SPAN: March/April, 2007 by SPAN magazine

A LETTER FROM

PUBLISHER

THE

n a global economy that is increasingly competitive, no nation can afford to neglect the educational needs of its young people, nor can it afford to ignore the enormous contributions of women. Karen P. Hughes, the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has written the introduction to SPAN's special section this month on Indian and American women who have made a difference in the lives of their families, communities, nations and the world. The United States strongly supports the empowerment of women around the world, an expression of our belief in democracy and human rights. As Under Secretary Hughes writes, women are essential agents for bringing about change and are an often overlooked resource. Our series of profiles celebrates acts of courage and determination by extraordinary women, some famous, and some we believe you will be glad to get to know through reading about their lives and accomplishments. The United States sees value and opportunities in study, research and educational cooperation with Indians. This is the purpose behind Under Secretary Hughes' visit to India in March with a delegation of U.S. higher education leaders, representing America's desire to expand educational exchanges and partnerships with Indian institutions, professors, researchers and students. Our second special section is an in-depth look at the steps India and the United States have taken toward cooperation in research, marketing and education through the Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, signed

by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington, D.C. in July 2005 and emphasized in their New Delhi Joint Declaration a year ago. Our package of articles reviews innovations such as rice that can combat blindness, drought resistant peas and how Indians and Americans first began working together on agricultural development during the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. We're still at it, preparing for new challenges ahead. "Back from the Brink," our cover story, gives some encouraging good news on the sometimes depressing subject of endangered species through beautiful photographs and details about offbeat methods used by ordinary people who care about animals and their environment. This month, SPAN welcomes Deepanjali Kakati as our new associate editor. As SPAN's copy editor since October 2005, she displayed hard work, creativity and dependability and we are sure our readers will benefit from more of the same as she takes on her new duties. Born in Guwahati, Assam, Kakati worked as a senior subeditor at India Today and The Asian Age. She was a subeditor for The Sentinel in Guwahati after receiving her MA in English (Honors) from Cotton College. We've carried out many changes at SPAN over the past two years in response to the suggestions of our readers. Please take time to fill out our special Reader Survey and mail it in. We would like to hear how you think we're doing.

cJ~,AJ...n.-.J

2007

March/April

SPAN Publisher: Editor-in-Chief: Editor: Associate Editor: Urdu Editor' Hindi Editor: Art Director: Deputy Art Directors: Editorial Assistant: ProductiorVCirculation Manager: Printing Assistant: Business Manager: Research Services:

Larry Schwartz Carina R. Sanders Laurinda Keys Long Deepanjali Kakati Anjum Nairn Giriraj Agarwal Hemant Bhatnagar Khurshid Anwar Abbasi,Qasim Raza Shalini Khanduja Rakesh Agrawal Alok Kaushik R. Narayan The American Library, Bureau of International Inlormation Programs

44 *Festivals: 45

51. Patrick's Day

On the Lighter Side

Front cover: A soaring bald eagle. Photograph by Doug Lloyd

12 Architecture:

Getty Villa

30 *Preparing for New Challenges

Visit SPAN on the Web at .

http://usembassy. state. gov/posts/ in1/wwwhspan.html Contact us

By Dinesh C. Sharma

35 * Agricultural Research

editorspan@state.gov

For subscriptions

Agriculture

By Daniel Miller and Kristen Easter

or address change:

subscriptionspan@state.gov

36 *The U,S, Land-Grant System By Daniel Miller

STATEMENT The following

The Cortex Cop

*Brain Research: Indo-U.S. 38 * 4-H: Preparing Future Leaders 51 Cooperation

FORM IV

is a statement of ownership and other particulars

46 Don't Even Think About Lying

about

SPAN magazine as required under Section 19D(b) of the Press & Registration of Books Act. 1867, and under Rule 8 01Ihe Reglstralion 01Newspaper (Cenlral) Rules, 1956

By Giriraj Agarwal

By Daniel Miller

53 *Religion: 41 *Genetically Engineered Eggplant First Freedom Project

Public Affairs Section American Embassy American Center

2. Periodicity at Publication: 3. Printers Name:

Nationality Address

24, Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001 Bi-monthly G.PTodi

16 *Supporting

Indian

Aianta Offset & Packaging Ltd. 95-8, Wazirpur Industrial Area

4. Publishers Name: Nationality Address 5 Editor's Name: Nationality Address 6. Name and address 01 individuals who own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than OUf percent of Ihe total capilal

Delhi 110052 Larry Schwartz

By Karen P.Hughes

17 Shirley Franklin

American

24, Kasturba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001. Laurinda Keys long American 24, Kaslurba Gandhi Marg New Delhi 110001. The Government of Ihe United States 01America

Women's

Empowerment

*Health: Eye Treatment

By Silla Brush

19 *Mallika Dutt 20 *Drew Gilpin Faust 22 *Maura Hurley 23 *Welthy Fisher 24 * Anjali Deshmukh 26 *Guest Essay

By Smita Jain

By Deepanjali Kakati

By RanjitaBiswas

58 * Achievers: Matthew Sanford 59 Letters to the Editor 60 *NewsScape

By Anium Naim

By Angus McDonald

By Manuka Khanna

Opinions expressed in this 58-page magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies 01the U.S. Govemment.

* Articles with a star may be reprinted with permission. Contact Business Manager R. Narayanat 011-23316841 or editorspan@state.gov

t's as rare as an ivory-billed woodpecker. Yet the recently reported sighting of this "ghost bird," long believed extinct, has driven home the message that not all such stories end badly. So Smithsonian looked for other animals that have made a comeback since Americans began protecting them in earnest a century ago. In 1900. the U.S. Congress passed the Lacey Act, which prohibited interstate trade of wildlife taken illegally. Efforts to safeguard America's natural heritage culminated in the 1973 Endangered Species Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon. It requires federal authorities to identify threatened or endangered animal and plant species and to help them recover, often by restricting how their habitats may be used. The Act is supplemented by scores of conservation, hunting and antipollution laws, and protected lands-almost a third of the United States is publicly owned. But for 30 years the Endangered Species Act has been the key to conservation. Today, more than 1,300 plants and animals are listed under the law as threatened or endangered, and thousands more are "species of concern." Now the Endangered Species Act itself is threatened. Because it can restrict development, White House and Congressional critics charge that the law places the well-being of animals over that of people. Supporters of the Endangered Species Act protest that weakening the law would have a far-reaching impact. Scientists have only begun to understand how living things interact, and eliminat-

ing anyone species can disrupt an entire community of living things. And it would be tragic to lose species. such as plants that produce cancer-fighting compounds, before scientists have had a chance to study them. Without the Act, advocates say, many species would join the passenger pigeon, the Eastern elk, the blue pike, the Santa Catalina monkey . flower and the estimated 500 other路 species in the United States that have vanished in the past few hundred years, victims of overhunting, overharvesting or property development. As Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson has said. destroying plant and animal habitats and the untold diversity of life within them "is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us." But what does it take to save a species? Smithsonian sent veteran environmental reporter Daniel Glick to investigate. Here are his 10 success stories.

n Hawaii's Big Island, marine biologist George Balazs seems to know most of the turtles by name or at least by their markings and tags. He conducts what may be one of the longest continuous monitorings of any sea reptile, an effort of 34 years, and has presided over a cultural makeover that has turned the sea turtle, once a popular menu item, into a star of a multimillion-dollar tourist industry. But Balazs credits the giant reptile itself. "The honu touch your heart," he says, using the Hawaiian word for turtle. "These turtles are their own best ambassadors." For decades, Hawaiians hunted the animals for their skin, which was turned into handbags, and their meat, a delicacy. "In the 1970s, a turtle was a 100-dollar bill," says Balazs. After he witnessed fishermen unloading a boat full of live green sea turtles bound for market in 1969, he worried that the species wouldn't breed fast enough to sustain the demand.

Hawaiian Green Sea Turt{e Status: Threatened Year listed: 1978 Average adult weight: 135 kilograms So he made an inventory of nesting female turtles at the animals' main breeding site: the French Frigate Shoals, an atoll about 800 kilometers west of Hawaii in an area that had been designated a wildlife sanctuary by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1909. In 1973, his fIrst year of fIeldwork, Balazs counted a mere 67 nesting females, not enough to compensate for the rate at which Hawaiian green sea turtles were being hunted. Largely because of Balazs' research and advocacy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1978 classified the Hawaiian green sea turtle as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Killing a honu became a federal offense. The green sea turtle made progress, despite its slow reproductive pace: females

reach sexual maturity at an average age of 25, and swim from Hawaii to their nesting grounds and back-a 1,600kilometer round trip-every three or four years. (In the 1980s, an outbreak of fibropapilloma, a mysterious disease that afflicts many turtle species, dealt the animals a setback, but the disease seems to be abating.) Balazs estimates the number of nesting females has risen to over 400 annually-a sixfold increase since the early 1970s. This rebound stands in contrast to other sea turtle species, five of which-leatherback, loggerhead, Kemp's ridley, olive ridley and hawks bill-remain endangered in all or part of their ranges around the world. As the honu began reappearing near several Hawaiian islands, including the Big Island and Kauai, snorkeling tour operators, beachfront hotel owners and even wildlife art dealers recognized the enormous potential of turtle tourism. This particular "watchable wildlife," like the

boon in whale-watching tours and even programs to view wolves in Wyoming, underscores the truism that many once-hunted critters are worth more alive than dead. On a residential stretch of beach in the Puako neighborhood on the Big Island, Balazs and a team of high-school students from the Hawaii Preparatory Academy spend the day capturing, measuring and tagging trntles taken from the turquoise waters. They've tagged thousands of turtles over the past two decades. Diane Campbell, who lives in the neighborhood, comes down to watch. "I love the honu," she says. She is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of the turtle and a message: "In recent years their numbers have declined due to disease and the destruction of their native habitat." Balazs asks if she purchased the shirt recently. "No, it's at least 10 years old," Campbell says. "I cheer every time I put it on."

