One May morning, 10-year-old Khadab played in the ruins of a school near his home in northern Iraq. He saw something that looked interesting. It was yellow and plastic and looked like a ball. He reached for his new toy and, BANG!

    The last thing he remembered was a big noise. When Khadab awoke, he was in hospital. His parents stood sadly by his side. They told him he had picked up an unexploded bomb. When it exploded, Khadab lost an arm.

    He was just one of hundreds of Iraqi children who have been injured or killed by stepping on and picking up explosives left over from the war.

    These landmines (地雷) and bombs have injured and killed at least 15 people a day since Saddam Hussein's government fell on April 9. And children are the most affected.

    Iraq is among the worst landmine-affected countries in the world. Many villages in the war-torn areas are surrounded by minefields (雷区). These landmines lie on the ground between rocks, up in trees and on riverbeds.

    Even though the war in Iraq is over, many children have not returned to school. They can be seen walking the streets with the natural curiosity of young kids. Their new playgrounds are places where the fighting took place. Many boys can be seen playing with unexploded bombs. A new game is to throw the bombs and run away. Some of them get away, but too many are killed. They do this for fun, and don't realize the dangers until it's too late.

    UNICEF (联合国教科文组织) has warned children, through the TV, of the dangers of landmines and unexploded bombs in Iraq. They hope to make children aware of the dangers they face.

    “I can't imagine there's going to be a classroom in the north without scared children in it. It's so widespread,” said Sean Sutton of the British-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG).

    MAG is an organization working to clear unexploded bombs and landmines in war-torn areas.

    It is difficult to report the exact number of deaths. Sutton said MAG found 320 injuries in northern Iraq in the first month after April 9. But he said the real figure was probably much higher.

    Being sociable looks like a good way to add years to your life. Relationships with family, friends, neighbors, even pets, will all help, but the biggest longevity (长寿) seems to come from marriage. The effect was first noticed in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote that widows and widowers (鳏夫) were at a much higher risk of dying than the married people. Studies since then suggest that marriage could add as much as seven years to a man's life and two to a woman's. The effect can be seen in all causes of death, whether illness, accident or self-harm.

    Even if the chances are all against you, marriage can more than compensate you. Linda Waite of the University of Chicago has found that a married older man with heart disease can expect to live nearly four years longer than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. Similarly, a married man who smokes more than a pack a day is likely to live as long as a divorced man who doesn't smoke. There's a flip side, however, as partners are more likely to become ill or die in the couple of years following their husband or wife's death, and caring for your husband or wife with mental disorder can leave you with some of the same severe problems. Even so, the chances favor marriage. In a 30-year study of more than 10,000 people, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School describes how all kinds of social networks have similar effects.

    So how does it work? The effects are complicated, affected by socio-economic factors, health-service provision, emotional support and other more physiological mechanisms(生理机制). For example, social contact can promote development of the brain and immune system, leading to better health and less chance of depression later in life. People in supportive relationships may handle stress better. Then there are the psychological benefits of a supportive partner.

    A life partner, children and good friends are all recommended if you aim to live to 100. The overall social network is still being mapped out, but Christakis says: "People are inter-connected, so their health is inter-connected."

    Happy Shakespeare Day!

    The 23rd April is World Book Day, but did you know that it is also Shakespeare Day? Everybody has heard of Shakespeare, but do you know many plays he wrote? Have you heard of many of his poetry?

    Shakespeare's plays fit into three categories: tragedies, comedies and histories. Perhaps his most famous play is the tragedy story of Romeo and Juliet, which deals with two young lovers who are forbidden to marry by their parents. Other tragedies include Hamlet, a play about a vengeful ghost Othello, about an army general who is manipulated(操纵) into killing his wife, and Macbeth(麦克白). If you've seen Harry Potterandthe Prisoner of Azkaban written which is sung in the Great Hall after the Sorting Ceremony. These words come from the Witches in Macbeth!

    Shakespeare's comedies include Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night is a play about confusing identities. Two twins are shipwrecked and the sister, Viola, dresses up as her brother, Sebastian, who she thinks is dead. It's hilarious, because the brother reappears without Viola realizing and there's a big love triangle going on: Viola is in love with the Duke Osino, who is in love with Olivia, who falls in love with Sebastian, except she doesn't realize that Sebastian is actually Viola dressed up! Everybody falls in love with the wrong person, but it is all made right in the end.

    The history plays, such as Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III and Henry V are based on the lives of real historical people. Antony and Cleopatra is a story about a doomed romance in ancient Egypt. Cleopatra becomes Antony's mistress and Antony becomes so obsessed with her that he loses his military might. Cleopatra kills self by letting a snake bite her after Egypt's army has been defeated by Octavius and Antony kills himself too.

