Age of Rieson

Stress

2012-01-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

In mid career I lived in the big city of Toronto where my husband had a prominent position and I was teaching science in a Collegiate Institute. We were fairly often invited to attend functions and, to make my hair look stylish in a hurry, I had a hairpiece made of my own hair I used to wear. It was held in place on the top of my head by a special comb and gave me a bouffant look.

After a few years in the city, we had a good opportunity to go back to our relatively quiet home province and we did so happily. My hairpiece remained in a box among my hats that were not worn for years as I became a graduate student in our local university and totally immersed myself studying and doing research in chemistry. It was a church funeral that required I wear a hat to attend that sent me back to scrummage in my hatbox. When I pulled out the hairpiece I was astonished to find that it was almost white! With the quiet life I had been living, many of my grey hairs had disappeared and when I stuck the hairpiece on the top of my head again, it looked distinctly out of place. For the first time I realized that living and working in the city must have put me under quite a bit of stress without my really being aware of it.

Hans Selye, a scientist working in Montreal was the first to demonstrate scientifically the effects of making lab animals tense and anxious and he is attributed with first using the term stress in that context. That was in 1935 and actually his work was not accepted by scientists until as late as the 1970’s. Now we hear about the effects of stress almost daily.

One example I read about some time ago now, had to do with medical students and how the stress of worrying about the final exams caused 80% of them to come down with a cold or other illness before or during the process of writing them.

Actually worrying as you study or write exams is counter productive because it just takes away from your ability to learn and recall. As well, Hans Selye has said ‘Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older’.

As with my experience in the big city, you can’t do anything about some stress but you do know rationally that worrying does not do anything to improve a situation. So my advice is to do your best to push your stressful concerns out of your mind and - as the song says - ‘In every life we have some trouble, When you worry you make it double, Don't worry. Be happy!!’ ...and you’ll live longer. Rie

Vinho Verde

2012-01-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

Spending a winter on Sabbatical in London, England in 1980, we needed a break from the interminable raw wet weather, and were delighted to be able to get cheap airline tickets south to Portugal. Sure enough as we climbed above the thick cloud cover, there was the sun and over the Channel, the clouds beneath disappeared. It seemed to us as if England must have had its own stationary black cloud we had escaped from under. We rejoiced.

Tourism had just started to be big business in those days and Portugal had coped with its lack of hotel accommodation by setting up a government run network of inns that they called Pousadas . We found this out shortly after we arrived when we visited the National Tourist Bureau in Lisbon and, with some help, worked out an itinerary where we would stop one or two days in an area, exploring, and then move on. The Pousada accommodations were in palaces, monasteries, historic buildings and the like – invariably of interest in themselves.

One leg of our journey led us to the north-east border with Spain where we stayed in a villa in the mountains and ate kid or cabrito for the first time. It was tender and a bit gamey.

The following day we traveled across northern Portugal through wooded areas to Porto on the coast. As we drove, we were intrigued to see grape vines around homesteads that were purposely trained to climb up every available tree or pole, leaving room, we supposed, for planting other crops beneath. When we stopped at a café in a small town we were lucky to have a proprietor who not only offered us a glass of wine but also explained it was made from their local grapes. It was called Vinho Verde and it was delicious - served cool, it had a bit of a sparkle and its low alcoholic content contributed to making the whole bottle we were served, disappear. When we reached the coast, we found a place on the beach where the locals were grilling sardines. We bought a loaf of bread, a couple of bottles of Vinho Verde and, with the sardines, had ourselves a very fine picnic. Writing about the day brings back unforgettable memories.

We have since been able to find Vinho Verde on occasion in our local wine outlet and always its special refreshing taste evokes lovely remembrances of our very pleasant day in northern Portugal . Rie

The Zone

2012-01-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

As you get older, you are usually more conscious of your ‘good’ days and ‘bad’ days. The problem is that you don’t quite know ‘why’ you can feel so ‘with it’ one day and be dragging around the next. But Barry Sears figured out one of the main reasons and he wrote a book on the subject called ‘The Zone’, back in 1995.

Dr. Sears was a biochemist who started out as a research scientist mostly in the field of fatty acids that make up many natural oils. This work led him to the study of other food groups and finally to the writing of the book spelling out a diet that, if followed, led to a state of optimal health. Athletes who first followed the diet, proved that it worked by excelling because their bodies and minds worked at peak efficiency, not just on occasion but all the time!

I read Sears book, ‘The Zone’ some years ago now, found it explained why the diet worked so well and I was very interested in following his diet but frankly, I found it daunting. No only did it call for a strict adherence to eating 3 meals a day and two snacks, all at given time intervals, but those meals and snacks had to contain 40% calories from carbohydrates, 30% from protein, and 30% from fat. There were recipes on line that helped and those who followed it give glowing testimonials but to do it properly, I could see it consuming any free time I had. At that time as well, I was traveling a number of months of every year, so I did not ever give it a full chance.

In the late 1950’s I had read several of Adelle Davis’s books. By then she was a well-known nutritionist explaining aspects of daily nutrition that were new to me. For instance, in her advice:

‘At breakfast, eat like a king; at lunch, like a prince and at supper, like a pauper,’ she made it clear that it all had to do blood sugar levels and how to keep them in a range where the body felt energetic throughout the day. For instance, if some protein like meat, eggs, or beans, are eaten at breakfast, since the protein takes longer to digest, it is still supplying some blood sugar until the lunch you ate at noon begins to add to it. The chart on the right shows an ordinary day when the advice given is not followed. Note the dip in blood sugar [red line] before lunch and the high levels in the evening when the energy available is generally not used and is stored as fat.

The Zone diet is clearly designed to keep blood sugar at a stable constant level so you feel good and your body is always ready to work or play at top efficiency. However, if you are like me and have a general sense of how important sugar levels in your blood are to your energies and well-being, you can do a pretty good job of eating sensibly to maintain a steadily available supply yourself without adhering to the strict 'Zone' diet. Rie

England & France

2012-01-08T05:55:00.001-08:00

In 1947 I to sailed England on a passenger liner that took 6 days to get there - airplanes were just starting to make a few commercial flights across the Atlantic in those days. I had by then a degree in chemistry and experience working in a lab so I had no difficulty finding a job in a town just outside London. I was 22 and the big drawing card for me to take the trip to Europe by myself was that my future husband was studying in France. The first chance I had, I travelled to Paris to visit him and what an eye-opener that trip was!

I had first to get to the south coast port then board a ship to cross the Channel and finally to take the train to Paris. British passenger trains were divided into compartments and I had my porter find me one with an empty seat. I was by then used to the reserve of the English, so was not surprised that not a word was said in the whole trip to the coast.

When we arrived, I hailed a porter who took my bag and politely saw me through customs and then a seat on the ship. When I tipped him, he slipped the money into his pocket without looking at it, tipped his hat and was off.

I don’t remember sailing across the Channel so the trip must have been uneventful but I will never forget our arrival in France and the noisy chaotic scene on the dock as porters vied with one another to pick up a job. My porter flung my bag onto his shoulder and beckoned me to follow him as he fought his way through the crowd to the train. I barely kept up but did recognize my bag as he handed it in a window and waved to me to come. He held out has hand for his ‘tip’, one that I thought ample, but he looked at it in distain and proclaimed loudly ‘pas assez’ [not enough] and even after I added another bill he hurried off without a nod.

The railway car was full and crowded and I was fascinated with the animated banter back and forth, the food every group seemed to produce, the casual way they were dressed [one woman even had curlers in her hair] and how indulgently they treated their children. I spoke some French and was engaged in conversations several times.

I was met by my fiancé, who eventually found us a taxi. It turned out, however, that the driver was not willing to take us to the outskirts of town near the student residences where a small hotel room had been booked for me. A furious argument ensued with menacing gestures and threats of calling police. Finally the cabbie acquiesced and off we went with him actually whistling happily – no hard feelings. Next came a late lunch in a tiny restaurant on a side street where I had the best mushroom omelet I have ever tasted – before or since – bar none.

Paris has continued to earn its reputation as an exciting city to visit and the England back then lived up to its name as a ‘Tight Little Island’. Rie

Gaia Principle

2012-01-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

"The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system with physical, chemical, biological, and human components." Amsterdam Declaration signed by 1000 scientists in 2001.

Back in 1986 James Lovelock came up with the original idea that the Earth acted like a living being and thus had the ability to absorb and control the health and stability of the our environment. He referred to the Earth as Gaia, the prehistoric Earth goddess, and his theory had widespread appeal because it was a new way of rationalizing how it was that the Earth’s systems were so interconnected and complex that the conditions for living creatures has been optimized over billions of years .

One problem with the Gaia principle is that we are tempted to ignore man’s lack of respect for the pollutants we increasingly spew into the biosphere, trusting that ‘nature’ will take care of them. As rising temperatures affect our oceans and weather systems with resulting violent storms and floods, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are testing the Earth’s capacity to deal with our emissions and I am very concerned with the possibility that before we know it, runaway and irreversible global warming will occur. That ultimate disaster has the potential to wipe out life on Earth as we know it.

To prevent this catastrophe, it is imperative that those concerned with the economy be persuaded to work with, not against, environmentalists to convert the engines that power industry from fossil fuels to green forms of energy. It’s a daunting task and I can’t see it happening if we wait for global agreements and regulations from political leaders who have their own vested interests. It must come from the bottom up with a ground swell of public opinion so powerful it cannot be ignored.

My New Year’s resolution is to be part of promoting that ‘ground swell’ by passing on the link to Avaaz, an already well established world wide action group with over 10 million members [and growing]. I implore you to consider adding your voice to petitions for improvements in global matters of immediate concern. The link is www.avaaz.org/en/. Please be part of the 'ground swell' by adding your voice to ours – it is the only realistic way I know that can make that positive impact needed before it is too late.

My best wishes for personal and improved planetary health in the New Year. Rie

Winter Solstice

2011-12-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

When we were in Peru some years ago, we took the train from Cusco to Machu Picchu – the ‘lost’ city high in the Andes Mountains discovered just 100 years ago this year. The trip alone was truly memorable. The little train’s engine struggled to climb part way up the mountain, stopped and backed up an equally steep grade, stopped and went forward up further and in this way zigzagged its way up to the level that ran through a mountain valley. After a couple of hours of mountain scenery, we got off at a station below the towering cliffs jutting up on all sides of the amazing site. A waiting bus transported us through tortuous hairpin turns and took us up the rest of the way.

