Taste-Testing...!

"If you are trying to make products for consumers, you have to get responses from consumers."
"People will tell you what they like and what they don't like, but getting useful guidance out of that to be able to develop a product is really challenging. It's not good enough [a common response]. One person might want a stronger flavour, one person might want less. I made a decision to try to approach it systematically."
"In pharmaceuticals, it was all about making nasty things taste tolerable."
"The one lesson that I have learned with the big consumer packaged goods companies is that they often assume that since they have been making their product forever, that they know all there is to know about their product and their brand equity will trump everything else."
Chris Findlay, food scientist, founder of Compusense Inc., Guelph

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Squash, Pomegranate & Kale Salad

And so, people with very refined taste buds are hired as taught professionals to do what machines cannot; determine the taste and texture and aroma that will inform giant corporations producing food products how they should best adjust their practises for greater consumer satisfaction resulting in increased popularity and sales, benefiting their bottom line.

People go to work in a tasting laboratory which is dimly lit, so as not to distract these professionals from their work. These experts are seated in row at their stations to think about their sensory perceptions related to food products; how the product looks, smells, tastes, feels. Theirs is a rigorous process, their training is to deconstruct the experience of eating foods most consumers take for granted.

They make use of iPads to enter data, ranking for example root vegetables on 44 identified properties all related to aroma, flavour, texture. Are the test food objects sweet? Metallic tasting? Do they smell starchy or damp or root-like? What do they taste like? Consumer sensory testing is a new field to try to better understand the human palate.

The founder of this new food-tasting-testing science was trained as a chemist working in the pharmaceutical industry before setting his future as a pioneer in food science. Flavour resides in a combination of taste and smell and their interaction on the human tongue; their interpretation can vary widely from person to person. Dissecting flavour is a demanding science.


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Peppermint Chocolate Bark: 2 Ways

Some people haven't a very acute sense of smell. People taking medication find the chemicals in the drugs can alter their palate. Roughly 30 to 40 percent of people who go through the initial training stages end up producing inconsistent results. Among the general population about 25% are considered to be "supertasters", with an above-average sense of taste.

"They are trained in objectivity like everyone else. Our ability to judge is separate from our preferences", explained Mr. Findley. Chili peppers, for example; One panel tasting the peppers of Mexican origin, another panel represented by Caucasian Americans. The Mexican panel enjoyed the hot peppers, tolerated their intense spiciness. Yet the two panels using the Compusense method arrived at an objective measure of "heat" quite similar to one another.

Ranking potatoes on a total of 52 factors related to visual appearance, aroma, flavour, 'mouth feel' and aftertaste, the level of flavours were assessed as 'earthy' and mouth-feel variations like 'waxy' or 'crumbly'.

Aside from which appearance influences taste perceptions as well; hot chocolate served in a beige mug was judged to taste sweeter by most people than the same liquid served in a white mug. Rounded chocolate vars are judged sweeter on average than those bars with square edges.

Although computer technologies are capable of detecting and measuring flavour chemicals in foods and beverages, the electronic versions unlike the human noses and tongues cannot sense what will find favour with consumers.

What Jews and the Chinese have in common

By Michael Goldfarb Writer and broadcaster -- BBC News online 

Like most people on their first trip to China, I felt like an ocean swimmer trying to get back to shore pulling against a particularly vicious riptide, overwhelmed and slightly panicked.

It was not just the gigantism - the number of people, the epic infrastructure projects, the impenetrable air pollution.

It was that the place in many ways looks familiar - but just off-kilter, as in a dream - all those Western brand names on advertising hoardings, but you cannot read the ads because they are all in Chinese.
I had this strange feeling of knowing but not having a clue most intensely when I visited Shandong University in Jinan recently.

Shandong reminded me very much of the University of California at Berkeley in the US, only with 57,000 students - instead of 35,000 - buzzing and biking purposefully around from class to class, and they were much, much more earnest.

At the heart of the campus is a newish 27-storey building with a giant clock on the top, which houses the department of religious studies. 

Religion was the reason I had come to Shandong. I was making a programme about the simultaneous origins of Buddhism and Confucianism; Shandong is close to Qufu, Confucius' home town and a centre of modern Confucian scholarship.

The university's religion department also houses the Centre for Judaic Studies, China's one and only department of Jewish studies.

Its existence is one of those off-kilter things. Sure, American and British universities have Jewish study programmes, but in China? I was surprised.

But the man who runs the centre, Professor Fu Youde, told me I should not be. Confucian and Jewish culture have much in common.

