Scottish

Traditionally, political leaders at least try to say nice things about the people who elected them, so McConnell’s outburst might seem a little surprising. What might be more surprising is that very few people disagreed with his attack. Scotland has long been called “the sick man of Europe”: our health statistics are quite shocking. Last year we finally shook off the dubious record of having the highest number of cancer deaths per capita in Western Europe, but we’re still near the top of the table for coronary heart disease. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, has the UK’s lowest life expectancy and remains the only part of the UK where the average man does not live to be 70. Overall, people live for a shorter time in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. Politicians, doctors and statisticians are generally in agreement about the causes of all this: cigarettes, alcohol and fatty foods.

A number of new initiatives are now being tried to tackle these problems. For one, the Scottish Parliament banned smoking in all Scottish pubs, clubs and restaurants, in 2006. Similar bans were recently introduced in both New York and Ireland; in both cases it’s too early to see if they will be effective, but they have certainly increased the number of people standing outside pubs, clubs and restaurants. Some people have suggested it’s a little ironic to offer us the chance to poison our livers in a smoke-free environment.

There is a great deal of concern in Britain as a whole about “binge drinking”, or drinking large amounts of alcohol in short periods. Our biggest brewing company, Scottish & Newcastle, has begun putting health warnings on its products, advising us that “responsible drinkers don’t exceed 4 daily units (men) and 3 units (women).” The average pint of lager contains approximately 2.3 units of alcohol. It’s only fair to point out that Scottish & Newcastle has also spent recent years promoting the consumption of stronger lagers with higher alcohol content. Meanwhile, the drinks industry as a whole has launched a new website, with the aim of “ensuring that people who choose to drink alcohol can understand fully the responsible drinking message, and can make well-informed choices as a result.”

But does the problem really lie in our inability to understand the “message” about health? Not according to a 2001 survey of consumer attitudes conducted by the Food Standards Agency Scotland. This survey found that, while 48% of Scots were fully aware of what constituted a healthy diet, only 23% actually ate healthily – the rest were “unable or unwilling to bridge the gap between awareness and actual behaviour”. The survey concluded that giving dire warnings about health simply does not work. People understand the theory, but can’t or won’t translate it into practice.

So, how can we persuade this rather unhealthy nation to give up their cigarettes, alcohol and fried food? Personally, I have no idea. But I should admit that, as I wrote this, I smoked two cigarettes and drank one cup of sweet, milky tea. My dinner tonight will be a healthy vegetable dish, but today’s lunch was most certainly fried. I checked my last Saturday night’s alcohol consumption on the “Drinkaware” website, and I’m afraid to say I wasn’t a responsible drinker.

Evidently I’m a living stereotype. I’m one of the at least 25% of Scots who are fully aware of what a healthy lifestyle is, but can’t “bridge the gap between awareness and actual behaviour.”

Sea monsters

sailors have been telling stories about giant creatures of the sea for hundreds of years. The monsters that sailors and fishermen describe are all slightly different but it's often an animal like a giant snake, at least 30 feet long, with an enormous head and neck. It sometimes actually attacks the ship. Some of these sea monsters turned out to be big pieces of seaweed or wood, but other stories are not so easy to explain. So what can these monsters be?

They could be sharks
There is an unusual type of shark that is shaped like an eel. It has a frill around its neck, which could look like a lion's mane. But the biggest one ever caught was only 25 feet long. Another type of shark, the 'basking shark', can grow to about 40 feet in length. In the 1970s a Japanese fishing boat caught an enormous dead 'monster' with a long neck. Scientists tested some small pieces of the animal and discovered that it was a basking shark. When these sharks die, parts of them rot very quickly, which gives them a very strange shape. But this doesn't explain stories about living, moving sea monsters.

They could be just very big snakes
The biggest snake in the world is the anaconda. One was found in the 1940s measuring 35 feet but there are no photographs to prove it. South American Indians tell stories of even bigger ones. The problem with this theory is that the anaconda is native to South America and can't survive in cold water.

They could be giant squid
This is an interesting theory. Scientists all accept that the giant squid really exists but we don't see them very often because they live in deep, cold water. They can be up to 50 feet in length and have the biggest eyes in the animal kingdom - over one-foot in diameter. And there are reports of much bigger ones too. They have a strong mouth like a bird's beak that can cut through steel cables and five pairs of arms, or tentacles. One pair is longer and thinner and is used to catch food. People have seen giant squid attacking whales for food. In the 1960s some Russian sailors reported watching a fight between a whale and a giant squid. Both animals died; the whale was found dead with the squid's arms wrapped around its neck, and the squid's head was found in the whale's stomach. There are also reports of giant squid attacking ships, maybe thinking that they were whales. So stories of giant sea snakes wrapped around ships could actually be one or two arms of a giant squid.

They could be giant octopuses
These creatures also exist. There are varieties of octopus with bodies as big as 23 feet around. But there are also stories that there may be an unknown variety that grows much, much bigger. An enormous animal was found dead and rotting on a beach in Florida in the 1890s. Parts of it seemed to be huge arms - over 30 feet long. Scientists tested a small part of the body but couldn't agree whether it was a whale or an octopus. The giant octopus has a strong mouth like the giant squid, but only has eight arms. They live at the bottom of the sea and use their arms to move around over the rocks. This explains why we don't see them very often.

They could be ancient sea animals, which have survived from the time of the dinosaurs
We know that strange animals lived in the sea during pre-historic times and many of them were very big indeed. They didn't look like fish and they had to come up to the surface of the water to breathe air. Perhaps when the dinosaurs died out, these sea creatures survived and have lived in the oceans ever since. Is that possible? Well maybe it is. In 1938 a strange fish was caught in the Indian Ocean. Scientists eventually identified it as a coelacanth (pronounced 'seel-a-kanth') which everyone thought had died out over 70 million years ago. And another type of coelacanth was found in the 1990s in South East Asia.

So, do any of these explanations convince you? Or do you think that deep down at the bottom of the sea, where we have never explored, there are strange creatures that are still completely unknown to science?

rainforests

Despite occupying a relatively small area, rainforests have a colossal role to play in maintaining the world as we know it. Tropical rainforests are home to a rich, colourful variety of medicinal plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain! 480 varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest. These forests sustain around 50% of all the species on Earth, and offer a way of life to many people living in and around the forest.

Rainforests are the lungs of the planet – storing vast quantities of carbon dioxide and producing a significant amount of the world’s oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival; the tall trees make a canopy of branches and leaves which protect themselves, smaller plants, and the forest animals from heavy rain, intense dry heat from the sun and strong winds.

Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is a deliberate tactic to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump, fly or glide across the gaps. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled leaves and bushes, like in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where leaves decompose into food for the trees and other forest life.

They are not called rainforests for nothing! Rainforests can generate 75% of their own rain. At least 80 inches of rain a year is normal – and in some areas there may be as much as 430 inches of rain annually. This is real rain – your umbrella may protect you in a shower, but it won’t keep you dry if there is a full rainstorm. In just two hours, streams can rise ten to twenty feet. The humidity of large rainforests contributes to the formation of rainclouds that may travel to other countries in need of rain.

Worryingly, rainforests around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to deforestation, river pollution, and soil erosion as land is being claimed for agriculture and trees are felled for wood. A few thousand years ago, tropical rainforests covered as much as 12% of the land surface on Earth, but today this has fallen to less than 5.3%.

We can only hope that the world governments work together with environmentalists and businesses to use their environmental knowledge and power to preserve the rainforests – awe-inspiring, beautiful and vital for our existence.

Kenya

Diversity, it seems, is a key word. It is a useless exercise to try and pigeonhole Kenya and Kenyans. They spill over, whichever category you put them into, with their different languages - Gikuyu, Swahili, Luo, religions - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, tribal and urban traditions, food, music and styles of clothes.

Geography may have much to do with this. Kenya is on the equator and the coast is hot, humid and tropical. Moving inland it rapidly becomes dry and arid. The north east, particularly along the border with Somalia, is desert, inhabited by nomads and camels. In the south is the Masai Mara, vast, open savanna, teeming with game. Just over the border in Tanzania, but floating in the sky and dominating the landscape for hundreds of miles is Kilimanjaro. To the north of Nairobi it becomes higher, more and more rugged and greener until you get to the jagged peak of Mount Kenya, a completely different shape from the famous volcano but also capped in snow. Splitting the country right down the middle is the Rift Valley, that runs from the Red Sea to the Zambesi, with its string of long deep lakes. Lake Turkana, surrounded by desert in the north, is one of these but the biggest lake of all, Victoria, in the east, is not.

What a fantastic, incredible part of the world this is!
One of the best ways to understand a place is to read what writers have to say about it.

