Lush prospects

A worldwide survey shows that hair surgery is headed for growth

In the 1940s and 1950s Americans were amazed and disturbed by the publication of the Kinsey Reports, the volumes on human sexuality prepared by Dr Alfred Kinsey which showed just how complex human sexual experience really was. For the first time, scientists could apply graphs and pie charts to this previously hidden area. Naturally, there were some hair-raising surprises.

It’s not on the same scale, but the 2009 census of the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS), released in June, also makes surprising and entertaining reading.

Rubber duck

Looking high and low for NACO condoms at New Delhi Railway Station

“My kingdom for a condom,” I muttered, dodging through the crowds outside New Delhi Railway Station, my eyes raking the walls for the bright red boxes. With much fanfare last year the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) had installed 1,500 condom vending machines (CVMs) at railway stations, public toilets and bus stands across Delhi (“at several vantage points”, said one newspaper, unhelpfully) — places frequented by itinerants and the less well-off. Across India, 11,025 were installed. Now, on the busy Ajmeri Gate side of this station, I couldn’t see even one.

Ship to sure death

A history of mass disease tells us we should beware of sea-borne weapons of mass destruction

Trust the ancients to know the oldest things best. Sushruta, the famous Indian surgeon of the 1st millennium BCE, wrote a treatise on surgery called the Sushruta Samhita. In it he prescribes a mantra to recite after surgery, a sort of prayer against post-operative infection — also the bane of modern surgery.

Patriot games

Angry words landed Varun Gandhi in trouble, but anger can also be physically harmful

Reading transcripts of Varun Gandhi’s alleged comments about his fellow citizens at an election rally in UP this week was enough to make the blood boil. But Gandhi, the BJP’s candidate for Pilibhit, seemed to have anger enough of his own. Surely he’s doing himself no good — whether or not the electorate approves.

Germs bite the dust

Don’t dismiss dirt, say health researchers, because it helps us stay healthy

At construction sites across the country, small children tumble about while their young parents, the labourers, can keep an eye on them. The toddlers seem to be happy playing outdoors, at an age when middle-class parents keep their offspring safely indoors and away from dirt and danger.

Young blood?

Far too many young adults are victims of high cholesterol

“Well, I’d gone for an executive health checkup, and when they gave me the results, I was shocked…” That’s how most of these stories start, with a blithe customer unpleasantly surprised to discover that he or she has unhealthily high levels of cholesterol. It’s something typically associated with middle age, and by these people, with their parents, perhaps — because these customers are all young, still only in their 20s or early 30s.

Soul medicine

At pilgrimage sites there are other health challenges besides stampedes

Pilgrimages were once arduous undertakings, requiring weeks or months of travel, and real determination. Even the holiest shrines had no more than a stream of devotees — not the floods of worshippers that arrive now by road, rail and aeroplane. A pilgrimage, today, can be a weekend holiday.

Rusting from the top

The Iron Lady is losing her edge, but Indians may be able to talk their way out of dementia

The Iron Lady’s mind is growing rusty. So says her daughter in a new memoir, titled A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl. Now 82, Margaret Thatcher suffers from dementia, a progressive decline in the brain’s functioning that affects the memory, language, attention, problem-solving abilities, social behaviour and sense of orientation of, mostly, elderly people over 65.

Beauty bites

Simal Soin, the expert behind A+ Medispa, makes us something good-looking

She’s been out all day at work, and has only just arrived at home, so she has to divide her attention between her two young sons and us — and the sons are winning.

Blood line

Human blood from the lab? It’s about time

A small, struggling biotech company named Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Massachusetts, USA, announced this week that it had found a way to mass-produce red blood cells (RBCs) using stem cells taken from human embryos. The idea is not new, but ACT’s method is a hundred times more efficient than any other.

Poetry in motion

Hotelier Ajay Bakaya devised an unusual fitness regime for himself

For a hotel chain that’s roaring up the charts — 10 hotels to be completed this year, 11 the next, 10 again the year after — its Delhi office is surprisingly drab. It is a small and functional space in a nondescript building on a potholed lane in one of Delhi’s industrial areas.

In fact, the cabin of Sarovar Hotels and Resorts’ executive director Ajay Bakaya is at nodding distance from the receptionist herself, and she nods us through in no time at all.

All you can’t eat

What’s behind the food crisis, according to farmers’ rights campaigner Raj Patel

Stuffed & Starved: What Lies Behind the World Food Crisis
Raj Patel
HarperCollins
xxii + 442

“All data is political,” says Raj Patel, researcher, writer and campaigner for farmers’ rights and against the global “food system”. He uses data to draw an hourglass-shaped figure — a simple graph which represents the inequality in the food industry, where large numbers of growers and eaters are separated by a tiny number of large corporations. In his book he tries to show how governments and trade agreements work in favour of the few rather than the many.

Fear makes sense

Our expressions tell an evolutionary story

Google recently created a whole new range of animated “rich emoticons” for users of its e-mail and online chat services. They’re really quite amusing, and (as their plainer cousins have done for years) they help give our staccato online conversations a measure of the emotional depth that our facial expressions allow us to convey while talking face to face.

Although facial expressions have obvious social utility, scientists have long wondered why they originally developed. Expressions don’t just help us communicate (which is already an evolutionary advantage) — they also change the way we sense the world.

The rediscovery of food

Science and industry have ruined our diets, says Michael Pollan

In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating
Michael Pollan
Penguin
xiv + 242

“Culture,” says Michael Pollan, “…is really just a fancy word for your mother.” He means food as culture, of course, and the descent of traditional foods to modern plates through the transmittal of knowledge from mother to daughter over millennia.

Shot in the dark

In U Me Aur Hum season, news of an arthritis medicine that fights Alzheimer’s disease

It’s novel to see Bollywood dealing with disorders in the body rather than the body politic. Black offered a heartwarming take on blind-deaf-and-dumbness, Taare Zameen Par on dyslexia, and now Ajay Devgan’s U Me Aur Hum marries love drama with love’s low points, such as one of the partners being confronted by a calamitous disease — Alzheimer’s — in, of course, an ultimately heartwarming way.