More Than a Symbolic Victory Status: Threatened, awaiting removal from list Year declared endangered: 1940 Lowest count in lower 48 states: 417 nesting pairs n 1782, the Second Continental Congress incorporated the bald eagle into the first Great Seal of the United States as a symbol of "supreme power and authority." Unlike England, where wildlife was the exclusive property of royalty, in this new nation wild animals belonged to all the people. By the 1930s, the national symbol was in trouble. Bald eagles, once soaring over most of the country by the hundreds of thousands, had plummeted in number to an estimated 10,000 pairs by the 1950s. Hunting, land clearing and accidental poisoning contributed to the decline (eagles often ate toxic meat set out by ranchers to kill wolves and other predators). In 1940, the U.S. Congress jumped to the fore with the Bald Eagle Protection Act, which acknowledged the scientific and political reasons to conserve the distinctive white-headed bird with a seven-foot wingspan. "The bald eagle is no longer a mere bird of biological interest but a symbol of the American ideals of freedom," the law states. It prohibited the killing of bald eagles for virtually any reason. But the introduction of DDT [Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane] in 1945 dealt the animal a critical blow. The pesticide, sprayed far and wide to eradicate mosquitoes and agricultural pests, crept into the food chain. Fish ate exposed bugs, eagles and other birds ate pesticide-laced fish, and the DDT ingested by the birds so thinned their eggshells that chicks couldn't survive. By 1963, only 417 bald eagle nesting pairs were found in the lower 48 states.

In 1972, 10 years after Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring publicized the insidious threat of DDT, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the pesticide. Still, the hunting and chemical regulations would not have been enough to revive the bald eagle. The passage of the Endangered Species Act provided critical help by protecting the bird's habitat. Other federal laws would also contribute. Efforts to decontaminate the Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast, prompted by the Clean Water Act, benefited the eagle by slowly reducing harmful pollutants from prime bald eagle feeding grounds. Widespread affection for the emblematic bird also made a difference. Eagle lovers monitored nests, educated the public and campaigned to close nesting areas during the breeding season. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service banned hunters from using lead shot nationwide, which can poison eagles and other rap tors that scavenge waterfowl that have been struck by the shot. Meanwhile, the eagle itself adapted to living near people-even setting up nests a few miles from the U.S. Capitol. In 1995, wildlife authorities changed the bald eagle's status from endangered to threatened, an important moment in conservation history. Today, with about 7,678 pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48 states, the bird awaits a final OK to be taken off the Endangered Species Act's threatened list, a move that many anticipate will come quickly. "People want success," says Jody Millar, Bald Eagle Monitoring Coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, in Rock Island, Illinois. She says that the recovery of the beloved national symbol has generated public acceptance of conservation measures. "No government can protect a species if the public doesn't want it."

he origins of Earth Day lie, curiously, in antiVietnam War protests. It was Gaylord Nelson, U.S. senator and conservationist, who first wondered whether the methods developed for the anti-Vietnam War protests could achieve positive results in other areas as well. The anti-war teach-ins-meetings to discuss a subject of public interest-were held on campuses across the United States and they led Nelson to plan a nationwide teach-in on the environment.

PaUla Status: Endangered Year listed: 1967 Feeding habits: Finicky

aul Banko walks along the arid slopes of the 4,200meter-high Mauna Kea volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. He's searching for a yellow-crowned songbird called the palila. He hears the trilled warble that gives the bird its onomatopoetic name, but he doesn't actually see one. 'Typical Hawaij birding experience," Banko deadpans. For nearly two decades, Banko, a U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist, has sought to

reverse the palila's decline by working to restore its habitat and coaxillg the birds to colonize another territory. The bird, a type of Hawaiian honeycreeper, lives almost exclusively on seeds from the increasingly scarce mamane tree. The state's flora and fauna have long been vulnerable to habitat loss, invasive species, overharvesting and disease. Indeed, Hawaii is home to a quarter of all the United States' animals and plants listed under

the Endangered Species Act, with more than 300 threatened or endangered species, more than 100 candidate species and more than 1,000 species of concern. Almost half of Hawaii's native bird species have become extinct. Human activity has devastated Hawaiian birds and other wildlife since Polynesians first settled the islands some 1,600 years ago. Stowaway rats that leapt from their canoes preyed on birds' nests. Several species

A Clown Makes a Comeback

of flightless geese, prized as food, were extinguished. Other birds were culled for their plumage, and Hawaiian kings cleared forests for agriculture. Europeans, arriving in the late 18th century, brought mosquitoes that later transmitted avian pox and malaria, against which native songbirds had little resisfance. Introduced sheep, pigs, cats and cattle compacted soils, ate mamane seedlings or devoured nestlings. Ranchers cleared forests for cattle pastures. Mongooses were imported to control the rats, but because mongooses hunt during the day, when rats hide, the mongooses ate ground-nesting birds instead. The palila vanished from the islands of Kauai and Oahu probably before 1800. Hawaii's endangered species experience is instructive, Banko says, because the destruction

disappearance of a species can set off a cascade of problems. Take the sea otter in Alaska. Research biologist Jim Estes of the U.S. Geological Survey Biological Resources Division suspects that overharvesting of whales in the Aleutian Islands in the 1990s prompted orcas, which eat other whales, to venture closer to shore and prey on sea lions, harbor seals and sea otters. As sea otters dwindled, one of their key foods, sea urchins, boomed. Sea urchins graze on kelp, so kelp forests declined. Without the kelp, crabs, clams, sea stars and many fish species suffered. In California, the decline of sea otters due to hunting and lost habitat had a similar outcome. The southern sea otter of central California has been helped

Southern Sea Otter Status: Threatened Year listed: 1977 Skill: Uses tools (rocks, shellfish) to obtain food

undreds of thousands of sea otters once ranged from Baja California to northern Alaska and across the Bering Strait to Russia and Japan. The animal was thought to have been eliminated from the California coast in the early 20th century, despite a 1911 international treaty that protected sea otters from the fur trade. In 1938, biologists made a startling announcement almost like that of the recent ivory-billed wood- ~ pecker's rediscovery: up to several hundred animals were living ~ near Big Sur on the central California coast. With that news, a ~. rocky conservation success story began unfolding. ~ Over the next four decades, in路 the absence of hunting pres- ~ sures, the sea otter population in California climbed to approxi- ~ mately 1,800. But the otters faced new problems, including oil 0 spills and some commercial fishermen who considered the otters by the Endangered Species Act and other laws, including 1980s competition (they are voracious eaters) and killed them. regulations that moved gill net fishing farther offshore. In the Commercial gill net fishing-a practice akin to dropping a cur- late 1980s, a small otter population was relocated to an island off tain into the water and capturing almost anything that swims the coast to ensure a separate, distinct colony as a hedge against by-killed an estimated 1,000 sea otters between 1973 and 1983. a calamitous oil spill or disease epidemic. Today, there are more The otter's tale provides a lesson in why species protection is than 2,500 California sea otters between Half Moon Bay and so urgent. Plants and animals in a particular region interact with Santa Barbara, and the population appears stable. Sea urchins one another in intricate and sometimes unknowable ways; the there are returning to normal, and kelp forests are thriving.

if)

and fragmentation of habitats as well as the domination of native species by invaders are the root causes of many species' decline. "We see this as a microcosm of what's happening on the continent in terms of watching ecological processes unravel," he says. The process is just more obvious on a real island than on one of the ecological islands that increasingly occur on the mainland-isolated habitats surrounded by highways, strip malls and housing developments. The pallIa was one of the first species to be protected under the Endangered Species Act when an early version of the law passed in 1966. Still, state authorities did little until 1978, when the palila did what any red-blooded American bird would do: it sued. In PaliZa versus Hawaii Department of

Land and Natural Resources (the first time a bird was a plaintiff in a lawsuit, which was brought by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund), a federal court ruled that under the Endangered Species Act, the state had to prevent further damage to the bird's habitat. In the 1990s, when the U.S. Army proposed building a road through critical palila habitat, the Act dictated that the military pay nearly $14.6 million to fund palila restoration projects. By then, most palila were confmed to a 30-square-kilometer forest on the west slope of Mauna Kea, between 2,100 and 2,700 meters. This lone population of about 3,000 birds easily could have been wiped out by fire, storms or a disease that strikes mamane trees. With the military's mitigation money, Banko and co-workers set out to

expand the palila's existing forest and establish a new pallia population on Mauna Kea's north side. Banko and others netted palila on the west slope, equipped them with tiny radio transmitters and moved them to the north slope. Most of the birds simply flew the 20 kilometers home. In March 2005, however, the researchers relocated another 75 wild palila, and some appear to have stayed put. At the same time, Alan Lieberman, of the Zoological Society of San Diego's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species, along with his colleagues at Hawaii's Keauhou Bird Conservation Center, have bred palila in captivity and released 15 of the birds in the northern habitat. Though some died or disappeared, Lieberman says, the survivors appear to be

acting like wild palila. On Mauna Kea's north side, Banko walks around a forest of six-meter-high mamane mixed with an occasional koa and sandalwood tree. Over a hand-held radio, he receives a report from one of his field researchers: there are five palila in a tree a kilometer away. The tree stands in the middle of what the researchers have dubbed "palila paradise," where they've spotted 20 of the birds. "I think the palila will colonize this area," Banko says, but he acknowledges it might take decades to build a community that won't need to be supplemented with captive-bred or relocated birds. He spots a female palila flitting in and out of the mamane tree. Everybody spies her activity through binoculars. Mter a few minutes, it's obvious what she is doing: building a nest.

allow the birds to eat and rest). "We show them the way once," says Heather Ray; who used to work for "the group that runs the crane project, Operation Migration. After that, she ~ insists, despite their odd upbringing, ~ "these are wild birds." ~ The whooping crane, like the ~ black-footed ferret in the Great;Z Plains and the California condor, is inching back from the precipice of extinction. In 1941 the species vied with the ivorybilled woodpecker for the title of North America's most endangered bird. Only 21 whooping cranes were left in the wild, the population devastated by hunters, wetlands loss and fashion (their plumes topped ladies' hats). Conservationists were eager to revive the species, but they didn't know where to start: nobody knew exactly where migratory whooping cranes nested. Then, in 1954, firefighters found

whooping cranes at the Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories in Canada. Recovery efforts for this migrating bird with a two-meter wingspan now had a multinational twist. A Canadian-American team created a new migration route for the birds from Wisconsin to Florida (there is also a nonmigratory whooping crane population, in Florida) to supplement the cranes' historic route from Canada to Texas, reasoning that bad weather or other problems along the single route could wipe out too

many cranes. By now, the whooping crane recovery program has used virtually every trick in the conservation biologists' toolbox: captive breeding, intensive training of nestlings, international cooperation, partnerships between government and conservation groups, habitat conservation and great gobs of public and private money. In December 2006, the population hit a milestone of 373 whooping cranes in the wild, including captive-bred birds that have now made the migration without a motorized escort. Though still endangered, the species has come a long way from its double-digit nadir. "If we can save the whooping crane," says Ray, "we can save all the other species." The achievement, she adds, is "the wildlife equivalent of putting a man on the moon."