Binyavanga Wainaina, winner of the Caine Prize for African writing 2002, tells, with good humour, how astounded he is, when reading literature by Europeans in his country, “by the amount of game that appears for breakfast at their patios and the snakes that drop into baths and cheetah cubs that become family pets. I have seen five or six snakes in my life. I don’t know anyone who has been bitten by one”.*

Karen Blixen or Isak Dinesen, was, of course, the most famous European writer with her novel Out of Africa. Both the book and the film were heavily criticised for over romanticising the colonial way of life. This in reality was not nearly so “noble and dignified” but in fact extremely debauched and sordid, full of racist, small minded people. Nevertheless many loved it, and those who know Kenya know that the beautiful photography was no exaggeration. Some also hold on to that vision of African nobility, dignity and beauty, maintaining that it is not something patronising or elitist but indeed still something worth striving for.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s books are set in that same fantastic landscape, yet focus firmly on the people and the characters are as wonderful or nasty as in real life. He is famous for writing in his own language - Gikuyu - and for telling the story of the fight for independence as it really was, not simply heroic black stereotypes against the nasty, oppressive British. The traumatised characters in “A Grain of Wheat” are victims of atrocities by their own people vying with each other for power. His later books, particularly “Petals of Blood”, speak of the post independence slide into corruption, nepotism etc. and he ended up in exile in the USA for many years.

So no, black writers, it seems, do not have to shoo elephants off the veranda or lie in bed listening to lions roaring outside the window. Their preoccupations are entirely different. While whites yearn for vast, empty landscapes, blacks love their kith and kin, their extended families and close knit communities. Whatever this says about their differences Kenya is certainly big and accommodating enough for all.

Or is it?
As the population expands the country seems to shrink. It is increasingly difficult to get lost in the vastness of Africa. Wild life habitats are shrinking as people take up more and more space and pressure is increasing from all directions. Nairobi, aptly nicknamed Nairobbery, is a sprawling, chaotic, dangerous place with its famous mutatus (mini buses), prostitutes, armed gangsters and flying toilets. (If you don’t have a proper one you just do your business in a plastic bag and fling it as far as you can out of your yard into some else’s). Some complain that lack of physical space also means lack of mental space. There is less room for new ideas. The poor don’t have time to think at all. People in power use fundamentalist rhetoric to keep themselves in power, ganging up on critical diplomats, homosexuals, journalists, the Anglican church in Britain and the USA etc. Many may not like what they see but are afraid to stick their necks out.

Dr Richard Leakey, the renowned paleonanthropologist and environmentalist who later became head of Kenya’s Wildlife Department and embarked on a crusade to save its natural resources, particularly the African elephant, came into conflict with all sorts of powerful people and ended up losing his legs in a plane crash that many say was no accident.

A BBC headline recently read “Little to celebrate as Kenya turns 40”. December 12 is “Jamhuri Day” and lavish celebrations are being planned but there has been a fierce row over this. The government plans to spend a million dollars on 12 days of ceremonies but many say the money should be spent on other things - drugs for Aids patients for example. Only two years ago, in December 2002, there was dancing in the streets as the new National Rainbow Coalition under Mwai Kibaki took over from Daneil Arap Moi who had been in power for 24 years. Yet so soon after disillusionment has set in. Many say he has not done enough to get rid of corruption. Unemployment and crime continue to rise, basic infrastructure such as roads, phones, railways and electricity continues to deteriorate.

Looking on the bright side, Kenyans have recently played a very important role in both the Sudanese and Somali peace processes with, it seems, some long awaited success.

And there is Wangari Maathi! To her complete surprise she won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for her environmental and human rights work, the first African woman to do so. She is the Deputy Environment Minister and is known as “The Tree Woman” because of her campaign to plant trees. The Green Belt Movement has done much to slow deforestation and so long as Kenyans have people like her perhaps they need not be so pessimistic.

But, then, Kenya has so many people like her! There is so much talent - writers, musicians, sports people, business entrepreneurs, wild life experts, farmers, teachers, the list is endless. And there are probably even more in the Diaspora. It is hard to imagine how so many clever people cannot succeed if they work together. Now is the time to start really moving ahead, for all the qualified and talented people abroad to come home, for everyone to get on with developing the country. Kenyans, on their 40th anniversary of independence, need to unite in celebration of their vast human resources – talent, knowledge, expertise and, above all, diversity.

*Discovering Home, Binyavanga Wainaina.

IKEA

We got onto the bus and it drove over the bridge across the River Neva and out of the city. One passenger had her dog with her. We saw the big yellow letters IKEA on a blue background from far away, they are on a sign which is higher than the trees. The same design is on the side of the building, a very big blue box with a car park all around it. We got out of the bus and walked along a special route to the entrance with a roof over it. We went into the shop through a big door that turned like a wheel. About ten people can walk inside one section of the wheel. IKEA shops are very popular everywhere in the world, and they are made to serve very large numbers of people.

Most places in Russia have a cloakroom where you can leave your coat. On this day there were too many people, so only children could leave their coats. I had a rucksack and they said that I should leave this in the cloakroom and carry my coat. If you have a child aged 3 to 6 you can leave him or her in a play room…usually for 2 hours or just one hour on busy days. They give parents a piece of paper with the time of collection written on it so that they don’t forget. I don’t know what people with dogs do.

The first place we went was up the stairs to the café. Here everything is self-service. You take a tray and ask people to serve you food, for example traditional Swedish meat-balls. If you want coffee, tea or a fizzy drink you pay for a cup and afterwards you fill it from a machine. While you eat and drink you can study the catalogue. They say that 160 million copies of the catalogue are printed all round the world – where I live, they delivered a copy to each flat. People who want to buy a lot of things can take a big yellow plastic bag to put them in. There are also different sorts of trolley. One has a seat for a small child and a place to hang the big yellow bag.

The area next to the café is for special offers. Then, there are a lot of pictures in frames and mirrors. After that, you come to a place where there are different rooms which you can walk into and sit down in. When you know what you want to buy, you have to look at the code on the price tag. This code tells you the place on the ground floor where you should go to collect the pack with the parts you want inside it. All Ikea furniture is in cardboard boxes and you have to put the parts together when you get home.

One of the main problems of life in Russia is the small amount of living space that people have in their flats. It is very unusual for a family to have a room that nobody sleeps in. So the idea of a “living room” or a “sitting room”, as we call it in English, is a bit different. Most people have a room with a sofa-bed that they open out in the evening to sleep on. I think it’s quite a good idea for Russian flats to have the bed on tall legs with enough space for a sofa under it. You can buy one in IKEA for about £200. On my visit to IKEA I didn’t buy anything because I live in a rented flat with lots of furniture in it. I just like looking.

DNA

Well, the pub was the Eagle, in Cambridge, the date was Feb. 28th 1953 (fifty years ago this week) , and the men were British biochemist Francis Crick and his American colleague James Watson. They worked at the Cavendish laboratories down the road. And they were not exaggerating. Soon their names were known not just to scientists, but to the wider world, and biology had changed beyond recognition.

What they had found was the structure of dioxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the substance which is in every cell in our body and carries the genetic code for all living things. If not exactly the stuff we're made of, it's the stuff that makes the stuff we're made of.

A few months after their excited announcement in the pub, they would publish a rather more tentative article in the journal Nature. Hidden away near the end was a single, cautious sentence which scientists regard as the understatement of the century : "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." Translated into less scientific language? Well, "We've found the secret of life!" might just do it.

A design for life
The beauty of their discovery was hidden in that modest sentence in their article. They had not just found the structure of a complex molecule, in the days before electron microscopes (Watson worked by cutting out cardboard shapes and fitting them together), but they had guessed that the form and function were linked. In finding the shape, they had discovered how DNA worked - how the genetic code is passed on. And they were proved right. The double helix of DNA (a shape famous enough to have been made into jewellery and perfume bottles) unravels into two strands and makes copies of itself. In this way, the DNA instructs our cells to produce more cells, each containing an exact copy of the original code. "It's beautiful, so beautiful!" - as Watson was later to remark.

A detective story
The tale of the race to find DNA has all the ingredients of a detective story. Colourful characters, human error, false clues, and academic competition all played a part, as rival teams of scientists converged on the elusive answer. And, as in a good detective story, the answer surprised everyone with its elegance and simplicity.

An unsung heroine
In stories like this, we like a moment when the scientist shouts "eureka!" and the DNA story has one. In fact, this moment excites controversy to this day. At King's College, London, Watson saw anX-ray crystallography picture of DNA ("Exposure 51") taken by the brilliant English scientist Rosalind Franklin. Franklin did not mix easily in the male-dominated environment of the labs, and it was her boss Maurice Wilkins (not on good terms with Franklin) who showed Exposure 51 to Watson, without Franklin's knowledge.

Franklin's photograph was Watson's "eureka" moment, when out of many possible shapes for DNA, he narrowed it down to the double helix. He sketched the shape on a scrap of paper and headed back to Cambridge "with pulse racing" to get back to work with his cardboard. The role of Franklin and Exposure 51 was not fully credited at the time, and she is an icon for female scientists to this day who feel that her work was undervalued by her male colleagues.

Rosalind Franklin died of cancer tragically young, and so was not to share the Nobel Prize with Crick, Watson and Wilkins in 1962.