The video takes you to the breathtaking site. The most spectacular part of the tour for me was to the sacred flat rock with its hitching post where the Incans performed the ritual of lassoing the sun at the time of winter solstice. After days of prayers and incantations, they believed they made it stop disappearing into the horizon earlier and earlier each day and start it’s return toward longer days of spring and summer.

The axis around which the Earth spins, precesses [wobbles like a top] and for us in the northern hemisphere, it tips away from the sun to its full extent at winter solstice and then takes 4 or 5 days before it starts tipping back. On June 21, it is fully tipped toward the sun, the days are very long and our summer starts . At the South Pole, of course, December 21 is their longest day and thus the beginning of their summer.

I’ve always been surprised at the extent to which ancient civilizations studied the skies. Observatories from Samarkand in Uzbekistan to Uxmal on the Yucatan peninsula, to name two special ones I’ve visited that were very advanced. They were able to create calendars to predict the best planting and harvesting times and the dates of ritual ceremonies needed to be precisely known so they could be celebrated correctly.

Without the distractions of modern times and the accumulated knowledge so freely available, people had a special connection with the planet when surrounded with the grandeur of the moving skies full of stars that appeared, disappeared and moved predictably. It gave a sense of wonder that is missing now for many of us living in light polluted cities.

At this special time of year, in whatever way you may observe the holiday in our northern hemisphere, I hope you will rejoice in the knowledge that the days will start getting longer and as the Earth warms, anticipate the rebirth spring brings. Soon, out will come our seed catalogues. Rie

Guinness stout

2011-12-18T06:02:00.000-08:00

Recently my doctor prescribed a glass of Guinness stout before dinner to improve my appetite. It’s nearly black in colour and I love the distinctive taste. It’s an old remedy – I had an aunt many years ago who was told to drink a bottle of stout a day to improve her ability to nurse her new born. Scientists now corroborate that the signage that says ‘Guinness is good for you’ that is to be seen very prevalently all over Ireland especially, is actually true. It does contain healthful vitamins and minerals.

When we were in Ireland some years ago, we visited the old St. James’s Gate Brewery where Arthur Guinness started brewing beer in 1759. During the tour someone asked why the beer appeared so black and the answer of necessity, required a short lesson on how any beer is made. We were told that the cereal that is the basis of most beers is barley or wheat [rice is used sometimes in lighter varieties] and to change the starch in the grains of cereal to sugar, it is soaked in water and allowed to sprout. The sprouted grain is then heated to dry the seedlings and the resulting product is what they call ‘malt’. Water, hops [for flavour] and yeast are added to the malt and the yeast feeds on the sugar to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The result is beer, the third most popular drink in the world behind water and tea. With that basis we were then told the story about the first batch of the deep ruby red Guinness stout.

It turns out that the men who made the beer were allowed a certain amount of it to drink during their breaks in a day. One day, as the story goes, they were having such a jolly time, they allowed the sprouted barley to heat too long and the malt was roasted to a dark colour. It wasn’t burned and they decided to use it anyway. When the overseer saw the resulting almost black beer, to punish the men he insisted that to they would have that for their break and they would have to drink it until it was all used up. Actually it was really no penalty at all because the workers liked the dark beer so much and thus the start of production of Guinness stout that was perfected and has became renowned throughout many countries in the world.

Those who make their own beer know that when it is racked into bottles, a teaspoon of sugar is added to each one and then the cap put on to seal it. The yeast continues to work on the sugar and produce the carbon dioxide bubbles that give the beer its characteristic taste and ‘fizz’. Instead of using this method of producing effervescence, Guinness developed an altogether unique new method. It was a widget that is filled with nitrogen gas under pressure and sealed into any container of stout.

The "floating widget" found in cans and bottles of Guinness is a hollow plastic sphere, 3 cm [over an inch] in diameter, 7 cm [about 3 inches] in length with the small microscopic hole in the bottom. The video shows how it works to put that special ‘milky head’ on the beer.

It’s taken some serendipity and a long time for Guinness stout to develop but, Oh my, it’s been worth the wait! Best medicine I’ve ever had!

Elephant Safari

2011-12-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

In 1996 when we traveled to Nepal, we made arrangements to visit the southern jungle bordering on India where rhinos could be hunted using elephants. As the picture shows, the rhinos must not consider elephants any threat because they pay no attention to them nor to the gaggle of tourists on their backs.

Our first morning there, we are awakened to the sound of elephants returning from the jungle where they had spent the night chained to a tree feeding and sleeping. Though tamed, the chains are routine and necessary to keep them from wandering off.

Each elephant is always accompanied by its mahout, the man who controls it. Mahouts apparently start as boys when they are assigned a young animal. They form a bond with their elephant that often lasts through much of their lives. After breakfast, we were shown the elephant enclosure where they are groomed and trained. The younger elephants being in close contact, learn from the older ones and the video shows that the elephants learn vocal signals as well but usually won’t react to any command unless given by its own mahout.

To go on safari we had to climb up to a high platform built so the elephants could come alongside and we could step onto the ‘howdah’ or the carriage strapped to their back. It was comfortable enough as we moved slowly along the trail being rocked from side to side. We soon reached a clearing where rhinos were grazing. They seemed dwarfed by our huge mounts and we certainly had a good look at them.

.Actually I was more interested in the elephants. They are among the smartest in the animal kingdom with 160 gestures and more than 70 sounds that they use in communication. Many vocalizations are complex and sophisticated and progress has been slow in the study of elephant language. I was even more intrigued when I read that in the wild, male and female elephants live separately and that female groups of up to 20 close family members spend their lives together. The life cycle of females is similar to that of humans in that they live 20 or 30 years after their last child. I am reminded of the piece I wrote about the ‘grandmother effect’ and how the close contact of the older women with the young allows them to pass on their accumulated knowledge. Elephants may be wiser than we realize.

The biggest treat for me on that safari was in the afternoon, watching the elephants playing in the river where they were having a fine time together. It was easy to see they were interacting and you could truly feel their affection for each other. Rie

Pasteur to Penicillin

2011-12-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

When I was visiting a science museum in Paris in 1949, I remember being thrilled to come across the very swan neck flask that Pasteur had used in his famous experiment in 1862. He did that experiment to prove that the popular belief in ‘spontaneous generation’ - that life just starting up of its own accord - was not the reason why any food left open to the air ‘went bad’ or began to ferment.

The results of that experiment would be far reaching. One of the main reasons that science has been so successful is that experimental outcomes are openly reported and thus able to be used by other scientists with confidence as the basis for their own work. This post is about a chain of important discoveries affecting all mankind that started with the work done in the 1670’s by Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch scientist famous for making microscopes. He had reported that through them he could see a multitude of very tiny microscopic life forms. This knowledge subsequently convinced Pasteur that there were all sorts of microorganisms, mostly bacteria, viruses and fungi spores that you couldn’t see suspended in the air and that they were drifting down onto food and infected it.

To prove his point, Pasteur did a simple but very famous experiment. He put some nourishing broth in 2 identical long stemmed flasks boiled them both to kill any microorganisms they contained and one he left the top open while with the other, he melted the glass at the top of the stem and pulled it into a long swan neck shaped tube as shown in the picture. It was still open to the air but microorganisms could not fall into the broth and, as Pasteur predicted, it did not spoil as the other one did.

Influenced by Pasteur’s results and writings, Joseph Lister, a surgeon in Scotland, became convinced that the reason open wounds usually became infected was because the harmful microbial life forms from the air were similarly contaminating them. By 1869, he was sterilizing his instruments, cleaning open wounds and covering them with bandages covered with an antiseptic. His results were so dramatic with so many lives saved that he spread the word and medical science was revolutionized through reading about his methods and following his example.

The story of Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin can also be connected to Pasteur’s work. Although it had been suspected for many years that disease could be passed from one person to another by being in close proximity, Pasteur proved that bacteria suspended in air could cause disease. In 1928, Fleming was looking for a substance that would not be harmful to the body but could kill the disease-causing germs a person had breathed in. He was growing a type of Staphylococcus bacteria in covered glass dishes and trying to kill them with different substances. By chance while cleaning up some discarded dishes, he happened on one that had been open to the air and a mold was growing in it. Observant, he noticed that the mold was killing the ‘staph’ germs all around it. Recognizing his ‘find’ as important, he had a colleague identify the mold as a Penicillium type and he called its active ingredient penicillin. His chance discovery opened up the whole field of antibiotics.

When you prepare food be aware, like Pasteur, that you are creating conditions for air born contamination. Cover and refrigerate. Rie

Kite surfing

2011-11-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

To the uninitiated, kite surfing is the sport of riding on a small surfboard propelled across water by a large kite to which the rider is harnessed. I was introduced to it when we wintered in Caberete, on the north shore of the Dominican Republic. The bay there is touted as being one of the world-class sites for kite surfing.

That is because on every sunny day, the air over the land is warmed and, as it rises, air is drawn off the water to take its place. This causes the consistent, steady onshore breezes that sweep in over the large open bay - perfect conditions for kite surfers. They begin appearing around 2 pm ready for hours of extreme sport. Besides jumping and stunts in the air, some kite boarders with the latest equipment and a good wind, can reach speeds of 80 to 90 km/hour and they can travel very long distances in a downwind.

With this background, I was intrigued to hear the following story, the truth of which I cannot verify but it does make for a good tale. It is about an entrepreneur from Marseille who used to windsurf for fun and exercise in the large bay there, The story goes that he was very happy with the sport until one day a couple of kite surfers showed up. Seeing their amazing speed and comparative lack of effort - a harness strapped around their waist is directly connected to the kite - he decided he had to try it for himself. It would not be inexpensive to take lessons and to rent or buy equipment but apparently it paid off for him. As he directly experienced through his body harness the powerful force of the wind in the kite, it suddenly dawned on him that that same power could be used to pull along the ships in his merchant fleet.

And so it came to be - huge new towing kite systems that capture the energy of the wind are now a reality and one kite can cut down on a ship’s fuel costs up to 20%. Considering that the cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel it burns, the saving are worth a lot of investment.

Using sails to harness the power of the wind is an old story but it turns out that kites have several major advantages over sails. First the wind's speed near the surface is slowed down by friction with the water and there are much stronger winds higher up where a kite flies. The kite above a ship are in an unhindered position to capture the much greater energy accessible up there. Then important too, the kite is controlled by a computer that maintains the shape and position of the kite so that most of wind’s available energy is captured and is concentrated in pulling the ship straight ahead with an ‘even keel’ so it to slips through the water with least resistance.