Safe Harbors on Private Land Retf.CockadedWoot[pecker Status: Endangered Year listed: 1970 Security measure: Pecks at pine tree bark to release pitch, which oozes down the trunk and stymies snakes

n the early 1990s, while environmentalists and loggers in the Pacific Northwest battled over the northern spotted owl, sentiment was running high in the Southeast over the red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW). The medium-sized bird nests in mature longleaf pine forests, which have been heavily logged since the 19th century. After it was listed as endangered in 1970, some private landowners from the Carolinas to Mississippi deliberately cut longleaf pine trees to prevent the bird from squatting on their land. One driver's personalized license plate read "I eat RCWs." The question of what to do with endangered species on private land had long vexed wildlife managers. Some property owners have opposed species conservation efforts because of concerns that they'll have to restrict commercial activities if an endangered species is identified on their land. The conflict over the woodpecker inspired a new approach to the problem, a cooperative agreement called Safe Harbor: if landowners agreed to help protect and restore a listed species, the federal government would waive particular

Endangered Species Act restrictions. The first signatory of the agreement to save the red-cockaded woodpecker, perhaps the most successful Safe Harbor arrangement in the program's 10 years, was the Pinehurst Resort (site of the 2005 U.S. Open golf tournament) in North Carolina, which agreed to replant longleaf pines and log their private forest holdings near the resort with selectivecutting rather than clear-cutting. In return, U.S. wildlife officials agreed that Pinehurst and other landowners would not be subject to increased limits on development. The Safe Harbor agreement, like other conservation measures, didn't succeed on its own. Biologists fostered the regrowth of longleaf pines by burning competing undergrowth. And they constructed nest boxes and set them into trunks of smaller trees to serve as suitable nesting cavities until forests matured. Today, the red-cockaded woodpecker population is an estimated 15,000. Moral? "We've got to make landowners allies in species conservation," says Colin Rowan of Environmental Defense, a group that helped forge the Safe Harbor concept. More than 320 private landowners are enrolled in the Safe Harbor program, contributing to the protection of 35 threatened and endangered species on more than 1.2 million hectares.

almon runs have dropped precipitously along the Pacific Coast-victims of dams, waterway diversions and riverside habitat destruction. But along the Sacramento River in California, winter chinook salmon runs grew from a low of just 186 fish in 1994 to more than 10,000 in 2004. In this case, the salmon's decline can be linked to too much concrete. In 1945, Shasta Dam in Northern California shortened the length of river accessible to salmon, forcing the fish to spawn farther downstream. Next, the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, built in 1964 about 72 kilometers below the Shasta, near Redding, started blocking salmon from migrating up or down the river. Then, during a drought, Shasta Dam released warm water into the river in the summers of 1976 and

1977, to keep the streams flowing. The outcome for baby chinook was predictable: the fry fried. In 1985, scientists petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to classify the fish as endangered. Officials of the service ruled that although the fish was decidedly in trouble, a formal listing under the Endangered Species Act wasn't necessary.

Sharing Water During a Drought Cfiiricafiua Lel!Pard Fro!) Status: Threatened Year listed: 2002 Newly adopted habitat: Cattle watering tanks

An Earthjustice attorney sued. While the case was pending on appeal, in 1990, U.S. officials classified the California winter run salmon as threatened. Yet chinook populations in the Sacramento River continued to drop, and after another petition the fish was reclassified as endangered in 1994. The Act then mandated, among other engineering changes, that Shasta Dam

operators install a device that would pump deeper-and thus colder-water into the river. The Act listing also compelled the federal government to clean up ...Iron Mountain Mine near Redding, which had been contributing to salmon deaths by leaching heavy metals into the river. All told, federal and state agencies have spent more than $200 million to revive the salmon's winter run.

rizona ranchers Matt and Anna Magoffin earned an unofficial nomination to the Endangered Species Hall of Fame by hauling 3,700 liters of water per week to a stock tank on their ranch for four years, all to save a frog on its last legs. Many Southwestern aquatic species have suffered in the past century. Invasive species have altered the desert habitat, fungal diseases have hit frogs and other amphibians, and ranching and the Sun Belt population boom have diverted water, disrupted river and stream habitats and destroyed seasonal watering holes. The Magoffins are part of a coalition called the Malpai Borderlands Group, which created a Safe Harbor agreement for the Chiricahua leopard frog after it was listed as threatened in 2002. Biologists estimate that the frogs have disappeared from 75 percent of their historic range, and today the frog population is at or near its lowest point ever. To help the frog, the Magoffin family rebuilt water tanks, put in wells, poured concrete ponds and moved tadpoles from drought-stricken pools to more reliable water sources. Biologist Jim Rorabaugh of the Fish and Wildlife Service in Phoenix, Arizona, credits the Magoffins with paving the way for frog conservation on the 400,000 hectares where the Malpai Borderlands Group is active. Most of that land is public, controlled by the states of Arizona and New Mexico and the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, but much of it is owned privately by ranchers. "We're a long way from recovering this species," says Rorabaugh. "But we've got some really good partnerships on the ground."

he Karner blue butterfly once lived in 12 Eastern and Midwestern states and the province of Ontario, Canada. But as agriculture and development destroyed its prime habitats, including

oak savanna bers declined cent or more. The federal endangered,

and pine barrens, its numacross its range by 99 pergovernment declares species but subsequent recovery

efforts draw on state and local agencies as well as federal ones, along with conservation organizations and private landowners. In Wisconsin, the heart of the Karner blue's range, the entire state helped bring this

One-horned Rhinoceros aZiranga National Park in Assam is home to nearly 90 percent of the great Indian one-horned rhinoceros population. This endangered species is a target for poachers because rhino

horns are in high demand on the global black market, where one ki logram fetches around Rs. 80,000. Rhino horn is used in various Asian medicines. But while rhinos continue to be mercilessly

killed, increased security and greater anti-poaching efforts with the help of the Wildlife Institute of India, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local conservation groups have helped this endangered species survive. The conservation of the onehorned rhino in India has been a great success. In 1905, one-horned rhinos had declined to less than 20 in Kaziranga. Through strict protection, this population increased to more than 1,850 by 2006. The World Wildlife Fund's Indian Rhino Vision 2020 Project, championed by the Assam government, in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Floridabased International Rhino FounA pair of rhinos at the Kaziranga National Park in Assam.

dation is working to build the population of wild rhinos in Assam to 3,000 by 2020. In 1994, the U.S. Congress established the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A 2006 Congressional appropriation of $1.5 million, along with matching funds from host countries and conservation groups, paid for 44 vital rhino and tiger conservation projects. Grants are awarded for anti-poaching programs, habitat and ecosystem management, radio equipment to facilitate communication among park personnel, development of nature reserves, wildlife surveys and monitoring, management of human-wildlife conflict, public awareness campaigns and other conservation efforts. -S.K.

fluttering species back. Today, dozens of partners participate in a sweeping conservation plan that takes into account the butterfly's life history. When the caterpillars hatch in spring and summer, they require fields of lupine for food and shelter. So the Wisconsin Gas Company agreed to mow grass along its power lines later in the summer than usual, to give Karner blue caterpillars time to metamorphose into butterflies and fly away. The state highway department and other partner organizations also mow late, and they leave the grass long at the end of the growing season to help butterfly eggs survive the winter. Forestry companies and other partners delay herbicide and pesticide spraying on their lands until the fall, after lupine and other plants have died. "We will lose this species if we don't have institutionalized management," says Cathy Carnes, endangered species coordinator with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Wisconsin. Restoration of the insect's habitat appears to be a boon to other scarce animals that share it, such as the endangered Kirtland's warbler (which breeds in Michigan but visits Wisconsin), the slender glass lizard, the eastern massasauga rattlesnake and the wood turtle. To be sure, charismatic, symbolic or particularly cute endangered species often receive the lion's share of public attention and money, but the vast majority of endangered or threatened species are plants, unpretentious animals or insects like the Karner blue. The butterfly will never stir people's hearts quite like a bald eagle does, but its Endangered Species Act listing prompted enough changes that the Karner blue stands a good chance of surviving. "We still have time to preserve what we have left," says Carnes. ~ Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state. gov

