Word: weights
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more procurable “Green Card” craze brought many Indians (including my own parents) overseas for greater opportunity—suitors for marriage then labeled “export-quality” spouses. Today, even in a country whose growth outstrips America’s, the weight of Western ideas is ever growing, even as American immigration borders are drawn tighter. Is this attempt at emulating Western culture indicative of mistaken perceptions—perceptions that characterize Indians as desperately in need of a culture other than their...
...study published in the July 27 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that orangutans keep their footing - and their fingering - in the trees by moving with an irregular, offbeat rhythm that effectively counters the shaking caused by their considerable weight. "Orangutans rock flexible tree trunks from side to side with increasing magnitude until they can cross gaps in the [tree] canopy," says Susannah Thorpe, a bioscientist at the University of Birmingham in England and the lead author of the PNAS paper...
...understand how orangutans swing, it helps to compare them to their primate cousins, the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees pull their bodies close to the tree branch as they move, but being relatively small, they can do that without worrying about the vibrations caused by their own body weight. If orangutans behaved that way, the vibrations would build dangerously, as they do on a suspension bridge...
...orangutans' unique locomotion also helps them reduce the time and energy needed to climb. The more flexible a tree branch is, the more it will bend under an animal's weight. "That means they can lose height, and gaining height again is costly because you have to oppose gravity," points out Thorpe. When an orangutan leaps from a flexible branch it also loses motion energy - think of jumping off a pile of sand versus one of asphalt - and when they land on a flexible branch, they have to wait for the vibrations to stop before they can jump again, which...
...message was clear: There is no such thing as tourism in this corner of Africa. Ultimately, however, my run-in with the authorities is just another example of the shortsighted mismanagement of Equatorial Guinea. While the government lavishes in oil wealth, the citizenry suffer under the weight of unbearable poverty. Tourism could be an avenue for Guineans outside of the government sector to begin taking control of their own economic potential. The country itself is a vibrant and beautiful place, with landscapes ranging from volcanic mountains to elephant forests to grassy plains and sleepy seaside villages. With the right resources...