Science fiction becomes science fact
Fifty years on, DNA is not only inside us, it's all around us. Genetics is big news. Debates rage over the ethics of cloning, the safety of genetically-modified vegetables, the right of insurance companies to gather genetic data about their clients. DNA fingerprinting is already used by police. Recently, the British arm of the Human Genome Project won a court case preventing private companies from patenting genetic discoveries. A rogue Italian scientist and a bizarre cult are claiming that the first human clones have already been born.

We hear a lot about the dark side of genetics, but medical researchers are optimistic that our new knowledge of the human genome will bring huge medical advances. Follow the links below to get informed about the latest issues.

Meanwhile, the Eagle pub is to unveil a metal plaque this week to celebrate that famous lunchtime in 1953. A modest marker of a moment that is still changing our world.

Glossary
biochemist (n) : a scientist studying the chemistry of living things
cautious (adj): careful
cell (n): the small parts into which all living matter is divided
cult (n): a group of people with strange or extreme beliefs
electron microscope (n): an electronic piece of equipment with which scientists can see extremely small things, such as molecules
exaggerate (v): say something is bigger, better or more important than it really is
genetic (adj) : related to genes - the characteristics we inherit from our parents and the way we inherit them
helix (n): a spiral shape ( one which winds round and round)
patenting (gerund): legally registering your ownership of an idea, design, product or piece of information
rogue (adj): acting alone and independently, without the approval of others
tentative (adj): careful and hesitant
unravel (v): to separate into different strands
unsung (adj): playing an important role in events, but not recognised for it
unveil (v): reveal to the public
x-ray crystallography (n): a scientific procedure for taking photographs which suggest the shapes of molecules

Lets Dance

Ballet

Ballet is a specific academic dance form and technique which is taught in ballet schools according to specific methods. There are many ballet schools around the world that specialize in various styles of ballet and different techniques offered. Works of dance choreographed using this technique are called ballets, and usually include dance, mime, acting, and music (usually orchestral but occasionally vocal). Ballet is best known for its unique features and techniques, such as pointe work, turn-out of the legs, and high extensions; its graceful, flowing, precise movements; and its ethereal qualities. These carefully organized movements tell a story or express an idea.

Wikipedia: Ballet

Ballroom dancing

Ballroom dance, refers collectively to a set of partner dances, which originated in the Western world and are now enjoyed both socially and competitively around the globe. Its performance and entertainment aspects are also widely enjoyed on stage, in film, and on television.

While historically ballroom dance may refer to any form of formal social dancing as recreation, with the eminence of dancesport in modern times the term has became much narrower in scope, usually referring specifically to the International Standard and International Latin style dances (see dance groupings below). In the United States, two additional variations—"American Smooth" and "American Rhythm"—have also been popularized and are commonly recognized as styles of "ballroom dance".

Wikipedia: Ballroom dance

Break dancing

Breakdance, breaking, b-boying or b-girling is a street dance style that evolved as part of the hip hop movement among African American and Latin American youths in the South Bronx of New York City during the early 1970s. It is normally danced to funk or hip hop music, often remixed to prolong the breaks, and is arguably the best known of all hip hop dance styles.

Breakdancing is generally unstructured and highly improvisational, allowing the incorporation of many different elements. A basic routine might include toprock, a transition into downrock, a display of power moves, and finally a climactic freeze or suicide.

Wikipedia: Breakdance

Capoeira

Capoeira is an African-Brazilian fight-dance, game, and martial art created by enslaved Africans during the 16th Century. Participants form a roda (circle) and take turns playing instruments, singing, and sparring in pairs in the centre of the circle. The game is marked by fluid acrobatic play, feints, subterfuge, and extensive use of groundwork, as well as sweeps, kicks, and headbutts. Technique and strategy are the key elements to playing a good game. Capoeira has three main styles, known as "regional", "Angola", and the less-well defined "contemporânea".

Wikipedia: Capoeira

Flamenco

El baile flamenco is a highly-expressive solo dance, known for its emotional sweeping of the arms and rhythmic stomping of the feet. While flamenco dancers (bailaors and bailaoras) invest a considerable amount of study and practice into their art form, the dances are not choreographed, but are improvised along the palo or rhythm. In addition to the percussion provided by the heels of the dancers striking the floor, castanets are sometimes held in the hands and clicked together rapidly to the rhythm of the music. Sometimes, folding fans are used for visual effect.

Wikipedia: Flamenco

Foxtrot

The Foxtrot (also: "Fox trot", "foxtrot", "fox trot") is a ballroom dance which takes its name from its inventor, the vaudeville actor Harry Fox. According to legend, Fox was unable to find female dancers capable of performing the more difficult two-step. As a result, he added stagger steps (two trots), creating the basic Foxtrot rhythm of slow-slow-quick-quick. The dance was premiered in 1914, quickly catching the eye of the talented husband and wife duo, Vernon and Irene Castle, who lent the dance its signature grace and style. It was later standardized by Arthur Murray, in whose version it began to imitate the positions of American Tango.

Wikipedia: Foxtrot

Indian Dancing

Indian classical dance is a misnomer, and actually refers to Natya, the sacred Hindu musical theatre styles. Its theory can be traced back to the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni (400 BC).

Dances performed inside the sanctum of the temple according to the rituals were called Agama Nartanam. This was a spiritual dance form.

Dances performed in royal courts to the accompaniment of classical music were called Carnatakam. This was an intellectual art form.

Darbari Aatam form of dance appealed more to the commoners and it educated them about their religion, culture and social life. These dances were performed outside the temple precincts in the courtyards.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi currently confers classical status on eight "dance" forms: Bharatanatyam; Kathak; Kathakali; Kuchipudi; Manipuri, Mohiniaattam; Odissi and Sattriya

Wikipedia: Indian classical dance

Line dancing

A line dance is a formation dance in which a group of people dance in one or more lines, executing the same movements. Certain line dances may be considered variations of circle dances, where people are joined by hands in chain, e.g., the Dabke dance of the Middle East. In fact, most circle dances may be danced in a line formation, rather than in a circle; this is most common when only a small number of dancers are available.

Wikpedia: Line dance

Salsa

Salsa refers to a fusion of informal dance styles having roots in Cuba and the Caribbean, Latin America and North America. Salsa is danced to Salsa music. There is a strong African influence in the music and the dance.

Salsa is usually a partner dance, although there are recognized solo steps and some forms are danced in groups of couples, with frequent exchanges of partner. Improvisation and social dancing are important elements of Salsa but it appears as a performance dance too.

Wikipedia: Salsa (dance)

Samba

Samba is a lively, rhythmical dance of Brazilian origin in 2/4 time danced under the Samba music. However, there are three steps to every bar, making the Samba feel like a 3/4 timed dance. Its origins include the Maxixe. There are two major streams of Samba dance that differ significantly: the Brazilian Samba music has been danced in Brazil since its inception in the late 19th century. There is actually a set of dances, rather than a single dance, that define the Samba dancing scene in the country; thus, no one dance can be claimed with certainty as the "original" Samba style.

Wikipedia: Samba (Brazilian)

Square dancing

Square dance is a folk dance where four couples are in a square beginning with Couple 1 (the couple facing away from the music) and going counter-clockwise until getting to Couple 4. Couples 1 and 3 are known as the head couples, while Couples 2 and 4 are known as the side couples. Each dance begins and ends each sequence in a square formation, with one couple on each side of a square. This is called being in your "sets-in-order". The dance was first described in 17th century England but was also quite common in France and throughout Europe and bears a marked similarity to Scottish Country Dancing. It has become associated with the United States of America due to its historic development in that country. Nineteen U.S. states have designated it as their official state dance.

Wikipedia: Square dance

Tango

Tango is a social dance originating in Buenos Aires Argentina. The musical styles that evolved together with the dance are also known as "tango".

Early tango was known as tango criollo, or simply tango. Today, there are many tango dance styles, including Argentine Tango, Uruguayan Tango, Ballroom tango (American and International styles), Finnish tango, Chinese tango, and vintage tangos. The Argentine tango is often regarded as the "authentic" tango since it is closest to that originally danced in Argentina and Uruguay, though other types of tango have developed into mature dances in their own right.

Music and dance elements of tango are popular in activities related to dancing, such as figure skating, synchronized swimming, etc., because of its dramatic feeling and its cultural associations with romance and love.

Wikipedia: Tango (dance)

Tap dancing

Tap dance was born in the United States during the nineteenth century, and today is popular all around the world. The name comes from the tapping sound made when the small metal plates on the dancer's shoes touch a hard floor. This lively, rhythmic tapping makes the performer not just a dancer, but also a percussive musician (and thus, for example, the American composer Morton Gould was able to compose a "concerto for tap dancer and orchestra"). The Encyclopedia Britannica definition for tap dance is: A style of American theatrical dance using precise rhythmical patterns of foot movement and audible foot tapping.

Wikipedia: Tap dance

Waltz

A waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in 3/4 time, done primarily in closed position.

The waltz first became fashionable in Vienna around the 1780s, spreading to many other countries in the years to follow. The waltz, and especially its closed position, became the example for the creation of many other ballroom dances. Subsequently, new types of waltz have developed, including many folk and several ballroom dances.

In the 19th century the word primarily indicated that the dance was a turning one; one would "waltz" in the polka to indicate rotating rather than going straight forward without turning.