Grizz{y Bear Status: Threatened in lower 48 states, but maybe not for long Year listed: 1975 Maximum height: Two meters when standing elcome to Grizzly Country." The sign is at the entrance to the squat, concrete building that houses the Cody district office of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Mark Bruscino, the agency's bear management officer, says he's trying to "keep the peace between people and bears." Glizzlies once roamed a vast swath of the Great Plains and Western states, but now occur only in isolated populations in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Wyoming. (They're doing fine in Alaska.) By the early 1970s, hunting and development pressures caused the grizzly population in the Yellowstone National Park area to plunge to about 150 bears, many of which were raiding trash bins in the national park. In 1975, officials classified the species as threatened in the lower 48. Today, Yellowstone and its surrounding area, most of which is national forest land, is home to more than 600 bears, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering taking the grizzly off the

threatened species list. It is "the wildlife recovery success story of the century," Bruscino says. Not that it was easy. The great bear is slow to reproduce, reaching sexual maturity at four to five years of age. Females give birth to only one or two cubs every three to five years. And grizzlies require great expanses of wild country to make a living. One important factor in the grizzly's rebound has been teaching people how to live with bears. That means keeping the animals away from humans so rangers or others don't relocate or shoot them. Near Cody, east of Yellowstone National Park, a 2.5meter-high bear-proof fence protects a small schoolhouse. Some ranchers take their cow carcasses to the county dump rather than leaving them to attract ursine scavengers. (The state of Wyoming has reimbursed ranchers more than $500,000 since 1995 for livestock losses.) Before a dumpster can be certified as ''bearresistant," a 400-kilogram captive grizzly pounds away at a prototype filled with

peanut butter and cookies. People put up electric fences around beehives (bears do love honey) and learn how to behave in a grizzly's presence (never look them in the eye, back away slowly). The long-term prognosis for the Yellowstone bears is cloudy. Genetic inbreeding may hamper this population's survival. And conservationists worry that declaring the grizzly no longer threatened will open the Yellowstone area to increased oil, gas and residential development, which would fragment the griZZly's habitat even more and hamper, if not undo, the bears' progress. Chris Servheen, the grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, says the bears have come back largely because people aren't killing them as much as they used to: "The most important habitat for bears is in the human heart." 41. Daniel Glick, of Colorado, is the author of Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth.

When in Rome:

A triking Redesign01 the Geny's Malibu Villa n the 1970s, the Getty Museum built itself a home in Malibu, California, in the form of an imitation Roman villa from the first century. There was something undeniably kitschy about the notion of putting a make-believe classical villa atop a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean and calling it a museum, but nobody seemed to mind. This was Los Angeles, after all, and so what if the overdecorated galleries, with their damask wall coverings and trompe-l'oeil murals, gave the museum's interior the feeling of a mogul's mansion in Bel Air? Then the Getty grew up. In 1976, its eccentric founder, the oilman 1.

SPAN MARCH/APRIL 2007

ByPAULGOLDBERGER

Paul Getty, died, leaving the bulk of his multibillion-dollar estate to the museum, which suddenly became the world's richest cultural institution. The museum morphed into the Getty Trust and spent a billion dollars constructing the Getty Center, a pristine modernist campus by Richard Meier, on top of a steep hill in Brentwood, a district of Los Angeles, 21 kilometers inland from coastal Malibu. The trust was obviously eager to leave behind its arriviste beginnings, and the villa could easily have become the most upscale condo conversion in Los Angeles history. Instead, the Getty came up with a more

imaginative, and more costly, idea: it decided to give its strange building a chance to be taken seriously. The trust announced that it would turn the Malibu villa into a museum of antiquities, filling it with objects that were created in the period that the building-a replica of the Villa dei Papiri, in Herculaneum-was intended to evoke. It was a risky move, since it wasn't clear if this approach would make the building look more dignified or even sillier. It took a dozen years and $275 rnillion to renovate the villa and surround it with a series of modernist buildings, including an entry pavilion, an amphitheater, a parking

â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘

Top left: A replica statue of a drunken faun overlooks the garden pool at the Getty Villa. The museum was reopened to visitors in January 2006 after a $275 million renovation. Above: The inner peristyle at the Getty Villa. Above right: The peristyle gallery in the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa.

garage, a cafe, an auditorium, an education center and a shop. The project's architects are Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti, of Boston, rigorous modernists who have a love of classicism and believe that an archi-

teet best respects history not by imitating it but by teasing its spirit into new forms. Machado and Silvetti are about as far as you can get from Norman Neuerburg, who designed the original villa, and it seemed an odd match: there is nothing overtly charming about Machado and Silvetti's work, while Neuerburg's design was a vast, sprawling exercise in cuteness. The campus that Machado and Silvetti have created is a bracing collage of old and new, and the villa has been nearly magically transformed. The task was surely made easier by the fact that the French furniture and Old Master paint-

ings are gone from the villa, and its new contents have a genuine connection to ancient Rome. (In fact, some items in the collection may belong to Rome; the Getty has been accused of acquiring a significant number of looted artifacts.) But it takes more than hauling away some gilded frames to make a ponderous building into a gracious one. Instead of slavishly replicating Roman architecture (although various touches, such as new floors of bronze, mosaic and marble, reveal a high level of scholarship), Machado and Silvetti have acknowledged the past without imitating it. They have SPAN MARCH/APRIL 2007

! In 1976, oilman J. Paul Getty died, leaving the bulk of his multibillion-dollar estate to the museum, which suddenly became the world's richest cultural institution. The museum morphed into the Getty Trust and spent a billion dollars constructing the Getty Center's modernist campus on a hilltop in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles. boldly reorganized the villa, creating more logical routes through it and adding 58 windows and three skylights, to bring natural light into the galleries. One of the best things in the villa now is a new main stair, of bronze, glass and hand-carved Spanish stone; a meticulous modernist composition, it is broad, sumptuous and serene, and a crisp counterpoint to the classical-looking environment around it. The effect is playful and knowing: in Italy, contemporary alterations to ancient Roman structures are often made in such a bluntly modem style, to make clear which elements are authentically old. Here, of course, the "original" details date from 1974. 14 SPAN MARCH/APRIL

2007

By treating the barely old as a revered object, Machado and Silvetti somehow make visitors feel that this building is no longer an object of ridicule but, rather, worthy of respect. It is an understated, sly maneuver, and they do it without taking the easy path of irony. Machado and Silvetti have recast the villa not only through their upgrades but in the way they have surrounded it with a series of new structures, changing its context. The villa is no longer its own little theme park: it is now an architectural folly in the center of a carefully conceived, impeccably wrought modem campus. In the English landscape tradition, the folly was not a trivial object but a noble act of historical connoisseurship, playing

off against a great manor house that was designed in a more contemporary style. Machado and Silvetti have saved the once outlandish villa by connecting it to this honorable architectural heritage. The ring of modernist structures doesn't intrude on the villa, nor do the buildings form a neutral backdrop. They are the architectural equivalent of cupped hands, holding the original structure within a firm, protective grasp. In this scheme, the new buildings-mainly horizontal structures, someof which are set into the side of the canyonare gateways that deliver you to the old.You start with Machado and Silvetti's monumental entry pavilion, and then zigzag up a series of staircases, through a carefully choreographed sequence of modernist areas, until you reach the amphitheater, where the space finally opens up. Only then does the renovated, painted concrete villa come into view-brilliant in ivory and white, with a glistening red tile roof. The facades of Machado and Silvetti's new buildings contain a few portions of travertine, a warm and handsome stone that here serves as a deft allusion to the dominant material on Meier's Getty Center campus in Brentwood. But the new villa buildings are clad mostly with striated concrete, a more provocative material that is at once harsh and delicate. Here, it is sometimes

The Getty Center in Brentwood, designed by Richard Meier, photographed from below the Exhibition Pavilion at dusk.

layered with marble, bronze, wood and other forms of concrete, to create what the architects call a "strata wall." The details are exceptionally refined-the retaining walls around the entry pavilion are capped by floating panels of translucent onyx, for example-and there are lots of climbing vines, lest anyone get the idea that these architects were trying to surround the villa with the rough and austere Brutalism that was fashionable in the 1970s. (Using the modernism of the villa's own period would have been a nasty, if clever, joke.) Machado and Silvetti seem determined

to show that modernism can have texture, richness, sensuality and scale. Their architecture recalls that of the great Italian modemist Carlo Scarpa. Like Scarpa, Machado and Silvetti can slip a sheet of glass or a crisp bronze rail into a stone facade, and make it seem not a coy juxtaposition of different periods but a real engagement of the modem with the Classical, so that architectural styles separated by 2,000 years appear to have something to say to each other. One of the new sections, a tall structure containing the cafe and the museum store,

lit

: -

Hollywood

'~. __~ -~--i'"