Ship’s ‘sky kites’ are good news and hopefully we'll increasingly hear of more green ideas like this to help stop the pollution of our planet in time. Rie

Antioxidants

2011-11-20T05:31:00.000-08:00

Antioxidants are all about the problems that happen when oxygen we are constantly breathing in, ‘burns’ the food we eat to give us the energy we need to stay alive.

It works like this: single oxygen atoms need extra electrons [they need 8 to be stable] so two of them pair up to form a weak bond and they go around as a molecule [see picture]. But when molecules encounter food that’s ready to be oxidized, they easily split apart and while one atom oxidises food the other – it’s called a free radical - is compelled to attack anything to grab an electron to satisfy it’s chemical need. Cell tissues are most often attacked and disrupted but it doesn’t stop there – the attacked cellular molecules split apart themselves each creating two free radicals and they in turn attack more cellular components forming more and more radicals needing electrons and a chain reaction starts that only ends its destructive deeds when enough antioxidants are present to donate electrons and not become free radicals themselves. If you click on video the whole process is nicely illustrated and makes it plain that antioxidants mop up free radicals helping prevent damage to cells and tissues.

The damage caused when antioxidants are not present can trigger all sorts of nasty things like a variety of cancers, arthritis, cataracts, heart disease, atherosclerosis, and premature aging to name a few. So it’s obvious we should make every effort to see that our bodies have an ample supply of antioxidants to stop damage as quickly as possible!

We do naturally produce some antioxidants but since most are found in foods we eat. It’s important to know that antioxidant rich foods are fruits and vegetables [especially the coloured ones], cereals, beans, nuts and seeds. Apparently the best way to make sure you are getting enough antioxidants is to eat 5 to 8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. That’s a bit much for me so I take vitamin supplements like vitamins A, C and E that are concentrated antioxidants.

If you want to have the best information possible about antioxidants for optimal health and foods high in antioxidants, I suggest you click on the link provided here. Knowledge is power - fight back - live long. Rie

Microwave Ovens

2011-11-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

All sorts of rumors abound about the dangers of microwave ovens leaking and microwaved food being harmful. I think it must be that some people are disturbed because they don’t know what’s going on in the oven and how it works. I hope then that my attempt at explanation is understandable and allays any concerns.

First of all you must know that microwaves are part of the electromagnetic radiation [EMR] spectrum just like radio waves and visible light and x-rays - they are rays of energy that pulse positive, negative, positive, negative, etc. through space and travel at the speed of light.

If the frequency at which the EMR changes from positive to negative is in the visible light region it affects our eyes so we can ‘see’ it as light. When the EMR comes from the sun, the part of it in the microwave region we feel as heat on our skin and think nothing of it. The remote control to turn a TV on and off is in the radio frequency region. X rays are pulses that change positive negative with such high frequency that mostly they pass through the body but the waves are partly absorbed by flesh and bones so give us an ‘x-image' of them.

To understand then how microwaves heat food, you have to know four things:

- 1. Positive is attracted to negative and repulsed by positive – something like the poles of a magnet. - 2. Lots of molecules have charges on them and we’re interested especially in charged water molecules here. - 3. Microwave pulses are slow enough to push and pull charged molecules, like water, around by attractive and repulsive forces as the waves, go past them, just like stick in the water bobs up and down as a wave goes by. - 4. We feel faster moving molecules as heat - the faster they go, the hotter they feel.

So essentially, all microwaves are doing is making charged molecules move faster. Since most plastics and pottery and glass have no charged molecules, they don’t react and stay cool in a microwave oven. Food, on the other hand, mostly has charged water molecules in it and heats up. Actually, microwaving has benefits because, by not heating food too long or too hot, many of the nutrients are preserved!

As far as microwaves leaking out of the oven, unless there is poor seal on the door - as an old, much used oven might have - no microwaves can escape. It’s like a box with a light in it in a dark room, if there are no cracks in the box, no light can escape.

So rest easy – microwave ovens have been around commercially since 1967 and when you look up the hazards, examples have to do with whole eggs in their shells and potatoes with skins intact which tend to explode and splatter because off the pressure of steam formed inside. You can’t heat water to more than 100 degrees C because it then just uses extra heat to form steam - but fats can be heated easily to very high temperatures and splatter so take care in heating them. Otherwise, rest easy – nothing unusual is going on in your microwave oven so just enjoy its wonderful convenience! Rie

Alone in the Universe?

2011-11-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

As usual my tendency is to look at things with a long perspective and scientific bent. However, it’s evident I’m not alone in wondering about the chances we’ll ever reach any form of life out there in the Universe. As is common knowledge, a radio call is being sent out through SETI – the global Institute whose purpose is to explore the ‘nature and prevalence of life in the universe’.

To answer that message, the life form on another planet would have to be advanced enough to understand it. Certainly we are unique on Earth in that we are intelligent enough to be logical and to communicate but it has taken most of the time since our planet was formed for us to have reached this level of complexity.

The fossil records are our main source of information on just what has happened during the evolutionary process. These scientific records tell us that:

- 4.6 billion years ago our planet was formed

- 3.8 billion years ago, life evolved in the form of single celled bacteria or microbes

- 0.53 billion [or 530 million] years ago bacteria got together to form multi-celled life forms and in a remarkably short period, many different species came into being in the so-called Cambrian Explosion

- 0.050 billion [or 50 thousand years ago] homo sapiens reached the modern form that could be recognized as us.

- 0.000,000,050 [or about 50 years] since radio became advanced enough to send messages out to the Universe. That has happened in the last very small fraction of time since the planet has existed.

If you consider that from our point of view on Earth, the sun has risen and set and the seasons have existed all those billions of years – in comparison to other planets, that makes ours a very rare and remarkably stable one. For this stability to occur we have had to:

- Be orbiting around a medium-sized, single sun in the outer reaches of our galaxy so as not to have been disturbed by other nearby suns.

- Be a planet that makes a circular orbit around the sun at just the right distance away to be in a good temperature range where most water was liquid.

- Be a planet spinning on its axis frequently enough (24 hours for us) so all parts were warmed in the day and cooled off at night. The axis had to be tilted so over a period of a year it wobbled and gave both hemispheres summer and winter seasons.

- Be fortunate enough to have a large moon that caught much of the debris during our planet’s early formative years.- There is much more about how rare our stable Earth has been if you click on the highlighted text.

Let’s try to always be aware how special and precious our planet is and do everything possible to prevent environmental deterioration so future generations can enjoy its beauty and bounty. Rie

Kefir

2011-10-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was growing up being intrigued by news stories of the discovery of some shepards in the Caucasus Mountains in Bulgaria who lived to very old ages – healthy lifespans of over 100 years were not out of the ordinary. Their vigour and health were attributed to some special kind of yogurt-like drink they concocted.

It has taken decades for research to be done on the special fermented drink they consumed and now it is available in the health sections of supermarkets. It is called Kefir and no one knows how it originated but apparently it has been around since time immemorial. It is composed of a complex structure of bacteria and yeasts with proteins, lipids and sugars. To make kefir you must have a source of kefir grains (see picture). They may be obtained from a health food store or anyone you know who makes kefir. The grains increase in the process of making a batch of the kefir drink. The video shows how simple it can be to make kefir which is much more healthful than yogurt – temperate control is not critical as it is with yogurt.

‘Kefir contains different types of beneficial bacteria. Yogurt contains transient beneficial bacteria that keep the digestive system clean and provide food for the friendly bacteria that reside there. But kefir can actually colonize the intestinal tract, a feat that yogurt cannot match.’

The health advantages of kefir are endless and it is one of the most affordable drink there is! Some of the known kefir health benefits are: strongest natural remedy against any allergy; strongest natural antibiotic without side effects; teats liver disease; cleans the body of perscribed antibiotics; cleans the gastrointestinal tract; treats ulcers; improves the human immune system; cures Candida; stops growth of cancer cells; reduces size of tumors; reverses calcination of blood vessels; boosts the body's energy; has anti-oxidant and anti-aging properties; replenishes body of good bacteria after antibiotic; balances the microflora of the body’s digestive system; and on and on the almost unbelievable list goes – click on kefir benefits.

Even if you don't think you want to live to the really old age of 100, with kefir so readily available, you should at least give it a try just to see how good it makes you feel! Rie

Hindu Cremations

2011-10-23T05:57:00.001-07:00

In the news this week was a story about the English researcher who spoke of the environmental costs of cremation and I am reminded of how important a ceremony it is in the Hindu religion.

They believe that until a body is cremated, the soul will remain nearby and that only when it is consumed by fire will it be released to go to the sacred place where it may be reincarnated into a new life. Their next life depends on how well the person had lived in their past life.

There is often much money spent on elaborate carved wooden cremation pyres – there was even a workshop devoted to building them just at the end of our street in Ubud, Bali. Kids often gathered to play with the shavings and build their own pyres. Many people attended cremations and tourists are welcomed as voyeurs of the spectacle and traditional ritual ceremonies around lighting the pyres.

On one occasion in Bali we were touring the north of the island by car and had stopped for lunch when we were approached by a pleasant young man who offered to be our escort to a local cremation. Arriving at the site, the ceremony was already in progress and any wooden pyre had been burned revealing the body on a concrete platform. The family of the body must have been poor and to us, not understanding the rituals or language, it was a very crude sight. There was a large tank of kerosene hoisted into a tree and a hose from it fed a burner trained on the body. We were there about an hour and one of the refills of the kerosene tank, until all that seemed left was the skull. A holy person would soon arrive to crack it open to release the soul and the ashes would then be taken by the family to the ocean to be scattered out to sea.

For Hindu’s there is no question or choice in what happens to their bodies when they die. We do have a choice and mine is to leave my body to a medical school, and leave some locks of hair for family should there ever be need for DNA analysis. For those with concerns about the considerable amount of fossil fuel energy used in cremation of a body, there are some natural burial sites set aside where burials are recorded but no markings are allowed to identify the grave. I know of one such natural site a friend chose for his burial and I am curious about their prevalence.

I believe it to be only considerate for each of us to face our inevitable death and let our families know our wishes for burial and any events they would like to see around it. Rie

8 Glasses of Water a Day??

2011-10-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

I have an ongoing argument with a good friend about how much water we should drink in a day. The common advice is 8 glasses but he says he drinks justa few cups of tea or coffee and feels just fine. Besides he’s well into his 80’s like I am.