    Shakespeare's plays can be very heavy going sometimes. Some of the themes they deal with are heavy and complex, so they almost always contain a lighter subplot with characters who aren't closely linked to the characters in the main plot. They are often used in tragedies to lighten the mood of the play and to keep the audience interested in the main plot.

    Some kinds of mental skills naturally decrease as people get older. Yet research seems to show that some training can improve such skills. A recently published study also appears to attest that the good effects of training can last for many years after that training has ended.

    Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland wanted to learn how long memory and thinking skills would last in older people who were trained to keep them. The people were part of the ten-year research project. They were taught methods meant to improve their memory, thinking and ability to perform everyday tasks.

    More than 2,800 volunteered for the study called ACTIVE ­ short for Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly. Most were studied when they were more than 70 years old.

    The volunteers took one of several short training classes meant to help them keep their mental abilities. One class trained participants in skills including how to remember word lists. Another group trained in reasoning. A third group received help with speed-of-processing ­ speed of receiving and understanding information. A fourth group ­ the control group did not get any training.

    Earlier results had established that the training helped the participants for up to five years. Now, leading study writer George Rebok says, the research showed most of the training remained effective a full ten years later.

    Professor Rebok and his team found that the people trained in reasoning and speed-of- processing did better on tests than the control group.

    "We are wondering whether those effects which endured over time would still be there ten years following the training, and in fact, that's exactly what we found.

    The effect on memory, however, seemed not to last as long. Still, the old people in any of the three classes generally reported less difficulty in performing daily activities than the control group. The total training time for the older people was between 10 and 15 hours.

Forget Cyclists, Pedestrians are Real Danger

    We are having a debate about this topic. Here are some letters from our readers.

    Yes, many cyclists behave dangerously. Many drivers are disrespectful of cyclists. But pedestrians are probably the worse offenders.

    People of all ages happily walk along the pavement with eyes and hands glued to the mobile phone, quite unaware of what is going on around them. They may even do the same thing while crossing a road at a pedestrian crossing or elsewhere. The rest of us have to evade (避让) them or just stand still to wait for the unavoidable collision.

    The real problem is that some pedestrians seem to be, at least for the moment, in worlds of their own that are, to them, much more important than the welfare of others.

——Michael Horan

    I loved the letter from Bob Brooks about cyclists (Viewpoints, May 29). I am afraid they seem to think they own the roads.

    I was walking across Altrincharn Road one morning when a cyclist went round me and on being asked what he was doing he shouted at me.

    The government built a cycle lane on the road but it is hardly used.

    The police do nothing. What a laugh they are!

    The cyclists should all have to be made to use the cycle lanes and wear helmets, fluorescent (发荧光的)jacket and tights at night and in the morning. They should pay some sort of tax and be fined for not wearing them.

——Carol Harvey

    Cyclists jump on and off pavements (which are meant for pedestrians), ride at speed along the pavements, and think they have a special right to go through traffic lights when they are on red.

    I was almost knocked down recently by a cyclist riding on the pavement when there was a cycle lane right next to him.

    Other road users, including horse riders, manage to obey the rules so why not cyclists?

    It's about time they had to be registered and insured, so when they do hit a pedestrian or a vehicle, or cause an accident, at least they can be traced and there might be an opportunity to claim.

——JML

    Write to Viewpoints of the newspaper.

    It's already challenging enough for environmentalists to keep beaches clear of washed up trash(垃圾) and plastic debris(残骸), but the most difficult problem lies in cleaning up all of the millions of tiny microplastics that are impossible to pick up and separate from the sand.

    Fortunately, a group of engineering students succeeded in developing a massive new vacuum cleaner that can collect microplastics without removing any of the sand from the beach. The 12 Canadian students from the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec built their Hoola One plastic vacuum cleaner as a class project.

    "We did some research and we realized there was no machine around the world to do this kind of job," Hoola One co-founder Sam Duval told Hawaii Public Radio. "So we told each other, 'We will invent it,' and we did it."

    As a means of testing their machine's efficiency, they recently used it on the sands of Hawaii's Kamilo Beach, which is also notorious for being one of the dirtiest beaches in the world. Though their first prototype(原型)experienced a number of technical issues, the students managed to fix the problems and tidy up the beach.

    Using a handheld tube, the machine sucks(吸入)up plastic and sand and dumps them all into a massive tank of water. Since rocks and sand are heavier than plastic, they sink to the bottom of the tank so they can be dumped back onto the beach. The plastic, on the other hand, floats to the top of the tank.

    According to Hawaii Public Radio, the team left the Hoola One vacuum on the island as a donation to the state department- They are now researching the ecological effects of the vacuum on the beach while they search for funding and sponsorships(赞助)to produce more Hoola One vacuums.