,;-,

!olE

has a large outdoor colonnade. Little slabs of onyx are set atop each column, forming modernist versions of capitals. The arrangement of the onyx layers varies with each column, and the effect is of piles of books stacked at random atop cylinders. A beautiful flourish, it's as subtle, and as gently witty, a comment on the dialectic between modernism and Classicism as I've ever seen. Elevating an object of architectural derision into something serious is no small achievement. This act seems particularly noteworthy in Southern California, where the line between good and bad taste has a: <3often been blurred beyond recognition, and ÂŤ ~ the experience of being in public space often consists not of strolling along a city street but of parking your car and entering some kind of artificial environment. At the :i} Getty Villa, you still park your car and enter ::E a fantasy world, but it's no longer a glib one: it's sincere, cerebral and elegant. By adding modem buildings, Machado and Silvetti haven't made the Getty's Roman villa any less a part of Southern California, and they haven't made it any less entertaining. They have given it the one thing it always lacked: a proper sense of history. 44

~~~-'-T-1," ,~ {"'...-'.,-_~ ,--;;,\r. â&#x20AC;˘.i.: 1-:1"~ L) '" '\).~! ~ CI

-j---..-1Ll: ,..:;/-:- ~.,

ill)) ~

-l.-1'"1:\ ';", LJ./

~---I

Los Angeles

Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic at The New Yorker. SPAN MARCH/APRIL 2007

~(J 0

Supporting Women's Empowerment Recognizing Achievements and Possibilities e observe International Women's Day and Women's History Month to recognize that social progress requires the active participation of women in all aspects of civic life and to acknowledge the contribution of women to international peace and security. Recognizing the achievements of ordinary women who have made transformative changes in their societies is a way to support women's empowerment at the grassroots level. Public acknowledgement of the importance of women is especially critical in countries where women have second-class status by law and/or practice. If women cannot participate in the political process, there can be no real democracy. If women are deprived of economic opportunity, development is crippled. If women are not educated, they cannot pass knowledge to their children, and there is no true security for the next generation. This is why the United States is committed to innovative efforts to improve the political, social and economic standing of women everywhere. A key component of U.S. efforts to support democracy and freedom worldwide is to help foster the development and efficacy of women as leaders in their countries' political institutions and processes. The United States supports programs aimed at training women around the world in basic leadership and advocacy skills as well as empowering them to run for office. Poverty often indicates a missed oppor-

tunity for women's participation, as the failure to use human capital curbs economic development. The United States is proud to sponsor innovative partnerships to promote economic opportunities for women. For example, the Women in Technology Program provides women's organizations with the training and tools to offer underprivileged women cutting-edge curricula and training in information technology, professional development and career networking. The empowerment of women is also key in the fight against HIV/AIDS. This pandemic is destroying precious lives, undermining economies, and threatening to destabilize entire regions. As the number of women and girls living with HIV rapidly grows, the empowerment of women is key to reducing the vulnerability of both women and men to HIV infection. Trafficking in persons is modern-day slavery, involving victims who are forced,

Karen P Hughes, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has just led a delegation of government officials and U.S. college and university presidents to Mumbai and New Delhi to expand educational partnerships. defrauded or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation. Annually, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders. Millions more are trafficked within their own countries. Up to 80 percent of transnational victims are women and children. Human trafficking is a global health risk and it fuels the growth of organized crime. The global observance of International Women's Day reminds all nations that the empowerment of women is irrevocably tied to the safety, security and prosperity of the world. ~ Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

Women's Historv Month n 1981, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution establishing National Women's History Week. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month, and every year since then March has been celebrated as Women's History Month. The 2007 Women's History Month theme is "Generations of women moving history forward." It highlights important events including the 50th anniversary of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement and the 30th anniversary of the National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas, that marked a high point in the influence of the women's rights movement on the formation of government policy. This year's theme expands on that of the Houston conference-"We are here to move history forward"-and celebrates the talent, courage and intelligence of generations of women. Honorees include Congresswoman Martha Wright Griffiths, civil rights advocate Brownie Ledbetter and Brigadier General Rebecca S. Halstead. Since its founding in 1980, the National Women's History Project (http://www.nwhp.org/) has recognized and celebrated the contributions of women to the history and culture of the United States.

The Pipe Dreamer

Shirley Franklin Mayor of Atlanta or two years after she was elected mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, in 2001, Shirley Franklin talked sewers every chance she got. Few were convinced that the city's pipes were crumbling or that the city was bleeding $20,000 a day in fines. And few wanted to raise rates on water to fIx the problem. At high school graduations, Franklin talked about clean water. At the supermarket, she talked about pipes to whoever was next to her in line. "I was a one-person chant, a drumbeat for infrastructure," says Franklin, 61, who dubbed herself the "Sewer Mayor." Her persistence paid off when voters passed a $3.2 billion overhaul of the aging water and sewerage system. Franklin, a Democrat, knows sewers aren't sexy, but that's exactly the kind of policy problem she likes to focus on. Scan her first-term record, and it might look different from a typical politician's: She has raised the sales tax by one percentage point, eliminated more than 1,000 city jobs, and spent her time talking potholes and sewers. "If you look in a book on how to get re-elected, it's kind of like the not-to-do list," says Franklin. Yet she was reelected

with more than 90 percent of the vote in November 2005 to continue as the first AfricanAmerican woman to serve as mayor of a major southern U.S. city. That's largely because Franklin has restored trust in government by rooting out the corruption that had infected America's southern darling following the 1996 Olympic Games. The previous administration had racked up an $82 million budget defIcit, which Franklin learned of only after taking office. In her first term, she showed Atlanta no-nonsense, back-to-basics policymaking based largely on broad publicprivate partnerships. As a longtime city administrator, she has focused more on selling policies and shoring up the basic systems of government-instituting walking beats for Atlanta's police, for example-than on winning political points, though she is quick to say she doesn't sit on the political sidelines. "I like politics," she says. "But I don't believe in playing politics with government policy. We ought to give the people our best thinking based on the research data and best practices."

Supporters credit her success partly to her long career as a city administrator under Mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young, as well as her six years working on the Atlanta Olympics. That experience has shortened her learning curve, of course. But she had not had to win votes or score political points in the past, since she had never run for elective office. That, no doubt, has guided her approach to the job. 'Tm kind of an unintentional politician," says Franklin. "I've always been interested in the policy and not in the political strategy." As a sociology major in the 1960s at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Franklin worked on a mayoral campaign and was active in the civil rights struggle. She attended the 1963 March on Washington with her

mother. Franklin says the social movements of the 1960s, and people like Coretta Scott King, still inspire her to have the energy and courage to push for reform. "I try to emulate that in my life, bringing the sheer will to get something done," she says. She went on to graduate school and worked at the U.S. Department of Labor before teaching political science at Talladega College in Alabama. In 2000, after she had served 13 years as a city administrator in Atlanta, an Olympics organizer, and a private consultant, former Mayors Jackson and Young encouraged Franklin to run. City Hall was under investigation by the FBI, a probe that resulted in the indictment of 10 of the previous mayor's employees. "I was discouraged by the lack of public trust that seemed

to be pervasive," she says. "It was in the black community, the white community, the newcomers, young people, older folks. There was a sense that government couldn't do it right." But she was also growing uneasy with the career advice she was continually giving to young women-advice she was not following herself. "I was telling all these young women ... that you could do

more than 30 years. "She came into her own." Some Franklin staffers call her a visionary. But she rejects the label, replying that she has just been around longer than most of her staff. Franklin says her former bosses, Jackson and Young, "could both see into the future," but she sees herself as a "driver for change ....! push things through." She stays intensely focused on issues, building alliances with city

"If you were going to take your time as a private citizen or as a professional," she says, "we were going to work with what you recommended." After Franklin spent two years speaking about the sewerage system, business leaders started asking her how they could help. The referendum to refurbish the system received the backing of three quarters of Atlanta's residents. Her task force on the sewer issue has Mayor Shirley Franklin (center in the yellow suit) joins other Atlantans in the 2003 groundbreaking for the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest, which was debtfree when it opened in November 2005, thanks to donations from individuals and corporations.

anything you wanted to do. And we hadn't had a woman" as mayor, she said. "I finally convinced myself that I had an obligation to break through the barrier." At ftrst she was unsure of herself; she was nervous speaking in public, and she trailed her opponents in name recognition early on. But eventually she raised $3.2 million and ran on a reform platform. She released copies of her income tax returns and posted campaign contributions on her Web site. Her campaign slogan was simple: "You make me mayor, and I'll make you proud." "When she got out on the campaign trail, she really grew," said Congressman John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, who has known Franklin for

leaders, and once she latches on to an idea she says it's a matter of crafting a clear message. "You know where she stands, and she'd tell you in a moment," says Lewis. "It's not a lot of small talk. She wants to get to the point and deal with issues." Nowhere is that drive more evident than in the more than two dozen public-private task forces she has started, which have brought in more than 75 private firms to help shape policy with city officials. "She is a skillful negotiator, mediator," says Lewis. "She's a bridge builder." Task forces are nothing new, but Franklin says the key to making her blue-ribbon panels a success has been simple: Follow the recommendations.

been a template for reform on issues such as homelessness, improving public schools and restoring fiscal integrity to the city. "Her response is always, 'What is the right thing to do, and then we'll manage the politics of the situation,''' says Pete Correll, chairman emeritus of Georgia-Pacific [the Atlantabased manufacturer of packaging, paper, pulp and building products] who is chairman of the Atlanta Committee for Progress. "While she's certainly not colorblind, she's not overwhelmed by the black-white issue," he says. "For so many years in Atlanta, I think the fIrst question we asked ourselves was what will the black community think and what will the white community think?

Shirley has brought us full circle to ask us what is the right thing to do. That is a dramatic change." Franklin's goals have shifted in her second term. She started a program in 2004 to support internships, jobs and college application fees for the city's recent high school graduates, after she found that 775 students had no postgraduate plans. In July 2005, the city opened a center to provide health care and job training to about 500 homeless Atlantans as a first step in Franklin's plan to end homelessness in the next 10 years. And now she's turning to another challenge: a massive redevelopment plan that calls for 30,000 new jobs and a $20 billion increase in Atlanta's tax base over the next 25 years. The centerpiece of the plan is the transformation of 35 kilometers of railroad circling the city's core into parklands and housing. Atlanta has turned itself around in many respects dming Franklin's fIrst term, but some critics say her pro-growth policies have hurt the city's poorest by raising the cost of living and focusing on attracting newcomers. Driving back from a meeting recently, she acknowledged the problem after pointing to new houses under construction and the new downtown headquarters of the Southern Co. "It's challenging to keep the city affordable," she says. For her personally, she'll have to maintain the energy that paid off on the sewer project. Although there were rumors about a possible run for the U.S. Senate, she says the best place for her to shape policy is Atlanta. Based on her track record to date, it's hard to argue the point. ~ Silla

