “party” smoke.
- Stress – Well, not so good, this is probably the area I would need to work on the most.
- Hypertension – Well, I am borderline on my blood pressure readings 🙁 Need to work on that.
- Cholesterol – Still waiting for results on my physical.
On the whole, I seem to be in decent shape. It’s good to take stock once in a while.
The LA Times does Ambassador Cars
Please, we don’t need any sentimentality! These cars need to go away, they’ve done their bit for 50+ years, it’s time to retire!
India’s ugly icon of the road – Los Angeles Times
TO describe the most famous car strutting along India’s roads today, think of some of the qualities associated with hot automotive design.
Sleek. Sporty. Sexy. Fast.
Now throw them out.
None of those words applies to the Ambassador — in fact, quite the opposite, many say. Its boxy shape, like a derby hat on wheels, is an aerodynamic nightmare. It can have trouble overtaking wandering cows, let alone more powerful rivals. It’s not the car you’d pick to impress someone on a first date, or a fifth.
Yet everything the Ambassador is not doesn’t change what it is: an icon of modern India, a national treasure that epitomizes the country’s last 50 years, which is how long the car has been rolling off the same assembly line in eastern India, day in and day out.
India at 60 – A Public Health Perspective
Well, at least I don’t have to take part in endless parades and listen to speeches any more. But India turned 60 today, and the head of the Indian public health foundation takes stock, and it is sobering.
The Hindu : Persisting public health challenges
Recent health indicators in India are a cause for both celebration and concern. While life expectancy at birth has risen to 63 years, infant mortality rate (IMR) and maternal mortality rate (MMR) are still at unacceptably high levels (57 per 1000 and 301 per 100,000 live births respectively). There is widespread disparity among States with Kerala being the star performer. Within States, the rural areas are way behind the urban segments. Even as our economy has grown rapidly, the nutritional status of children has remained stunted, suggesting that wide income disparities are preventing the poor from becoming the beneficiaries of growth.
Yes, I be the killjoy.
More from Amartya Sen
There is reason enough to celebrate many things happening in India right now. But there are failures as well, which need urgent attention. For example, there is still widespread undernourishment in general and child undernutrition in particular–at a shocking level. The failures include, quite notably, the astonishing neglect of elementary education in India, with a quarter of the population–and indeed half the women–still illiterate.
The average life expectancy in India is still low (below 64) and infant mortality very high (58 per 1,000 live births). It is certainly true that India has narrowed the shortfall behind China in these areas–that is, in life expectancy and infant mortality–but there is still some distance to go for the country as a whole. The problems are gigantic in some of the more “backward” states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. And yet there are other states in which the Indian numbers are similar to China’s.
he goes on…
If India has to overcome these failures, it has to spend much more money on expanding the social infrastructure, particularly school education and basic health care. It also needs to spend much more in building up a larger physical infrastructure, including more roads, more power supplies and more water. In some of these, the private sector can help. But a lot more has to be spent on public services themselves, in addition to improving the system of delivery of these services, with more attention paid to incentives and disciplines, and better cooperation with the unions, consumer groups and other involved parties.
Ah, basic and boring infrastructure building!
The most important thing I read today (Indian Agriculture Edition)
Yes, I read the Times article about this subject too, but Tom Philpott and P. Sainath writer better and more eloquently.
India, food, and modernization | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist
That “promising biotechnology” is Monsanto’s Bt cotton seed, genetically modified to ward off the cotton bollworm. Indian farmers have been desperate to get their hands on it because they think they need it to compete with their lavishly capitalized and subsidized U.S. peers.
But the Monsanto seed, which promises to enable farmers to use 25 percent less pesticide, might not be worth the premium (it goes for about twice as much as conventional seed, the Times reports). The great Indian journalist P. Sainath wrote recently that “despite all the claims made for [Bt cotton], input dealers here have seen no decline in pesticide sales as a result of its use. Some claim higher sales than before.”
As prices for seeds and other inputs rise, farmers have seen the price their goods fetch in the marketplace fall or stagnate. The result has been crushing debt burdens, mounting losses, and a stunning surge in suicides among farmers.
The Times reports that “17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.”
Well, that’s one way to clear the land of “inefficient” farmers.
Arsenic in the News
Professor wins $1M for arsenic filter – Yahoo! News
The National Academy of Engineering announced Thursday that the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability would go to Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax. Hussam’s invention is already in use today, preventing serious health problems in residents of the professor’s native Bangladesh.
This British Geological Survey website provides a good primer to the problem. Some key points:
- Arsenic is very toxic
- Arsenic is naturally occurring in the shallow groundwater aquifers of Bengal and Bangladesh at a toxic level
- The surface water is contaminated with bacteria and was responsible for high infant mortality, so aid agencies in the ’70s encouraged the use of tube wells and other groundwater pumps. While this contributed to a decline in infant mortality from gastrointestinal infections, it also dosed unsuspecting people with disease causing levels of arsenic
- The technology for removal of arsenic is very well known. But most solutions require electricity/periodic maintenance/technical skills and are thus not universal or sustainable.
- Simplicity is the key. You can’t tell the people to not drink the water, it is the only clean water available. You can’t install water treatment plants, there is no running water, you can’t rely on solutions that are centralized.
So with all that in mind, here’s what Prof. Hussam did:
The Gold Award-winning SONO filter is a point-of-use method for removing arsenic from drinking water. A top bucket is filled with locally available coarse river sand and a composite iron matrix (CIM). The sand filters coarse particles and imparts mechanical stability, while the CIM removes inorganic arsenic. The water then flows into a second bucket where it again filters through coarse river sand, then wood charcoal to remove organics, and finally through fine river sand and wet brick chips to remove fine particles and stabilize water flow. The SONO filter is now manufactured and used in Bangladesh. That’s great, and easy!
That’s pretty much freshman chemistry right there, further proof that most innovation does not need new science, only people willing to spend some time on problems that don’t necessarily get looked at.
An Indian History Book to Read
Ramachandra Guha has written a new book about modern Indian history (independence in 1947-Present). Sounds interesting, here is an excerpt (h/t the always wonderful blog, 3QD).
The Miracle That Is India : outlookindia.com
Is India a democracy, then? The answer is well, phipty-phipty. It mostly is, when it comes to holding elections and permitting freedom of movement and expression. It mostly is not, when it comes to the functioning of politicians and political institutions. However, that India is even a 50 per cent democracy flies in the face of tradition, history, and the conventional wisdom. Indeed, by its own experience, it is rewriting that history and that wisdom. Thus, Sunil Khilnani remarked of the 2004 polls that they represented “the largest exercise of democratic election, ever and anywhere, in human history.
Sounds like fun, people ask me about India all the time and while I have great experiential knowledge, this book would (if good) give this experiential knowledge some factual and structural backing.
Fun!