Wikipedia: Waltz

AIDS

The West African Republic of Senegal has a population of 10 million (95% Muslim) and there are about 80,000 cases of HIV/AIDS in the country. It seems like a large number but in fact, at about 2% of the population, it's very low in comparison to other countries. And this percentage rate has not increased for the last ten years. The United Nations recognises this success and has named Senegal, the Philippines, Thailand, and Uganda, as countries which have done the most to fight HIV/AIDS.

How has Senegal achieved this?
The political stability of the country over the past few decades has been an important factor. But what other things may have contributed to this success story?

Social and religious values
There is no doubt that social and religious values are an important factor. The Senegalese culture is traditional and religious belief is strong. This means that there is less sexual activity outside of marriage than in many societies. And many young people still believe in the traditional values of no sex before marriage and being faithful to your husband or wife.

Breaking the silence
Many nations in the world have strong religious and social values, but the Senegalese government decided early on that the subject of HIV/AIDS must be discussed openly. Political, religious and community leaders could not treat it as a taboo subject. This wasn't easy. Speaking openly about the use of condoms means accepting that people may have sex outside of marriage. Religious leaders spoke about HIV/AIDS and condoms in the mosques. They still talked about sexual abstinence and fidelity as the best way to avoid becoming infected, but they also recommended condoms for those people who were not going to abstain from sex.

The National Plan
The National Plan to Fight HIV/AIDS was already in operation in 1987, less than a year after the first cases were diagnosed in Senegal. Its aim was information, education and prevention and it was the first such campaign in Africa. A compulsory class was introduced into the national curriculum in schools. Private companies were encouraged to hold classes for their workers. The government gave the campaign strong support and a regular budget and the religious leaders became strong supporters too. Senegal has a long tradition of local community organisations and there were marches and workshops all over the country. High-risk groups such as sex workers, soldiers and lorry drivers were specially targeted. Women were particularly important in this process. Senegal recognised that women need more than education and condoms. They need to have the economic and social power to say 'No' to unprotected sex. Many young, popular musicians also became involved in the campaign reaching young people all over the country.

Sex workers
Prostitution was legalised in Senegal in the 1960s. Sex workers were registered and had to have regular medical check-ups. Anyone who was suffering from a sexually transmitted disease was treated free of charge. This system gave Senegal two big advantages in the war on HIV/AIDS. Firstly, it wasn't too difficult to extend the system of testing and treatment to HIV/AIDS. And secondly, the fact that sex workers were registered and known to the authorities meant that it was easy to reach them with education programmes. Many prostitutes themselves became involved in educating other women, and distributing free condoms. Twenty years ago fewer than 1 million condoms were used in Senegal. Now the figure is more than 10 million.

Safe blood
In 1970, Senegal began testing all the donated blood in its blood banks. So, unlike many Western countries, infected blood transfusions never caused the spread of the virus.

International scientists
Senegal has HIV/AIDS scientists who are known and respected all over the world. Professor Souleymane Mboup, is a world-renowned AIDS researcher. He is most famous for his work on documenting HIV2, a strain of the AIDS virus which is common in West Africa. Professor Mboup is in charge of his country's National AIDS Programme. He co-ordinates the Convention of Research between Senegal and Harvard University in the United States. He also works with the African AIDS Research Network.

The future
So far so good, but Senegal itself knows that it still has a long way to go. The biggest challenge is to hold on to what has already been achieved. Many experts are afraid that this initial success will spread a false sense of security and people will become less careful. One problem is that Senegal is a regional crossroads. Many men go to work in neighbouring countries and return infected with the virus. There is still a great deal of poverty in the country and many people cannot read or write. HIV/AIDS grows well in these conditions. Large numbers of prostitutes are working secretly without registration. Many sex workers cannot afford to refuse customers who don't wear condoms. And if women had more economic power they would not have to turn to prostitution to feed their families in the first place.

So Senegal must continue with the work. And maybe we can all learn a little from what the country has achieved so far.

major effect on the Earth

Have you ever looked out of the window of a passenger plane from 30,000 feet at the vast expanses of empty ocean and uninhabited land, and wondered how people can have any major effect on the Earth? I have. But it is now becoming pretty clear that we are causing a great deal of damage to the natural environment. And the planes which rush us in comfort to destinations around the globe, contribute to one of the biggest environmental problems that we face today – global warming.

For those of us lucky enough to have money to spend, and the free time to spend it in, there are a huge number of fascinating places to explore. The cost of air transport has decreased rapidly over the years, and for many people, especially in rich countries, it is now possible to fly around the world for little more than the contents of our weekly pay packets.

Unfortunately, planes produce far more carbon dioxide (CO2) than any other form of public transport, and CO2 is now known to be a greenhouse gas, a gas which traps the heat of the sun, causing the temperature of the Earth to rise. Scientists predict that in the near future the climate in Britain will resemble that of the Mediterranean, ironically a popular destination for British holidaymakers flying off to seek the sun. If global warming continues, we may also find that many tourist destinations such as The Maldives have disappeared under water because of rising sea levels.

As usual, people in the developing world are having to deal with problems created mainly by those of us in developed countries. Beatrice Schell, a spokeswoman for the European Federation for Transport and Environment says that, "One person flying in an airplane for one hour is responsible for the same greenhouse gas emissions as a typical Bangladeshi in a whole year." And every year jet aircraft generate almost as much carbon dioxide as the entire African continent produces.

When you are waiting impatiently in a crowded departure lounge for a delayed flight or trying to find luggage which has gone astray, plane fares may seem unreasonably high, but in reality we are not paying enough for air travel. Under the “polluter pays principle”, where users pay for the bad effects they cause, the damage caused by planes is not being paid for. Aircraft fuel is not taxed on international flights and planes, unlike cars, are not inspected for CO2 emissions. Also, the Kyoto agreement does not cover greenhouse gases produced by planes, leaving governments to decide for themselves who is responsible.

So what can be done to solve the problem? Well, although aircraft engine manufacturers are making more efficient engines and researching alternative fuels such as hydrogen, it will be decades before air travel is not damaging to the environment. Governments don’t seem to be taking the problem seriously, so it is up to individual travellers to do what they can to help.

The most obvious way of dealing with the problem is to not travel by plane at all. Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth encourage people to travel by train and plan holidays nearer home. However with prices of flights at an all time low, and exotic destinations more popular than ever, it is hard to persuade British tourists to choose Blackpool instead of Bangkok, or Skegness over Singapore. Friends of the Earth also advise using teleconferencing for international business meetings, but most businesspeople still prefer to meet face-to-face.

However there is a way of offsetting the carbon dioxide we produce when we travel by plane. A company called Future Forests, whose supporters include Coldplay and Pink Floyd, offers a service which can relieve the guilty consciences of air travellers. The Future Forest website calculates the amount of CO2 you are responsible for producing on your flight, and for a small fee will plant the number of trees which will absorb this CO2. Another company, co2.org, offers a similar service, but invests your money in energy saving projects such as providing efficient light bulbs to villagers in Mauritius.

Yesterday I returned to Japan from England, and was happy to pay Future Forests 25 pounds to plant the 3 trees which balance my share of the CO2 produced by my return flight. Now the only thing making me lose sleep is jet lag.

about England

However, if I’m being really honest to myself, although I love them all dearly, it’s not my friends that I have sent over in the post and I don’t buy pots full of sisters each time I go back. No, I have to say that the two major things I miss about England are Marmite and Baked Beans. For those of you who haven’t had the honour to taste these English delicacies then I have added a couple of links at the end so that you can find out all about them. Read, taste and spread the word.

Just to make sure that I wasn’t just being a sad, mad English woman I asked this question to some fellow English people here and came up with some interesting results. Marmite and Baked Beans came at the top of their list too. Cheese and onion crisps and sausages were runners up and close behind were pubs and the milkman. We live in a lazy society where we like our milk to be delivered to our door. While we were on the subject I decided to slightly distort the question to find out what they didn’t miss. The good old English weather was mentioned, the price of property was something that they could well do without and the whole of the transport system came in at a very strong third position. One person decided that after missing pubs she didn’t miss ‘the rest’ but I’m not sure we can take this as representing the views of all English people!

I then took my research elsewhere, into my advanced English classroom, to find out what a selection of French students thought of when given the word ‘England’. There was a strange mixture of famous figure heads such as Tony Blair, the late Lady Diana and Mr. Bean. Music was a popular choice with Robbie Williams, The Spice Girls and The Beatles getting special mentions. Finally, a reoccurring image that these particular French students had of England was ‘the disgusting food’. It’s difficult to judge whether this is purely a French view as they compare their own gastronomy to our grub, or whether people world-wide have actually tasted Shepherd’s Pie and Yorkshire Pudding and have collectively decided it’s all disgusting. As long as it isn’t based on Marmite and Baked Beans I don’t really mind. It hadn’t escaped my notice however, that most of the things English people miss about England have some connection with food and drink and yet not only are we not renowned for our food, we are actually criticised for it.

