The World's "Missing Women"

The world faces a shift from young to old   Getty Images

"Fewer-than-expected females in a population could result in elevated levels of antisocial behavior and violence, and may ultimately affect long-term stability and social sustainable development."

"A broader objective relates to the need to influence gender norms, which lie at the core of harmful practices such as prenatal sex selection. This calls for broader legal frameworks to ensure gender equality."

Study conclusions

 

"While the [sex ratio at birth] is projected to decline in some countries, we also provide a more extreme scenario — that [sex ratios] inflate in other countries, such as Pakistan and Nigeria."

"Hence, we still need to monitor the possible emergence of imbalanced sex ratio at birth after 2020."

Dr. Fengqing Chao, statistician, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Makkah, Saudi Arabia

 

"[The figures come as no surprise] It will take time to remove deep-rooted custom and belief."

"Progress is slow and incremental but we are working on making girls valued and cherished instead of being seen as a liability who need a huge dowry to be married off."

Anuradha Saxena, member, women’s empowerment division, Sikar district, Rajasthan, India

Children from Anvi village in the Jalna district of Maharashtra, where the ratio of girls to boys has worsened since the 2001 census. Photograph: Sattish Bate/Hindustan Times

Dr.Chao is co-author of a new study which reaches the conclusion that men, by the year 2100, could outnumber women in a third of the world, the result of unwanted girls deliberately aborted or killed as well as girls dying as a result of inadequate health care and nutrition. Her predictive models were developed in conjunction with scientists at the United Nations Population Division in New York, the National University of Singapore, the Centre de Sciences Humaines in New Delhi and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, projections based on a database incorporating 3.26 billion birth records out of 204 countries.

Published in the journal BMJ Global Health, the study estimates that the number of "missing women" is likely to rise by a further 4.7 million by 2030 -- 50 and 43 percent of these occurring in China and India, respectively. Both countries where culturally, boys are more valued than girls and the tendency is to celebrate the birth of boys and bemoan girls' birth. Both countries are well known to have long since identified the disparity in gender numbers, both have enacted legislation outlawing gender-selective abortions.

In addition, 17 countries -- primarily in sub-Saharan Africa -- also are at grave risk of developing a sex imbalance whose result would be that men would vastly outnumber women in various countries which account for a third of the world's population, in eighty years' time. That cultural preference for male babies has resulted in a skewed newborn ratio in a dozen countries; only three of which -- South Korea, Georgia and Hong Kong -- have taken meaningful steps to correct the situation.

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An economist from India, Amartya Sen, published an important essay in 1990 where it was revealed that about 100 million "missing women" upset the worldwide balance resulting from decades of infanticide. The inevitable will occur on a broad spectrum worldwide, one that China and India already face, where eligible young women are in scarce supply and men search fruitlessly for a possible marriage match. Women fewer in number by far also have other options; prioritizing careers over marriage and motherhood, and/or biding their time until the 'perfect' match appears.

"Missing women" is set to come in conflict with "marriage squeeze" where "elevated levels of anti-social behaviour and violence" on the part of unattached and resentful young males may be triggered by their inability to find a marriage partner, settle down and begin families of their own.

The New Nuclear Family

‘The burden of raising a tiny human is losing its appeal for commitment-phobic, cash-strapped, travel-obsessed or simply career-prioritising millennials.’ Photograph: Jeffrey Kaphan/Getty Images

"I would see the raising up of pets and plants to the status of children as a reflection of this generation's widespread rejection of that traditionalist view [e.g. home ownership and marriage]."
"Many millennials would say that what makes any kind of caring relationship special is not the fact that it meets some objective criteria ... but because of the level of emotional commitment or depth the carer feels inside."
"Meaning-making for young people today has to do fundamentally with relationship -- cultivating, protecting and nurturing relationships with other living beings."
Galen Watts, Ph.D.candidate, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

"[This very millennial spiritual outlook] takes the relationship between parents and children and family members as a model of how we're meant to care for each other."
"I think when we see people, whether they're millennials or not, thinking of themselves as having a parental relationship with pets or plants, they're applying that ethic of care to a cultivation of the spirit."
Elizabeth Drescher, professor of religious studies, Santa Clara University

"It's a completely different relationship [now than with her pets growing up on a farm]."
"We loved our pets ... but Marlowe sleeps in our bed."
"After I got Marlowe, and her filling that need for me to take care of something, she changed my life. And I felt that I didn't need to have kids because I had so much love for her."
Sarah Ahmad, 38, HR professional

Pexels.com

Millennials, that generation of  young adults born between the years of 1981 and 1996 have cultivated a different type of intimacy and stable relationship for themselves than did their predecessors. The life-goal in earlier eras for young adults related to the customary social expectation that young adults would find a life partner, marry and eventually have children. This new era with its own culture and idea of family and what it should be comprised of, gives status to companion pets as children; young adults now viewing their own role as that of 'parents' to pets and even valued household plants.

The shift in sensibilities gives a hint of what it's all about. It is unbecomingly insensitive to state that one 'owns' pets and plants. Now they are viewed as having come into one's life requiring 'parenting', and that shift in relationship is quite serious. Whether for economic or other personal reasons, young adults now delay "traditional markers of adulthood", in favour of substituting marriage for living singly or together casually, and agreeing to parent companion animals to fulfill emotional needs both for the young adults and for the adopted pet.

Functionally, emotionally, that pet becomes a 'child'. A sociological survey of American young adults urged people to identify the greatest spiritually significant activity in their lives. The emerging themes appeared to be "the four Fs of contemporary spirituality": spending time with friends and family, preparing and sharing food, and being with "Fido" -- the beloved animals that fulfill our emotional requirements for intimate warmth and caring responsibility.