Brush

is a reporter with

U.S. News & World Report.

Breakthrough for Human Rights the n East meets West world of corporate expansion, it is common to hear of American companies having affiliate offices in India, and vice versa. Nonprofit organizations promoting transcontinental social change, it seems, are not far behind. Mallika Dutt, 45, founder of Breakthrough, a human rights organization that functions through affiliate offices in New York and New Delhi, finds that both offices complement each other and build on the organization's raison d'etre-that of advancing global human rights. "The U.S. and India, as the world's largest democracies with extremely diverse populations, have been of particular interest to me because I feel if human rights are to be protected and promoted, this must be successfully done in the U.S. and India," explains Dutt, who works out of the New York office and spends four months each year in India. "On a personal level, I have also been interested in the U.S. and India because of my dual identity as an Indian American," she adds. Dutt started Breakthrough in 1999 as a means to promote human rights values through media, education and popular culture. It works to promote women's rights, sexual and reproductive rights, immigrant rights, racial, ethnic and caste equality. In India, popular entertainment has proven to be an effective way to reach the masses. In 2000, Breakthrough's pop album

Mann Ke Manjeere: An Album of Women's Dreams (Virgin Records) topped the national charts for five months. Its title song by Shubha Mudgal, based on the true story of a woman who left her abusive husband to become a truck driver, was named the Best Indipop Music Video at the 2001 Screen Awards and was nominated for the MTV Music Awards. More recently, Breakthrough's HIV/AIDS campaign titled "What Kind of a Man Are You?" drew national attention for its sensitive approach to a controversial subject-the fact that increasing numbers of Indian women are being infected with HIV by their husbands-and for its unparalleled use of mainstream media to raise awareness. Support from India's top media houses has played a large part in Breakthrough's success in reaching out to the audiences, says Dutt. "The partnerships that we have developed with mainstream entertainment industry players and media in India have been phenomenal," she says. "In the 'What Kind of Man Are You?' campaign, McCann Erickson India (the Indian branch of New York-based advertising agency McCann Erickson) developed our entire campaign pro bono. We were then able to disseminate the campaign extensively with donated [time] through television, radio and print and through the Internet. More than 21 TV channels, 15 newspapers and magazines, five radio

channels and six multiplexes ... around the country partnered with us to disseminate the campaign in seven languages." While Breakthrough's programs in India focus on promoting women's rights through the medium of popular culture, in the United States, Breakthrough's programs focus on building awareness of racial justice and immigrant rights largely through public dialogue. "Our approach in the U.S. has been different because it has been far more difficult to partner with the mainstream entertainment industry," says Dun. "We have had to create and produce our media within the organization and rely on Internet and new media distribution strategies for dissemination. As a result, we have also convened large public forums on human rights issues within the U.S." In September 2006 Breakthrough organized a public forum in New York City to discuss the importance of a human rights movement in America. The event, co-sponsored by 70 organizations, attracted 600 participants from around the United States, including students, social justice leaders and performers. Speakers included Larry Cox, executive director of

Breakthrough is pioneering an approach to human rights aimed at challenging stereotypes.

Amnesty International USA, and Mary Beth Maxwell, founding executive director of American Rights at Work. Breakthrough's "Value Families" campaign, launched to demonstrate how fair and just immigration policies that respect human rights can benefit all Americans, was one of 10 campaigns singled out at the second annual Clinton Global Initiative in September 2006. Dutt also received a certificate of commitment from former President Bill Clinton. "President Clinton's recognition of the 'Value Families' campaign is critical to our efforts to reach out to partners in the business and entertainment industries. We need to build strong coalitions if we are to realize human rights in the U.S.," says Dutt. Through engaging multimedia and public education workshops, the campaign aims to reduce fear of and hostility toward immigrants, and create public dialogue that leads to what Breakthrough considers fair immigration policies. Bridging public policy and popular culture in India and the United States, Breakthrough is pioneering an approach to human rights aimed at challenging stereotypes, examining existing social conventions, and ultimately, influencing the way in which individuals, communities and nations interact with each other. ~ Smita Jain is an American freelance writer based in New Delhi. Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

â&#x20AC;˘

rew I In

Historian to Shape Harvard'~ istory is an integral part of Drew Gilpin Faust's life. The eminent historian and academic leader spends a lot of time studying people who are remembered for making a mark and showing the way. In February, Faust entered the history books herself when she was chosen as the first woman president of Harvard University. When Faust becomes the 28th president of America's oldest university on July I, it will be the first time that four of the eight Ivy League schools-Harvard, Brown, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania-will be run by women. The eight private colleges and universities in the Ivy League are considered the most prestigious higher education institutions in the United States. "I've spent a lot of time thinking about the past, and about how it shapes the futme ....Our shared enterprise is to make Harvard's future even more remarkable than its past," said Faust in a speech after her appointment was announced. Harvard is on the verge of adopting a new college curriculum "that promises more coherence, more choice, and more excitement in undergraduate education. We have just received a faculty report calling for renewed and enhanced dedication to teach-

ing," said Faust, an expert on the Civil War and the American South. But if Harvard is to accomplish all that it intends, it needs to break down barriers that inhibit collaboration among schools or among disciplines, barriers that divide the sciences and the humanities, she said. According to an American Council on Education study in 2006, 23 percent of college presidents were women. "While that percentage has increased from 9.5 percent in 1986, it is clear that women are still under-represented in this realm of academia," the American Association of University Women said in a comment on the study. Yet because more than half of all U.S. university presidents in 2006 were older than 60, compared with 14 percent in 1986, the futme for women's leadership in academia is considered promising. "A potential wave of retirements means there is an opportunity to create greater diversity in the [university] presidency," says Jacqueline E. King, director of the American Council on Education's Center for Policy Analysis. "It's important," said Faust in an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), "that that I'm the president of Harvard, not the woman president of Harvard." Yet, she said, her appointment does symbolize "impor-

Husl Future tant changes in the place of women in higher education, the place of women in public life, the place of women in America, and the world more generally. But it's more than me," she emphasized. "I mean, I'm the symbol. But the reality that lies behind it is much broader than Harvard, or me, or even higher education." Faust has served since 2001 as the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Before coming to Harvard, she spent 25 years on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where she had also headed the women's studies program. After the announcement of her new position, she told a news conference, "Young women have come up to me and said this is really an inspiration. So I think it would be wrong not to acknowledge that this has tremendous symbolic importance. "I hope my appointment can be one symbol of an opportu-

nity that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago," she added. Speaking about the challenges ahead, Faust said on PBS that there are many contradictions in how Americans have regarded universities. "We love them and hate them at the same time. We want to get our children into them. We struggle and strive to do that.

And yet, at the same time, we say they're hidebound and they're not well-managed." She feels that, while what Harvard does in this next decade will serve as an important part of the answer to these contradictions and challenges, it will also help to define the "character and meaning of universities for the 21st centurywhether they can be supple enough, enterprising enough, ambitious enough to accomplish all that is expected of them-and no less important, whether they can do so while preserving their unique culture of inquiry and debate in a world that seems increasingly polarized into unassailable certainties."

Drew Gilpin Faust (center in black), with Nell Booth, executive assistant to Bryn Mawr College's president, (left in red) is followed by reporters at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania just before Harvard chose her as its first female president. :'I.. '

Faust, who was born [Catherine Gilpin, grew up in ~ Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. - ~ She attended Concord Academy 1ÂŁin Massachusetts and received ~ her bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr in 1968. She graduated magna cum laude with honors in history, and earned her master's degree (1971) and doctorate (1975) in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. Faust's sixth book, The Cl.

Republic of Suffering, due for release in 2008, explores the impact of the Civil War's enormous death toll on the lives of 19th century Americans. Her previous book, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (1996) won an award from the Society of American Historians as best nonfiction book on an American theme. Faust rebelled at an early age against the widespread racial discrimination of the time and the secondary role she was expected to playas a female. When she was nine, she wrote President Dwight D. Eisenhower, urging him to end racial segregation. The only daughter in a family of four children, Faust wrote in a later autobiographical essay, "I was the rebel who did not just march for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, but who fought endlessly with my mother, refusing to accept her insistence that 'this is a man's world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better off you'll be.'" ~ Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

Maura Hurley

Sowing Seeds Early

he mustard seed is a much-favored condiment in Bengali cooking. Added to the smoking mustard oil, it sputters and exudes a pungent, delicious aroma; ground to a paste, it makes Bengal's famous hilsa fish curry absolutely delectable. One would think that these associations with Bengal have inspired Maura Hurley, married to a Bengali and who has made Kolkata her home, to name her little home library "Mustard Seeds." But there are other deeper meanings the spice evokes for Hurley. "I believe kids are like seeds. If something is planted in their minds at a young age, like peace and coexistence, it will develop meaningfully into their adult lives," she says. Hurley got the idea of starting the library at her own flat in the Salt Lake housing complex she lives in when she moved from Japan to Kolkata with her bio-physicist husband, Gautam Basu. She wanted to introduce her daughter and son to the world of books in an open and happy ambience but failed to find a nearby library. "In America we are quite used

to this concept of community libraries," says Hurley, who was also exposed to the concept of the "Bunko" or pocket libraries at individual homes during the time she spent in Kyoto, where she taught English. Meanwhile, she had collected books, many of them gifts to her children from her sisters back home "and I wanted to share them with others." All these ideas went into the making of Mustard Seeds eight years ago. It is open on Sunday mornings to coincide with the school holiday and no fee is charged for joining the club. Indeed, Mustard Seeds exudes a clublike atmosphere, a meeting place for children of varied ages. "As soon as they walk in, they are members," says Hurley, adding, "It's mostly an informal affair and kids also bring in friends from other areas of the city sometimes. But generally it's the neighborhood children who come in," usually about a dozen. Book reading or borrowing is not the only activity. The children sit around drawing pictures or trying out jigsaw puzzles. On the walls are displayed their