It also has to be said that there is so much more to England. We have some amazing landscapes ranging from vast seas, pebbled beaches, lush rolling hills in the Peak District, expansive bodies of water in the Lake District, immense, windswept open spaces in the Yorkshire Dales, to the most beautiful thatched cottages in the Cotswolds countryside. Our country villages are quaint and cosy while our major cities are bursting with life and excitement. It’s not fair to dwell on the vibrancy of London without mentioning the multicultural melting pot of Birmingham, where as a student I ate some of the best curries ever (food again!), or the enriching, evolving face of Manchester. Go to cities like Oxford and you will be taken aback at the intricate and impressive architecture. Go to towns like Stratford-Upon-Avon and not only will you step inside the wonderful world of Shakespeare, you will also feel enveloped by poetry as you feed the majestic, white swans and take a stroll along the canals.

Whatever your interests England has something for you. If you like beautiful, historic buildings you can visit the largest ruined castle in England; Kenilworth Castle or go and take in the breathtaking splendour of Blenheim Palace, although it is said to be haunted by the ghost of one of the Roundheads, the soldiers who supported Parliament during the 1640s English civil war. In fact England is shrouded in legend and myths. The actual Patron Saint of England, St. George, whose saint’s day we celebrate on April 23, is himself a man of mystery. He is said to have fought off and eventually killed a fierce dragon, thought by some to be the symbol of Satan, in order to save a beautiful princess, again thought by some to be the symbol of Christianity. Other mythical characters connected to England include the legendary Robin Hood who stole from the rich to feed the poor, and King Arthur with his honourable Knights of the Roundtable. The legends don’t stop with people as we have our internationally famous set of stones in Wiltshire: Stonehenge. This is a circle of stones which according to historians took 1,500 years to complete and was designed possibly for astronomy observations or even sacrificial purposes. It still remains today one of the most visited sites in England despite being situated on what has been described as little more than a round-a-about.

England is a well-visited country. My students thought the people to be welcoming and I hope that from a foreign visitor’s perspective this is actually the case. There are copious reasons to go, and go back there. I haven’t even touched upon the sports idols we have; the champion rugby players, the iconic Becks (of the Posh and Becks variety), the horse racing, the cricket. Television is an institution in itself. If you delve deep below the hundreds of ‘Make your house lovely’, ‘Learn DIY in two easy steps’, ‘Buy and sell a house in a week’, ‘Buy and sell a house abroad in a week’, type programmes, or the millions of cooking programmes, (we’re back to food once more), England produces some excellent drama and comedy that countries all over the world have bought.

If you haven’t yet been then you should. If you’ve been, then when are you going back to discover some more? And if you’ve already booked your next tickets over then could I possibly ask you to send me a couple of jars of Marmite as, to quote Old Mother Hubbard; the cupboard is bare!

what is ecotourism?

Imagine the scene. You're sitting in the hot sunshine beside the swimming pool of your international luxury hotel, drinking your imported gin and tonic. In front of you is the beach, reserved for hotel guests with motor boats for hire. Behind you is an 18-hole golf course, which was cleared from the native forest and is kept green by hundreds of water sprinklers. Around the hotel are familiar international restaurant chains and the same shops that you have at home. You've seen some local people - some of them sell local handicrafts outside the hotel. You bought a small wooden statue and after arguing for half an hour you only paid a quarter of what the man was asking. Really cheap!

Is this your idea of heaven or would you prefer something different?

Before you read on, try the vocabulary activity, which practises words and phrases that are important for you to understand the text.

Nowadays, many of us try to live in a way that will damage the environment as little as possible. We recycle our newspapers and bottles, we take public transport to get to work, we try to buy locally produced fruit and vegetables and we stopped using aerosol sprays years ago. And we want to take these attitudes on holiday with us. This is why alternative forms of tourism are becoming more popular all over the world.

But what is ecotourism?
There are lots of names for these new forms of tourism: responsible tourism, alternative tourism, sustainable tourism, nature tourism, adventure tourism, educational tourism and more. Ecotourism probably involves a little of all of them. Everyone has a different definition but most people agree that ecotourism must:

1 conserve the wildlife and culture of the area.

2 benefit the local people and involve the local community

3 be sustainable, that is make a profit without destroying natural resources

4 provide an experience that tourists want to pay for.

So for example, in a true ecotourism project, a nature reserve allows a small number of tourists to visit its rare animals and uses the money that is generated to continue with important conservation work. The local people have jobs in the nature reserve as guides and wardens, but also have a voice in how the project develops. Tourists stay in local houses with local people, not in specially built hotels. So they experience the local culture and do not take precious energy and water away from the local population. They travel on foot, by boat, bicycle or elephant so that there is no pollution. And they have a special experience that they will remember all of their lives.

This type of tourism can only involve small numbers of people so it can be expensive. But you can apply the principles of ecotourism wherever you go for your holiday. Just remember these basic rules.

			Be prepared. Learn about the place that you're going to visit. Find out about its culture and history. Learn a little of the native language, at least basics like 'Please', 'Thank you', and 'Good Morning'. Think of your holiday as an opportunity to learn something.
			Have respect for local culture. Wear clothes that will not offend people. Always ask permission before you take a photograph. Remember that you are a visitor.
			Don't waste resources. If the area doesn't have much water, don't take two showers every day.
			Remember the phrase "Leave nothing behind you except footprints and take nothing away except photographs." Take as much care of the places that you visit as you take of your own home. · Don't buy souvenirs made from endangered animals or plants.
			Walk or use other non-polluting forms of transport whenever you can.
			Be flexible and keep a sense of humour when things go wrong.

Stay in local hotels and eat in local restaurants. Buy local products whenever possible and pay a fair price for what you buy.

Choose your holiday carefully. Don't be afraid to ask the holiday company about what they do that is 'eco'. Remember that 'eco' is very fashionable today and a lot of holidays that are advertised as ecotourism are not much better than traditional tourism.

But before you get too enthusiastic, think about how you are going to get to your dream 'eco' paradise. Flying is one of the biggest man-made sources of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Friends of the Earth say that one return flight from London to Miami puts as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the average British car driver produces in a year. So don't forget that you don't have to fly to exotic locations for your 'eco' holiday. There are probably places of natural beauty and interest in your own country that you've never visited.

biotechnology

Beer and Cheese
When you are drinking a cold beer on a hot day, or eating a delicious cheese sandwich, you can thank biotechnology for the pleasure you are experiencing. That’s right! Beer, bread and cheese are all produced using biotechnology. Perhaps a definition will be useful to understand how. A standard definition is that biotechnology (or biotech for short) is the application of science and engineering to the direct or indirect use of living organisms. And as you know, the food and drink above are all produced by the fermentation of micro-organisms. In beer, the yeast multiplies as it eats the sugars in the mixture and turns them into alcohol and CO2. This ancient technique was first used in Egypt to make bread and wine around 4000BC!

Antibiotics
Antibiotics are used to prevent and treat diseases, especially those caused by bacteria. They are natural substances that are created by bacteria and fungi. The first antibiotic was made in China in about 500BC – to cure boils. In 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and it was considered a medical miracle. Modern research is looking at the creation of super-antibodies which can kill bacteria and viruses inside the cells that house them.

Cleaning up
Our modern consumer society produces a lot of waste which needs to be disposed of safely and without harmful end products. Environmental biotechnology can help. Indeed, the use of bacteria to treat sewage was first practised in 1914 in Manchester, England. Vermiculture or using worms to treat waste is another environmentally-friendly practise and the end product is a natural fertiliser. Bacteria have even been developed to help with problems such as oil spills. They convert crude oil and gasoline into non-toxic substances such as carbon dioxide, water and oxygen and help create a cleaner, healthier environment.

Modern times
These examples of biotechnology are accepted by most people. However, the discovery of the DNA structure by Watson and Crick in 1953 was the beginning of the modern era of genetics and the following areas of biotech are very controversial. Read on…

GM food
The genetic modification of plants and crops has been in practice for many years. This involves changing the gentic code of these plants so that they are more resistant to bad conditions like drought, floods and frost. Supporters of GM food say that it can offer the consumer better quality, safety and taste and for over a decade Americans have been eating GM food. However, things are very different in Europe where genetically modified food is very strictly regulated and regarded with deep suspicion by the public. GM food has even been called “Frankenfood” in the press, a term inspired by the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. There is a great cultural divide between America and Europe over whether such food is safe to eat and will not harm the environment and the discussion is still in progress.

Cloning and stem cell research
1997 saw the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first animal cloned from an adult cell. This was a remarkable achievement which created world-wide debate on the ethical issues surrounding cloning. International organisations such as the European parliament, UNESCO and WHO all declared that human cloning is both morally and legally wrong. However, we need to make a distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. Nowadays the idea of reproductive cloning – creating a copy of another person - is no longer interesting for researchers. Instead therapeutic cloning is creating excitement in the biotech world. Key to this technique are stem cells, which are master cells that have the potential to become any other kind of cell in the body e.g. nerve cells, blood, heart muscle or even brain cells. Stem cells themselves have generated a lot of controversy as it was believed that only human embryos could provide them. However, it now appears that adult stem cells offer the same possibility. This would mean that a patient who suffered a heart attack could provide doctors with his adult stem cells which could then be implanted back into his heart and used to create heart muscle, replacing the muscle that was damaged. As the genetic code is identical, there would be no problem of the body rejecting the implant as, unfortunately, happens with organ transplants. In the future, biotechnologists hope that stem cells could be used to grow entire organs. In this way biotechnology offers the hope of revolutionising medical treatment.