A dog holds a watering can in a garden. Millennials have begun to treat their plants and pets as children. Getty Images

In fact the caring ethic appears to have supplanted organized religion as a one-time source of meaningful connection for millennials. Religion is at a low ebb of recognized functionality as an emotional, spiritual tool of fulfillment in the wake of scandals in the Catholic Church, of fundamentalist churches like the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, of views of Islamist theocratic violence; all rejected and ready for replacement.

Religion became antithetical to caring principles held dear for society. Moral energy was redirected toward what would replace reliance on the church in the past. Like, for example, Sarah Ahmad living with her partner and sharing the love and companionship of two-year-old yellow Lab Marlowe whom both young adults love as though the Lab was a child. And to the Lab's new 'parents', she is their child.

Oh well, while we're at it, let's be fair about this. Older, mature and very mature adults who have gone through the traditional mode of life fulfillment; were married, had children, raised them, and became empty-nesters are not all that different in the later phase of their lives than these young millennials. Their children gone, there is a vacuum and that gap is often filled by the acquisition of a household pet or two.

And those pets take the place, as it were, of the grown, independent children off on their own. These welcomed and emotionally valued animals become the new 'children' whom empty-nesters 'parent' and lavish their attention and love upon.

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C-Section Party-Time, Brazil

The Washington Post

"It's cultural. Brazilians want to plan for everything. They don't want to hit traffic on the way to the
 hospital."
"They want to get their nails done, get a wax, to play it like an event."
Marcia da Costa, director, Sao Luiz Hospital, Sao Paulo

"We saw that we had to re-evaluate these percentages and make sure that birth decisions were being geared toward the health of the mother and  the child, and not for convenience."
"Here we had the opposite statistics [to the WHO estimate that ten percent of births require a C-section."
Rodrigo Agular, director, National Supplementary Health Agency, Brazil

"C-sections today are much safer than they were thirty years ago."
"Things are changing. Women are in the job market. Couples are trying to schedule a moment when the family can get together."
"[Caesarean sections fit some lifestyles]."
Olimpio de Moraes Filho, president, Brazilian Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology

"The mom has just given birth, she is learning to breastfeed, she doesn't want to entertain at home."
"So while she's getting ready for the birth, we are getting ready to host."
Paula Ascar Baracat, co-founder, Estudio Matre

"It [a natural birth] doesn't fit with our lifestyle. I'm a doctor, and my husband is, too. We have a very planned life and had to take vacation for the baby to be born."
"I love it [her hospital room, decorated in blue and white balloons, refrigerator stocked with rum-barrel-aged beer, her luxury suite lined with succulent plants, parting gifts for the 80 guests she expects]. To be surrounded by the people you love [as you give birth by C-section], people who saw you grow up, is extraordinary."
Bruna Viera, 32, Albert Einstein Maternity Hospital, Sao Paulo

Albert Einstein must be chuckling at yet another manifestation of human absurdity. True, he was absorbed with abstract, abstruse suppositions relating to physics, the cosmos, but his dry, amused comments on humanity and and peoples' proclivity toward extremes and the absurd were beyond entertaining, infused with wisdom and tolerance. Childbirth, the most natural experience a woman can have, the process nature designed females to undergo in the interests of natural increase of any population, is fairly straightforward.

In this busy-busy, distracted modern world of ours, patience is at a premium. People want things they anticipate to occur when they want them to; natural processes be damned. When a woman is in labour in hospital, her gynecologist is likely a very busy man, and he will, if it hasn't already happened on its own, break a woman's waters to speed labour and delivery. Women have taken to a more extreme level of management, opting for Caesarean Section over natural delivery in a bid to 'save time'.

Women appear increasingly in North America to look upon a C-section delivery as convenient and desirable. Gone are the days when such invasive surgery was looked upon with dread, a misfortune, a procedure undertaken to save a baby's life because a natural delivery was unfeasible, the baby's position in the uterus awkward and dangerous, delivery potentially hazardous. Instead of delivering vaginally, as nature has intended, a surgeon slits open a woman's abdomen and uterus to extract the fetus.

C-sections are 'legitimate' in the sense of being medically required in but ten percent of pregnancies. They are more expensive procedures to undertake than natural childbirth. At one time, the chance of death through C-section for both mother and child loomed dangerously; that danger has been dramatically reduced with modern techniques and well-equipped hospitals. Even so, hemorrhage and infection is more likely to occur in an elective Caesarean than as a result of a natural birth process.

C-sections are linked to higher rates of respiratory distress, diabetes and the potential for high-blood-pressure for babies delivered by C-section. When the choice is made for a premature C-section related to some event that corresponds in time with the event, and the procedure is carried through prematurely in the fetal development stage, the chance of respiratory problems for the baby and prolonged hospital stays for mothers and babies is more likely.

The government of Brazil does not view the new cultural normalcy around C-sections in a positive light, the Health Ministry attempts to reduce the Caesarean "epidemic" by persuasion if possible, through legislation if not, with the government banning medically unnecessary C-sections in 2015, before 39 weeks' gestation. In the past, Brazil's public health system saw the health community lacking resources to monitor women through hours of labour.

In those situations C-section meant medical staff could monitor mothers for a shorter time period. At private hospitals, mothers began to favour C-sections. At private hospitals it has become routine for a pregnant woman in labour to have her hair and makeup looked after in her hospital room. About $500 as a daily fee allows a family to rent the presidential suite, with living room and bathroom to accommodate guests, along with a balcony and mini-bar.

A frosted window looking into the operating room at the Albert Einstein Maternity Hospital turns transparent during surgery, so guests may view the drama inherent in the moment of birth. Clients of businesses specializing in C-section parties taking place in private hospitals pay up to $10,000 for floral arrangements, guest books, monogrammed sheets, personalized water bottles, and silver-plated guest favours.