"The core of Confucianism and Judaism is ethical," he explained.

"They both stress the importance of the relationship between man and man, and are based on the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you," he added. 

The fifth commandment enjoins Jews to honour their fathers and mothers. Confucianism also emphasises filial piety - but in a way Jewish parents can only dream of.

We were seated in Prof Fu's 17th-floor office, the neatest academic environment I have ever visited. The leaning towers of books and papers that characterise most senior academics' habitats were completely absent.

On his surgically sterile desk was a copy of Roget's thesaurus.
The thesaurus is a useful tool for the professor's work as a translator. Among the Jewish classics he has translated into Chinese - via translation into English from the original Hebrew, Latin and Arabic - are Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed as well as Benedict Spinoza's Hebrew Grammar.

It was Spinoza who provided Prof Fu with the connection to Judaism because of "the tolerance and generosity in his work".

 

The professor himself grew up in a time notably lacking in both qualities. The son of farmers, he was born in a mud-walled agricultural commune in 1956, just as Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign was getting under way. 

That disastrous attempt to collectivise Chinese agriculture led to famine and the deaths of anywhere between 20 million and 45 million people.

He graduated from high school in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. Universities were shut, and he spent five years working in a factory for one yuan a day before finally being allowed to attend university.

Prof Fu is an impressive man and had a remarkable grasp of Jewish history and religion but there was one element of Jewishness he seemed not to get: the jokes.

The Chinese are a very serious people but they do laugh. There are stand-up comedy clubs in China and a comedy channel on TV.

  

I spent an hour watching a television comedy channel. Everything was the same, the behaviour of the comedian at the mic, the cutaway shots of people in the audience laughing - only it was in Chinese, so I do not know what the jokes were about.

Anyway, I wonder if the Chinese can get the core of Jewish humour, its bitter irony. Heinrich Heine, 19th Century poet and essayist, described it best: "I try to tell my grief and it all becomes comic."
Prof Fu does not think humour matters.

"Jokes are important for Jewish literature," he said. "But as a culture, the core of Judaism is the law, as given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai."

"Well, I am not so sure about that," I replied, "Jewish culture is not simply the law. The culture has been shaped by how Jews have responded to persecution over the 2,500 years since the law was first written down in the form we know it."

Which, come to think of it, was in the same century when Confucius was formulating his teachings. So the Jews and Chinese are linked by historical coincidence, in addition to filial piety and the Golden Rule.

A Chinese chicken soup in New Hampshire, inspired by a Jewish recipe

 

We carried on into the afternoon discussing our people's cultural affinities.
"Jews love Chinese food," I pointed out.

"Also Chinese medicine," Prof Fu added. "I know foreigners who say 'I do not want to take Chinese medicine.' But my Jewish friends, many of them accept Chinese medicine."

This lead me to tell him a story about an Israeli acupuncturist, a Jewish Buddhist, who had treated me in India the previous week. But I will tell you that story another time.

Proactive Beats Reactive

"I waited to see people coming out of the residence. I said, 'Our house is going to be full, we can shelter them, keep them warm.' But we did not see a single person come out. We were wondering what was going on."
Francine Boucher, L'Isle-Verte, Quebec

Rescue personnel search through the icy rubble of a fire that destroyed a seniors' residence in L'Isle-Verte, Quebec.      Ryan Remiorz/AP

Located on the St. Lawrence River, north-east of Quebec City, the village of 1,500 is facing a tragedy. In such a small place, there are many who have been personally affected; their father or mother, aunt or uncle, grandparent might have been one of the 52 elderly and often physically incapacitated people who had made their home at the residence. Twenty people were rescued, they happened to be in a newer part of the complex which had been fitted out with fire sprinklers.

There were no fire sprinklers in the original larger building that represented La Residence du Havre.

Fire engulfs a seniors residence early Thursday a L'Isle-Verte, Quebec -- Photo Frances Drouin/The Canadian Press

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Fire engulfs a seniors residence in L'Isle-Verte, Que., early Thursday, Jan.23, 2014. Many of the 30 people unaccounted for in a fatal fire in a seniors residence northeast of Quebec City had limited movement and were confined to wheelchairs and walkers, a local official said Thursday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frances Drouin

- See more at: http://www.courierislander.com/news/yet-another-quebec-town-reeling-as-fatal-fire-rips-through-seniors-residence-1.798999#sthash.Y8zDjkP4.dpuf

The fire broke out on the second floor of this three-story wooden building of fairly recent vintage, just after midnight, when there would have been fewer staff around on duty than are present during the day. All the residents were asleep. Of those sleeping elderly people, thirty are unaccounted for, while five have been found, dead.