A few years ago, I started drinking about 6 or 7 glasses a day because I had leg cramps every night and I found just by accident that the water alleviated the problem altogether and I have felt better physically ever since too - so I am sold! But to prove the point I went on line this week to do some research. First, I was vindicated by the statistics; secondly, no one says it has to be water - just fluid - and finally, the amount depends on how much you weigh.

Your weight in pounds divided by 2 gives you the number of ounces to drink in a day. For instance, if you weigh 150 lbs. then you should drink around 150/2 = 75 ounces [or 7 and a half 10 oz. glasses a day].

If you weigh 90 kilos, then you should divide your weight by 30 90/30 = 3 litres you should drink in a day

Water affects every cell in the body by absorbing nutrients better and it also detoxifies by facilitating the work of the kidneys and bowels. The brain is 90% water and when properly hydrated, it works better and you don’t tend to get headaches or migraines or tire as quickly. The water we drink protects and moisturizes our joints etc. Going to sites about the benefits of water there are many others.

In my searching I came across a site that informed me of the enormous benefits of drinking water with lemon in it. In the body, lemon water becomes alkaline and has a similar composition as other digestive juices like saliva, hydrochloric acid, and bile. The juice helps dissolve gallstones, calcium deposits in the joints and arteries, kidney stones, and pancreatic stones as well.

Another amazing fluid is green tea. It has been used as a medicine in China for at least 4,000 years and an old Chinese proverb says ‘Better to be deprived of food for 3 days than tea for one’. Recent research on green tea has discovered that it contains a compound epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), that slows the growth of cancer cells and can kill them without damaging healthy cells around them. It also alleviates rheumatoid arthritis, benefits those

with cardiovascular disease and infections. As well it actually lowers and balances cholesterol levels. It is also actually benefits impaired immune functions.

I began by addressing those who poo-hoo the need to keep the body hydrated and ended by learning the benefits of drinking lemon or green tea in the water. Thanks old friend for being so hard to persuade! Rie

Cell Phone Dangers ?

2011-10-09T11:51:00.000-07:00

Wondering why cell phones could possibly be so dangerous to teenagers - there were warnings on the radio all this week - I decided to do a little research myself.

The topic also gives me an excuse to use the diagram pictured. I got almost as pleasant a jolt of 'instant understanding' from a diagram like that as when I was first introduced to the periodic table. If you could enlarge the picture, you would recognize that what we call light has a much broader range or spectrum than the small portion of it we can actually see as the colours of the rainbow. Interesting that birds and bees can ‘see’ a little on either side of our visible spectrum.

Well established theory says that light is made up of particles called photons that travel in waves at the speed of light. The length of the waves gets shorter and shorter as you go from left to right in the diagram. The wiggly lines representing wavelengths run from the straight baseline up to the arc. Radio waves on the left have the longest waves from 20 meters long down to 1 mm. Next to them are the more energetic microwaves with wavelengths from 1 mm. to 25 millionths of a meter or 25 micrometers. Next, as you see, are infrared through visible to ultraviolet to X-rays and Gamma rays. The x- rays are so energetic they can do damage to cells on occasion.

Fundamentally there is no difference between the radiation emitted by cell phones and microwave ovens except for power – they overlap in the electromagnetic spectrum of frequencies. Since cell phone waves can penetrate 4 - 6 cm (1.6 - 2.4 in) into the human brain the worry is that, if

more powerful microwave frequencies (shorter wavelenghs) are used, the young developing brain may be harmed by the breaking of weak molecular bonds.

One solution is that cell phones almost all have a feature that allows you to use them as speaker phones so you don’t have to hold them up to your ear except for private calls. Or why not start texting or twittering more ? Rie

Walking Sticks

2011-10-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

As I write, it is my first day home from the hospital for good after an operation that restored circulation to both my legs. Before the operation, I had a great deal of pain in both legs after walking even just across a room and even had a nasty ulcer on one foot that wouldn’t heal. I am elated because I now I have a chance to have a whole new lease on life at 86!

I have inherited bad genes from both parents that cause abnormal plaque to build up in my arteries. One result was that the main aorta leading to my legs was almost totally blocked and a bypass from the aorta above the blockage was not possible because it’s walls were very calcified [my doctor used the term ‘porcelain’ coated].

Instead, during the operation, an artery in my shoulder was tapped using an artificial gortex artery that was slid down inside my body and attached to my groin areas left and right. It has brought oxygenated blood to my legs and it’s like a miracle! My feet are warm, the ulcer is healing and I have no pain when I walk!

I am recovering but having to use a walker until I get stronger. That thing is awkward and makes me look like a poor frail old thing. Soon I’ll get out my walking sticks and they will exercise, my arms as I support my bad back - see picture above. Besides, I stand up straight when I use them. They are sporty and even better than a single cane, give me super balance. I was a skier and I will enjoy the rhythm of getting in stride again. Rie

Recovering

2011-09-24T15:42:00.000-07:00

I am currently hospitalized and recovering from a long, complicated (but successful!) bypass operation. To all my readers, I will be back next week.

Vitamin C

2011-09-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

I have an arterial by-pass operation in a couple of days and in preparation I have been popping lots of time-release Vitamin C pills. It is necessary for the building of collagen the connective tissue between our cells and for ligaments and tendons. I figure it will be good for the body to have lots of it available for mending the surgical damage I will undergo.

The word ‘vitamin’ means something that the body does not produce itself but needs for its chemistry to work - so we have eat foods with the vitamins we need in them. Sometime in the distant past when we were evolving as a species, we must have lived in an environment where we ate foods that contained lots of Vitamin C so, we didn’t need to produce it in our body like cats and dogs and many other animals do.

Linus Pauling in his book on Vitamin C tested rats and he discovered that they produced so much of the vitamin that, if we could still make Vitamin C like they do, taking into the consideration the difference in our body weights, we would produce up to 18 grams [18,000 milligrams] a day. An orange contains around 10 mg so mostly we don’t get anywhere near that amount.

Pauling himself took 18 grams of Vitamin C for years but if you start supplementing with large amounts like that most of it will be expelled in your urine until the body develops the enzymes to handle the larger amounts. Taking time-release is the best way to make sure your body can handle what you take. There are many other benefits to getting enough Vitamin C. Pauling lived to a healthy 97 and was surprised and disappointed when he got cancer, which took his life. Rie

Evolutionary Quantum Leaps

2011-09-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

I hope this post is not too abbreviated to make make sense to many. It has been written because I have found out this week that I must go through a by-pass operation that I have more than 10% of failing and there’s a chance I might not even make it. There is nothing quite like facing one’s own mortality to make one focus on priorities.

One of mine has always been to write about the long view of the processes that have taken place in the 4.6 billion years since planet Earth first formed as a huge mass of molten rock. My interest is focussed on finding clues that will help me understand why we humans evolved - our place in the whole scheme of things and generally why we are prone to behave the way we do.

Interestingly, it appears that the laws of nature are such that evolution has happened in quantum leaps. When you study how it all has progressed, you see clearly that for long periods of time, one kind of process will be getting more and more complex until Boom - there is a new unpredictable, unimaginable and more sophisticated process that emerges - a quantum leap to a new level is reached which then itself becomes more and more complex until another 'emergence', or leap occurs and so on.

For example in the beginning, the planet finally cooled down so that the tiny basic fragments of matter were able to come together to form atoms. As the temperature cooled further and the atoms bump into each other at slower speeds, they often interpenetrated and exchanged or shared electrons making a bond between them – like sodium metal atoms and chlorine gas atoms do when they collide. The sodium and chlorine disappear because, joined that way, they made an entirely new substance when they collided called sodium chloride, the compound we know as table salt. Boom, that kind of process was a quantum leap from Physics that just deals with matter and the forces that act on it to Chemistry that has to do with the creating of totally new kinds of matter.

As Chemistry proceeded to become more and more complex, huge new compounds formed and they joined with others in chemical reactions until some systems became so large and interdependent with many self-catalyzing reactions that groups of compounds began to reproduce, and change. Boom, a quantum leap to totally unpredictable advanced process life. Biology is so different from the Chemistry that sustains it - it is recognizable as a quantum leap.

Single celled life forms that we call bacterium first developed and as they became more complex, intercommunicative and interdependent over a long 3 billion years, they finally cooperated and joined together to form multi-celled beings - animals and plants. Over the following 70 or 80 million years during the Cambrian explosion, the rate of evolution accelerated by orders of magnitude and major diversification of all living things occurred including the sprouting of our branch of the tree of life. A few 100 thousands of years later big brained homo sapiens evolved. Boom – a quantum leap to humans who form a whole new Psychological level so like but so different from other animals .

This is pretty broad-brush stuff that could include many more levels. These ideas have arisen from the Earth's fossil records as studied by paleontological scientists. If you are having trouble reconciling the scientific evidence and your concept of a great designer, ‘God’, you could simply change that aspect of your belief to accept ‘God’ as the Creator of the Laws of Nature.

The sun keeps shining, fueling a push to more complexity and now logically, as we humans communicate, and become more interdependent [it's easy to see our drive and success in doing that] we are the ones being pushed to be part of another emergence or quantum leap, For an overview of those ideas check out the highlighted site.

What have we learned from all this about ourselves and possibly our purpose? To me one of the main messages is that the looming possibility of destroying our beautiful sustaining planet, is a global crisis that we all need to cooperate in preventing. Perhaps through supporting the new technologies and also cooperating in working toward less adversarial societies that lead to greed and ecological destruction. Unless we support enlightened national leaders I cannot see them ever becoming globally cooperative enough to agree to the measures necessary. Let's hope nature gives us time to smarten up and prevent further global tendencies towards the destruction of our planet. Rie

Broken Leg

2011-09-04T10:06:00.000-07:00

About a week or so into our month-long travels in China in 1992 we were in Kunming, which had many delights for tourists to explore. One day we decided to take a trip to see the famous ‘Petrified Forest’ about 120 km away and took the local tour bus soon to find we were the only ‘foreigners’ aboard.

After a couple of hours we made a stop to visit one of the huge caves in the area. It was dimly lit with some strings of Christmas tree lights and as I was attempting to videotape the whole scene - without warning - I suddenly found myself falling into a gaping hole. I must have shrieked in fright and pain because I soon found myself surrounded by a group of fellow travelers who pulled me out. One of them seemed knowledgeable and gently examined the bruised and bleeding leg and, with a quick jerk, straightened my ankle. Another burly fellow piggybacked me up the long stairs out of the cave and into the bus.

It was a very long day for us with no way of communicating so I was immensely relieved when we finally got back to our hotel and could talk to the Manager. He sent us by cab to the hospital and I finally found myself on a gurney being wheeled through the halls - an experience in itself!

