Philip Bethge

Category: Stories

  • Who Needs Berlitz? British Savant Learns German in a Week

    Is it possible to learn German in just days? Linguistic savant Daniel Tammet managed to do so in the course of a week. Using his own special technique, the 30-year-old, who has a mild form of autism, has learned to speak more than 10 languages.

    Daniel Tammet likes the German language. It’s “like a clean room with good sharp corners, tidy and straightforward,” he says, yet at the same time it’s “poetic, transparent and elegant.”

    “Take, for example, words like bisschen (a little bit) or Löffelchen (a small spoon),” he adds. “I like this diminutive chen ending.”

    Or the word Gras, for grass: “I like that the first letter fits — for me words with ‘G’ are green,” says the young British man, before offering his signature thin smile. It’s a Thursday in Hamburg’s Hotel Wedina, and 30-year-old Tammet has four more days. By Monday, he plans to have learned enough German — after only a week’s training — to appear on the German television talk show “Beckmann” and speak fluently about brain research, autism and his new book.

    Tammet is a savant. As a child he had epileptic seizures. Doctors later diagnosed him with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism. He mastered the world of emotions only through hard training.

    Numbers and foreign words, on the other hand, come to him naturally. He sees colors and shapes where most people see only plain words and numbers. He’s memorized the number pi to 22,514 digits. He knows instantly that January 10, 2017, will be a Tuesday. And he’s a fleet-footed traveler in the rocky terrain of languages.

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

    Tammet can speak Romanian, Gaelic, Welsh and seven other languages. He learned Icelandic in a week for a TV documentary, at the end of which he gave a live interview on television. He felt somewhat nervous, but was able to speak quite fluently with the show’s host. He even dared to make a joke in Icelandic, which is generally dreaded for its complexity. He still speaks the language today.

    And last week, Tammet took a linguistic stroll through German’s convoluted sentences, had picnics in the genitive case and roamed through the language’s myriad plural forms. He did bring some rudimentary school German along for the journey. Nonetheless, his coaches were stunned.

    “It’s fascinating how he learns, especially because it’s almost impossible to comprehend,” said language coach Christiane Spies, who assisted Tammet the entire week. “I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

    Tammet first begins learning a language by reading for hours, especially children’s books. He murmurs the words quietly to himself, appearing calm and highly concentrated. At 1 p.m. on the dot he gets edgy — that’s lunchtime.

    In the afternoon, Tammet and Spies stroll through Hamburg, chatting about the history of the Hanseatic League, visiting museums and galleries. “He needs an incredible amount of fodder,” says Spies, “otherwise he gets bored quickly.” Tammet immediately links new words with ones he already knows: What is that called in other languages? Which expressions are similar?

    “Wolle” (wool), “Baumwolle” (cotton) and “Wolle spinnen” (to spin wool), he notes them all down in his small handwriting. That’s how it goes the whole time. Occasionally he pauses, apparently listening to his thoughts. “It doesn’t seem as though the learning process is an effort for him,” Spies says. But how is that possible?

    Tammet tries to explain it himself: “I learn new languages intuitively, like a child.” Grammar doesn’t interest him. Instead, he lets himself be carried along by the language, looking for patterns in the mess of sentences he hears, tying words together into related groups. “Small, round things often start with ‘Kn’ in German,” he says, pointing out Knoblauch (garlic), Knopf (button) and Knospe (bud). Then there are the long, thin things that often begin with “Str,” like Strand (beach), Strasse (street) and Strahlen (rays).

    “I try to develop a feeling of how each particular language works,” he says, adding that he’s helped in this pursuit by the fact that regions in his brain are connected in unusual ways. Most humans think in isolated categories, but for Tammet everything is networked. “When I think about words,” he says, “I take information from everywhere in my brain.” Emotions, colors and shapes all connect themselves with the words, allowing him to learn with incredible speed.

    Do his talents make Tammet unapproachably eccentric? His shyness is noticeable. And yet, in an almost uncanny way, he’s very likeable. He speaks in a soft, warm voice and, unexpectedly, maintains constant eye contact.

    Tammet wants to explain and make understandable to others the way that he sees the world. He wants to impart fun in learning, joy in numbers, words and thoughts. “I hope my experiences can help people to discover and develop their own talents,” he says. He adds, “Love is an accurate description of what I feel for languages.”

    “His nature is really touching,” says Spies, the language coach, “both his way of learning and the person as a whole.”