Firefighters were on the scene ten minutes after receiving the emergency call. Ms. Boucher described witnessing one failed rescue before the arrival of the firefighters. An elderly woman had telephoned her son from the residence, informing him of her peril. "She went out on her little balcony with a blanket, he came right away with a ladder and put it up to the balcony, but he could not go up there. There was too much smoke and flames."

Chief of the Isle-Verte volunteer fire department explained that by the time his men arrived "It was completely ablaze". Sprinklers are mandatory in Quebec seniors' homes only where the occupants are not mobile. Fire Chief Yvan Charron explained that his volunteers were able to access the new wing built in 2002 and equipped with fire sprinklers, but not the larger structure built in 1997.

Yet within that 52-person occupancy home there were many who were not mobile, dependent on wheelchairs, many were ill, one person was diagnosed with Alzheimers and one person was said to be blind. The staff had received fire-safety training and exposure to evacuation procedures. But scant few were present that night to aid their elderly, incapacitated charges.

One young woman in the village was awakened by her employer at 4:30 in the morning, calling to ask her to open the LeBarillet restaurant down the road from the residence so firefighters could come in to warm up. "They said there was a fire at the Havre. I immediately thought of my grandparents", she said. Her 92-year-old grandfather and 90-year-old grandmother had moved into the residence only two months ago, and they had perished.

As the restaurant's short-order cook she paid homage to them by cooking for the rescuers. "My thoughts are really with them today", she said through tears, "We have really experienced a tragedy".

Another resident of the village, Bernardin Roussel lives at home with his wife of 53 years, but at age 75 he had thought about moving into the residence to join some of his friends and neighbours who lived at the Havre. "They found it to be really nice there", he said. "Madame Bertrand, Madame Fillion. They are people we all know in a little village like this. It's not the same as you guys in the city."

The private residence operators note on the website of the Residence du Havre that it had won two "golden roses" in 2004 and 2006 from the Federation de l'Age d'Or duQuebec "for the quality of the residence and the care offered." Recognition for "meeting the highest quality norms" was awarded to them as well from the Regroupement Quebecois des residences pour aines.

All operators of private retirement homes in the province must maintain detailed fire-plans. The homes must also keep fire extinguishers handy as well as "other fire-protection equipment", with no explicit requirement in the law for automatic sprinklers. In Quebec City, Social Solidarity Minister Agnes Maltais was of the opinion that this tragedy might just stimulate the government to review regulations relating to seniors' residences.

Doesn't it always take a tragedy for action to be taken to attempt to avoid future such tragedies? Why, one is given to wonder, would a three-story building be built entirely of wood to begin with? A highly flammable building with no need under law to equip it with fire sprinklers.

Insufficient staff on hand to deal with an emergency requiring evacuation of infirm elderly people does not inspire confidence, awards and care-recognition aside.

 The Circuitous Treadmill

"It's sad to say that most pharmacists have come to accept this as an occupational hazard. As a gatekeeper for medication, they know there is always a risk ... that at one point they're going to be looking down the barrel of a gun or at the point of a knife."
"[Weapons can be varied; an aerosol-can/lighter combination turns into a] flame thrower; [dousing a pharmacist with gasoline with the threat to light up his life works well] "That's all it took. The strategies that are being applied, there's no end to them."
Allan Malek, senior vice-president, Ontario Pharmacists' Association

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Theft and similar losses represent a vital source of Canada's drug-abuse problem, fuelling the thriving street trade in illicit/prescription drug handovers. Health Canada requires by law that pharmacies, distributors and wholesalers report to them thefts, robberies, pilfering by employees, losses in transit, "unexplained" losses and any other noted absences of 'controlled' substances; prescription drugs whose use can result in abuse and harm.

Attention has turned to those opioid painkillers so increasingly popular that they have served to identify Canada second only to the United States in per capita consumption. The addiction and overdose death rate has mounted in lock-step with the rise in use of these potent medications. Both among people prescribed the drugs by a physician and those people who make their purchases clandestinely at street level.

Health Canada registers losses ramped up sharply from pharmacies in 2011 among four of the most popular opioids -- oxycodone, morphine, hydromorphone and codeine, with 415,000 tablets disappearing in 2011. Theft and losses from "licensed dealers"; distributors and wholesalers up the supply chain, spiked in 2010, decreased the following year and have climbed since 2011.