X-rays revealed I had cracked the big femur bone but the leg was so swollen that, instead of a cast, the Doctor plastered the area with a vile looking paste, splinted and bound it. After a couple of days we managed to charter a small plane to take us to Chengdu where a colleague, who had been a visiting professor at my University, met us.

At that time, all hotels seemed to have Doctors in their service who would come to your room and were paid a small sum for each visit. Our hotel had a retired army doctor who, thankfully, soon took off the plaster poultice that was so itchy it was driving me crazy and proceeded to massage the leg from top to bottom a couple of times every day. It was extremely painful but I figured he had been trained to get wounded soldiers back in the lines to fight again as

soon as possible and that the the poultice and message were to increase circulation to do just that. I was willing to take the suffering to to get back on my feet again and be able to use the rest of our precious time in China to travel.

The Chinese methods worked! Miraculously I was able to walk with crutches without much discomfort in less than 2 weeks and we culminated our trip by walking the Great Wall of China. Fortunately too, I was so mobile we could continue our planned trip around the world that year. I for one am convincedc we could learn much from Chinese methods of treating fractures!! Rie

Natural medicines

2011-08-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

In 1994 my husband and I spent 4 months traveling in South America and were ‘blown away’ by the cultural diversity and the never-ending species of plants we encountered that were used by them as natural medicines.

The picture shows the stalls with their local medicines and herbs being sold and because of my interest, learned of a specific case where a Bolivian ‘medicine man’ saved the lives of many men when the Panama Canal was being built.

We learned more when we were the shores of their sacred Lake Titicaca. There, a center had grown up around the building of the reed boats that sailed its waters. There were reed huts for the workers and we were invited to visit one of them where a very old medicine man who spoke English, welcomed visitors. We sat on reed mats and as he smoked in the dim light of his small fire he told us the story.

As a young man in his teens he had been chosen by his grandfather to be the one he would pass on his knowledge of how and where to gather medicines so that when he died, he could take over as his tribe’s medicine man, or curanderos. To that end the two set out for a year traveling north through the jungles and mountains collecting plants, tree barks and minerals while he was taught their use and dosages. They eventually reached Panama where they soon learned that so many men were dying from malaria that the whole project was in immanent danger of being abandoned.

He and his grandfather had collected the bark of the cinchona tree that contained quinine and that remedy was so effective, the men were able to recover and were able to complete the canal in 1914.

In the chemistry department of my university, a whole section was devoted to natural products research where students were taught to separate all the compounds in a substance used as a natural medicine and characterizes the active ingredient that they could then synthesize in the lab and the drug companies could produce and sell. For instance the bark of the willow tree contains acetylsalicylic acid that’s sold to you as aspirin.

I have a tendency to trust herbal medicines and those drugs I’ve learned come from natural products and one of my experiences in China may appear as one of these posts soon. Rie

Natural medicines

2011-08-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

We started off in Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru where we visited many amazing Inca sites and incidentally learned that their medical practices were extremely advanced. Continuing south, we flew into Bolivia and after landing on a barren windy plain, we descended by bus into the huge ancient crater that took us into the heart of the busy city of Le Paz whose streets thronged with stocky women with their voluminous skirts and bowler hats. The picture shows the stalls with their local medicines and herbs being sold. Because of my interest, we learned of a specific case where a Bolivian ‘medicine man’ had saved the lives of many men when the Panama Canal was being built.

We got the whole story when we were on the shores of their sacred Lake Titicaca. There, a center had grown up around the building of reed boats that sailed its waters. There were also reed huts for the workers and we were invited to visit one of them where a very old medicine man who spoke English, welcomed visitors. We sat on reed mats and as he smoked in the dim light of his small fire and told us the story.

As a young man in his teens he had been chosen by his grandfather to be the one special one for him to pass on his knowledge of how and where to gather medicines so that when he died, the young man could take over as the tribe’s medicine man. To that end the two set out for a year traveling north through the jungles and mountains collecting plants, tree barks and minerals while he was taught their use and dosages.

They eventually reached Panama where they soon learned that so many men were dying from malaria that the whole project was in immanent danger of being abandoned. He and his grandfather had collected the bark of the cinchona tree that contained quinine and that remedy was so effective, the men were able to recover and complete the construction of the canal in 1914.

In the chemistry department of my university, a whole section was devoted to natural products research where students were taught to separate all the compounds in a substance used as a natural medicine and to characterize the active ingredient, which they could then synthesize in the lab and help the drug companies to produce. Interesting that the bark of the willow tree contains acetylsalicylic acid that’s sold to you as the very familiar drug aspirin.

I have a tendency to trust herbal medicines and other drugs I’ve learned come from natural products and one of my experiences in China may appear in one of these posts soon. Rie

Seville Oranges

2011-08-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

We visited Spain in the ‘70’s, rented a car and explored that fascinating country. I especially remember Seville in the south not just because it is a beautiful Moorish city but its avenues and the central square were full of orange trees. It was October, the oranges were ripe and so plentiful we picked one, peeled it with difficulty, bit into the juicy flesh with gusto only to recoil in disgust because they were so bitter and sour they were frankly inedible. We wondered why they would ever have been planted there and it turned out to be an interesting story.

Oranges had first been imported from China as early as 100 BC because sailors used to become very ill with the dreaded scurvy when they ran out of fresh fruits and vegetables at sea. Some even died because of the lack of Vitamin C the fresh produce provided in their diet.

The Captains of very early European trading ships solved this problem by planting citrus trees - oranges, lemons & limes that are full of Vitamin C- in many of the ports along their trading routes. Citrous trees are killed by frost so Seville is about as far north as they would grow in Europe. It took sweet oranges and other varieties much longer to migrate than the Seville oranges because they are not so hardy.

At one time the seafaring British who sailed the world helped solve the scurvy problem by importing Seville oranges and making a concoction of the orange peel and juice stewed up with lots of sugar. They gave it the name Marmalade and I always figured that name was derived from the French ‘mer malade’ [sea sickness] so I was a bit disappointed when I read it actually comes from the Portugese word ‘marmelo’ meaning quince jam.

The British sailors were given marmalade on their toast and to flavour deserts etc. and soon got a taste for the caramelized bitter flavour. Before marmalade, sauerkraut and portable soup that contain Vitamin C were the remedies used by famous long distance sailors like Captain Cook - I might add, much to the distaste of their crew. During the 19th Century to prevent scurvy sailors were given limes that were easy for them to obtain from their Caribbean island colonies - hence the name 'Limeys', first for British sailors and now for the British themselves.

Many animals like cats, dogs and even the lowly rat can produce Vitamin C in their own bodies and you probably can expect a post from me one week explaining why and extolling the many virtues of vitamin C. Rie

Amazing Water

2011-08-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up in the 1930’s, all cows were inspected for disease and if they were healthy, farmers just milked them, poured the milk into glass bottles, put caps on them and delivered the bottles to door-steps every morning. I very clearly remember when I was sent out to bring in our bottles of milk in the winter, I often found that the milk had frozen and had sprouted an amazing column of frozen cream on top [no homogenizing those days].

It was only much later that I finally began to really appreciate what a unique property it was that water expands when it freezes and I got that nice jolt of pleasure when I understood why. Imagine some of the implication if water didn't expand and float! Rivers and lakes in colder regions would freeze from the bottom up and and all the marine life where that happened would be frozen solid.

Water's uncommon behaviour is the result of the way the hydrogen atoms are lopsidedly attached to an oxygen atom to form a water molecule, H₂O. [Shown are both different ways the molecule is usually represented]. Notice the positive[+] and negative[-] charges around the molecule. These charges make the molecules tend to stick together [negative and positive attract like the poles on little magnets].

Molecules are always on the move and, at higher temperatures, they move faster and tend to mostly bounce off one another without sticking. However, as the temperature goes down, they slow down, stick to each other more and the water gets closer packed and denser so it shrinks. That happens to all materials but something pretty unusual happens to cold water at 4 degrees C [39^oF]. At that temperature the water molecules are moving so slowly they start sticking together and connecting to form an open hexagonal pattern that spreads them apart making the water expand. The video representation is supposed to represent water cooling until it forms the open hexagons.

In 3D the pattern is more like a honeycomb and you can easily see why it would float. Warm up the ice, molecules move faster, the weak attractions between them break and the whole structure collapses to liquid water again.

If you have read this far and are interested in things like this, maybe you should have been a scientist – nature can be endlessly fascinating especially at the molecular level. Rie

Them Decisions

2011-08-07T08:19:00.001-07:00

It’s summer, we have visitors and having to make a decision on what I’d write about this week I thought I’d lighten up on this post and tell you one of my father’s stories. I guess they were supposed to be jokes but they always had a point.

It’s about this farmer who hired a man for a few days to help him with all the chores that had accumulated during a busy summer. The man was a pleasant surprise; he was willing, handy and used his head so he seemed to get everything done so quickly that the farmer ran out of chores for him to do when he had one whole working day left.

Finally he had the bright idea of taking the man to the half underground potato house where he had stored his winter supply of spuds and said ‘This should be a restful day for you after all your hard work. All I want you to do with the potatoes left in there is to sort them into 3 piles – the good ones, the ones that need to be eaten right away and the rotten ones to throw out’.

When the farmer came back at the end of the day he found the man sitting there with only a few potatoes in each pile. When he asked him what happened, his worker drawled; ‘Well you see Mister - I don’t mind no real work but it’s them decisions that’s so hard to make.’ Rie

Spirit House

2011-07-31T08:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve had some tests this week and bad news about my health. I have been aware of living on borrowed time since a heart bypass 14 years ago and though I am still hoping that the marvels of medical science can improve my quality of living and life expectancy, I anticipate the bad genes I’ve inherited will be winning out sooner than later.

We found an idyllic spot for a summer house that we built years ago and it’s a place where we have had many memorials for our friends, and relatives. It started with the weeping willow tree for my dearly loved older sister who died tragically at 19 – it's seen a little left of centre in the sunset picture. Other commemorative trees, flowering bushes, and perennial plants have followed, remembrances for close family and dear friends. I’m beginning to think of what I would like as a memorial for when my time comes.

When we visited Indonesia in 1992, we spent a few weeks in Ubud, the cultural centre of the island of Bali. Most Indonesians are now Muslims but when they were conquering the islands centuries ago, many of the Hindu population fled to Bali. The Balinese still practice that religion in their daily lives and in their own way in many small thoughtful things they do. We stayed in a little cottage in the middle of a rice paddy where we had to walk over simple wooden interconnecting boardwalks to reach other buildings. Every morning when we woke and ventured out onto our wide veranda there was a gift laid there for us - a freshly picked flower, or a small piece of fruit in an artistically interwoven leaf....