    “How small does a spoon have to be in order to be a ‘Löffelchen‘,” Tammet wants to know. How small must it be to receive that German diminutive “-chen“? A teaspoon isn’t small enough. Instead his eye lights on a tiny spoon in a salt shaker.

    So small. It’s certainly worth a -chen.

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)

  • Germany’s Mystery Cow Disease: ‘Holy Mary, Help Us in Our Hour of Need!’

    A mysterious illness is causing calves to bleed to death on German farms. Veterinarians are stumped over what is causing the deaths: vaccines, genetically modified feed or perhaps even the first mother’s milk?

    What can a cattle farmer do when he sees blood running from his calves like water, when they become lethargic and febrile and, by the next morning, are lying dead on the floor, their coats covered in blood?

    “Our calves from last summer looked like they had been beaten,” says farmer Robert Meyboom, who is still shocked and perplexed today. “The animals’ bodies were covered with drops of blood, and their eyes were bloodshot.”

    The veterinarian tried everything, he says, including administering vitamins and blood-clotting agents. But nothing worked, and “within two or three days, they were all dead.” … More

  • The Healing Power of Death

    Were Europeans once cannibals? Research shows that up until the end of the 18th century, medicine routinely included stomach-churning ingredients like human flesh and blood.

    By Philip Bethge

    According to the recipe, the meat was to be cut into small pieces or slices, sprinkled with “myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe” and then soaked in spirits of wine for a few days.

    Finally, it was to be hung up “in a very dry and shady place.” In the end, the recipe notes, it would be “similar to smoke-cured meat” and would be without “any stench.”

    Johann Schröder, a German pharmacologist, wrote these words in the 17th century. But the meat to which he was referring was not cured ham or beef tenderloin. The instructions specifically called for the “cadaver of a reddish man … of around 24 years old,” who had been “dead of a violent death but not an illness” and then laid out “exposed to the moon rays for one day and one night” with, he noted, “a clear sky.”

    In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, recipes for remedies like this, which provided instructions on how to process human bodies, were almost as common as the use of herbs, roots and bark. Medical historian Richard Sugg of Britain’s Durham University, who is currently writing a book on the subject says that cadaver parts and blood were standard fare, available in every pharmacy. He even describes supply bottlenecks from the glory days of “medicinal cannibalism.” Sugg is convinced that avid cannibalism was not only found within the New World, but also in Europe.

    In fact, there are countless sources that describe the morbid practices of early European healers. The Romans drank the blood of gladiators as a remedy against epilepsy. But it was not until the Renaissance that the use of cadaver parts in medicine became more commonplace. At first, powders made from shredded Egyptian mummies were sold as an “elixir of life,” says Sugg. In the early 17th century, healers turned their attention to the mortal remains of people who had been executed or even the corpses of beggars and lepers.

    Paracelsus, the German-Swiss physician, was one of the most vehement proponents of body-stripping, which eventually gained popularity at even the highest levels of society. British King Charles II paid 6,000 pounds for a recipe to distill human skull. The regent applied the resulting distillate, which entered the history of medicine as “the king’s drops,” almost daily.

    Scholars and noblemen, as well as ordinary people, swore by the healing powers of death. US anthropologist Beth Conklin, for example, quoting a 19th-century source, writes that in Denmark epileptics were reported to stand around the scaffold in crowds, cup in hand, ready to drink the red blood as it flows from the still quavering body. Skulls were used as medicine, as was the moss that tended to sprout from them. It was believed to staunch bleeding.

    Human fat was supposed to alleviate rheumatism and arthritis, while a paste made from corpses was believed to help against contusions. Sugg even attributes religious significance to human flesh. For some Protestants, he writes, it served as a sort of substitute for the Eucharist, or the tasting of the body of Christ in Holy Communion. Some monks even cooked “a marmalade of sorts” from the blood of the dead.

    “It was about the intrinsic vitality of the human organism,” says the historian. The assumption was that all organisms have a predetermined life span. If a body died in an unnatural way, the remainder of that person’s life could be harvested, as it were — hence the preference for the executed.

    The practice was not always a success. In 1492, when Pope Innocent VIII was on his deathbed, his doctors bled three boys and had the pope drink their blood. The boys died, and so did the pope.