In this brief overview of the history of biotechnology we have jumped from making bread to making human organs - an enormous leap- and it is clear that these modern practices raise many controversial issues. However, despite the debate, we can imagine that as biotechnology has been around for many years, it will still be around for some time to come - but who knows where it will take us?

asthma?

What is asthma?
Asthma is a condition that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and more than 5 million people in the UK are asthmatic, about one in thirteen people. It is a lung disease that affects your airways – the tubes that carry air to and from your lungs. It causes the muscles in these tubes to contract, the tubes themselves to swell and also causes sticky mucus to be produced. All of these factors can make it very difficult for a sufferer to breathe properly.

Shortness of breath, especially after exercise, coughing, or difficulty breathing while sleeping, are all common symptoms. These can be described as mild asthma attacks; however, they can usually be controlled by medication. A severe asthma attack, on the other hand, where a sufferer finds it very difficult to breathe, may require hospital treatment. How badly you are affected by these symptoms depends on what type of asthma you have; from mild to chronic; and how well you are able to control the disorder.

What causes it?
Asthma is not contagious, although it’s still not known precisely what causes it. People can be born with it; develop it in childhood, or at any age. If you have asthma, it’s likely that someone else in your family had it, as the illness is known to run in families. There is also some evidence that environmental factors, such as diet, housing conditions or smoking during pregnancy, can cause asthma.

Having the condition doesn’t necessarily mean you will suffer badly from the symptoms. Mild or moderate asthma can be easily controlled through medication or lifestyle changes. Additionally, all attacks need a trigger, and if these triggers can be identified and avoided, the likelihood of an attack decreases. Triggers can include: pollution, smoking, dust, animal hair, stress, pollen, exercise, and cold air. These triggers are personal to each individual sufferer, so if you have asthma, make sure you know what is causing your attacks, you can then better avoid these triggers.

History
Asthma is not a recent condition, in fact there is written evidence of the condition from ancient Egyptian times. The word asthma itself was first coined by the physician Hippocrates over 3000 years ago, and was the Greek for ‘difficult breathing.’ Over the years, people have tried many remedies both physical and mental, to combat the illness.

To alleviate the symptoms, people changed their diet, avoided polluted towns, or took herbal/folk cures such as tobacco smoke, owl’s blood, chicken soup, tar fumes, or acupuncture. Blood letting and opium were also popular treatments. Prayer and meditation were used to enable people to better control their own breathing. Some of these remedies or breathing techniques are still being used today.

Medicine and preventative measures
It wasn’t until the mid 20th century that doctors realised asthma attacks were caused by the swelling and contraction of the airways. Consequently, in the last 40 years there have been many developments in the treatment of asthma. There are presently two main types of medicine: preventers and relievers. A preventer is used every day and reduces the swelling of the airways, cutting the risk of an attack. A reliever, such as Ventolin, is taken when breathing has become (or is going to become) difficult, this actually relaxes the muscles of the airways, reducing constriction and improving the airflow. The medicine is usually taken using an inhaler.

Prevention is also good treatment, so if you have asthma, remember to keep generally healthy, take regular exercise and lots of vitamin C to avoid colds and flu – which can be dangerous for asthma sufferers. A healthy diet is also important, and do watch what you eat, as certain foods or food additives can be asthma triggers.

By taking the right medication and making the right lifestyle choices, there is no reason why most asthma sufferers shouldn’t be able to lead perfectly healthy and active lives.

Famous sufferers
There have been many famous asthmatics past and present. These include:

Beethoven, Che Guevera, Benjamin Disraeli, Marcel Proust, Bob Hope and Martin Scorsese

There are even asthmatic sporting heroes such as:

Dennis Rodman (basketball), Paul Scholes (football - Manchester United) and Paula Radcliffe (UK Long Distance runner)

The future
Unfortunately there is still no cure for asthma, although the development of new treatments has led to a much better quality of life for most sufferers. However, the number of people being diagnosed as asthmatic has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. This increase could be due to environmental or dietary factors, but for the moment researchers are puzzled.

It is not unusual for the symptoms of asthma to diminish as sufferers get older, although personally after 27 years I’m still waiting ...

assassination

The quote above was the reaction of Elizabeth Gaskell, an English writer, on hearing of the shooting of US President Abraham Lincoln in 1865; but it could well describe the feelings of millions on November 22nd 1963 when another US president fell victim to an assassin’s bullet. The event so etched itself into the collective memory that years after people could remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. There are few other types of historical moment that affect so many people in quite this way.

When in Rome
Back in the days of the Roman Empire, being the top dog was just as risky a business and assassination was an occupational hazard. If you take a look at the long list of emperors who met their death at the hands of others, you wonder what made the job so attractive. In the period between 284 and 41 BC, more than half of the 40 or so emperors came to a premature and violent end while in office, often at the hands of the soldiers who were supposed to protect them - from Heliogabalus down to Claudius and Julius Caesar, not forgetting Caligula this very week in AD 41.

Where it all began
The earliest known examples of assassination may be in Iran, where three Kings were done away with after palace intrigue in the 5th century BC. The father of Alexander the Great, Phillip of Macedon, received his coup de grâce in similar fashion a century later. The word itself is supposed to derive from an 11th century religious sect in Iran called the Assassins or Hashishim, who saw it as their duty to eliminate enemies in this way, their name coming possibly from their habit of eating hashish.

Headcount
Throughout history, political or religious succession has often been a bloody affair. In virtually every society, the phenomenon repeats itself. In the United States, four presidents have been assassinated, most recently of course John F Kennedy on that day in Dallas, Texas in 1963. In Russia three Tsars have perished in the same way. In Italy seven Popes, in Egypt, one President and two Prime Ministers, in France three kings, including the last…or was that merely execution?

Little triggers
So what exactly constitutes an assassination? The word always implies the murder of someone important, usually involved in politics. And the assassin is sometimes doing it for money, but more often for a cause. The Anarchists of late 19th century Europe saw it as a legitimate political weapon which would cause the downfall of the whole ruling hierarchy: President Carnot of France, the Empress of Austria, and King Umberto I of Italy were all sacrificed to this philosophy, although the edifice refused to crumble. Political extremists of the Far Left followed the same path in Italy and Germany in the 1970s. At certain points in history, however, such acts can set off a far larger chain of violence, as occurred after the slaying of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary in 1914 or the Prime Minister of Rwanda in 1994.

Democratisation of death
The demise of absolute rulers in the 20th century hasn’t put an end to this type of selective killing. Prime Minister was just as dangerous a position to occupy as king or emperor before it; Afghanistan, Burundi, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Rumania, South Africa, and Sri Lanka are among the nations that have had at least one PM assassinated at some point. A certain ruler of the United Kingdom narrowly escaped death from a bomb meant for her in 1984.

Fair game?
Political activists are also seen as legitimate targets for assassination by those who disagree with their views. Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Chico Mendes immediately spring to mind. More recently, it is powerful men in the world of business and law who have become prey to the dedicated assassin. In Europe, since the 1980s, German industrialists, Greek ship owners, Spanish bank directors and Italian judges have all been bumped off.

Hidden hands
Other states are sometimes involved in assassination by proxy: a prime example being SS leader Heydrich in Czechoslovakia during WWII, killed by resistance fighters on the orders of the UK government intelligence service. The involvement of foreign powers is suspected but still unproven in other cases: Salvador Allende, Prime Minister of Chile and Samora Machel, President of Mozambique, are but two; Belgium has now apologised for the part its intelligence services played in the death in 1961 of Patrice Lumumba, PM of Congo.

Give us the tools…
And how has the assassin plied his trade? In ancient times, the knife was favoured for a quick end and poisoning for a slower lingering death, while in modern times it is usually the gun, but not only. The bomb, the plane crash, the ice-pick and the exploding cigar have all been employed. And as for that infamous Russian personal lifestyle coach, Rasputin, poisoning, shooting, beating and drowning were all apparently necessary before he finally gave up the ghost.

The ones that got away
Which brings me to the subject of assassinations that failed. Cuba’s Fidel Castro must hold the record for the political leader who has survived the most attempts to get rid of him. He has employed a food taster for decades as did Roman emperors of old. In England, one plot that failed to kill the King James I and the entire parliament in 1605 is still commemorated to this day every November with fireworks and bonfires to symbolise the explosives the conspirators tried to use.

Inexplicable
And what about those public figures who were targeted out of the blue? I have always thought it rather bizarre that anyone would want to murder John Lennon or Andy Warhol, not to mention Olof Palme, the Prime Minister, and recently Anna Lindh, the Foreign Minister, of Sweden, one of the world’s most peaceful societies. It just goes to show you don’t have to be a tyrant or involved in a power struggle to be the victim of a madman.