The medications are hugely popular. People don't like to feel down, depressed, restless and unhappy with the way their lives are unfolding. They don't want to accept that sometimes experiences in life aren't of the joyful variety, that in everyone's life there are times when sadness and depression prevails, and then, for the most part, for most of us, that time passes and we get on with life. People are impatient, eager to lift themselves immediately out of a funk.

"We're not always happy, and there are often good reasons for unhappiness. But there's this idea that we should all have high self-esteem, fantastic relationships and tremendous jobs.
"It's like cosmetic psychopharmacology: If you don't like the way you look, you go to a plastic surgeon and get it fixed. If you're not happy enough, go to a doctor and go on anti-depressants."
Dr. Joel Paris, professor, past chair, department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal.

Canadians rank among the highest users of antidepressants in the world, reporting the third highest level of consumption among 23 member nations surveyed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD figures show Canadians consumed 86 daily doses of antidepressants for every one thousand people per day in 2011, greater numbers than the UK (71 doses per day), Spain (64) and Norway (58).

Iceland, at 106 doses per 1,000 people per day, and Australia, with 89 doses were higher in antidepressant use than Canada. Retail drugstores in 2012 filled 42.6-million prescriptions for antidepressants, according to figures released by prescription-drug tracking firm IMS Brogan. And while Dr. Paris stresses that antidepressants are essential in cases of severe, debilitating, life-threatening depression, these figures reflect a far larger societal problem.

Pills like Prozac and its ilk are being swallowed daily by millions of Canadians who may not be aware and may be equally disinterested in knowing that studies suggest that in instances of mild depression, where, to quote Dr. Paris "you're still working, you're still functioning", the drugs don't often work, or they may produce a temporary placebo effect.

"And then you get onto this thing, where you try another one, and you try a third one, and then you add some other type of drug entirely. It's a whole treadmill of pharmacology people get caught up in. The fear of relapse has driven doctors to keep people on them for years", commented Dr. Paris.

These are not innocuous drugs; a decade ago pharmaceutical companies were ordered to add a warning that use of the drugs place people at increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour in the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs; selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And they can be addictive. Some people stay on them for years, because they're generally well tolerated.

"Part of the problem is that they're not toxic enough to make people want to stop them" Dr. Paris remarked.

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Canine, Feline -- Choice!

"Children in our study preferred dogs over cats in every comparison, and regardless of their familiarity with this species.
"The appreciation of less popular animals like cats probably needs time to develop, and appears more dependent on their physical appeal and on our contacts with them.
"In species whose young completely depend on their caregivers for sustenance and protection, (this) response has a clear adaptive value, contributing to enhance offspring chances of survival.
"What is interesting for us is the possibility that such a response may be generalized to the human-animal bond."
Marta Borgi, Instituto Superiore di Sanita, Italy

AP Photo/Cleveland Animal Protective League    At just three years old, children already see cats as playing second fiddle to dogs, suggests a new study of kids’ responses to animals

 

Ms. Borgi reported in the journal Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin that very young children will make a choice in favour of dogs over cats as a companion animal, or one that appeals to their sense of attraction. The study in question whose co-author was Francesca Cirulli, drew on the opinions and sensibilities of 272 children, three to six years of age who were given photographs of dogs and cats to consider.

Along with those of adult dogs and cats, a teddy bear, a human baby, a puppy and a kitten.

Most of the children stated their preference to be dogs over cats. Those that favoured cats over dogs generally had experience at home with cats. Animals with baby-cherubic features appealed to children, just as they do to adults. The animals' appeal to both is that they appear to be dependent, sweet and vulnerable, arousing a protective and caring attitude in the observer. It's easy to attribute a sweet disposition to a sweet-looking animal.

Animals with big eyes and round faces, floppy ears and small bodies were more preferred than the alternatives. When children were accustomed to seeing cats in their own home situation then they would make a choice in favour of cats, but the study authors found that the reverse had "no effects of having dogs at home but a statistically significant effect of cat ownership".

And then, the gender of the children themselves had a play in the choice with girls preferring a dog with infantile traits over a dog without those traits. The overall bias for dogs was not as prevalent as that for cats with baby-like features. Dogs simply made the grade in the majority of choices, over that of cats.

Rage Disorder

Just about everyone knows all about IEDs. They are Improvised Explosive Devices. Simple to make and devastating in their impact. Widely used in Afghanistan by the Taliban, who plant them at the side of roads where UN foreign forces have met with their explosive impacts. Resulting in death at worst and amputations at the very least. Of course ordinary Afghan civilians, farmers, children have also had experience with IEDs, but those are the 'unavoidable casualties' of conflict.