    Was all of this cannibalism? Sugg has no doubt that it was. Like the cannibals of the New World, the Europeans were fundamentally interested in the consumption of vital energy. For anthropologist Conklin, the European form of cannibalism is especially remarkable. Outside Europe, she notes, the person who was eating almost always had a relationship with the person who was eaten. Europe’s cannibalism, on the other hand, was “distinctly asocial,” Conklin writes, adding that human body parts were treated as merchandise: bought and sold for a profit.

    By the end of the 18th century, however, the appeal had worn off. “With the Enlightenment, physicians sought to shed their superstitious past,” says Sugg. In 1782, for example, William Black, a physician, wrote that he welcomed the demise of “loathsome and insignificant” medicines, like “dead men’s skulls pulverized.” These, and “a farrago of such feculence,” had fortunately disappeared from the pharmacies, Black remarked.

    An era had come to an end, and with it the interest in recipes like those of Briton John Keogh. The preacher, who died in 1754, recommended pulverized human heart for “dizziness.” Keogh even provided a dose and instructions for use: “A dram in the morning — on an empty stomach.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

    –> read original article at SPIEGEL Online International

     

  • An Undersea Kama Sutra: The Disturbing Sex Lives of Deep Sea Squid

    A Dutch biologist has extensively studied the reproductive techniques of deep-ocean squid. During sex, they are brutal and ruthless — and sometimes clumsy.

    By Philip Bethge

    Sex in the deep sea is a difficult proposition. The problems already begin with the partner search: How do you find someone to mate with in the pitch-black depths of the ocean? And for any creature that does manage to have a rendezvous beneath the waves, failure is simply not an option.

    “Seize the moment,” is how Dutch researcher Hendrik Jan Ties Hoving describes the most basic rule of undersea reproduction. “Chances are low of finding a partner a second time.”

    Hoving, a biologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is in a position to know what he’s talking about, too. He recently completed his doctoral thesis on the reproduction of deep-sea squid. He studied 10 different species, from mini-squid measuring just 25 millimeters (one inch) in length to 12-meter (40-foot) giant squid. Among Hoving’s striking findings: Squid bite during sex, males drive sperm packets directly into the skin of females and brutal wrestling is part of their mating ritual.

    The array of techniques is impressive, Hoving says, but also takes some getting used to. His conclusion: “Reproduction is no fun if you’re a squid.”

    Most of the squid behaviors that have come to light so far are striking and bizarre. For example, researchers in California photographed one species, Gonatus onyx, caring for its brood. This squid, which measures just under half a meter (one and a half feet) long and lives in water around 2,500 meters (8,000 feet) deep, stretched its arms into a kind of web, holding a gelatinous matrix containing 2,000 to 3,000 eggs. It regularly flushed fresh water through this egg mass, presumably to aerate the embryos.

    Meanwhile, American researchers Clyde Roper and Michael Vecchione caught another species, Brachioteuthis beanii, in the act off the coast of North Carolina. One squid grabbed another from behind, and the one being grabbed “bent its body and vigorously moved its arms around the head and mantle opening of the grasping squid” — one pulling the other, the second sinking toward the first. The experts’ opinion: “Probably mating.”

    Now Hoving has unveiled what seems like an entire Kama Sutra of the squid world. The subjects of his study were all already dead at the time he observed them, but what the biologist found in museums, obtained from fishermen and collected from the ocean on scientific expeditions off the coast of Namibia and the Falkland Islands is nonetheless sensational:

    • Using their sharp beaks or the hooks on their tentacles, males of the species Taningia danae make cuts more than five centimeters (two inches) deep into the females’ flesh. They then deposit sperm packets, called spermatophores, into the wounds.
    • Females of a mini-squid species, Heteroteuthis dispar, store sperm within their bodies in a special pouch. The precious cargo can account for up to 3 percent of the squid’s total body weight.
    • Some males of the species Ancistrocheirus lesueurii appear outwardly almost like females. “Possibly an adaptation for getting closer to the females,” Hoving suggests.
    • For another species, Moroteuthis ingens, the males simply release their sperm packets and don’t need to do anything more. The spermatophores penetrate the female’s skin independently, using a substance that dissolves tissue.

    Hoving has an explanation for this strange avoidance of bodily contact: “Mating is probably quite risky for the male,” he says. “In most species they’re smaller, and could get eaten.”

    He has a similar explanation for the males’ rough behavior: “More than anything, it’s about being fast.” It seems the males are quite literally under great pressure. A few years ago, Australian biologists discovered sperm packets under the skin of a freshly caught 15-meter (50-foot) female giant squid. Covered with a “gelatinous” substance, they had presumably been “injected” by a male, the researchers reported, “under hydraulic pressure,” with a penis “up to 92 centimeters (three feet) long.”

