341) In modern times, it was perhaps the

gentleman scientists of the nineteenth century

who came closest to a genuinely objective form of
scientific research. These privileged amateurs
enjoyed a financial independence which most
scientists today cannot have, and which enabled
them to satisfy their scientific curiosity without the
need to please patrons. With the growth of scientific
research after World War II, science has become an
expensive occupation. Many scientists today look
back upon the 1960s as a golden age of modern-day
science, when research was mainly funded by the
taxpayer, and scientific enquiry was seen by
governments to be part of the public good, and
worth paying for. Today, the situation is very
different.Academic freedom is now often a little more
than an illusion for most scientists working at
universities or in publicly-funded research
institutes. Moreover, science is now largely
dominated by the interests of the industrial world,
and hence, hardly deserve the name science.

342) The Agta Negritos of the Philippines, a presentday tribal people, are an example of a culture whose
women and men share all subsistence activities.
Most interestingly, the Agta Negritos women hunt
large game with bows, arrows, and hunting dogs.
The women are prevented from hunting only during
late pregnancy and the first few months after giving
birth. Teenagers and women with older children are
the most frequent hunters. The women space their
children to allow for maximum mobility. They keep
their birth rate down through the use of herbal
contraceptives. By studying these ethnographic
examples and by questioning the assumptions that
have been made about female and male roles in
prehistory, anthropologists have concluded that
Western societys traditionally low view of womens
status is by no means universal.

343) The Rhine-Ruhr area became the greatest

industrial region of Germany, because it had at its
heart the great coalfield of the Ruhr. Mining is now
almost entirely northeast and westwards across the
Rhine. The region contains the greater part of the
German iron, steel and heavy engineering
industries. The great integrated iron and steel
plants mostly cluster on the Rhine waterway.
Specialized steel plants and engineering works are
more widespread. With a decline in coalmining and
the dismantling after World War II of certain steel
plants, some of the older Ruhr towns have
diversified their industries considerably: vehicles,
electrical goods and clothing are now being
produced.

344) Stimulation of several areas of the

hypothalamus in the brain causes an animal to
experience extreme hunger, a voracious appetite,
and an intense desire to search for food. The area
most associated with hunger is the lateral
hypothalamic area. Damage to this area sometimes
causes the animal to lose desire for food, sometimes
causing lethal starvation. On the other hand, a
centre in the hypothalamus that opposes the desire
for food, called the satiety centre, is located in the
ventromedial nucleus. When this centre is
stimulated electrically, an animal that is eating food
suddenly stops eating and shows complete
indifference to food. However, if this area is
destroyed bilaterally, the animal cannot be satiated;
instead, its hypothalamic hunger centres become
overactive, so that it has a voracious appetite,
resulting in tremendous obesity.

345) The loss of global biodiversity is occurring at

an alarming rate. Since the 1970s, the area of
tropical forests destroyed worldwide exceeds the
land mass of the European Union. Animal and plant
species are disappearing. Overfishing has depleted
stocks around the world. Poor farming practices
have depleted soils while allowing the invasion of
harmful species. Destruction of wetlands has left
low-lying areas extremely vulnerable to storms and
natural disasters. Especially in Europe, ecosystems
have suffered more human-induced damage than
those on any other continent. Only about 3 per cent
of Europes forests can be classified as undisturbed
by humans, and the continent has lost more than
half of its wetlands. The spread of urbanization and
the over-exploitation of resources is having an
enormous impact on biodiversity.

346) During the hunger winter of 1944 in

Amsterdam, over 20,000 people died of starvation.
Many of the citys trees were cut down, and the
interiors of abandoned buildings broken up for fuel.
When peace came this once most beautiful and
urbane of cities was in urgent need of large-scale
reconstruction. In the years following the end of
World War II in Europe, modern architecture had an
unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate a
socially minded, urban style. The consensus today
is that in most places it failed. The young Dutch
architect Aldo van Eyck was one of the earliest
critics of the mechanistic approach taken by his
modernist colleagues to urban reconstruction. The
failure of architecture and planning to recreate
forms of urban community and solidarity has
become a problem in post-war Europe, as so many
acclaimed housing estates, new towns, or newly
designed urban quarters, around Europe, have been
troubled by vandalism, disrepair and abandonment.
Van Eyck saw this coming. In 1947 at the age of 28,
he went to work for the Office for Public Works in
Amsterdam and, as his first project, built a small
playground. This was in line with his belief that by
promoting and shaping the daily encounter or
inbetween-ness of social space, architecture could
humanize cities and create public trust.