Mothers in Brazil have been opting to schedule their child’s birth rather than wait for it to occur naturally so much that the Health Ministry was forced to step in to try an quell the “epidemic." (iStock)

Director of the maternity ward at Einstein Hospital in 2015 conferenced with doctors, doulas, midwives, feminist activists and government officials in a discussion of possible methods that could result in an increase in the number of natural births at private hospitals in Brazil. The Appropriate Birth Project was launched in a partnership with 35 hospitals pledged to prioritize natural births over C-section deliveries.

They began by offering the same luxuries and party favours to natural births deliveries as is done with C-sections. Five new natural-birth centres with private showers and tubs were opened at the Einstein hospital. At Sao Luiz, those opting for natural births may select colours of lighting arrangements with their in-room whirlpool bathtubs. Ceiling Fairy lights can be blue or red, reflecting patient mood, with all rooms equipped with MP3 players patients can load with personal playlists.

In four years, the rate of natural births at Einstein increased close to 50 percent from 18 percent. Now, over 200 hospitals have adopted the same program.

"The changes have to be concurrent for everyone: women, their families, their workplace, doctors, nurses."
"When the husband comes in and says, 'I'm working, I need to know the date of the birth' -- it's about learning to plan for the unplannable."
Linus Pauling Fascina, director, maternity ward, Einstein Hospital

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Nature's Human Health Formula

"[There is no one 'true' diet for humans, who] can be very healthy on a wide range of diets."
"We know that because we see a wide range of diets in these very healthy [hunter-gatherer] populations."
"Our whole species has evolved from hunter-gatherer communities. We were hunting and gathering before we were us, and if you want to understand how our physiology works it is important to understand hunting and gathering and how it affects our bodies and health."
"If you go live with hunter-gatherers, the thing you’re overwhelmed by is how active they are. You are on your feet all day moving — you don’t have the luxury to be lazy, and that impressed me a lot."
Herman Pontzer, professor, Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, North Carolina

A Tsimane member. Image credits: jambogyuri.

"They [Indigenous Bolivian population] changed from their traditional diet to eating in town where everything is fried."
"They started eating fried chicken and rice and drinking Coca-Cola. Some of these folks can see a pretty rapid change in health."
Michael Gurven, anthropologist, University of California, Santa Barbara

"Close friendships and family bonds, low levels of social and economic inequality and lots of time spent outdoors are typical in hunter‐gatherer populations and other small‐scale societies."
"The absence of these in modern societies is associated with chronic social stress and a range of non‐communicable diseases, including metabolic disease and obesity. As we work to understand the evolutionary roots of modern disease, we should strive for a more integrative and holistic understanding of lifestyle and health among hunter‐gatherers today and in our collective past."
"Exercise may also help to regulate appetite, improving the balance between energy expenditure and intake and exercise has been shown to help maintain weight loss. The regulatory effects of exercise warrant further attention."
Study on diets of hunter-gatherer societies, published in the journal Obesity Reviews

Hazda Hunters, northern Tanzania

Diets, habits and physical activity levels of modern hunter-gatherer groups with lifestyles very like those of ancient populations took the attention of a research group whose findings were recently published in the journal Obesity Reviews. The major takeaway of the research was that in reviewing these small-scale societies all appear to exhibit generally good metabolic health, although their diets varied widely. Their diets, understandably, were represented largely by what was available to them given their geographic location and their cultural habitude in hunting and gathering.

Some of these tribes obtained around 80 percent of their calories from carbohydrates while others consumed mostly meat, yet almost all eat a mix of meat, fish and plants, foods packed with vital nutrients. On the other hand, fiber is a mainstay of these diets -- derived from carbohydrates stemming from consumption of vegetables and starchy plants with a low glycemic index -- not leading to rapid blood sugar spikes. Sugar remains a part of their diets, derived from gathering honey.

One other thing distinguishes them from modern society and which they all held in common; physical action where many of these tribespeople walk up to eight to sixteen kilometers each day. Peculiarly enough, the study found no higher energy expenditure levels than those expended by the average modern-day office worker, suggesting that exercise be recommended by health authorities on the basis of improving metabolic health -- not necessarily as an antidote to obesity through calorie-burning.

Healthwise, what sets these modern hunter-gatherers apart from their modern, cosmopolitan counterparts is a relative absence of chronic conditions such as heart disease, hypertension and cancer, as well as having lower obesity rates. They exhibit quite high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, even as they age, and Type 2 diabetes and metabolic dysfunction are conditions that are rare among these populations.

On the other hand, infant mortality rates, led by infectious diseases tends to be high and deaths occasioned by accidents, gastrointestinal illness and acute infections are commonplace, yet those who survive to adulthood reach their elder years fairly free from degenerative diseases of a type that are recognized as 'normal' in industrialized nations. In the hunter-gatherer groups, people tend to remain fit and active until death.

Studies indicate that when people of hunter-gatherer societies move to urban centres, adopting lifestyles so unlike their own, high rates of obesity and metabolic disease arise among them. Dr. Gurven from the University of California, researches the Tsimane in Bolivia -- a group with a subsistence lifestyle of hunting, gathering, fishing and farming -- studying them extensively and publishing detailed reports relating to their exceptional cardiovascular health and lack of diabetes.

However, among those he studies have been some who have left their villages to move to the town of San Burja located nearby, to take up sedentary office occupations, and in the process surrender their traditional diet. That alteration in lifestyle results in health-deleterious effects that erode their fine health condition so common in their traditional diet and lifestyle.

Dr. Pontzer and colleagues used data collected from the Hadza, a community commonly spending their time hunting and foraging in northern Tanzania, a reflection of how their ancestors lived for tens of thousands of years, consuming what is familiarly spoken of as "the oldest diet", relying on a limited number of foods whose lack of novelty and variety in such diets may explain why they tend not to overeat and become obese.