Conspiracy theories
One persistent feature of assassinations are the conspiracy theories that go with them - did the marksman really act alone? Conspiracies are not difficult to construct. Ask yourself who would have wanted the victim dead and then collect a few facts about the crime that don’t quite tally. Add in the obvious point that high-ranking figures are often involved with the secret services and have access to sensitive information that ordinary citizens are not allowed to see, and you have yourself a very fertile mixture which can keep those with an active imagination busy for years .

By the content of their character
Whatever the true circumstances surrounding their death, many high profile figures live on long after they are taken from us in so sudden and shocking a manner. I leave you with the portentous words of Martin Luther King spoken on the night before he died. His life is now celebrated in the USA by a public holiday on the third Monday of January every year.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

archaeologists

Sometimes, archaeologists and historians work together. Take, for example, the study of the Romans, who dominated the Mediterranean area and much of Europe two thousand years ago. We know a lot about them from their writing, and some of their most famous writers are still quoted in English. We also know a lot about them from what they made, from their coins to their buildings. Archaeologists have worked on Roman remains as far apart as Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England and Leptis Magna in Libya.

Of course, for much of human history, there are no written documents at all. Who were the first humans, and where did they come from? This is a job for the archaeologists, who have found and dated the bones and objects left behind. From this evidence, they believe that humans first appeared in Africa and began moving to other parts of the world about 80,000 years ago. The movement of our ancestors across the planet has been mapped from their remains – humans went to Australia about 70,000 years ago, but have been in South America for just 15,000 years. The evidence of archaeology has helped to show the shared origin and history of us all.

It is very unusual to find anything more than the hard evidence of history – normally, the bacteria in the air eat away at soft organic material, like bodies, clothes and things made of wood. Occasionally, things are different.

A mind-boggling discovery
In 1984, two men made an amazing discovery while working in a bog called Lindow Moss, near Manchester in the north of England. A bog is a very wet area of earth, with a lot of plants growing in it. It can be like a very big and very thick vegetable soup – walk in the wrong place and you can sink and disappear forever. After hundreds of years, the dead plants can compress together and make ‘peat’, which is like soil, but is so rich in energy that it can be burned on a fire, like coal.

The men were cutting the peat when one of them saw something sticking out – a human foot! Naturally, the men called the police, who then found the rest of the body. Was it a case of murder? Possibly – but it was a death nearly two thousand years old. The two men had found a body from the time of the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain. Despite being so old, this body had skin, muscles, hair and internal organs – the scientists who examined him were able to look inside the man’s stomach and find the food that he had eaten for his last meal!

Why was this man so well preserved? It was because he was in a very watery environment, safe from the bacteria that need oxygen to live. Also, the water in the bog was very acidic. The acid preserved the man’s skin in the way that animal skin is preserved for leather coats and shoes.

How did he die?
Understandably, archaeologists and other scientists wanted to know more about the person that they called, ‘Lindow Man’. His hands and fingernails suggested that he hadn’t done heavy manual work in his life– he could have been a rich man or a priest. They found that he hadn’t died by accident. The forensic examination revealed that he had been hit on the head three times and his throat was cut with a knife. Then a rope was tightened around his neck. As if that wasn’t enough, he was then thrown into the bog.

So, Lindow Man was killed using three different methods, when just one would have been sufficient. The archaeologists believe that he was sacrificed to three different Celtic gods, called Taranis, Esus and Teutates. Each god required a different form of death. A sacrifice to Teutates required drowning, which is why he was found in the bog. Nobody can tell the complete story of Lindow Man. The Romans said that the Celts made sacrifices every May to make sure that there was enough food that year. Was he a typical ‘routine’ sacrifice?

An archaeologist called Anne Ross has suggested that Lindow Man was a special case. Why would an important man be sacrificed to three gods? Perhaps it was in response to the Roman invasion of Britain, which started in the year AD 43, close to the time that Lindow Man died. He might have been killed to gain the help of the gods against the Romans. It didn’t work. The Romans stayed in Britain for four hundred years and Lindow Man stayed in his bog for two thousand.

Say hello to Lindow Man
If you visit London, you can go and see Lindow Man at the British Museum, where he is spending some time in the company of more famous mummies from Egypt. Whereas the bodies of the Egyptian kings and queens were intentionally preserved, Lindow Man is with us by accident. Whatever his origins, it is a fascinating experience to see him face to face. I recommend it.

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Your turn
What are the most interesting archaeological discoveries in your country? What do you think of this article. Send us your texts and/or opinions.

Your texts

Fatima writes “Archaeology is a field that I don't have any experience with. More over it is not part of the subjects I usually read. However, the study of old things like bones, pots and other materials made from stone to find out about their history and their ages, and the civilization of the place where these materials were found, is important.

The Roman Empire was a very powerful nation at the time. They invaded many countries including Britain, where they stayed for four hundred years. About the Lindow man’s case the archaeological study did not reveal who he was. Was he from the Roman Empire or from the United Kingdom?

About this article the archaeologists believed that the Lindow man had been sacrificed three times to three different Gods. In my Opinion one can sacrifice living creatures to God. On the contrary, one cannot sacrifice dead creatures to God, unless dead creatures are required by the Gods. However, the ancient people in Britain at the time had intended to make three different sacrifices to three different Gods, but instead of that they were killing the same man in three different ways. So, the only killing which is counted as a sacrifice to God is the first one when they hit his head three times. In fact, the other two killings were not sacrifice because the man was already dead.

In my opinion, they did not find another rich men or priests to sacrifice, so they decided to cheat the other Gods. However, the archaeologist Ann Ross suggested that he might have been killed to gain help from the Gods. But it didn't work. On the other hand, the Lindow man remained in the bog near Manchester for two thousand years without alteration of his body.

In fact archaeologists mentioned that the body of Lindow man did not decompose and they were able to look at the last food he ate in his stomach after being in the bog for two thousand years – a remarkable thing, isn't it!!

In my opinion the scientists could have done another type of analysis besides their archaeological studies. They could have done an analysis of the components of the bog where the Lindow man was preserved for two thousand years. Chemical and biological analysis could have been done to know the secret of the bog.

In conclusion I think the Lindow man was killed in three different ways because it wasn't easy to kill him so they hit his head first and when he fainted they cut his throat with a knife and then tied him with rope to put him in the bog safely.

This is my personal opinion, however I am not an archaeological expert and therefore I apologize to the author of the article” Archaeology" Mr. Paul Millard and the other archeaologists who made the study - I was only trying to express my opinion and practise my English reading and writing.”

animals migrate?

Why do animals migrate?
Many types of birds, insects, marine mammals, reptiles, fish and large mammals migrate each year. The principal reasons for this are to reach suitable places for breeding, and to obtain better conditions for food, water and temperature.

Some examples of migration for reproduction are: fish, such as salmon, who migrate to spawning grounds (and change from saltwater to fresh water); sea birds, sea turtles and seals, who come ashore to breed; and whales, who journey thousands of kilometres to their breeding grounds.

Many birds migrate from cold regions to warmer zones in winter. Large herbivorous mammals, like moose, have winter and summer habitats, and some antelopes in Africa, migrate so as not to be caught in droughts.

How do they find their way?
There is evidence to suggest that animals that migrate possess a sort of inbuilt "compass". In one experiment, some starlings were taken from their usual habitat in Holland, to Switzerland. When these birds migrated, they went in the same direction as in previous years, but ended up in Spain instead of France.

Further experiments have shown that animals may use the sun, the stars (nocturnal birds), polarized light (on cloudy days), geomagnetic fields (pigeons, turtles) and landmarks (whales, insects) to help them find their way.

Irruptions
An irruption is an irregular movement of an animal population out of an area, with no return, caused by a sudden, explosive increase in that animal's numbers. The best-known examples of this involve lemmings and locusts. It is a common myth that lemmings commit mass suicide by throwing themselves over cliffs. What happens, in fact, is that every few years their numbers increase to such an extent that they must leave their usual habitat in search of food. Their instincts are so compelling that they will cross rivers or lakes by swimming, or continue their journey even if the land before them ends in a cliff or the ocean.

Some facts and feats
Passenger pigeons were once the most common bird in the whole world, occupying the whole of the eastern United States from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, breeding in their northern habitats and going south to more temperate climes in the winter.

They migrated in such vast numbers that the sun would be blocked out as they passed. Ornithologist John James Audobon wrote in his book The Birds of America: "Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles, the pigeons were still passing in undiminished number, and continued to do so for three days in succession." Another ornithologist, Alexander Wilson, noted "It was then half past one (when the birds first appeared in the sky). About four in the afternoon, the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous and extensive as ever." He estimated that in less than 3 hours he had seen a little more than two billion birds.

Other extraordinary accounts talk of the birds' droppings covering the countryside like snow, their cooing drowning the noise of hunters' guns, and nesting grounds covering more than 300 square kilometres in which enormous trees would crash to the ground under the weight of the birds.