Now we learn there's another IED. This one is listed in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official "bible" of mental dysfunction. In that edition of psychiatry's listing of mental illness, IED is described as "recurrent, problematic, impulsive aggression", noted by its disproportionate reaction to the situations that happen to provoke the reaction.

Those reactions are characterized as explosive expressions of rage, verbal or physical. By people who, confronted with situations which would normally irritate, annoy or confuse people without the disorder, instigate a response so filled with provocation by those with the disorder they entirely lose control of their responses, they break or smash items and fill the air with loud and abusive language.

"These people blow up frequently, and it's getting them  into trouble. Not necessarily with police. It gets them into trouble in their relationships; it gets them into trouble at work.
"Sometimes they can mask it, or keep it under wraps. But after awhile, they can't. It's hard to live with these people."
"If you actually put inflammatory proteins into certain areas of the brain which are relevant for aggression, you can make animals more aggressive."
"What isn't clear is why the field or society is not interested enough in studying and treating these problems, which is just remarkable. The fact is aggressive people are not considered to be very sympathetic, because they're doing things to people.
"But the people we're studying are not psychopaths. They're not doing these things on purpose. There's a biology to this. There are circuitry issues that are out of balance, there is biochemistry that is out of balance. This is a real thing."
Dr. Emil Coccaro, chair, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neuroscience, University of Chicago

This man, who is an expert in IED, or "intermittent explosive disorder" has just had research findings published. Leading to the suggestion that people suffering from IED may be treatable. And the agent for treatment may be a pharmaceutical we use for a great many other health issues; Aspirin. Among adults, it would appear IED can afflict between three to five percent of the population. It commonly emerges in adolescent; age 13 for boys, 19 for girls.

Males are affected by the disorder more commonly than females, although the gender gap isn't very wide. It appears there's a connection between low levels of brain chemicals; notably serotonin and impulsive aggression. The research, published in JAMA Psychiatry, concludes that people with IED have higher levels than normal of C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 in their bloodstream.

Other studies demonstrate that people suffering from IED harbour a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. A medication for these conditions is not surprisingly acetylsalicylic acid. Dr. Coccaro and his research team are planning to test the anti-inflammatory drug Celebrex, in people with IED.

There's another issue associated with people with IED. People charged with the commission of certain crimes of violence often claim to be suffering from physical or mental problems. Hoping that they will be criminally exonerated from blame for their actions that have been harmful to others. Citing the belief that they suffer from IED effects when faced with a criminal charge, perpetrators of spousal abuse and other violent crimes might hope to avoid jail by claiming "rage disorder".

So now, we have not only crudely made bombs which are capable of wreaking havoc and killing people. We also have people with attitudes and emotions and reactions that are in effect, capable of making them into improved explosive devices, whose effect may produce a scene of mayhem and murder.

We Are Canadian, Hear us, Eh!

"We need the best data we can get to understand how immigrants are adapting, and to assess whether the policies we have in place are the right ones -- both for the country that's accepting people and for the newcomers who are arriving."
Kevin McQuillan University of Calgary, professor of sociology

rcinet.canada

"The devil is in the details but if you're a big-picture person, you can wipe the sweat off the brow. On both the national and provincial scale, I think (the NHS) caught the broader trends.
"[The figures are] relevant to the types of debates we're having in Canada right now about the place of religion" [in public life and criteria for voluntary as opposed to mandatory questions]. We need to justify why some things are considered private while others are not. There needs to be a genuine national discussion about it, and we need to do it reasonably soon."
Jack Jedwab, executive vice-president, Canadian Institute for Identities and Migration

Those interested in statistics have now been gifted with a few facts about Canada and its population they might have only guessed at before the publication of results from the National Household Survey. This survey took the place of the Statistics Canada mandatory long-form census that was abolished by government decree for a purportedly less-intrusive type of census questionnaire, equally lengthy and detailed, but voluntary in nature.

It was feared that making the census voluntary would result in few responses, and that answers would not be as forthcoming. The chief statistician for Statistics Canada resigned in protest over the turmoil that resulted from the abolishing of the long-form census. And university departments, private industry, news gatherers were all dismayed at the expectation that the once-reliable statistics gleaned from the long-form census would never be accurate through its replacement.