The greater the variety of food choices in modern society, the longer it appears, before people experience that 'full' feeling, a sensation understood as 'sensory specific satiety'. "It's the reason you always have room for dessert at a restaurant even when you're full", explained Dr. Pontzer. "Even though you've had a savoury meal and you can't eat one more bite of steak, you're still interested in the cheesecake because it's sweet and that button hasn't been worn out in your brain yet."

Foods rich in fibers are a staple of a healthy diet. This was one of the very few similarities across all investigated diets. Image credits: Keith Weller, USDA.

Gratuities Or Not?

"Overall, the current findings suggest that, if any restaurants are going to lead the movement away from tipping, it should be upscale restaurants and those restaurants should replace tipping, not with service charges, but with service-inclusive pricing."
"Indeed, the data suggest that only upscale restaurants can abandon tipping without suffering a reduction in overall customer satisfaction and only if they replace it with service-inclusive-pricing."
"These findings indicate that restaurants at all price tiers should expect the elimination of tipping to reduce online customer ratings. The only exception is expensive restaurants replacing tipping with service-inclusive-menu-pricing; in that case only can tipping be eliminated without reducing online customer ratings."
"Many restaurateurs hope to offset such costs [increase in minimum wages] by replacing tipping, which generates revenue management cannot legally access, with service charges or higher menu prices, which generate revenue management can control and distribute more equitably between front- and back-of-house employees."
"[Research] adds to a limited body of evidence that tipping increases overall customer satisfaction relative to that under alternative compensation/pricing systems -- especially when compared to service charge systems at less expensive establishments."
Hospitality research team, lead: Michael Lynn, Cornell University

Tipping benefits customers, while its elimination can harm their sense of self esteem.

We like to feel good about ourselves, and being generous to others helps us feel we're doing the 'right thing', it would seem. And when you're taking a taxi, being served in a restaurant, or tipping a bell-hop for example, it seems the right thing to do in the knowledge that these are low-wage services leaving those being tipped dependent on the generosity of those whom they're serving to supplement their earnings. There is a standard for tipping in the West, and people generally adhere to it, viewing it as a small part of the generalized social contract.

A research paper published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management had those involved in this study convinced that tipping makes people feel they have done the right thing. And that to institute a no-tipping rule would have negative effects. If there is no method by which customers who have been well-served can indicate their appreciation beyond a simple 'thank you', by proffering a cash award to a server, the feeling would be that server would lack motivation to continue providing good service.

So the impulse to tip isn't entirely altruistic in nature, obviously. Customers become concerned that with no incentive to the server through a cash award to provide good service, the level of care in serving would deteriorate. The study authors carried out by researchers at Cornell University point to tipping as a form of "altruistic conspicuous consumption" whose result is that in having the tipper feel good is psychologically beneficial, leaving people with the impression they are generous to others less wealthy than themselves.

Their research also led them to the conclusion that customer satisfaction would be hugely reduced were tipping to be left out of the equation. Customers actually self-report on their eating-out experiences and are inclined to feel better served where tipping is customary, attested to by online ratings. Where restaurants have experimented with alternatives to tipping, the comments tend to be more critical in nature; something is missing, that feel-good attitude.

Implementing a no-tipping policy for a restaurant leads to a reduction in customer satisfaction, according to the research. Which concludes that should eating establishments want to entirely satisfy their clientele, allowing free and voluntary tipping is the key instead of building tips into the meal price or by addition to the bill. The issue is a live one at a time when minimum wages have escalated so that restaurant owners try to make up for added operating expense by absorbing tips into general revenue that otherwise are directed to wait staff.

Data used by the research team was provided by the website ReviewTrackers with about ten thousand ratings of 41 restaurants at all price levels in a two-year period. The ratings gathered there had been posted originally on websites more familiar to must users, such as Yelp, Google, Facebook, or TripAdviser. This, at a time when one in five restaurants had committed to no-tipping policies, and other restaurants are moving in the same direction.

Needless to say the issue of tipping is a cultural one. And not all cultures agree with tipping. In Japan, famously, it is considered insulting to tip anyone in the service industry. There is pride in providing outstanding service, and it is expected by society that service will be outstanding. To imply that someone in the service industry requires an impetus provided by an additional cash reward is not looked on kindly in that culture.

'Till Death Do Us Part

"While wedding planners have fashioned an entire industry centered on that 'special day', Canadians themselves appear unconvinced that the day -- or the institution it represents -- is all that special anymore."
Angus Reid Institute report

"You see really significant numbers of people across those age demographics [18 to 34-year-olds] who are not convinced of the importance of marriage, whether it is civil or religious; who are not convinced of its relevance; and who are not convinced its necessity or relevance even when there's a child involved."
"The flattening of that across age demographics -- where you only really see people in the 65-plus age group likely to say that it is important across all those questions -- really stands out. We're now of an age where you see Baby Boomers or Gen-Xers telling their children or their nieces and nephews, 'It's not that important."
Shachi Kurl, executive director, Angus Reid Institute

Vancouver couple Nathaly and Jeff Nairn arrive at the Waterfront station following their wedding on a SkyTrain platform.  (Jennifer Gauthier/ For StarMetro)

How social convention changes over time! The sanctity of the marriage bond is no longer regarded as a 'must-do' for people deciding to spend the rest of their lives together. At least in Canada. Perhaps this is as much a reflection of the fact that divorce is readily attainable and so many marriages end up in separation and divorce, with or without children. Perhaps it's an indication that in such a distracted, busy lifestyle there's little patience for ceremonies that are costly and all too often temporary, and with such short attention spans prevailing in the general population it's just a nuisance factor.