    Small wonder that things sometimes go wrong. Hoving discovered sperm packets, among other places, in the eyes of animals he studied. And one giant squid found off the coast of Norway seems to be a not atypical case: a male, it also had spermatophores under its skin. The science journal Nature offered the interpretation that the squid may have “literally shot itself in the foot.”

    In the end, however, it seems fertilization does manage to take place in most cases. Squid are certainly numerous enough — according to Hoving, there are around 200 species in the deep ocean. Not even overfishing does harm to them, he says. Quite the opposite, in fact: “The squid have more to eat, since they don’t have to share their food with the fish that are caught for consumption.”

    A female squid releases millions of tiny eggs into the water, but generally only once in her lifetime. When she does, the sperm stored under her skin are discharged simultaneously. The father for this legion of embryos is often the single male who got his beak or hooks on the female first.

    Thus the brutal attacks by some male squid have another purpose, Hoving believes. “The females have downright negative experiences with mating, meaning that afterwards they won’t let any other male near them.”

    It’s a forced fidelity for the squid, and Hoving even has a technical term ready for it: “traumatic insemination.”

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Germany’s Early Warning System: Waiting for the Next Tsunami

    German scientists have designed a tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean. The project aims to protect Indonesians by giving them enough time to escape the danger. The ultimate goal is speed.

    Nils Goseberg is very worried about the Siti Nurbaya Bridge in Padang. The 80-meter (262-foot) bridge spans the Arau River and anyone fleeing a tsunami would most likely need to cross it.

    Goseberg, who works at the Franzius Institute of Hydraulics, Waterways and Coastal Engineering in the northern German city of Hanover, faces a problem that seems borderline absurd: How to evacuate Padang, a city of 800,000 people, in just 20 minutes? … More

  • German Cities for the Bees: Wanted — Young, Urban, Professional Beekeepers

    Germany is running out of bees. But urban beekeeping may just be the solution. The country’s aging beekeepers are looking to attract young city dwellers to the hobby.

    By Philip Bethge

    Emil Wiedenhöft’s bees know their way around the urban jungle. They buzz in, flying around the 71-year-old beekeeper’s head as they carry nectar and pollen to the hive. Then they swarm out again, heading back into the surrounding sea of buildings — a squadron of tiny, striped nectar collectors

    “They have to fly out of here at a steep angle to make it over the buildings,” says Wiedenhöft, as he casually wipes one of the bees from his shirt and points up into the air. The gray wall of his apartment building towers over the beekeepers’ patio. Two beehives stand in front of his apartment window.

    Wiedenhöft is a beekeeper in Berlin. “Beekeeping in the big city isn’t a problem at all,” says Wiedenhöft, who is retired. He has even managed to convince a few neighbors to take up the hobby. “I’ve trained six beekeepers in the eight years I’ve been living here,” he says, proudly. “A young beekeeper needs a role model.”

    Still, despite Wiedenhöft’s efforts, there are too few beekeepers in Germany and, as a result, not enough bees. Experts already fear that the shortfall could have serious consequences for fruit farmers, because the industrious pollen collectors are no longer adequately pollinating their plants. But beekeepers like Wiedenhöft are bucking the trend. The profession, which includes a disproportionately high percentage of older people, is trying to recruit new blood with courses and special offers — especially in cities.

    Hundreds of thousands of bees are constantly dashing through the backyards and courtyards of cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. The densely populated Ruhr region is now home to more bees than the surrounding countryside. Bees are at home on Berlin’s balconies, rooftop terraces and hotel roofs. Bees are also popping up in larger numbers in cities around the world. In London, beehives can be seen on the roof of the Bank of England — honey from the London metropolitan area has even won the first prize at Britain’s National Honey Show. And in Manhattan, “Sheriff Beekeeper” David Graves sells his Rooftop Magic Honey at a premium price.

    Armies of Bees

    “Cities are ideally suited for bees,” says Jürgen Hans, chairman of Berlin’s beekeepers’ association. There are roughly 500 beekeepers in the German capital alone. Hamburg is home to at least 50 million bees from more than 2,100 bee colonies.

    While many city dwellers are likely to gasp at such numbers, the armies of bees are hopeful signs for beekeepers. “The animals develop marvelously in the city, because it’s warmer there than in the countryside,” says Hans, adding that cities offer “a large and constant selection of flowers for bees searching for nectar.” Hans, a beekeeper himself, waxes lyrical about the chestnut, black locust and maple trees lining the streets, and the sweet pea, briar roses and knotgrass on playgrounds.