In Ubud there were frequent parades of women dressed in their best, carrying decorated trays of fruit and flowers balanced on their heads. They walked to the temple in a long line and left their offerings in thanks for the bountiful gifts from their Gods. They had other rituals, simple lovely things they did and the one I remember most was that many families had a miniature ‘spirit’ house on a post in the corner of their garden. This was where the spirits of their ancestors lived and they seemed to visit the house on occasion to commune or leave small offerings of a pretty pebble, or maybe a crust of bread so a bird would visit….

Their ancestors were a presence in their daily lives, a reminder of their own mortality and probably a comforting assurance their own spirits would not be forgotten when they died. In our popular American culture there is no tradition of respect for elders and too often youth and good looks are held up as models to be valued. I think that needs changing and an aging population will help. I'll do my bit by asking that a spirit house be my memorial. Rie

Chia

2011-07-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

It’s summer and we have visitors. Most of us over 70 and we are all health conscious.

I thought this morning that an outsider watching us around the breakfast table would be amused to see us all sorting out our vitamins and other supplements and then preparing our own bowls of fresh fruit, kefir, and cereals. As we chatted yesterday about the benefits of our choices, I learned about chia [also sold under the brand name Salba], a recently rediscovered small seed I am definitely going to add to my bowl.

Chia [or Salba] was a staple in the diet of the Aztecs, and was fed especially to their soldiers. When the Spaniards were invading and trying to conquer their armies, they learned that chia was the chief contributor to the strength and stamina of the Aztec soldiers and made the decision to completely wipe out all chia crops.

Intrigued, by what I was hearing about the health benefits of these small seeds, I naturally went on the Internet and found a number of sites that give all the information you would ever want to know about this recently discovered wonder food.

For instance:

- Two tablespoons of chia give you your total daily requirements of antioxidants.

- Chia can absorb over 12 times its weight in water and forms a gel. This means it improves digestion and body hydration and makes you feel full so it decreases your appetite, a benefit for weight watchers.

- With high levels of calcium and high quality protein, chia strengthens bones and muscles. It also regulates blood pressure, and lowers bad cholesterol levels.

- The seeds have the ability to regulate blood sugar levels and are being discovered by diabetics as an excellent addition to their diet

If you click on the highlighted site you can do your own research into the many benefits of chia seeds.

Can't resist including Mark Twain's quip: 'Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.' Rie

Aging repeat

2011-07-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

Ageing revisited

I have been denying it but proof positive I am becoming forgetful is that I forgot I had written a blog on aging that repeats a number of the observations I made in the April post on the same subject. Shocking! but there it is – irrefutable evidence – a common symptom of aging!

We have our first birthday after we have lived for a whole year so, since I had my am 86th in January, I am half way through my 87th year and feel qualified to add my two cents worth on the subject of ageing.

We have one unique body we are born with and, good or bad, we must live in it for our lifetime. We do however have a lot we can do about how it ages. If we were given a new car when we were driving age and told that it had to last us through our lifetime we would surely make it our business to take good card of it – have it checked up regularly, change the oil and have it seen to right away if there were any mechanical problems. Our bodies tend to be self-healing and are far more forgiving but to keep our health and feel fit as we age, we need to take care of it.

In the early 50’s I started taking an interest in nutrition and absorbed the very readable books by Adelle Davis. Nowadays our diet is often very different from our hunter-gatherer ancestors and we can easily have a deficiencies of some of the vitamins. I have been knowledgeably supplementing for most of my life. So rule number one for long life is take care of your body, eat well, exercise and all that good stuff and obviously don’t smoke. I did for 30 years when we didn’t know better and I still suffer with clogged arteries in my legs.

I expected there would be noticeable deterioration in vigour in my 60’s and 70’s but actually, I was constantly surprised at how great I felt and how much sustained energy I had through until I was 82. That's when I began to slow down a bit but was still active. At 85 the circulation problems began to really slow me down so I am being proactive and hope to have the trouble at least alleviated.

Someone once said 'Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed' and unfortunately the aches and pains of moving have started to descend and my greatest pleasure for now is using my head – and hopefully my deterioration into forgetfulness will be slow. Rie

Books & Travel

2011-07-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

My spouse and I were married in Europe back in 1949 – he was a student in Paris, we had little money and a strong desire to see as much of Europe as we could while we were there. Transportation was a tandem bicycle that for long distances rode in the baggage car as we travelled third class on the train. To keep costs down, we’d shop at local markets, snack a lot and stay in the least expensive room in a good hotels so it was clean and had hot water. Economizing was a necessity and part of the fun.

Once the travel bug bites you never recover and even with careers and a family to raise, we’d be off whenever we could. After retirement, every winter we’d be away for 4 or 5 months - around the world 3 times, and spent whole winters in Africa, South America, and Asia a number of times and of course Europe – always on our own. I thought of writing a book but always was too involved in science projects one way or another so finally some travel experiences are finding their way into some blog posts like this one.

We always travelled light but still took two or three books with us – one was the latest travel book for the country to be visited – they are all informative but we prefer the ‘Lonely Planet’ series because of its excellent local maps. In a new place, it takes the first two or three days to plan things out so you can make the most of your visit. Renting a car gives freedom to poke into out of the way place. My advice is, if you haven’t much time, take a tour. You don’t get the same feel for a country or ever have enough time when you visit a site but all the planning is done for you and the guides are usually excellent.

Besides the Lonely Planet book, we take historical novels. One example - if traveling in Greece, Mary Renault’s books give such gripping portrayals one transported back in time and place so the whole experience is much enriched.

Our first time in Mexico, we read Bernal Díaz first-hand account of the Spaniard Cortés' incredible conquest of the Aztecs in 1521. Díaz served as a soldier under Cortés and was no writer but his chronicle of events is so real one gets caught up in reports of grizzly native worship and the adventure and intrigue. He describes how Cortés’ prevailed against all odds by using his ability to manipulate, flatter and persuade his enemies. One of the family expressions since then has been recognizing when someone is ‘doing a Cortés’.

Until next week… Rie

The Golden Mean

2011-07-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

There are forces and consistencies in nature – we call them the Laws of Nature - that have shaped the evolutionary processes to produce everything that we see in our environment on Earth. The golden mean is a ratio [rounded off it is 1.618] that is one such consistency. It mysteriously defines the proportions of the branching in plants and the bones in an animal's skeleton as well as a myriad of other natural phenomena!
It appears we humans are predisposed by nature to be somehow attuned to the golden mean and using it ourselves seems to make our architectural and artistic creations more harmonius. If given a choice about what we see as the most pleasingly proportioned rectangle for instance, we choose the one whose ratio of length to width is closest to the golden mean. A simple example would be a rectangle whose length is 1.618 units and width is 1. Obviously dividing the length by the width gives the golden ratio. If you click on the word video, the first part particularly will you give a sense of the remarkable properties of this ratio.

It was the Greek mathematician Euclid who first geometrically defined the ‘golden mean’ or ratio and started the recognition of it as an all-pervasive, and recurring number in nature.

In 1202 an Italian mathematician, Fibonacci, when playing around with a simple series of numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 … , happened on a connection to the golden mean. If you divide any two neighboring numbers in the series, the larger one by the smaller one, you will get the golden ratio and if the smaller number is divided by the larger one you get 0.618 which is the golden mean minus 1.

If you click on this site, you’ll see it is pretty amazing how Fabonacci's numbers play out so often in nature – but not always. On occasion another series is followed. As you watch the videos and search the internet, I hope you can appreciate how naturally scientists in studying their environment, come up with the beautiful mathematical relationships and and equations – some easy like the golden ratio and some comprehensible to only a few. Rie

Baby Talk

2011-06-25T18:06:00.000-07:00

The idea of teaching your baby sign language has been around since the 1980’s when university student Joseph Garcia first noticed that babies of deaf people were naturally starting to sign as early as 8 or 9 months old. He was intrigued at how proficient the babies became at it and if you click on the word video, it will actually show you a number of babies signing and how effective it can be.

As the same time in the 1980's two other researchers had separately discovered and were doing research on teaching babies to sign so I thought that by now it had become common knowledge. However when I mentioned it to a couple the other day, neither of them had heard of it so I am writing this blog for anyone unaware of this great way to communicate with your preverbal child.

Having had children myself, I know how frustrating it can be when your baby cries and you have no idea why. Up until they are 8 or 9 months old obviously all you can do is guess at the reason for their distress but as they mature, and you teach them baby sign language it can be an adventure and a blessing to be able to communicate with them.

I can still remember teaching my babies to say bye-bye by picking up a little hand and waving it at departing friends. Once they ‘got it’ they loved doing it and would look at us for approval. Babies usually clap their hands when they are happy about something and I’ve always loved their natural tendency from an early age to point that little index finger at anything and everything. Signing is just a natural but educated extension of using their hands when they try to tell us something.

With sign language it is not only satisfying to interact with your child for the convenience and fun, but because communicating is a highly evolved part of being human, it also strengthens the bonds of love and trust between you and your baby.

There are other proven advantages as well. It turns out that learning to sign requires early development of some parts of the young child's brain that research shows are important later for developing language skills as well as more effective social and emotional capabilities .

If you happen to have a very young child you want to start teaching sign language, there are many sites available. Click on this highlighted text to get started. Rie

Keeping book

2011-06-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been drawn to the methods of science - keeping records of observations and collecting numerical data if possible. I even took a stopwatch to the hospital when my second child was about to be born. I timed the periods between contractions, the first stage of ‘labour’, and how long they lasted. I found it not only interesting but it also had the added bonus of distracting me. I discovered that if I think about something else, most pain is actually easier to bear somehow.

When my children were school age I started teaching high school and I loved it. I enjoyed the teenagers and rarely had problems until I was assigned to a special Grade 10 class that had been giving everyone grief. I soon found out that there were two older boys in the class whose whole aim was to ‘get the teacher’ and they were good at it and were obviously enjoying finding creative ways to disrupt the class so it was unteachable.

After a week or so, I checked with the school Principle to find out what I might do in the circumstance. It turned out that one of the school rules was that if a student failed to do their homework three times in a row, they could be suspended for a few days. I gave the class fair warning about this rule, assigned a little homework every night and 'kept book' with dates and circumstances. It didn’t take long before I had enough data and, though I had to insist, it was acted on. It worked, as 'keeping book' usually does. The class was teachable but I always regretted that those boys never came back, especially after learning why they probably acted the way they did and how they might have been helped.