347) The huge ice sheet covering Greenland, which

is the worlds largest island, provides a habitat for
many arctic species and holds nearly 8 per cent of
the worlds freshwater. It is, on average, 5,000 feet
thick and is constantly being replaced as snow
falls each winter. Over the course of centuries, the
snow compacts into ice, which slides towards the
ocean. In recent years, higher atmospheric
concentrations of heat-trapping gases have
accelerated that process. As temperatures rise, the
top layers melt, giving way to darker, heatabsorbing ice and liquid water. The meltwater
seeps down to the rock below, lubricating the ice
mass and speeding its slide into the sea.

348) Researchers are a step closer to understanding

how Alzheimers disease takes shape - literally. A
sign of Alzheimers is the presence of protein
aggregates in the brain known as plaques. They are
made up of various lengths and conformations of
the beta amyloid protein. The proteins link end to
end, forming long, threadlike structures called
fibrils. Now biologist Roland Riek and his colleagues
have constructed a three-dimensional model of the
fibrils based on their own experiments and earlier
data published by others. Riek says the model will
help investigators to understand protein structure,
which could lead to better targeted drugs. For
example, molecules could be engineered to act as
protein binding partners, thus interfering with fibril
formation. Such a sticky molecule could also be
used to diagnose the disease early. The model work
might lend insight to other neurological disorders
that involve fibril formation, such as Parkinsons
disease. Riek says his group will extend the threedimensional work to other variations of the amyloid
protein, because it undergoes many conformational
changes on its way to forming a fibril. We need to
try to trap them in these intermediate states, he
explains.

349)
Thomas Edison began conducting
experiments during his childhood. To start with,
there were hundreds of unsuccessful experiments
but Edison eventually invented and patented 2,500
items, including the electric lamp and phonograph.
He was determined to give laughter and light to
people, but, until he actually managed to do so,
most people ridiculed him. Without losing hope,
Edison attempted over 1,000 unsuccessful
experiments in his efforts to make an electric lamp.
When people told him he was wasting his time,
energy, and money for nothing, Edison exclaimed,
For nothing!. Every time I make an experiment, I
get new results. Failures are stepping stones to
success. Determined to give people electric lamps,
Edison said hed meet his goal by early 1880. In
October, 1879, he created his first electric lamp, and
in so doing, received much praise. People realized
that Edisons invention was not affected by rain or
wind, remaining constant through bad weather.
Just as he had hoped, Edison provided people with
light and laughter.

350) Despite various scientific advances, in the

early 1900s the public still did not understand
mental illness and viewed mental hospitals and
their inmates with fear and horror. Clifford Beers
undertook the task of educating the public about
mental health. As a young man, Beers developed a
bipolar disorder and was confined for 3 years in
several private and state hospitals. Although chains
and other methods of torture had been abandoned
long before, the straitjacket was still widely used to
restrain excited patients. Lack of funds made the
average state mental hospital-with its overcrowded
wards, poor food, and unsympathetic attendants - a
far from pleasant place to live. After his recovery,
Beers wrote about his experiences in the nowfamous book A Mind That Found Itself (1908), which
aroused considerable public interest. Beers worked
ceaselessly to educate the public about mental
illness and helped to organize the National
Committee for Mental Hygiene. In 1950, this
organization joined with two related groups to form
the National Association for Mental Health. The
mental hygiene movement played an invaluable role
in stimulating the organization of child-guidance
clinics and community mental health centres to aid
in the prevention and treatment of mental disorders.