And government itself, concerned about the adaptability and streamlining into the Canadian way of life, and acceptance of Canadian values and laws will have some answers through the distilled responses. Canada has the highest proportion of foreign-born citizens of its collegial-member G8 countries.  An amazing 20.6% of Canadians were born elsewhere than in Canada, migrating to the country by choice or necessity.

And though there were stern denunciations of the cancellation of the long-form census with its replacement by a strictly voluntary questionnaire (one in seven households received the long-form census, while the short-form was sent out to the balance of households) responses were received from 2.65-million households to provide Statistics Canada with a fairly accurate look at the details of Canadian life and lifestyles.

We know now that fully one-fifth of the current population was born elsewhere than in Canada. And of that number 1,162,900 arrived in the country between 2006 and 2011, the last year which the numbers reflect. The gathered statistics also tell us that there are 7.9-million Canadians who profess no religious faith, a steep rise from the decade before. Of the largest faith in the country, 22,102,700 Canadians identified with Christianity; a notable decline of 10% since 2001.

 Median family income for families of two or more in 2010 was $76,600; while the median for single Canadians living on their own was $28,200; quite the gap.  This is the first Canadian census ever undertaken that resulted in the knowledge that more working-age females than males had achieved post-secondary qualifications; 64.8% as opposed to 63.4%. Women now account for almost six in ten adults age 25 to 34 with university degrees.

The much-scorned "one percenters", those in the high income brackets with earnings of $191,00 on average, close to seven times the national median, will remain detested by those hugely greater numbers considered the working poor. 

The Canadian Immigrant magazine

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A look at global population trends

Too many people is a big problem, but too few is a concern as well.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / September 21, 2013

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Aline Burasa (holding child) lives in Goma, Congo, with her six children. Her husband is a park ranger. Sub-Saharan Africa has the world's highest birthrate.

Mary Knox Merrill/The Christian Science Monitor/File

The story of the 21st century has been one of falling birthrates, rising standards of living, and a revolution in food production. But the global picture is uneven: As populations decline in wealthier nations, in other countries – particularly in Africa, says a new report – they are rising at rates that may mire their people in poverty.

Q: What countries are growing the fastest?
The 10 countries with the highest fertility rates are all in Africa, led by Niger, where women give birth to an average of 7.6 children. Burkina Faso, with a fertility rate of 6 children per woman, is the slowest growing of the 10, all of which are among the world's poorest countries as well. Recent research by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington projects that Africa's population will more than double by 2050, from 1.1 billion people today to 2.4 billion. Nigeria, already the most populous nation on the continent with 174 million people, is projected to be the third most populous in the world by 2050, with 440 million, after China and India.

Q: What countries are growing the slowest?
The surprising leader is Bosnia-Herzegovina, with just 1.2 children per woman. The others in the top 10 least-fertile countries all average 1.3 children per woman and include three Asian countries: Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. The others are in Europe: Moldova, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, and Hungary. The fertility rate in the United States is 1.9 children per woman, which implies a declining population. But America is expected to grow in the coming decades because of immigration.
The average global fertility rate is now 2.5 children per woman, down from almost 5 in 1960.

Q: So does that mean Africa is in trouble and everyone else is not?
Not necessarily. While there are major concerns that population growth will outstrip economic growth in many African countries, many other countries are deeply worried about the possibility of declining populations, which undercut economic growth and leave fewer and fewer workers to provide for systems that will burgeon with retirees.

Even China is worried about the effect of a declining population 35 years after instituting its draconian "one child" policy. China was concerned that it wouldn't be able to feed its people when it made it illegal for couples to have more than one child and engaged in forced sterilizations and abortions to cut population growth. China's population, now at 1.35 billion, is expected to drop by 2050.
Q: What are the solutions?

There aren't any easy ones when it comes to the African countries whose population growth rates are so high. Rising income and education levels lead to lower fertility rates, but accomplishing those first two things is challenging – even more so when a poor country's limited educational resources are swamped by a vast number of children.

Consider Niger, which the Population Reference Bureau compares to the Netherlands, since both countries have roughly 17 million people today. At the moment, 50 percent of Niger's population is younger than age 15, compared with 17 percent of the Netherlands'. And given Niger's extremely low standard of living, parents in Niger have an unfortunate incentive to bear more children: The bureau estimates that 43,000 infants died in Niger last year. In the Netherlands, by contrast, the figure was 650.

Q: Which countries are expected to have the largest populations in 2050?
India, which has 1.3 billion people today, is expected to supplant China in the top spot by then with a projected population of 1.65 billion. The US, though still growing, will fall from its current No. 3 position, with 316 million, even though it will rise to a projected 400 million. That will put it at No. 4, behind Nigeria, which is about one-tenth the size of the US in area.