So people, getting on with life, give short shrift to the customs of yore, with their heritage value and religious overtones in societies shifting inexorably away from organized religion. The poll undertaken by the Angus Reid Institute identified patterns reflecting the variant values of defined age groups. Where 18- to 24-year-olds and people over 65 appear to reverse the national trend in clear majorities feeling marriage is "very important", or "somewhat important" in their estimation, to consolidate romantic partnerships.

All women appear, irrespective of which age group they're in, to claim that in their opinion marriage is of least importance in a committed relationship, matching the opinion of men in general. Men over 55 years of age, feel the opposite. And nor do unmarried couples with children feel any different; for they too state that marriage is "not that important" or "not important at all" for a legal marriage to take place in circumstances where children are involved, any more than when there are no children in a conjugal relationship.


Among people between the ages of 35 to 44, that marriage-negative response represents the majority, reversed in the age range over 65 where, perhaps predictably, that age group feel positive about the importance of marriage in a family situation;  upholding a tradition supported by religious advisers advocating for the sanctity of the marriage vows and the stability and legality offered to offspring. Among visible minorities, people are far likelier to regard the institution of marriage as important.

Those differences aside, the aggregate rule the day; the cultural-social importance that marriage was once held to have is negated in Canada where over one-fifth of all couples now live common law, according to Statistics Canada, representing a greater than three times rate than in 1981. In addition, one-person households have become the most common type of households for the first time, surpassing those households of couples with children.

In 1971 among 18- to 34-year-olds who married, there was a 56 percent margin, which has now, since 2011, descended to 22 percent.


This is not a North American phenomenon; there is an observable difference between Canadian and American attitudes to marriage. The Angus Reid poll used questions previously asked by Pew Research in the United States, to enable them to measure the differences. American results indicated a much more robust sense of the importance of marriage to couples intending to spend their lives together; over two-thirds of Americans responded that marriage was important to them, with half claiming it to be "very" important.

And while two thirds of Canadians feel that society does just as well should people cling to priorities other than marriage and children, their American counterparts shared that view by only 50 percent of the population.

Photo, Roy Hsu

Evolutionary Survival Advantages: Man as Marine Animal

"The Bajau have this subsistence that depends on marine foods, and they've been known to have this lifestyle for more than a thousand years. They're pretty incredible: They can dive for very long periods of time for more than 70 metres, with nothing but a set of rustic wooden goggles and a set of weights, nothing like the equipment we would use today."
"The Saluan diverged from them about 15,000 years ago, and they are not known to have this marine lifestyle. So the idea was to contrast these two populations with similar ancestries, but different lifestyles. We wanted to see if there was some difference in their genomes that could explain this."
"This gene existed before the Bajau, because the Saluan have it too. But once they diverged from each other, at some point in history, it became advantageous for Bajau individuals to have this after the Bajau adapted to this particular lifestyle."
"Individuals who had it tended to survive more than others, or maybe they had more children. The fact that both Bajau divers and non-divers have the large spleen points to the fact that this is something they have from birth rather than something they acquired through experience over time."
"We're [humankind] still evolving. Evolution hasn't stopped at any point in time."
Fernando Racimo, assistant professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

A Bajau diver uses a spear to hunt fish.  CNN

"The lung chest wall could become more compliant [the environmental adaptation displayed by the Bajau. There] could be some looseness that develops over your training [throughout a lifetime]. The diaphragm could become stretched." 
"The abs could become more compliant. We don't really know if those things occur."
"The spleen is able to contract to some extent but we don't know of any direct connection between thyroid and spleen. It may well be."
Richard Moon, Duke University School of Medicine

The seaside village of Jaya Bakti in Sulawesi, Indonesia, is inhabited largely by Bajau people   CNN

One scientist's exciting finding, can be another's perceived misinterpretation of observable facts. Skepticism on the part of one researcher in response to the ebullient !Eureka! of another, is the stuff of which science and research is made; there is always that 'prove it!' element. And Dr. Racimo of the University of Copenhagan believes his hypothesis is well and truly proven by what he and his fellow researchers at University of California, Berkeley -- teamed up to study in the mystery of how it is that some humans are capable of holding their breath beyond a five-minute period -- have concluded.

The Indigenous Bajau people, resident for millennia off the coast of Southeast Asia, more commonly called Sea Nomads -- inhabiting an ancestral area close to Malaysia and the Indonesian archipelago, are capable of diving up to 70 metres undersea. They wear primitive wooden goggles, and hold a set of weights; with one deep breath they dive and the astonishing length of time they can sustain that dive, with a breath they can hold for up to five minutes sets them apart from others, quite distinctly and dramatically.

As Sea Nomads, they live in traditional houseboats and each day hours are spent hunting fish and assorted creatures of the sea. Where most fisherfolk spend their time above water casting rods or nets for fish, the Bajau people do their fishing deep under water. The amazing free diving capacity is not seen anywhere else in the world, skills they possess that have been a mystery for centuries. Which led a group of geneticists and biologists from the University of Copenhagen and University of California, Berkley to the informed belief that the answer to the mystery lies in their spleens.

Jatmin carries a freshly-speared octopus back to his boat.  Photo: James Morgan

According to conclusions published recently in the journal Cell, the Bajau people may be possessed of a genetic advantage acquired through environmental adaptation over thousands of years; when natural selection gradually gave preference to those among them capable of performing such underwater feats not given to most humans and in the process a people emerged with enlarged spleens enabling them to remain underwater for vastly prolonged periods of time on a single, expansive breath.

The spleen has a key role in the process that evolves as humans dive into water where an autonomous "diving response" ensues, as breath is held while underwater. The spleen stores red blood cells, and during the dive response it contracts, injecting oxygenated blood cells into the circulatory system, becoming the fuel partially responsible for the process that allows us to hold our breaths. The amount of time we can spend underwater is directly related to the size of the spleen, according to the researchers' hypothesis.