    Hamburg’s trendy Ottensen neighborhood is the ideal place for lively city bees. On this early summer day, for example, beekeeper Georg Petrausch is checking his hives on the roof of the “Motte,” a neighborhood cultural center. “Nice flying weather today,” says the 45-year-old, as he gazes across streets and alleyways flooded with sunlight, the sound of traffic drifting up from the street below. It is a trendy quarter, with Moroccan restaurants across the street and numerous bars where hip urbanites hang out.

    Petrausch lights a bundle of hemp straw in a pipe-like device. The beekeeper uses the smoke to calm the insects. Then he carefully removes a bee-covered honeycomb from the hive and opens a few of the hexagonal cells. Petrausch has lovingly dubbed the glistening honey flowing from the cells Ottenser Wildblüte (Ottensen Wildflower).

    Bees and Bratwurst

    He harvests between 150 and 200 kilos of the sweet stuff a year, often with the help of neighborhood children. A teacher, Petrausch has also founded a beekeeping program for kids. Once a week, young bee enthusiasts meet in the garden of a school nearby where the students handle the honeycombs without protective clothing while bees buzz around their heads.

    “I’m not afraid at all anymore,” says 12-year-old Iris, “and the honey we make here also tastes better than honey from the store.”

    As enthusiastic as members of the trade are about these young, budding beekeepers, they haven’t prevented the nationwide number from continuing its decline. Today there are only 82,000 beekeepers in Germany, and they manage about 700,000 bee colonies. Experts say this is far too little, and that Germany needs at least a million bee colonies. “The honeybee pollinates 80 percent of our flowering plants,” says Jürgen Tautz of the “Beegroup” at the University of Würzburg in southern Germany. “The loss of bees is a threat to diversity.” Declining bee populations can mean a drop in the numbers and quality of apples, cherries, berries and agricultural crops. Many wild plants also do not reproduce as efficiently without the industrious insects.

    To make matters worse, bees are getting more sensitive. Like domestic pigs, they are now overbred, says Tautz, which makes them more susceptible to disease and environmental toxins. Only recently, clothianidine (sold under the commercial name Poncho), a pesticide used to treat seeds, was blamed for the deaths of large numbers of bees in southwestern Germany. The use of monocultures in agriculture is also detrimental to the insects. According to Tautz, “if bees can only find pollen from rapeseed and sunflowers, it’s about as harmful to them as it is for people to eat nothing but bratwurst.”

    But the insects’ greatest enemy is a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor. It infests the hive, sucks bee “blood” and weakens the entire colony. In the end, the bees are no longer capable of surviving winter. In the winter of 2002, for example, about 30 percent of all bee colonies in Germany died with infestations of these killer mites believed to have been one of the main causes.

    Young Beekeepers Needed

    Only experienced beekeepers are capable of controlling mite infestation, which is one of the reasons efforts to train new beekeepers are so important to the industry. The beekeeping profession is in rapid decline, with only about a dozen apprentices throughout Germany today. This highlights the importance of hobby beekeepers — about 95 percent of all bee owners — recruiting young people.

    The latest trend is beekeeping on a trial basis. Experienced apiarists lease individual colonies to young beekeepers for a year and provide them with advice and support. At the end of this trial year, the young beekeepers can opt to continue or return the bees.

    “We had 11 new beekeepers in our club last year,” says “bee godfather” Peter Schömbs of Berlin’s Zehlendorf Beekeeping Club, “and 10 of them decided to stay.” The 65-year-old trained Bert Kleinlosen. Although Kleinlosen is 58 himself, the bearded novice is, oddly enough, considered a young beekeeper. Beekeeping clubs are firmly in the hands of the 60 and old generation. Anyone who can bring down the average age is more than welcome.

    In Berlin’s Schmargendorf neighborhood, experienced and novice beekeepers work side-by-side. Together they make small frames for the honeycombs, hunt down mites or prevent the bees from swarming. This happens when the beehive becomes too crowded and the queen escapes with part of the colony. Recapturing the swarm is an arduous task.

    When bees swarm, they congregate in large groups in trees or on lampposts, as they search for a new place to start a hive. The mere sight of such a large concentration of bees leads many a city dweller to question the wisdom of urban beekeeping. What happens if the poisonous insects decide to sting, after all? Bee stings can be dangerous, even life-threatening to people who are allergic.