Ethiopia and Congo are expected to join the top 10 by 2050, pushing out Japan and Russia. Congo's population is projected to rise from 71 million today to 182 million, and Ethiopia's from 89 million now to 178 million.

Criminally Segregating the Criminal Ill

The Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre on Innes Rd. in Ottawa. (DARREN BROWN/QMI AGENCY)

"What you have are correctional guards who really aren't properly trained to deal with individuals with more complex medical needs.
"For the correctional guard, it is easy to say 'This person is being difficult, I don't understand what they are doing or why they are doing this, let's put them in segregation or solitary confinement.
"While our client was in solitary confinement, she basically started mentally disintegrating and at times was acting out at staff, and they basically just left her locked in the hole.
"It's our view that Christina's treatment by the OCDC is the worst to ever come before a Human Rights Tribunal. It is our view that this kind of harsh and abusive treatment deserves the highest award of damages ever."
Paul Champ, lawyer

Mr. Champ is acting on behalf of 43-year-old Christina Jahn, a woman dying from breast and bone cancer. Aside from her very unfortunate death sentence of cancer, the woman has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and borderline anti-social personality disorder. She is, in other words, a woman hit with a double-whammy misfortune of mental health and a morbidly dread disease that is taking her physical essence, just as mental health dysfunction has given her psychotic moments in life.

This woman has also amassed a bit of a criminal history with a record for petty crime. Each time she appeared before a court for one of her outbreaks she would be sentenced to progressively longer jail sentences, as a repeat offender with whom the court was losing patience. Most latterly she had created a disturbance as she waited at the Ottawa Hospital cancer centre for treatment. She became upset over the length of the wait, to the extent that alarmed hospital staff and they contacted police.

When the police officer arrived at the hospital Ms. Jahn became belligerent. She was then charged with resisting arrest and causing a disturbance. There are many people without mental illness, afflicted by a physical illness they fear and which has made them exceedingly anxious. With their mind fixated on the illness, and hoping for some relief from the pain or anxiety they find difficult to endure, having to wait an extended period of time to have medical attention could provoke the beast in the best of us.

In 2012 she was returned once again to the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre after a shoplifting arrest. On this occasion also she was charged with resisting arrest, along with the charge of theft. She pleaded guilty, and spent 125 consecutive days in segregation. Segregation confined the woman to 23 hours of confinement in a small windowless cell. During which time jail staff failed to supply her with her cancer medication for which she asked, repeatedly.

Ms. Jahn, according to the guard on duty "began screaming, yelling obscenities through the hatch and generally being the thoroughly disgusting, rude and obnoxious inmate that all staff have experienced in the past". Her reputation well known, the general dislike of the woman appears to have guaranteed she would be ill-treated. She spent time in jail in 2011 and 2012; held on the first occasion in segregation for 83 successive days.

And during that stay was denied cancer medication, missed an appointment with an oncologist and as a result required an emergency mastectomy after release because of the galloping advance of the cancer. All of which led Christina Jahn to file a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. She is seeking damages as well as to effect a systematic change in how the province's jails treat the mentally ill like herself. She claims staff at the jail withheld her cancer medication, left her cell lights on through the night, removed her mattress so she had to sleep on the floor and shut off water to her cell.

Her lawyer, Paul Champ, decried the "excessive use" of solitary confinement as a controlling tool with someone suffering from mental illness. Mr. Champ is seeking $250,000 on behalf of his client in damages for "harm to dignity, humiliation, mental anguish and reckless discrimination".  The greater purpose of the plaintiff for the tribunal to achieve is to direct the provincial ministry overseeing jails for an improvement in the treatment of mentally ill inmates, and the monitoring of segregation.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services gave no comment. In 2011 a report produced by the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre recommended that the province take steps to build a separate facility for mentally ill female inmates. To match the one that already exists for mentally ill male inmates. A secure female unit, their report said, could save $21-million in incarceration costs and about $5-million in health-care costs annually.

It's not as though the Correctional Services ministry is unaware of the crisis in their ability to handle the needs of the mentally ill. A report that they had themselves produced found that 26% of female offenders have serious mental health problems. In other words, it is highly likely that their mental condition has helped to make them the rebellious social outcasts, oblivious to expected social norms, that they express. Royal Ottawa Hospital authorities call on swift action because in their opinion the number of women with mental illness is steadily rising.