This neat conjecture fits very well into the fact that Sea Nomads are found to have spleens about fifty percent larger than those measured by researchers in other Indigenous people living nearby, the Saluan. Ancestrally related to the Bajau, the Saluan don't share the gift of an enlarged spleen enabling them to dive for a prolonged period as the Bajau do. Melissa Ilardo from the University of Copenhagen's Center for Geogenetics was the lead author of the paper. She had travelled to Indonesia, hauling along a portable ultrasound to measure the spleens in the two communities.

Ibu Diana Botutihe has lived her entire life at sea, visiting land only intermittently to trade fish for rice, water and other staples. Here she is pictured on her boat in Sulawesi, Indonesia.    Photo: James Morgan

The researchers discovered the Bajau also was possessed of a  higher frequency of a variant of a specific gene, called the PDE10A, once they sequenced the genomes of a few dozen Bajau and Saluan test subjects. The conclusion was drawn that increased thyroid hormone levels in the Bajau are also thought to play a significant role in the process. Their decision, however, is not necessarily shared by other scientists who believe it possible that other adaptations could be involved in the diving capability of the Bajau; further study is required for a fuller understanding of the process, they stress.

Yet the anomalous environmental process that stimulated such an evolutionary advantage for survival is seen in other study groups where genetic mutations come into play among other discreet populations living in extreme geological and atmospheric conditions globally. Studies, for example, documenting that people living in Tibet appear to have benefited through natural selection to adapt to hypoxia, an oxygen deficiency resulting from living in high altitudes that can be fatal to others, but which the Tibetans have adapted to.

The Bajau are adept free divers. Some of them spend up to five hours a day under water, searching for food and other creatures for trade.   Photo: James Morgan

No! Not Black: Cream and Sugar, Please....

"Coffee today is like God in the Old Testament. It will either save you or kill you depending on how much you believe in its magic powers."
"After a certain point, all that ridiculous information can make you wonder, is science bullshit?"
John Oliver, Last Week Tonight

"Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter than muscatel wine!"
"I must have my coffee..."
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1732, aria, 'Kaffee Kantate'

Coffee, according to some scientists is packed with vitamins from Bs 1,2,3 and 5 to minerals such as magnesium. An antioxidant powerhouse. Anyone imbibing an average amount of coffee daily, say two to three cups (ha!), derives more antioxidants than they might from their daily consumption of fruits and vegetables. Which might, of course, speak to the fact that most people ignore the need to consume produce on a daily basis, but coffee lovers cannot overlook their daily cravings.

Coffee starts the day for almost everyone, and its most immediate effects are reliably, that energy surge, pinpoint focus, alert state, mellow mood and enhanced cognitive function. Deprived of that morning coffee life gets bogged down, we can't start the day, feel cranky and tired, and everything's a rotten bore. Nothing perks up mood, attention and ability to function quite so much as that requisite coffee.

Oh, there's much more, there's long-term benefits. How about a reduced risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's? Oh, and, just incidentally a lowered risk of various types of cancer. Coffee, according to the American Diabetes Association, can assist in lowering the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. A 2011 Harvard study even claimed a 20 percent lower risk of depression for coffee drinkers.

And if that's not enough, how about the World Health Organization's dietary recommendation for 2015 - 2020 associating health benefits linked to consuming three to five cups of coffee daily? Oh, you didn't need to be convinced? What on Earth did people do before 1600 and the introduction in the West to that wonderful brew?

Well, at about that time in history, coffee was considered a cure for alcoholism in Britain. Not everyone was convinced, however. There was a Women's Petition Against coffee promulgated in 1674 that read: "We find of late a very sensible Decay of that true Old English Vigour. Never did Men wear greater Breeches, or carry less in them."

So coffee's a boon to humankind, isn't it? Except ... except for a few niggling, perhaps unwarranted doubts. The consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest based in Washington warns that any coffee consumption at all during pregnancy may result in low birth weights, in miscarriage and !gasp! childhood leukemia.

A significant positive association was linked in a 2010 meta-analysis of 5,347 lung cancer cases and 104,911 non-cases which concluded that high, very high coffee intake may lead to lung cancer. Researchers at Maastricht University, The Netherlands, linked coffee consumption to a 20 percent risk increase for urinary tract cancer, through a 2010 study.

Oh, and there's more; the claim that coffee makes people less intelligence. People who drink coffee black, some studies contend, are likelier to be psychopaths. Yes, there are the trifling irritations resulting from coffee use, when too much caffeine can lead to anxiety, restlessness, insomnia, digestive issues and high blood pressure. 

Coffee, above all, is a.d.d.i.c.t.i.v.e.....

Bottoms up!

A Very Special Christmas Gift

"We found that, around Christmas, people are generally happier and they're also less anxious and more calm."
"Every time you see these moods arise you see an increase in sex searches on Google."
"I think we conclusively show it's not a biological adaptation to the solar cycle because even with Australia and Brazil we see the same holiday effect and they're in opposite phases at any given time. So it can't be a biological adaptation to fewer  hours of sunlight."
"This shows how data from social media can actually disprove a hypothesis that was the most well established one in biology."
"Now we just need to find out what the social triggers are that increase biological reproduction around these times."
"I suspect it's because Christmas is very family-centered and specifically child-centered in terms of gift-giving and the story of baby Jesus. Christmas also marks the end of a cycle because it's at the end of the year, so maybe this just makes people feel more calm."
Dr. Luis Rocha, professor of informatics, Indiana University

And here we thought that Christmas spurs feelings of nostalgia, of loving families affirming their faith in Christianity and the wonders of the birth of a baby who grew to be a man of immense philosophical wisdom to set out to teach the world that people have an obligation to one another, that their creator had invested them with the capacity to overcome their base instincts and emotions for the greater good of peace and equality and that to prove just how imperative it is, the creator was prepared to sacrifice his earthly son to emphasize that message and empower believers to achieve the goal that humanness imposed upon them.