    ‘Don’t Try This Yourself’

    “When people and bees begin living in closer quarters, the incidence of allergies automatically rises,” says Munich allergist Bernhard Przybilla. Wolfgang Sieger, an internist from the Bavarian town of Wörth an der Donau, warns “every beekeeper should find out if there are people who are allergic to bees living nearby.” But, Sieger adds, the problem isn’t as dire as some might believe, because only about one in every 100 people is allergic to bees. Compared to wasps, says Sieger, bees are “a very peaceful species.”

    Beekeepers feel the same way. For decades, they have been trying to breed gentleness into these industrious insects. Apis mellifera carnica, or Carniolan bees, are the result of this ongoing breeding effort. “It’s the ideal city bee,” says Benedikt Polaczek, a bee researcher at the Free University of Berlin, “it’ll only sting if I try to turn it into a postage stamp.”

    Polaczek, who has been keeping bees for 40 years, teaches university courses for beekeepers and regularly hosts groups of schoolchildren and even kindergarten classes. Recently, the 51-year-old bee expert was showing the youngsters how to extract honey. Using a tool called a frame lifter, he opened the cells of a honeycomb and then placed it into a honey extractor. The device uses centrifugal force to extract the sweet, amber-colored liquid from the wax.

    “City honey has an outstanding aroma,” said the beekeeper, and gave his young visitors a taste. “And besides, it’s very clean, because they don’t spray pesticides as much in the city.” Then the researcher showed the children his hives. Using his hand, he carefully brushed several dozen worker bees from a honeycomb. The agitated animals crawled around on his fingers.

    “Look, the bees are completely peaceful,” says Polaczek. But before his guests left, he gave them a bit of advice: “Just don’t try this yourself.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    –> read original story at SPIEGEL Online International

  • The Price of Survival: What Would It Cost to Save Nature?

    How much is the Earth worth to us? At a global conference in Bonn, Germany, representatives of 191 nations are discussing a revolution in conservation. By making a highly profitable business out of saving forests, whales and coral reefs, environmentalists hope to put a stop to a dramatic wave of extinctions.

    The envoy from Europe can hardly believe his eyes. Butterflies the size of dessert plates are fluttering around his nose. Orchids hang in cascades from towering trees. Hornbills sail across the treetops. The tropical air is filled with the saturated scent of growth and proliferation.

    Biologists have already tracked down more than 10,000 plant and 400 mammal species in the Congo basin. These plants and animals are part of the world’s second-largest uninterrupted rainforest, one of the planet’s most potent carbon storage systems. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that Hans Schipulle, 63, is tramping around in the wilderness near the Sangha River on a humid morning in the Central African Republic.

    “This forest stores carbon dioxide, and thus helps to slow down global warming. It regulates the global water supply and holds valuable pharmaceuticals,” says Schipulle, a veteran environmentalist who works for the German government. “We must finally realize that these are services that are worth something to us.”

    Schipulle is in the region on a sensitive mission. Since December, he has headed the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), a group founded by Americans, Europeans and the countries along the Congo River. The alliance aims to prevent the Congo basin from being plundered and transformed into oil palm and coffee plantations by mid-century. The Congo rainforest is still largely in one piece, but investors from around the world have already discovered the region’s potential for big business — ore, diamonds, plantations and lumber. But Schipulle and his partners have other plans for the Congo basin. They want international financial institutions or the world community to fork over money to preserve the rainforest as it is today. The threat of clear-cutting poses a double risk for the world. First, destroying the Congo rainforest would eliminate one of the earth’s most important cooling systems. Second, the carbon dioxide (CO2) released as a result of slash-and-burn agriculture would further accelerate global warming.

  • Super Sorghum for the Poor: Can Genetic Crops Stop the Food Crisis?

    It will take some time before genetically modified crops can help the world’s starving people. One reason is that agricultural corporations are developing the wrong types of plants. In emerging economies like Argentina and India, most GM crops are cultivated for use in export products.

    Sometimes the solutions to humanity’s problems are only a mouse click away. “How do you feed half a billion people in the desert?” a graphic on the Web site of the Africa Biofortified Sorghum (ABS) project asks. The answer it proposes is: “Super Sorghum!” “Grow it!” the Web site, sponsored by a consortium of the agricultural industry and the scientific community, suggests succinctly. A happy, smiling child … More