Pregnancy can be the most wonderful experience life has to offer. But it can also be dangerous. Around the world, an estimated 529,000 women a year die during pregnancy or childbirth. Ten million suffer injuries, infection or disability. To David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, these grim statistics raise a profound puzzle about pregnancy. “Pregnancy is absolutely central to reproduction, and yet pregnancy doesn’t seem to work very well,” he said. “If you think about the heart or the kidney, they’re wonderful bits of engineering that work day in and day out for years and years. But pregnancy is associated with all sorts of medical problems. What’s the difference?” The difference is that the heart and the kidney belong to a single individual, while pregnancy is a two-person operation. And this operation does not run in perfect harmony. Instead, Dr. Haig argues, a mother and her unborn child engage in an unconscious struggle over the nutrients she will provide it. Dr. Haig’s theory has been gaining support in recent years, as scientists examine the various ways pregnancy can go wrong. His theory also explains a baffling feature of developing fetuses: the copies of some […]
SAN JOSE, California — The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday sharply cut its demand for Google Inc. customer data and a U.S. judge signaled he intended to require the search company to hand over some records, potentially opening the door to compromise in a test case for Web privacy. U.S. District Court Judge James Ware told a hearing he would make a decision that weighed the government’s need to gather data against Google’s needs as a private company to defend its trade secrets. Ware added that he was concerned about creating the perception that Google’s users’ privacy could be undermined, but he reacted positively to the reduced request by the government, which is seeking data for a study on Internet child pornography. “It is my intent to grant some relief to the government,” said Ware of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, adding that he expected to make a decision “very quickly.” Shares of Google’s (GOOG) stock rose $14.10, or 4.2 percent, to close at $351.16. The government on Tuesday reduced the number of Google searches it wanted data on to just 50,000 Web addresses and roughly 5,000 search terms from […]
BEIJING – Move over Bode. You may have competition you don’t know about – among a sturdy skiing clan in northwest China. They are central Asians, Mongols, and Kazaks, living in the remote Altay mountains of Xinjiang province, where some claim skiing was first conceived. Using curved planks whose design dates back 2,000 years, the Altaic peoples are formidable skiers. They might not win a medal on perfectly groomed Olympic trails. But they can break their own paths, track elk for days in deep snow, and capture them live. They don’t zig-zag through slalom courses or bump down moguls. But using a single pole, they plunge straight down mountainsides in a blaze of efficiency, and climb hills with a speed and grace that has wowed the few Western experts who have witnessed their prowess. “These skiers wouldn’t do well in the Olympics,” says pro skier Nils Larsen. “But the Olympians from Turin couldn’t make their skis do what the Altaic skiers can. “The Altaics learn at age three, and by seven they are really good. They saw us skiing, swerving and turning, and they thought it was the funniest thing,” Mr. Larsen adds. “For them, […]
NEW YORK — The world now has a record 793 billionaires, up 15 percent from a year ago, with a rising number in India, Russia, Brazil and the Middle East as well as more women, Forbes magazine said on Thursday. Soaring stock, oil and commodities prices increased their combined net worth to $2.6 trillion as 114 individuals joined the exclusive club, including 10 more women for a total of 78. “A billion just isn’t what it used to be,” said Forbes Associate Editor Luisa Kroll, presenting the 20th annual list at a New York news conference. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates topped the list for a record 12th year in a row with a net worth estimated at $50 billion, followed by perennial No. 2 Warren Buffett, the famed investor of Berkshire Hathaway, worth $42 billion. Mexican industrialist Carlos Slim moved into the No. 3 spot at $30 billion, just ahead of Sweden’s Ikea founder, Ingvar Kamprad, at $28 billion. Moving into the top 10 are French luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault at No. 7, Canadian publishing magnate Kenneth Thomson and family, and Li Ka-shing, head of the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa. The complete […]
Whatever trust the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops had restored with their response to clergy sex abuse has been badly eroded in recent weeks by a combination of missteps and outside criticism. Any of the latest developments would be disturbing, but taken together, critics see the church as floundering with the same problems that engulfed it four years ago. The troubling signs include: -The Massachusetts attorney general now says the Archdiocese of Boston, where the abuse crisis erupted, has failed to implement key reforms it had promised, including tracking guilty priests and teaching adolescents and teens to protect themselves from predators. Advertisement -In a 2005 deposition unsealed last month, Bishop Joseph Imesch of Joliet, Ill., said he felt no obligation to go to police in the 1970s when a priest on trial for molestation told Imesch he was, indeed, guilty. The bishop said he has reported abuse claims to civil authorities in the last few years, but when pressed by a plaintiff’s lawyer to cite examples, he could not. -In Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, a leader in shaping the bishops’ reforms and the vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, admitted he […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
