Kim De Rijck, Science Editor De Standaard

Someone from FlandersBio reacted to the call in my previous post, to help find tools and technology that can be operated by voice, for paralysed people who cannot use their hands or head. He mentioned Sensotec, Technology & Integration and Skil. I didn’t find too many voice controlled devices on those three websites, but the last company seems to have telephones that can be operated by voice.

From another source, I received information that was less commercial: there is a center called Modem Communicatie- en Computercentrum that gives independent advice about improving the accessibility to electronic aids for people with a disability.

Thanks for all the tips!

Kim

A remarkable coincidence happened this week. For a story about brain activity during coma, I was talking on the phone with Steven Laureys, a neurologist from the University of Liège, who is an expert in this field. He also did a lot of research on people in a vegetative state. A vegetative brain still reacts on external stimuli, like pain or sound, but only on a primary sensory or motoric level. The connections to associative brain regions, for ‘higher processing’ or consciousness are not functional anymore. Vegetative people are awake but unconscious, while people in coma are not awake (they have their eyes closed) and are unconscious.

Just when the conversation with Laureys had ended, the phone rang again. A man called to ask if I knew any company or organisation that provides technical aid for paralysed people who can only use their voice and not their hands or head to command the instruments around them. He was trying to help an acquaintance. (I could not help him, so anyone who does, please contact me).

The man than started to talk about his daughter, who has been in a vegetative state ever since she was born, 28 years ago. She is at home where the man and his wife have taken care of her all these years. She needs some attention every half hour, so the situation has totally changed their lives. ,,We had to abandon all our adventurous plans in life. But still’’, he assured me, ,,I can say that we are happy.’’

The theoretical explanation I had just heard from Steven Laureys suddenly came very much alive. The man who talked about his daughter added that he would be happy to help with advice to anyone in the same situation. I have his details, so you can use my webform.

Kim

In many third world countries, local vegetables are forgotten or neglected. Mass produced ‘world crops’ like corn and cabbage have replaced them in the daily menu. The disapearance of the leafy vegetables from the diet often causes a lack of vitamins and minerals in the local population. This kind of ‘invisible’ malnutrition leads to diseases and underdevelopment in children and adults, even in places where plenty of food seems available. Obesity, due to the consumption of the easy food of the modern world - high in calories and fat - is increasing at a higher rate in developing countries, and is becoming a real problem in some urban areas. Diabetes and heart disease usually take a greater toll in poor countries, where healthcare is limited.

The organisation Bioversity International, based in Rome, is coordinating projects with local partners to re-introduce the traditional leafy vegetables. In Kenya, scientists, television, supermarkets, restaurants, and many other organisations worked together and succeeded in bringing the vegetables back to the supermarket and the local market places. After the success in Kenya, similar projects are starting up in other countries, where the effects on nutritional health will be monitored more closely.

I learned about this fascinating project from Patrick Maundu, a Kenyan etnobotanist, and Emile Frison, the (Belgian) director of Bioversity International (formerly know as IPGRI), whom I met at a biotech conference in Rome.

At the University of Ghent, Céline Termote told me about another (but related) project she is doing in Congo to bring more diversity into the local menu. She and her colleagues are identifying valuable (wild) fruits and vegetables in the jungle, in the hope they can be cultivated.

If you go to my article in De Standaard,  you might want to
c lick to the pdf: it is a double page with beautiful pictures.

Kim

The Genius Factory  is a book that I would recommend to every science journalist, and to everyone else.  It tells the story of a ‘Nobel sperm bank’, which was founded by Robert Graham in 1980 in the United States, with the aim to create a generation of ‘Nobel children’.

Slate journalist David Plotz found donors and mothers that once were involved in  the sperm bank, and talked to some of the more than two hundred children that originated from it. The family stories are brilliantly written and really touching, the portraits of the donors and the other people behind the sperm bank vary from hilariously funny to tragi-comic or simply pitiful.

Plotz brought some of the children in contact with their (until than anonymous) donors; a moving experience for some, a disappointment for others - some donors appeared to be not that ‘Nobel’ after all…

In his book (which also appeared in Dutch: Wonderkind op bestelling),  Plotz gives an interesting insight on how the eugenic ideology (selecting people on the basis of certain qualities to create a ‘better’ human race) grew and spread throughout the United States and Europe, and how it led to less ‘innocent’ events in history than the foundation of a sperm bank.

Here is my article about it in  De Standaard.
More about the book and the author: www.thegeniusfactory.net

Also highly recommended: My Unc le Oswald, a very funny story that Roald Dahl wrote in the eighties, inspired by Robert Graham and pushing the idea of a Nobel sperm bank just a little bit further ….

Kim

PS: One more tip: The most beautiful story I have read in the past year was Life of Pi,  by Yann Martel, a book you will never forget.