So, apart from the ecstatic delight of children at the colourful blinking lights on evergreens growing from a pot on their living room floor, and all the wonderful gifts that a mischievous old elf clambered down their home chimneys to carefully array under that green, glowing tree, there is a special gift for adults, as well, beyond the amusement and pleasure afforded parents in witnessing their adorable children enjoy that cherished tradition.

Getty Images

Indeed, the holiday celebration of the birth of Christ represents a religious festival of immense importance to worshippers of Christ, the  holiday arriving at the bleakest of seasons in the northern hemisphere, when daylight hours are short and cold plagues comfort in every conceivable way. A time when family, near and extended, make a special effort to come together to renew familial bonds for the emotional comfort of reliving their commitment to one another and to the religion that provides them with the spiritual assurance they crave.

Now comes the result of new research, recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, concluding that during the Christmas season of bright good cheer, peoples' interest in sex reaches a crescendo. Data was analyzed from 130 countries with the use of Google Trends by researchers searching out sex-related terms through the space of a year, to discover a huge spike occurs when people Google sex terms just around the Christmas season.

That !Aha! moment that led to the further conclusion that this spike in sex interest nine month afterward resulted in a boom of September babies. Curiosity about the phenomenon spurred researchers to make use of Twitter to perform a "sentimental analysis" searching for words associated with emotion such as "love" and "thankful". What exactly might it be that during the Christmas season elevated peoples' amorous instincts?

There was an already existing hypothesis that held an abundance of September births was readily explained by examining biological factors not cultural ones, with the biology hypothesis leaning toward the human reproductive cycle, based on Earth's orbit, making it likelier to conceive around the winter solstice. This theory collapses somewhat when bringing in those living in the southern hemisphere when the winter solstice occurs in June. Only at Christmas time does sex-Googling spike.

The researchers didn't stop there. They forged on to discover that sex interest peaked as well during Eid al-Fitre which marks the end of the Islamic holiday of Ramadan. And while Eid al-Fitre is a movable celebration, not occurring on the same date yearly, sex interest nonetheless shifted, according to the holiday's presentation date. Furthermore, the pattern of these specific religious holidays eliciting in people an urge to procreate had no counterpart in other holidays.

Other holidays have much in common in a celebratory, cultural way with Christmas, resulting in family gatherings, time off work, special food, yet it is Christmas and Christmas only that inspires people to yearn for sex.

It turns out people are more interested in sex around the holidays, which could explain why most babies are born in August and September. Getty Images

"We didn't see a reversal in birth rate or online interest in sex trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres -- and it didn't seem to matter how far people lived from the equator."
"Rather, the study found culture -- measured through online mood -- to be the primary driver behind cyclic sexual and reproductive behavior in human populations."
Dr. Luis M. Rocha, study co-author

"Liberating" Palestine, Boycotting a Film Tainted by Israel

"I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens."
"Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children."
Israeli actress Gal Gadot

Israeli actress Gal Gadot arrives at the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Wonder Woman' at the Pantages Theatre on May 25, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images/AFP)

"In typical Lebanese fashion and because we definitely have our priorities in order, Lebanon’s government decided to rise up from its slumber and resist, even though the movie has been announced for over three years now."

"The fact of the matter is that if you have a problem with the content of a movie, the actor or actress leading it or anything pertaining to it… Simply don’t go watch it."

"Call for a boycott, but you sure as hell have no right in making sure no one else gets to watch it too."

Blogger Elie Fares --  “A Separate State of Mind” blog

It is a cardinal sin to be an Israeli. All the more so, an Israeli who served in the Israel Defence Force. And since everyone in Israel, male or female, is expected to serve through general conscription for a two-year period in defence of their nation, those who wish to see Israel destroyed feel justified in considering all Israeli Jews as criminal persecutors of Palestinians. The simple fact that Israel must maintain a standing army in preparedness for any contingency owes to the other fact; that its neighbours wish to destroy it.

Palestinians cannot have it both ways; waging both physical war with Israel and expecting Arab Palestinians to recognize their obligation to attack Jews in an effort to 'recapture' the land it sits upon as its ancient heritage, but which Palestinian Arabs contest as their very own, and engaging in slanderous propaganda popular wherever anti-Semitism thrives, eager to join the Boycott-Divestment movement. But eager and prepared to present itself as a partner for peace with Israel.

The film Wonder Woman, which sets out to portray women as physically powerful, courageous and as determined as any man, in a campaign to save the world, has garnered lots of praise and worldwide attention. Advance premieres have resulted in critics giving it excellent reviews, and people are eager to see the film, considered a first of its kind because it features a woman in a super-hero role, usually reserved for super-men.

"She's incredibly strong, but she also stands for something which is the opposite of being violent -- which is love, truth, compassion."

"As a woman, it was interesting sometimes that I would say, 'I think [females] might fight a little differently than [males] might fight."

"The challenge is to see both the good and bad of mankind..."

"We all want to bring, not only a hero to the world, but a message of helping anybody find their voice."

Patty Jenkins, director, Wonder Woman

Perhaps the director's words hit the issue square, though of a certainty they weren't intended to be political. But what she says and how she describes the film and what it explores in human relations appears to lead directly to Israel-as-metaphor.

Wonder Woman is opening during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and theatres in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait are scheduled to run the film. Oman and Bahrain are also going to feature this blockbuster that has aroused interest in theatre-goers worldwide. But film enthusiasts in Lebanon are just plain out of luck, because its ministry of economy has banned the film. Not because the theory  of a woman daring to do what men have always done is offensive to a religion where women are neither seen nor heard in public.