I’ve found that 'keeping book. has helped in lots of different circumstances and I can hear myself giving advice to those who I found are always complaining about unfair or abusive situations at work or elsewhere but never really did anything about it. Try stopping defusing your anger by venting and 'keep book'.

When I visit my Doctor, the ‘white coat’ effect usually has an influence on how much I can remember when I am asked to describe my health problem and how long I’ve had it. Now, that I ‘keep book’, recording symptoms and when they occur, it is much more helpful and impressive to present to the Doctor and she has a better chance to come up with a correct diagnosis. An example for me is when my blood pressure is measured. It is always higher when it is recorded in the Doctor’s office so I bought a cuff and recorder and now use at home during the day and pass recorded results over so she can prescribe more accurately how much medication to prescribe to keep it in a good range. We are the only ones who can actually describe what our bodies are experiencing and Doctors need our health information divulged as succinctly as possible in order to keep us in topnotch health.

Try being creative in ‘keeping book’ – it works surprisingly well! Rie

Viruses

2011-06-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I was told by a friend who suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that she probably got it because her immune system had been overwhelmed by trying to combat so many viruses.

Many people wonder why there hasn’t been a drug invented that could kill viruses. The answer to that is simple – you can’t kill viruses because they are not alive! A striking demonstration of this was given some years ago when the tobacco mosaic virus was purified and its crystals stored in a jar. One crystal was taken out years later and put on a moist tobacco leaf and the virus began to attack the plant’s cells and multiply. Click on the video and see the remarkable way a virus does that.

There are now drugs called ‘antivirals’ that can’t kill viruses but can inhibit a targeted virus's development. Some of these drugs are well known like those for HIV, hepatitis B or herpes. No antivirals have been developed for the common cold yet and because viruses go through mutations and new viruses can develop for various kinds of ‘flu', the best means of attack developed so far are vaccines.

A vaccine contains something that resembles the virus or the dead or weakened form of the virus itself that, when injected, causes your immune system to get busy developing antigens to kill it. So if you do catch the viral disease, your immune system can respond so quickly it can stop it in its tracks.

Linus Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize twice, gave convincing reasons why ingesting enough vitamin C could prevent a virus from multiplying and making you sick, but those claims have not ever been shown to be true in scientific trials. Still there are persistent stories of people who were dying of polio or swine flu being revived to live again after being given injections of vitamin C.

Obviously, having a healthy immune system is the best defense against any form of viral attack and how can you build a really healthy immune system is no secret - have a healthy intestinal tract full of trillions of probiotic bacteria. Eating a daily dose of good yogurt [tests should show it has at least a billion probiotics per serving] is a good start but if you really want to have a super healthy system working in your ‘gut’ you can try kefir.

Kefir has been around since ancient times and a single serving can contain over 30 billion of the best probiotic bacteria! Those famous Bulgarians who lived in the northern slopes of the Caucasian mountains and all lived well into their 100’s discovered how to make kefir, which is just another form of fermented milk like yogurt. Health food stores are a good source and if you want to live to be 100, it's the best advice I can give you.

Here’s to your good health and a long life! Rie

Probiotics

2011-06-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

My children were born in the early 1950’s and, since my husband’s career was in a city that had no place where I could further my scientific career, the focus of most of my reading was on books about how to give my young ones the best start in life that I could.

It included reading books by nutritionist Adell Davis that were then just being published. I found them very readable and informative and was so convinced by her that I started following her recommendations at a time when paying attention to what you ate was scoffed at. My faith in her advice on healthy eating back then was not misplaced. Research today vindicates her science and I felt great satisfaction when in 2000 she placed sixth among her century’s notables - that included scientists like Edison and Einstein!

For one thing, Adelle advocated eating yoghurt long before it became the highly advertised popular health food it has become in recent years. Back then it was sometimes hard to get yogurt, so I made it myself in an inexpensive temperature regulator and found it simple, inexpensive and fool proof.

I was curious as to why yogurt was so healthful and found out that it’s all about the bacteria it contains. I also learned that these single celled organisms were among the earliest forms of life that evolved on Earth 6 billion years ago. It took 3 billion years for them to diversify and learn to communicate before they finally got together to form the first multicellular creatures that we have evolved from. And they are still everywhere – so small they are invisible - in the air, in the soil, in us and on us.

Actually, amazingly, there are 3 or 4 lbs. of bacteria in our intestinal tract and we couldn’t live without them. They play a large part in the digestion of food, making vitamins and generally assisting in keeping our body working well. Tampering with their well being as we do when we take antibiotics or are under unusual stress, can cause serious illnesses like persistent diarrhea and throat and genital infections for example.

In contrast to ‘antibiotics’ that kill bacteria, ‘probiotics’ promote the health of our trillions and trillions of intestinal bacterial. Yogurt, properly made, contains mainly probiotic good kinds of bacteria. Unfortunately, to preserve their shelf life, most commercial yogurts have been heated and contain only dead bacteria. I learned recently that to be sure you are getting the good live bacteria in the yogurt you buy, it has to be tested in human clinical trials. The only yogurt I know of that has been tested in Canada and has good live bacteria is Danone Activia.

As I mentioned, making it yourself with milk is not difficult. You can also get probiotics in pill form but they are dormant in that state and not as effective in adapting to handle sudden changes that affect your bacterial health. We take them when we travel to foreign countries and are encountering new kinds of bacteria that are sometimes toxic.

Here’s to a good healthy gut and long life. Rie

Celebration of Life

2011-05-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

My brother died in December and this weekend the whole family and close friends have gathered to celebrate his life.

We are having ceremonies, large gatherings and small, all with lots of opportunity to tell stories of his accomplishments, foibles, funny incidents and sad. We are having a wonderful time laughing and crying and sharing the memories we have. We are celebrating that he will live on in those memories.

I will be back next week. Rie

Red Coats

2011-05-22T05:26:00.000-07:00

If you read my last blog about rubber – you’ll find a few similarities in this one in that it tells the tale of another natural product that the Spanish discovered when they conquered South and Central America, which subsequently ended up being exploited by the British.

A few years ago my husband and I spent a winter in Oaxaca, a city in southern Mexico where its indigenous peoples and cultures have survived better than in any other region of Mexico.

As you fly south from Mexico City over extensive rugged mountain ranges - you finally spot Oaxaca beautifully located below on a broad mountain plateau. The experience makes you realize why the city’s culture is so very rich - it would have been virtually impossible for the Spaniards to properly conquer the area because of its location. Its isolation was obviously the reason for the survival of the sixteen original native villages that are located in the valleys around the city.

We had friends who had wintered in Oaxaca for 14 years, spoke Spanish easily and enjoyed visiting the indigenous villagers. They had got to know some of them so well they counted them as good friends. We rented a car and took many happy outings with them visiting different villages where each one specialized in its own style of craft – be it pottery, woodcarving or hand weaving. In everything they produced they used the bright colours they loved.

One different excursion we took was to a ranch where they grew a special kind of cacti and bred bugs – to be precise –cochineal insects that fed on them. The picture at the top shows the process of infesting new cacti leaves with hatching cochineal.

They got the eggs, or hatching young insects, by brushing them from leaves used for brooding onto a piece of fabric that is pushed into a finger shaped basket and hung over a fresh cactus leaf. When the insects mature they are crushed to release the red caminic acid, which makes up a fifth of the body weight of the female insect. It is an edible red dye that changes colour depending on what you mix it with.

This dye source, known since the time of the Incas, was exported by the Spanish when they conquered South America where the cactus the cochineal feed on also grows. However, it had a checkered history and didn’t really catch on until the 18th century. By then the British had combined modern science with their long experience with dyes and found mordants that made the dye bright crimson, ‘fixed’ it to the fabric and made it colour fast.

The British subsequently took over the industry and one example of its early use by the British was to dye the woolen cloth they used in making the ‘red coats’ that served as the famous uniform for men of the British army for many wars – Prince William wore a traditional red coat at his wedding recently. Rie

Rubber Thief

2011-05-15T12:53:00.001-07:00

After retirement my husband and I used to spend winters traveling and in 1994 we flew to South America for four months of exploration. After an Elderhostel course in Brazil, we had a chance to fly up to Manaus, a city in the middle of the huge rainforest 1000 miles up the mighty Amazon River.

We hadn't had a chance to read ahead so knew little about what we would find as we flew over jungle for what seemed like hours. Finally, as the plane slowed, we saw below a city whose size, layout, and buildings amazed us by their grand scale.

The Amazon is still nearly a kilometer wide at Manaus and many of the floating wharfs and buildings were constructed of metal that had been shipped in from Europe. The impressive opera house pictured above, gives a sense of the city's grandeur. We soon learned it all had to do with rubber.

When the Spanish and Portuguese colonized South America they found the natives had learned to score the bark of rubber trees to collect the sap that had the consistency and colour of thick

milk. It was called latex, and when the water was evaporated from it, they learned to make the rubber balls that Columbus described them using in games.

For centuries rubber was viewed as a curiosity until in the 1820’s two British scientists, Macintosh & Hancock, experimented with coating cloth with latex to make waterproof clothing. However it was not until 1843 - when Goodyear learned to keep the rubber from getting very soft in warm weather and stiff in cold, that rubber caught on and the demands from Europe started a rubber boom.

Prospectors and speculators found that a variety of wild rubber trees around Manaus was the most productive and they soon became very very wealthy exploiting that source to supply the insatiable markets in Europe. Everyone in Brazil profited, including the Brazilian government, which carefully guarded its natural resource. Their monopoly on rubber was successful until Henry Wickham, a British biologist, was able to smuggle 70,000 seeds out of the country. They were germinated at Kew Gardens in London and the seedlings shipped to suitable British colonies like Malaysia and parts of Indonesia where plantations were started. The whole process took about 60 years but eventually the rubber trees were able to be milked and profits flowed, and perhaps are still flowing, into British pockets and so ended the Manaus boom.

Actually, we have since visited Malaysia’s rubber plantations and, at night when it is cool, we were able to observe the trained workers, with their calcium carbide lamps, maintaining the latex flow by carefully trimming the channels that ‘milk’ the trees.