Just noticed something funny: today, the recently launched ‘international’ news channel France 24 features a science story  L’eau va manquer en Bolivie, about c limate change and melting glaciers.
The movie on the website begins with “Les Andes Boliviennes, altitude 5.000 mètres…”.  Web visitors who choose the English version at France 24  (Bolivian Andes facing water shortages),  hear in the same movie “The Bolivian Andes, altitude 15.000 meters…”.  A new world record ! 

Kim

Jef Leroy, a Belgian researcher at the Mexican National Institute of Public Health calculated (together with American colleagues) that many more children in developing countries could be saved if research money was better spent. Today, 97 percent of the research funding for the prevention of child death is used for the development of new technologies (new vaccines, medicines, diagnostics…).

Previous calculations have shown that even the best technologies could save only two million of the ten million children (younger than five) that die every year, if nothing is done about the availability and use of the medical aid.

However, six million children could be saved if the already existing technologies (rehydratation salts, musquito-nets…) would be more available and used. But only three percent of the child death research money is spent on research to make the current technology more available. Leroy calls it the 3/97 gap.

In the February issue of the American Journal of Public Health (and advanced online), he and his colleagues urgently ask for more research on the strategies that have the capacity to save most lives. (Article in De Standaard.)

With the name ‘3/97 gap’, Jef Leroy also refers to the 10/90 gap: only ten percent of all research funding on health is spent on problems of developing countries. The other ninety percent goes to health issues of the industrialized world.

 Kim

Het Nieuwsblad,  the more popular newspaper of the media-company I work for, is now also publishing my Science Shops (Wetenschapswinkel: a column in which I answer readers’ questions about everyday-life science). That is good news, because it almost multiplies the number of readers by four.

I have not heard any recent sales numbers of my Science Shop book yet, but it is still prominent in the book shops, so I suppose it is still doing well.

The latest question I answered in the Science Shop  was ‘Why does shampoo only foam the second time you wash your hair?’ It is an individual thing: shampoo can also foam the first time. The foaming depends on the skin type, the washing frequency and the amount of calcium in the water. And softer types of shampoo (like for children) may not foam at all. Warning for foam fans: too aggressive treatments may cause the skin to dry out.

My article in Het Nieuwsblad  has been edited a bit (shortened). The full version in De Standaard  is here.

Kim

Between Christmas and New Year, we made a Science Section in De Standaard  with a festive twist. In the Science Shop, the question of the week was ‘Do animals have a sense of humor?’ Very difficult to say. Apparently, rats can laugh, but that does not prove that they are joking. Funny ancdotes of parrots and chimpanzees suggest that some animals really have humor, but proof is hard to get. It is an intriguing field of research, and amusing too…

Kim

The Alps are finally getting some snow these days. With several skiing competitions cancelled earlier (lack of snow and frost, or excess of rain), the ski station authorities were getting a bit nervous about the late start of the skiing season.

I asked European experts on Alpine climate change if the white slopes will melt entirely in the coming decades, and wrote this feature about it in the science section of De Standaard  (you can go to the pdf to see the entire double page).

In November and the first half of December, snow cover has always been uncertain, claims Andrea Fisher from the University of Innsbruck. Ski stations are trying to open the season early for commercial reasons, but snow in the first part of December is a matter of luck, according to statistics of the past century. Only by the end of December, snow is guaranteed.

Still, there is a c lear trend. Ten of the last eleven autumns in France where the hottest in the past century, as Pierre Etchevers of the Centre d’Etudes de la Neige in Grenoble points out. The temperature has increased with 2° C in the Alps in the last 120 years and the warming is expected to accelerate. Regional precipitation patterns are changing as well. Moreover, warmth and rain are increasing the disappearance of the glaciers, and the melting of the high altitude permafrost could make mountain slopes unstable.

Climatologists like Wolfgang Seiler (Karlsruhe) predict a lot of trouble for the Alpine villages, with landslides, flash floods and dry summers. The disappearance of the glaciers and the short winters are already affecting the electricity supply in countries like Switzerland, where hydropower is a significant source of energy, warns Heinz Wanner of the University of Bern.

And skiers will have to move uphill, because positive winter temperatures make snow canons useless. The lack of snow is likely to put skiing stations at low altitude (up to 700 meter), like in Bavaria, out of business.

So, let’s have some fun in the snow while we still can…

Kim

One of the events I could not yet report about in those hectic November days, is the latest conference of the Dutch-Flemish Association for Investigative Journalism. It was a success, with interesting  local and international speakers (Philip Meyer, Matthey Waite) and with many workshops where journalists learnt new tricks to make the news, and to do so in a faster and more efficient way. 

I organised two science-related workshops: one about dealing with medical information (speaker: Bert Aertgeerts), and another about how not to be fooled by numbers (with Hans van Maanen en Jaak Billiet). There were also inspiring sessions where journalists talked about their groundbreaking news stories and how these stories were made.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to network with colleagues from across the border or from other media. Although it was in Flanders this year (Mechelen), there were only 20 or 25 Flemish journalists among the 225 participants - the large majority was Dutch. It is sad that there seems to be such reluctance in Flanders to encourage and invest in (useful) educational activities for journalists.

Kim