Astonishingly, the passenger pigeon is now extinct. A combination of habitat destruction and commercial killing meant that the last surviving specimen died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Another example of an animal that once migrated in vast numbers, but was almost hunted to extinction, is the American bison. At the beginning of the 19th century, an estimated 50-60 million bison would migrate to richer pastures each year. "When the European settlers arrived … a mass slaughter began. At the peak of the slaughter, some 2.5 million bison were killed annually from 1870 to 1875 and the legendary 'Buffalo Bill' Cody claimed to have killed 4862 of the animals in one year alone". Unlike the passenger pigeon, however, conservation efforts saved the bison from extinction.

Guinness Book of Animal Records, p. 8

Other animals amaze by the great distances they cover during migration. The arctic tern is credited with the longest migratory flight. "It breeds mainly around the shores of the Arctic Ocean and then flies to the other side of the world to spend the remainder of the year in the Antarctic - a total distance, if it were to travel in a straight line, of at least 16,000 kilometres. In a lifetime, this is equivalent to flying to the Moon and back".

Guinness Book of Animal Records, p. 127

The grey whale is believed to undertake the longest known migration of any mammal. "Hugging the North American coastline, it swims from its winter breeding grounds in Baja California, Mexico, to its summer feeding grounds in the rich waters of the Bering Sea, and back again, every year. This amounts to a total annual distance of (up to) 20,000 kilometres".

Guinness Book of Animal Records, p. 117

The European freshwater eel is another great migratory creature. They are born in the Sargasso Sea, off the coast of the USA and the Caribbean, and then drift for some three years across the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe, where they live in rivers of the North Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean Seas. When the eels reach maturity, and conditions are right, they make their way down the rivers and out to sea to begin the long swim back to the breeding grounds of the Sargasso Sea.

For the peace of mind of any couch potatoes reading this, not all animals migrate enormous distances. The blue or dusky grouse "spends the winter in mountain pine forests and descends just 300 metres to nest in deciduous woodland where there is an early crop of fresh leaves and seeds".

Guinness Book of Animal Records, p. 128

acupuncture

Alternative medicine has become much more popular in the West in recent years. It seems that people are becoming increasingly worried about the side effects of drugs, and are turning to treatments such as homeopathy, osteopathy, yoga, reflexology and acupuncture to complement, or sometimes even replace, Western medicine.

An event in my life three or four years ago made me examine my own attitudes towards alternative medicine. After suffering from insomnia for a few months, I was feeling mentally and physically exhausted. A trip to my GP, and attempts at self-medication with nightly doses of Guinness and whisky, failed to bring any relief from my condition. My friend Tony, who was studying acupuncture at a college near London at the time, suggested that I visit an acupuncturist. Since I have a healthy fear of needles from waiting in line for vaccinations in gloomy school corridors, I was reluctant to take his advice, but by this time I was so tired that I was prepared to try almost anything.

I made an appointment with the only acupuncturist in my area, and after another nearly sleepless night, turned up at his room in the local alternative health centre the following morning. After taking my pulse, looking at my tongue, and asking a few questions about my diet and lifestyle, the acupuncturist correctly deduced that I was worn-out (I found this extremely impressive since he hadn’t asked me why I had come to see him.) He then inserted a needle in my right foot between my first and second toe, and, despite my anxiety, I fell asleep immediately. At the time I considered the whole experience to be close to a miracle.

What is acupuncture?
Acupuncture is based on the idea that energy flows through the human body along 12 lines or meridians. These meridians end up at organs in the body, and illness is the result of a blockage of the energy flow to these organs. To remove the blockage, an acupuncturist inserts very fine needles into the body at points along the meridians. This stimulates the flow of energy, and restores the patient’s health.

What is the history of acupuncture?
Traditional Chinese medicine has been practised for around 3000 years in the Far East, but is relatively recent in the West, and acupuncture only really became well-known in the West in the 1970s as people began to travel more frequently between the two areas of the world.

A significant event in the history of acupuncture came in 1971, when a journalist from the New York Times had his appendix removed in China, when on a trip to the country with Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State for the USA. Surgeons used acupuncture to deaden the pain of the operation, which greatly impressed Kissinger.

Although at first doctors in the West were often sceptical of the medical value of acupuncture, in the last few years it has become more established as an alternative to Western medical treatments, since clinical tests have shown that acupuncture is effective for a number of conditions.

What can acupuncture be used to treat?
In the Far East acupuncture is used to treat a wide range of complaints, and is also used as a preventative medicine, since it is thought to increase the body’s resistance to infection. In the West, the treatment is often used to relieve headaches, dental pain, back pain, and arthritis, and to treat depression, asthma, stress, high blood pressure and anxiety.

Who uses acupuncture?
Since acupuncture is known to be effective against pain, it is not surprising that many sportspeople have experimented with acupuncture when fighting injury. Martina Hingis, the famous tennis player, had a wrist injury cured through treatment, and English Premier Division football club Bolton Wanderers employ an acupuncturist to keep their squad in good physical condition. While in Korea for the World Cup in 2002, soojichim, a Korean form of acupuncture, was very popular with the German football team.

Cherie Blair, a well-known human rights lawyer, and the wife of the British Prime Minister, was recently spotted wearing an acupuncture needle in her ear, suggesting that she uses the treatment to cope with stress. The Queen of England is also interested in acupuncture, although she doesn’t use the treatment herself – she and many of her family rely on another alternative medical treatment, homeopathy, to keep them healthy.

What are the risks?
Finally, if you do decide to visit an acupuncturist, it is important that you check that they are qualified and registered to practise acupuncture. In the past some people have experienced allergic reactions, broken needles and even punctured lungs while being treated, although this is very uncommon.

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Glossary
allergic (adj): caused by an allergy.
appendix (n): appendixes a small tube-shaped part inside the body below the stomach.
arthritis (n): an illness which causes the parts of the body where bones meet to become painful and often big.
asthma (n): a medical condition which makes breathing difficult by causing the air passages to become narrow or blocked.
clinical (adj): relating to medical treatment and tests.
deaden (adj): to make something less painful or less strong.
dental (adj): relating to teeth.
GP (n): abbreviation for general practitioner: a doctor who sees people in the local area and treats illnesses that do not need a hospital visit.
homeopathy (n): a way of treating illnesses using very small amounts of natural substances.
insomnia (n): when you find it difficult to sleep.
miracle (n): something that is very surprising or difficult to believe.
organ (n): a part of an animal or plant that has a special purpose.
osteopathy (n): the treatment of injuries to bones and muscles using pressure and movement.
preventive (also preventative) (adj): Preventive action is intended to stop something before it happens.
pulse (n): the regular movement of blood through your body when your heart is beating.
puncture (v): to make a hole in something.
reflexology (n): a treatment in which your feet are rubbed and pressed in a special way in order to improve blood flow and help you relax.
sceptical UK (US skeptical) (adj): doubting that something is true or useful.
side effect (n): another effect that a drug has on your body in addition to the main effect for which the doctor has given you the drug.
significant (adj): important or noticeable.
vaccination (n): a substance which contains a harmless form of a virus or bacterium (= extremely small organism), and which is given to a person or animal to prevent them from getting the disease which the virus or bacterium causes.
worn-out (adj): extremely tired.

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Your turn
What do you think about acupuncture and other types of alternative medicine? Send us your opinions.

Your texts

Daniele writes “The topic of alternative medicine is a very interesting one because for the time being more and more people get ill due to several reasons. In fact, all the time modern society has to cope with very dangerous and/or stressful situations, which seriously jeopardise our lives every day. I think that it is the price we all have to pay for living in a technological world, and probably we need to be healed in a different way. I do think that people too many times abuse medicines, while we all should not underrate the side effects of such treatments. Though I completely trust traditional medicine too, if correctly used.
Acupuncture is a very effective way to defeat some diseases, since it has been used for several centuries, especially by far-east ancient cultures.
The fact that it does not have as many side effects as the traditional medicine is definitely a very good reason to consider it a reliable alternative in the complex sector of medicine. Nevertheless, I do agree with the author of the article, when he reminds us of the absolute importance of choosing a highly qualified professional acupuncturist, otherwise the effects could be worse than the illness itself!”

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Inna Vigolko writes “I have never used alternative medicine and I had heard almost nothing about it, but I think that alternative medicine isn't proven and I think that it is medicine based on illogical things. When we are born, we live in an atmosphere which has no influence on us - that's why I don't believe any energy comes through our body and definitely a needle won’t help us by taking away the bad energy. Once my mother went to an alternative doctor to cure her migraines. It was written that the doctor cured the wife of a famous writer so my grandmother wanted my mom to go there. The doctor pricked my mom's fingers and it didn't help her at all.”

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Mohammad Reza Shaygani writes “Alternative medicine is good for people who do not use chemical medicines. Every one who uses drugs increases his or her body’s resistance to medicines. Of course I agree with the use of a few methods of chemical medicine such as vaccination and so on. But in acupuncture how we can trust to the acupuncturist to be qualified.”

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Beata Chmura writes “I have never used acupuncture, but I often use homeopathy - I think it can help with some diseases. And the most important thing for me is that doctors who use homeopathy are more careful about prescribing antibiotics. It prevents many damages to our organisms.”