But because its star, a woman, is an Israeli Jew; a combination that makes for detestation and anger. Beirut had prepared to schedule the film at one of its cinemas but though posters and billboards went into play no one in the capital of Lebanon or elsewhere in the country will now see it because it has become symbolic of the state of war between Lebanon and Israel. Lebanon's Iran-led Hezbollah paramilitary group and the Islamic Republic of Iran, both committed to Israel's destruction, have, needless to say, great influence in this matter.

An Islamist Republic whose focus is on supporting terrorism world-wide and its creature, a terrorist group, both of which are helping Syria's mass-murdering president in his sectarian war against his own people would like the world to believe that it is Israel and its presence in the Middle East that is responsible for the violence, bloodshed and barbarism that floods the nations of Arab and Aryan Islam. The freedoms that Lebanese once enjoyed in a country once admired for its openness and social advancement has disappeared, with Druze, Christians, Sunni and Shiite Islam at one another's throats.

And it all began when the Palestinian Liberation Organization under the late Yasser Arafat made Lebanon its conflict outpost after Jordan's then-King Hussein refused to allow his country to continue to be overrun by Palestinian militias, attacking Israel over the border and destabilizing both Israel and Jordan. What the PLO failed to accomplish in Jordan (though a slow-simmering effort continues) it accomplished handily in Lebanon before it was forced from there, too.

But the chain of events leading from Lebanon's dystopian malfunctions which bred Hezbollah when the Iranian Republican Guard Corps infused Shiites with the sacred vision of jihad and martyrdom has entirely disrupted the country and its administration, the larger waves of which stimulated Sunni states like Saudi Arabia to encourage their own brand of death-dealing-and-loving jihad beginning with al-Qaeda and ending with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Should anything untoward happen to ISIL, the Muslim Brotherhood hovers in the background, infesting the Islamic nations of the Middle East and North Africa, and installing themselves throughout the Western world, infiltrating Europe, North America and Oceania.

 Bagel, Bagelry, Smoked Meat and Deli

"We must conclude that Christian Montrealers did not widen their taste for bagels, bagelries, smoked meat and delis to a taste for Jews nor for Judaism [for most had no idea they were buying] an artifact [of Jewish culinary heritage]."
"It would seem that Montreal's gastronomical heritage corresponds ... almost exclusively to Jewish culinary specialties."
"It was a neutral zone [affinity for traditional Jewish cuisine on St.Laurent Boulevard] that was a meeting point between the French, English and Jewish communities, and which enabled the bagel to become this iconic food." 
"Bagels and smoked meat were originally intended for the Jewish immigrant community but they soon became popular with workers [particularly those in the surrounding garment industry] who saw in them hearty and affordable food."
Oliver Bauer, theology professor, University de Montreal

Jewish Business News

"Quebecers likely think of smoked meat and bagels the same way they think of poutine -- as local Quebecois culinary staples."
"Those who are aware of their origins -- regardless of whether they harbour prejudice or not -- may subscribe to the same view as those who believe Jewish doctors are tops. A kind of reverse, albeit more gentle, racism."
Bill Brownstein, columnist, Montreal Gazette

Jewish Business News

According to Professor Bauer, and more than certified by the history of the Jewish presence in the Province of Quebec, and Montreal in particular, a general taste for Jewish dishes did nothing to persuade Quebecois to look upon the presence of Jews in their midst with more sympathy and favour. The culinary gap may have been bridged with the attraction of mouth-watering Jewish food specialties, but the culture gap remained unbridgeable.

And the simple fact seems to be that most gentiles have no idea whatever that bagels originated as a Jewish bakery item. "Most people are not making a political statement by going to Schwartz's", stated Professor Bauer, quoting sociologist Morton Weinfield of McGill University maintaining that a deliberate dissociation between smoked meat and bagels from Judaism and Jews helped Quebecoise support their traditional stance on "les Maudits Juifs"; detesting the latter and obsessively devouring the former.

The very fact that the Quebecois had the presence of Jews in their midst to thank for the presentation of delectable food had no bearing whatever in the general opinion of French Canadians with respect to the Jewish presence in their province, and complaints about the expanding Jewish presence at University de Montreal and McGill in the 1930s, were not about to be limited because of smoked meat and bagels.

The Jews thrived in Montreal, despite the presence of lively anti-Semitism, and so did the delis and bagel bakeries. The Jews thrived thanks to their insistence that they had a right to live there and attend university and do anything that any other person living in Quebec could aspire to, and they pushed back against adversity. The delis and the bagelries thrived because they had the custom of not only their Jewish clientelle but an ever-expanding army of specialty-food-appreciating non-Jews.



Schwartz's deli in Montreal is considered "a Quebec place and not a Jewish place". It was a 'Jewish place' and it still presents Jewish deli food, but it was bought out by Celine Dion, the Quebec/Las Vegas superstar celebrity, renamed La Charcuterie Hebraique de Montreal. Now in gentile hands, tradition prevails; mayonnaise, thought to be a dairy-based product, is not served with meat presented Kosher-style. And it is hugely popular with tourists who flock there to sample 'Montreal smoked meat'.

A Tourism Montreal blog invited readers to "taste Montreal's culinary heritage", listing ten restaurants, six of which are Jewish. Tourism guides always recommend bagels and smoked meat when visiting Montreal. Typically eastern European Jewish foods which 19th Century immigrants to Canada setting in Quebec to flee Central European pogroms brought with them, for nostalgia and comfort. St. Laurent Boulevard, the Main, was the dividing line between the city's anglophone and francophone communities, and it was there that most of the bagelries and delis were established.

Professor Bauer theorizes that the hole in the centre of bagels symbolizes the vacuum in the Jewish diaspora representing the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Others speak of the round shape representing infinity. Bagels are served at circumcision ceremonies for newborn baby boys, and during periods of mourning the death of a Jew. Symbolism galore.