colorful handiworks: pamtmgs and also pictures of T-shirts they designed and made as part of a contest on Earth Day. "Afterwards we baked a cake, too, sharing it together." Teaching about environment preservation through these little acts, Hurley feels, will plant the seed of sensitive and aware future citizens. Young enthusiasts Riku, Alokon, Subhajit and Tiyasha also show off their self-painted cloth bags, in which they carry their library books home. They also bring out their own newsletter from time to time. Rightly, it carries the message, "Small efforts for big results." The children also love the way "Maura aunty" gives them a free hand in discovering and experimenting, even allowing them to get wet under a shower after a stiflingly hot day. And why not? While driving down the road, Hurley says her children look out of the car window and wonder aloud why they can't get wet like the street kids. "These are experiences that give simple pleasure to children and I don't think one should be too strict about these things," she says matter-of-factly. The collection of about 500 books at Mustard Seeds is an eclectic mixture, from beautifully illustrated books by Allen Say like Tree of Cranes, Prodeepta Das' Geeta's Day: From Dawn to Dusk in an Indian Village, to biographies and Harry Potters, of course! Since the idea of Mustard Seeds caught on, Hurley has made it a point to collect as many books as possible while visiting home. She says that attending garage sales is a boon and "public libraries in America also sometimes sell books at rock bottom prices." Hurley also discovered the M-Bag of the postal authorities in America through which one can send a huge number of books and media material at a reasonable rate. Besides, her friends and siblings also continue to send books. Hurley also works part-time, teaching slum children in an informal school run by a non-governmental organization. Hurley is also fond of graphic arts. The designer in her finds creative fulfillment through her involvement with an organization that helps poor women earn an income through crafts. Hurley promotes the "pat" (or scroll painting) of the Medinipur district of West Bengal. "What I like about these works is that it is not just

the painting, but the involvement of the whole community. And they can be adapted to modem art very well." She feels it is important to bring into focus the artisans, as well as their work. "For example, a patachitra in the Bengal tradition is not complete without the presence of the 'chitrakars,' the painters, who sing along, describing each scene, which are mostly from the epics." Their singing and unfurling of the scroll make it a whole, she feels. Hurley's love for Asian folk mts, which was further honed in Japan, is not accidental. She earned her degree from Michigan State University in philosophy and Asian studies and also studied Japanese. Hurley likes to write, too, and her creativity finds expression in her blog,

http://tik-tiki .blogspot.com/.

4t.

Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkata-based freelance journalist who also translates literature and writes fiction.

International Women'sDav

he idea for this special day developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amid rapid industrialization that led to protests over working conditions. Women workers from clothing and textile factories staged one such protest on March 8, 1857, in New York City They established their first labor union in March, two years later. More protests followed on March 8 in subsequent years, most notably in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. In 1975, the United Nations began celebrating March 8 as International Women's Day. This year's theme is "Ending impunity for violence against women and girls." On March 8, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and honor their achievements. It is an opportunity to unite, network and mobilize for meaningful change.

Welthy FisherBYANnWNAIM On a Mission for Literacy

he history of the literacy movement in India would be incomplete without taking into account Welthy Honsinger Fisher's contribution. Through her determination and commitment she was able to make a difference in the lives of thousands of people. Born in Rome, New York, in 1879, she graduated from Syracuse University in 1900. She started working as a teacher, but within six years she was sent to China, as a Methodjst Church mjssionary. There she became principal of a girls' school in Nanchang. But India called. In 1924, she married Fred Fisher, a Methodist bishop working in Agra. The Fishers were well-acquainted with prominent leaders of the Indian independence movement and their extensive travel convinced them that poverty and lack of education were the root causes of suffering. In 1938, Fisher's husband died in Detroit, Michigan, but she decided to carryon her work. She returned to India in 1947 and once again met Mohandas K. Gandhi, who advised Fisher that if she wanted to spread education in India, she should work in the villages. He repeated

Above: WeIthy Fisher. Below left: Trainees and staff at the prayer hall at Literacy House. Below right: Staff members and trainees work in the garden at Literacy House.

this advice in his last meeting with her six weeks before he was assassinated. Fisher, who was well-known as an educational activist, was asked in 1952 by Dr. Arthur T. Mosher, principal of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute, to visit Allahabad and train a few people selected by the government, who would in turn train village teachers. In Allahabad, she started her training program with 40 people at a small bungalow of the Agricultural Institute. This was the first step toward what later became Literacy House, a small nonformal school that combined literacy with vocational training. Fisher divided her entire movement under four heads: functional

Welthy Fisher chats with a gardener outside the prayer hall at Literacy House in 1958. literacy, family life, food production and fear removal. In early 1954, after just a year of operations, it became increasingly difficult to continue the program because of financial constraints. But Fisher decided to take up the challenge. She rented an old garage near the Allahabad Agricultural Institute and started giving classes on the verandah. She went to America and explained her plan to the trustees of World Literacy Inc., which donated $45,000 for her mission. On her return to India, Fisher got a request from K.M. Munshi, the then governor of Uttar Pradesh, to shift her Literacy House to Lucknow. He provided a four-acre plot and the move was made in September 1956. Teacher training started at the new headquarters but

the educational mission was taken to the villages by workers who went into markets on bicycles with tin trunks full of booklets. These were lent out and collected after a couple of days. Greenwich Women of Connecticut, in America, donated a van, which helped literacy workers reach remote villages. Fisher would often accompany the caravan. Meanwhile, necessary books were written and distributed on a large scale by Literacy House itself. A fortnightly newsletter, Ujala (Daylight), was launched and circulated through libraries and literacy kits. Workers were trained under the Functional Literacy Program so that they could, in turn, train others. A department of "Family Life Education" was established to enable rural women and girls to support themselves. In 1958, when the Indian government wanted to spread the Panchayati Raj movement, Literacy House

was given the task of arranging orientation training for village heads and members of block development committees. Impressed by the activities, the government recognized it as a state resource center. Fisher won the Ramon Magsaysay Award, given to honor outstanding individuals and organizations working in Asia for human development, in 1964 and donated the entire $10,000 to buying two 16-hectare farms, so that classes in agriculture and animal husbandry could be offered, along with literacy. Today, Literacy House is a major adult educational and teacher training institution. Its routine remains similar to what it was during Fisher's days. Trainee applicants sponsored by the government or others come to Literacy House from across India. They include teachers, deputy supervisors of schools, social workers, district welfare workers, home science instructors, cooperative workers, block development supervisors, health workers and clergymen. After retiring from her work, Fisher spent most of her later years at her ancestral home in Southbury, Connecticut. She visited India for the last time in 1980 at the age of 101. She died a few months after returning home. One of her co-workers, Mushtaq Pardesi, quotes her as often saying, "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." Pardesi says, "She lit a lamp. And then the process of lighting the lamps, one after the other, never stopped." ~ Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

arathi-speaking Anjali Deshmukh, born and raised in suburban America, but happily painting, designing and writing in a minimally furnished South Delhi apartment, is the last person you would accuse of having an identity crisis. Ask her if she considers herself American or Indian and the 27-yearold replies in a stream of rapid fIre, highly articulate English that she is, in effect, both. Look over the canvases on the walls and you'll see what she means. Strikingly modern, almost abstract landscapes combine influences from NASA satellite imagery to Hindu mythology to dense scientific papers trawled from the Internet. On a gleaming Macintosh laptop, the artist designs companion pieces to ultimately accompany the canvases, creating a dialogue and providing, in some measure, an explanation of the work. Deshmukh exhibited 20 paintings and digital drawings at a show called "Agent Green of the Acacia Tortilis and Other Weapons" at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, in December 2006. "The work began as an examination of how the intersection between mythology and science could reflect on social

and environmental issues," says Deshmukh. She started the series in America but developed it extensively over the last year in India, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. www.fulbright-india.org Take the Saraswati River as an example. The invisible third river which joins the Ganga and the Yamuna at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, is a sacred entity to some, a possible historical fact to others, a real river which either dried up or moved underground in ancient times. Travel to different parts of northern India, and you will encounter different versions of the Saraswati, remodelled according to local geography. Likewise, Deshmukh has her own consciousness of the river. Her mother being a Sanskrit scholar, Deshmukh grew up surrounded by Hindu mythology. But she also uses the river as a metaphor. In her painting of the sang am, the confluence where the three rivers meet, the Ganga and the Yamuna are stylized but recognizably aqueous, cool and blue. The Saraswati, bisecting the Y of the rivers, is a series of densely green ponds, representing the story of the river rising from seven lakes. The simple composition captures both the ritual purity of the confluence and its present pollution. The catastrophic environmental degradation, says Deshmukh, was the thing she found most striking when she visited the site.

Lightening the subject with a touch of humor and a ray of hope, the green ponds also refer to the use of duckweed to absorb nitrogen pollution in waterways. In another canvas, the third river becomes a different metaphor altogether. A thin white line snakes across a desiccated landscape, originating in a delicate veil of green which holds tenuously to a corner of the arid territory. The landscape represents a stretch of desert near laisalmer in Rajasthan. The river has now become the border between India and Pakistan, an arbitrary line drawn in sand, yet a line with all the real world power of a religious story. On either side of the line, communities are sinking tubewells, depleting the water table without any sense of coordination-affecting each other's future because of a line intended to separate them. Deshmukh switches on her computer and shows a parallel work, a reflection of the image using computer graphics where blocks of yellow text mirror the fragile greenery where the river rises. These are three stories of the water crisis, each with a different outcome. They reflect her extensive reading and writing on the subject, a process which she interweaves with the painting, often sitting up till 4 a.m. sifting articles she has found on the Internet. The computer image will eventually be shown side by side

with the painting. Deshmukh was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, but India has always loomed large in her life. Her parents are from Maharashtra, and Marathi was the lingua franca in the family home until she was about five; then she switched to English. She majored in English and fine arts at Amherst College, Massachusetts, and a brief spell in journalism followed. Her career morphed through a stint at Rhode Island School of Design, which allowed her deep consciousness of India to emerge on canvas. A Fulbright Scholarship brought her to Delhi in November 2005 for her first extended stay. "My artwork has always had some connection to India, because of my upbringing and because I care about India," says Deshmukh. Yet her art contrasts sharply with the formalist works that currently dominate New Delhi's alt scene. As a product of American schools, Deshmukh says she comes from a different tradition. Political and social concern, perhaps heightened by her perspective as an outsider, are primary to her work. Her environmental engagement came about when she began painting landscapes, about a year before she arrived in India. Subjects included the story of Shiva as a pillar of fire, which was compared to a volcanic eruption and used as an allegory of global warming brought about by natural phenomena. The current series is a continuation of those themes, but with more emphasis on the human causes of environmental problems. Deshmukh hasn't made a fIrm decision on her future. She may return to a writing career in the United States, or come back to India and live here as a Person of Indian Origin, with the option to take citizenship. The current boom in the art market would certainly work in her favor. One plan she discusses is founding an organization to address some of the social and environmental concerns she has been exploring through her work. ~ Angus McDonald, a freelance writer and photographer who has lived in India since 1998 is also currently documenting projects of the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation.