Travel holds many charms but the most rewarding for me are those where my knowledge of the world is enriched and expanded. Rie

See Jane Soar

2011-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Women make up half the world's population but in most countries they are only awakening to their potential. When that potential is fully released we will see a much different and better world. Rie

For the two decades before I retired, I taught mostly university students taking third and fourth year courses in physical chemistry. When I talked to the girls who did exceptionally well about going on with their studies in math or science, I found that most of them had no idea of their own abilities and were not even considering further studies because they didn’t think they were good enough to go further. It was a different story with the boys – they were confident and sometimes had an exaggerated idea of their own abilities.

As I came to retirement age, I realized it was like a recurring theme - girls too often underestimating their potential. That was just my opinion but one I held so strongly that I went to the President of the University, told him that I wanted to do a study to find out how girls stood up academically. I asked him for permission to have a printout of the records of student Grade Point Averages [GPA’s] for all courses in all faculties over the last 10 years. It sounded innocuous enough and he readily agreed, not perhaps realizing that the information would fill 28 document boxes with the raw data. I had a student do the preliminary hackwork, and as I analyzed the figures, they revealed an unexpected and absolutely astounding picture.

I had in no way set out to document the superiority of one gender over another – my goal was just to show young women that they were just as good as most of the boys. However, by the very nature of the exercise, the academic test results of men and women were of necessity compared. The data showed that in every single course - be it in Arts, Science, or Math - the girls on average consistently made better grades than boys.

The gap between their scores was in most cases narrowing by the final year and there were a few cased when the boys on average had surpassed the girls in one year. I rationalized it was because girls mature at a younger age and the boys were catching up. Apparently our brains continue to mature until we are around 25 and there is no doubt about it that men and women have different approaches to life and their work. My observation is that women in general tend to take less risk and can multitask easily whereas men in general are more single minded and less conservative in their approach.

The big overall message is that the evidence in this study and others like it, shows that women should have every confidence in their potential to pursue whatever career they aspire to whether it be in the traditional fields for women or those for which they may have been told they are not suited - like math, physics or chemistry.

Spread the word. Rie

Silk Road

2011-05-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

In the fall of 2000, Elderhostel offered a full two week educational adventure to Uzbekistan in Central Asia and we joined up. Uzbekistan is where Samarkand, Tashkent and Khiva were established trading posts on the Silk Road that merchants traveled from Europe to China. [click on map to enlarge]

At that time it was only nine years since Uzbekistan had declared its independence after 24 years of Russian occupation and, as we expected, there were few concessions for tourists – but that made it all the more interesting for us! We found the food very unfamiliar and most signs and directions were written in the Russian alphabet [русский алфавит] or Arabic script that had been used before that. The architecture, impacted mostly by Arab and Muslim culture, was unusual and different and one also felt that quite a few Uzbeks were not many generations away from their fierce equestrian tribesmen ancestors. They were civil but cautious and carried themselves with pride - as well they might.

Seeing things from their point of view, we gained a new respect to learn that is was largely in this part of the world that the concept of one God, instead of many, first originated. It started with Zoroastrianism and then was taken up in turn by Judaism, then Christian and Muslim religions. As well, after the fall of the Roman empire during the Middle Ages from the 5th to the 15th century, when there were barbarian hoards devastating European culture, the Uzbeks were among those who valued the knowledge that had been accumulated in such places as the famous Library at Alexandria. They preserved it and built institutions that fostered the search for new learning.

I had always had the misconception that the Silk Route was discovered by Marco Polo because he was the first ever to write about his extensive travels from Europe to China in the 13^th century. However our lecturers informed us that the route was actually first traveled during the expansion of Alexander the Great's empire into Central Asia and China in 329 BCE. Much of Central Asia is so arid it is desert but the fertile area between two rivers in Uzbekistan, the Amu and Syr, can be considered a cradle of civilizations that goes so far back into antiquity that one can only guess at

its origin. We do know that cities like Samarkand and Tashkent already had a long history when Alexander conquered the region.

A feature that constantly reminded us of the ever present danger of getting lost in the shifting sands of the desert, were the very tall round towers on which fires were kept lit all night to guide travelers. I have often wondered if the idea of using the minarets around their mosques was picked up when the Muslims invaded this part of Asia in the middle of the 7th century! Rie

Easter Bonfires

2011-04-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

Back in 1975, we found ourselves in Greece in April and as we approached Easter, travel schedules, excursions, and visitor attractions were all shutting down. Our disappointment disappeared when we were told that if we wished to truly experience the celebration of a Greek Orthodox Easter - the most significant observance of the Orthodox faith -we should find our way to the island of Crete.

We took a ferry and on Good Friday morning in Crete’s main city, Heraklion, we were awakened by the reverberating sound of the loud bell from a church just next door to us. That church bell continued to slowly toll the whole day and it added drama to the solemn reenactment of the tragic crucifixion of Christ. There were street processions of life-sized effigies from the churches - and the black clad mourners with candles who followed them.

On Saturday, again following a suggestion, we drove east to Agios Nikolas, which turned out to be a small fishing town clinging to the steep coastline. After dinner and a snooze - as instructed - we headed up the hill in the dark to a small village at the top. We found it to be alive with people flocking through the narrow gate to the walled space where the church stood. Feeling like the tourist voyeurs that we were, we slipped past those being blessed by the priest as they entered and followed the crowd to the huge pile of wood in the back courtyard.

On the stroke of midnight, in celebration of Christ's resurrection the roar of cannons being fired below in Agios fairly shook the ground. Then we saw the priest caming out of the church with a candle lit from the alter. With it, he first lit the bonfire and, while candles were passed out, he started lighting them, and they in turn lit others and soon the whole courtyard was filled with the warmth and radiance of the flames.

What happened next was very meaningful. One after another, everyone was blessed again as they left to walk down the road to their homes. There they lit fires in their own hearths with the blessed candle flame. During the forty days of lent when the faithful ate no meat, the hearth had been dark and cold. To celebrate on Easter, they ate lamb, roasted on a spit in their newly rekindled fires.

Since pagan times, symbolism has always played a big part in celebrating the coming of spring after the vernal equinox. Rabbits are a part Easter because they are a symbol of fertility and eggs, the source from which new life springs.

Religious or not – for those of us in northern climes, the coming of spring is a time to rejoice and to revel in anticipation of the wonderful renewal that comes with it as our part of the earth tips toward the sun and, for the whole season, we are blessed with it’s glorious light and warmth. Rie

Head Start

2011-04-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, I have believed intuitively that the first 5 or 6 years of a child’s life are tremendously important and have a lasting impact on the kind of adults they will become. I was not alone in these feeling but it is only in recent years that there has been verification from the hard sciences. Early on there had been studies by social scientists to show that there is a large difference in achievements at school between children from middle class families and those who are disadvantaged because of the emotional and deprivational stresses of living in poverty.

As far back as 1964 when Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty, there was enough evidence make him declare:

'Five and six year olds are inheritors of poverty’s curse and not its creators. Unless we act, these children will pass it on to the next generation like a birthmark.'

It was Johnson who initiated the ‘Head Start’ program. Children who attended 'Head Start' come from backgrounds that had the worst outcomes and the program soon confirmed that early childhood intervention was remarkably successful.

We are now living through a great era of advancement of medicine. Biochemists are now learning about organisms at the molecular level. They have found that your characteristics as a person, your looks, emotions, temperament and outlook are a result of the expression of specific pieces of your DNA that we call genes – right? Well no - it’s not as simple as that.

It turns out that the environment in which we find ourselves, especially when we are very young, has a very important influence on the way our genes behave - and that they can actually be very affected chemically by the emotional atmosphere we are experiencing at the time. The science that is concentrating on this area is called epigenetics.

Epigenetics explain why identical twins are often quite different in many ways. It also gives us an understanding of why those who have been abused, neglected or stressed by an unhealthy environment as small children, usually end up with poor academic records, and/or become addicted to drugs, get into trouble with the law or commit suicide. Statistics from the ‘Head Start’ program show that for every $1 spent on it, $9 is saved in the prevention of these outcomes.

When young children are given love, and are valued and encouraged, they gain the confidence, trust and courage to open their minds to new things and overcome their original anxieties, fears and attitudes. It has been shown that right up to the age of eight, the mind is so flexible and responsive that the effects of early abuse or neglect can be largely reversed. And these positive resutls tend to rub off on their siblings and friends.

The early years do last a lifetime! Rie

Bread & Wine

2011-04-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou beside me, singing in the wilderness’ – The Rubiat

Our summer house is built on farm land that had lots of old apple trees that we have never pruned or picked. Occasionally, when we have a warm enough fall, the fallen apples ferment, and their delicious scent attracts creatures like rabbits, groundhogs and deer. They all have a jolly time getting tipsy as they gobble up this potent gift of nature and later of course, spread the apple seeds in their scat. This was Mother Nature’s whole purpose in the exercise. She also provided the single celled fungi called yeast that get the fermentation going. The yeast cells are so small they are suspended in the air like dust landing on whatever is in the vicinity. In the case of the ripe apples, they were ready, willing and able to consume the sweet juices and in the process produced alcohol and carbon dioxide gas [CO₂].

In very ancient times in the various cradles of civilizations, early humans must have found that they too enjoyed the taste and alcoholic effects of fermenting fruit. It turns out that grapes were a fruit of choice, not just for taste but because the air born yeast stuck to their skins ready to start fermentation process as soon as the ripe fruit burst open. As humans are wont to do, they soon were thwarting nature’s original intentions by crushing the fruit and producing wine from the fermented juice. It’s interesting that many vintners still use the strains of yeast that are naturally provided.

So, as yeast cells in the air provide the wine, so too they play a most important role in providing leavened bread. Our hunter, gatherer ancestors collected seeds to eat and store for lean times and, as early as 9000 BC there is evidence that wild grain seeds were being ground to produce flour. It was easy to mix flour with water and pour it on a hot rock to cook. This unleavened bread soon became a staple in their diet and one can imagine that on occasion a slurry of flour in water must have been left standing for a few day and it began to bubble. That’s because a different strain of yeast that was able to break down the starch in the flour to make sugar and was happily feeding while producing alcohol and CO₂gas. The bubbles got caught in the flour-water slurry making it rise and soon enough some one had learned how to produced loaves of light textured

bread something like we know it today but tasting sour. During the gold rush in the Yukon, the prospectors relied on natural yeasts to produce their sourdough bread. In fact it was 1880 before bread yeast was introduced and sold commercially!

Have you ever noticed that if you smell bread baking when you enter a house, a strong sense of well-being comes over you? That’s because the alcohol - produced by the yeast -_.is being vaporized in the hot oven and you’re breathing it in.

Thanks to Nature’s gifts – life is good …and getting better? Rie