The Effects of Segregation -- The Pains of Imprisonment versus Behavioural Deep Freeze

The Arbour recommendation for independent adjudication was not, however, based solely on the need to ensure compliance with the law and the legal characterization of segregation. Because, on her assessment of the evidence and the literature, "There is no rehabilitative effect from long-term segregation, and every reason to be concerned that it may be harmful," placing a prisoner in long-term segregation subjects that prisoner to greater deprivation than originally envisaged by the sentencing court and therefore the use, and in her view, the overuse of long-term segregation, must be subject to independent oversight.
In coming to these conclusions, Madam Justice Arbour reviewed the debate in the scientific and criminological communities on the effects segregation has on prisoners who are subjected to it. This was an issue which had been the subject of evidence in the McCann case in 1975, and in Prisoners of Isolation I reviewed the available clinical and empirical research on the subject; in particular, a series of experiments conducted by Canadian researchers in the 1960s and 1970s who had concluded that solitary confinement did not induce any change in a prisoner’s self-identity or blood pressure and therefore was not demonstrably more stressful than routine prison life. The problem with these and other experiments was that they bore no relationship to the typical situation facing prisoners confined in administrative segregation. The subject of the experiments were volunteers, the periods of confinement were of short duration (less than 10 days) and prisoners could terminate their confinement at any point.

"We argue that she would not have been treated that way if she had a different kind of illness. If you had a physical illness, you'd get proper medical care. But because she has a mental illness, the treatment option is to put her in solitary confinement. It's well supported by the medical evidence that it has serious deleterious effects on mental well-being of people who are well, let alone already mentally ill", argued Christina Jahn's lawyer with perfect confidence in his perfect case.

Taking Grave Exception....

Ignorance of all the News Fit to Print?

The British government has funded research of somewhat peculiar value, into the habits and proclivities of the genders where consumption of news is concerned. And the female of the species has been found spectacularly wanting. Which is, in a sense, puzzling. After all, what is news, but a type of gossip; passing information from one to another. Granted, gossip is taken to represent news of a more intimate, personal nature, in a limited geography, usually news that does not reflect particularly well on the individual under discussion.

But there are social scientists who hold that the human proclivity to engage in gossip is simply the beginning, fanning out to an extension of news-gathering and -dissemination. And in publishing news on a large scale, we have just enlarged the scope, as it were. The study, now concluded, has come to the understanding that women are curiously lacking in news uptake. In tests to determine the extent to which men imbibe news and become knowledgeable about current events as opposed to women, men win the stakes.

This information-gap by gender is constant whether one is speaking of the United States, Greece, Japan or Australia. Most people of either gender scored low in Colombia as opposed to Norway where such general knowledge tends to score high, yet in all countries tested, men's score of knowledge of current events ranked higher than their female counterparts. Cultural gender equality played no part in this; the evidence was similar whether from Britain or the U.S. or Japan and South Korea.

"The fact that political knowledge gender gaps have not shrunk in advanced industrial nations, despite women's progress in areas such as education and work presents a grim prospect for many developing countries.(?)
"In this cross-national comparative study, we confirmed that women's inferiority in political knowledge is a global phenomenon. This general conclusion can be explained, albeit not fully, by gender-biased hard-news contents in all countries and less exposure to media by women than by men.
"But we also discovered that gender gaps in political knowledge were wider in societies with advanced gender equity than in those with less advanced gender equity. Particularly, men in Canada Australia, Norway, and the U.S. score substantially higher than women."
Report, published in the journal Global Media and Communication

 In Canada, it seems older Canadian men appear more informed than younger men, the trend less evident for Canadian women. The more television news a person watches, evidently, the better informed, except, confoundedly in the United States and Colombia. Nationally, Americans were marginally more informed than Colombians! Norwegian women narrowly beat out Canadian men while Norwegian men scored supremely well.

Women in Canada correctly responded to one-third of questions put to them on current events. Men responded correctly in just short of half the questions. Placing Canadian women on a par with American men, as American women scored dismally; barely one in five questions. "I think it's because public affairs is indeed dominated by men. It may be that there is also patriarchal bias, but whether reality is being distorted or whether it is merely being reflected" is unknown.

"What is clear is that TV news is dominated by men in terms of the sourcing of stories across the world", said Professor James Curran, lead author of the study; professor of communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre.

Seems clear it hadn't occurred to him or his researchers that women are simply resigned to men "messing up the world", and pay them as little heed as possible, preferring to get on with life.

Egad!