===Guest Essa

Political Equality:

Need of the Hour

he Indian Republic started its journey with the ideals of liberty, equality and justice that made Indian women feel secure with promises of survival, equal treatment and opportunity. Their dream of being equal citizens, however, remains unfulfilled even today. The progressive vision of the Constitution has proved inadequate in addressing the complexities of gender discrimination. There is a growing consciousness to recognize women's autonomy, and their capacity to act as full citizens. Political participation, representation and a share in decision-making bodies are significant indicators of the status of women in any society. In pre-independence India, women had demanded voting rights as early as 1917, and they bravely fought against colonialism as well as the patriarchal, traditional society. Voting rights came with national independence. Constitutional provisions and legislative securities subsequently led women to enter elective and appointive public office in unprecedented numbers. India has had a woman Prime Minister and several state chief ministers. The celebration of the year of Empowerment of Women, the reservation of 33 percent of panchayat seats for women and a proposal for a similar reservation in Parliament are all steps in the right direction. In general, however, the involvement of women in politics has been low key. They have acted as volunteers in civic and social community efforts, in electoral politics as political wives, party loyalists and voters. But in political decision-making their status has been subordinate to that of men. Only a small section of women belonging to or supported by affluent and influential families have managed to enter the political mainstream. One hindrance is that, in India, politics has been associated with unhealthy competition, display of physical strength, greed and struggle for the exercise of authority. Women have been socialized to believe that politics is a male domain, a dirty game and have stayed on the sidelines. But it is not simply their choice. Indian culture assigns women the responsibilities of primarily parenting and nurturing, so they develop an according psychology and choose the role of care-giver and confinement to the private sphere, I.e. home. The family in India has an important influence on the life of women, whose identity and course in life are considered to be determined by their fathers, brothers

or husbands. Women's limited political training and socialization takes place within the family and home. Practices such as female seclusion and sex segregation, the relative rigidity of the division of labor, and the notion of the "naturalness" of males' and females' work, and many subtle aspects of gender relations all contribute to the shaping of ideology and practices that marginalize women. Even in the area of politics there is a gender gap, not only in choice of candidates but in voting. This is mainly related to illiteracy. It is exacerbated, however, by inadequate vote registry campaigns and carelessness of those whose duty it is to help women, even illiterate ones, complete the formalities through which they can exercise their constitutional right to cast a ballot and choose their leaders. Patriarchy should not be regarded as an insurmountable obstacle, but must be fought. Education, development of scientific outlook, legal safeguards, enlightenment of men and awareness of their own potential by women are the effective forces in this direction. By strengthening women's leadership, building up their self-confidence and morale and equipping them with information the situation can be changed. It is not just the numbers that count. Success lies in the way women leaders perceive the problems and effectively resolve the issues. To strengthen the position of women in society, equal participation of men and women is required. This is not only a demand for simple justice or democracy, but a necessary condition for human existence. The entry of women into politics and decision-making structures can change the policies, vision and structure of institutions. They could redefine political priorities, and place new items on the political agenda to address gender specific concerns and provide a new perspective on mainstream political issues. Development can only take place when women are given decision-making roles. Education combined with this opportunity can overcome social, cultural and economic barriers and lead toward self-determination. ~ Manuka Khanna is a reader in the Department of Political Science and a guest faculty in the Institute of Women Studies at Lucknow University. Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

shy, unassuming scientist and former civil servant, Rachel Carson seemed an unlikely candidate to become one of the most influential women in modern America. But Carson had two lifelong passions-a love of nature and a love of writingthat compelled her in 1962 to publish Silent Spring, the book that awakened environmental consciousness in the American public and led to an unprecedented national effort to safeguard the natural world from chemical destruction. As a trained scientist, Carson meticulously documented her conclusions about the long-term dangers of pesticides; as a skilled writer, she communicated those dangers in language the average reader could understand. Carson was born 100 years ago in a small town in western Pennsylvania. Although she grew up far from the seacoast, she recalled that even as a child she felt "absolute fascination for everything related to the ocean." She also was determined that one day she would be a writer. As a student at Pennsylvania College for Women, she majored in English until her junior year, when she switched to biology-a bold move at a time when few women entered the sciences. She went on to graduate cum laude from Johns Hopkins University with a master's degree in marine

Rachel Carson A Quiet Woman Whose Book Spoke Loudly biology in 1932. While teaching zoology at the University of Maryland, Carson spent summers studying at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, where she saw her beloved sea for the fIrst time. She began her civil service career writing science radio scripts for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and in 1936 was offered a job as an aquatic biologist, only the second woman ever hired by the agency in a professional position. Carson spent 15 years in the federal government writing educational materials about conservation and natural resources and editing publications for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Carson had continued to write independently about her love of the sea. In 1941, she published her fIrst book, Under the Sea Wind, a naturalist's look at the struggle for life in the sea and along its shores. A second book, The Sea Around Us, which described the processes that formed the earth and the oceans, became a bestseller and won her worldwide acclaim. The financial success of her books made it possible for Carson to retire in 1952 from the government and build a cottage on the coast of Maine. Her third book, The Edge of the Sea, a guide to marine life, was published in 1955. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring is available at the American Library in Kolkata and Chennai.

By PHYLLIS MciNTOSH

Carson had long been concerned about environmental damage from overuse of chemical pesticides and as early as 1945 had tried unsuccessfully to sell an article about pesticide testing to Reader's Digest magazine. In 1958, with evidence mounting about the hazards of DDT [Dichloro Diphenyl Trichloroethane] and other pesticides, Carson was moved by a letter she received from friends on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, describing how aerial spraying of DDT had killed birds on their land. She resolved to alert the public to the dangers and, once again unable to sell a magazine article on the subject, set to work on Silent Spring. Over the

next four years, she meticulously researched the book and, anticipating sharp criticism from chemical companies, compiled 55 pages of sources and an extensive list of experts who had reviewed her manuscript. When the fIrst installment of the book appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1962, the chemical industry decried her as a "hystetical woman." The book quickly found favor with the public, however, especially after a major television network aired a special about pesticides that featured an interview with a calm, reasoned Carson. In addition to TV appearances and interviews, Carson testified before several congressional committees and called

for some type of regulatory agency to protect people and the environment from chemical hazards. Seven years later, in 1970, Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency, a direct result of the environmental movement sparked by Silent Spring. In 1972, the government banned DDT, the pesticide that had helped push America's national symbol, the bald eagle, and other birds to the brink of extinction. Few people knew at the time that while Carson was writing Silent Spring and enduring the controversy that followed its publication, she was waging a losing battle against breast cancer. In April 1964, at age 56, she "- died at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside ~ Washington, D.C., never knowing of the landmark legislation that would result from her work. "Now I can believe that I have at least helped a little," she had written modestly to a friend in 1962. "It would be unrealistic to believe one book could bring a complete change." She could not have been more wrong. As Carson biographer Linda Lear has noted: "In the face of personal attack, and in spite of being gravely ill, Rachel Carson provided a compelling example of the power of the single individual to bring about change." ~

Phyllis McIntosh, a former contributing editor of National Wildlife magazine, frequently writes about health issues.

=== m

••• u z ••• u

Lile is Good Jackie Riley is a wife, mother, photographer, teacher, financial service associate, volunteer gardener, butterfly chaser and survivor of breast cancer. Now, for the first time, she is also a writer, sharing her experiences with SPAN readers.

t first I didn't want people to know how scared I was. Now, I find myself trying to tell my friends why they shouldn't be so scared if something did happen to them. I never refer to it as "my cancer." This would be to accept it as part of me, which I refuse to do. I am not in remission, I am cured. We just need an answer to this cancer so people don't have to keep living this nightmare. Everyone still wonders why I did not cry hysterically or scream or shake or get upset

ByJACKllillilliY

after I was told the lumpectomy on July 7,2006 had proven positive for invasive ductal carcinoma. I had already had three biopsies, including a stereotactic biopsy, which is supposed to be state of the art. How much more emotion did people expect me to have? I'd been through the mill three times and now that everyone was finally agreeing concretely that there was a problem, I was expected to react in horror. No one understood that the horror had happened three times before this. After a week passed from hearing the news, I began to think straight and make plans It finally dawned on me: The problem will be over. There's an end in sight now that we finally know there is a problem. It was good news, not bad news. And I had to lead the way for myself. No one else saw what I was seeing At about this time, I found this wild Karner blue butterfly on the path at the Kitty Todd Preserve in Swanton, near my home in Ohio, and snagged a photo. I frequented the preserve as a means to deal with anxiety and nervous tension. It was a huge week for me. Two days later I underwent a mastectomy.

A male Karner blue butterfly, photographed by_ Jackie RileJj in July, 2006, during one of her weekly walks in The Nature Conservancy, Kitty Todd Preserve, Swanton, Ohio.

http://www. nature.org/w hereweworklnorthar erica/states/ohio/preserves/art 162.htm t

CanSupport in India

he Forum for Breast Protection, a New Delhi-based NGO, has been ~ngaged in detection and prevention of breast cancer since 2001. The group comprises medical experts from other disciplines related to cancer so that patients can access all medical facilities they need, from testing to post operative care. The organization works to create awareness about breast cancer and encourages women to come forward for an examination so that any malignant growth can be detected at a treatable stage. It organizes lectures for organizations, schools and colleges and disseminates information on the disease through pamphlets and posters. Recently, the forum produced an educational film to inform women about how to conduct self-examination in the privacy of their homes. Self-examination is one of the most successful ways of detecting changes in the breast that may indicate a tumor is forming at an early stage, allowing the woman to seek medical tests earlier. karunasharma75@gmail.com Phone: 9810514527

28 SPAN

. ••

2007

anSupport, a New Delhi-based nonprofit organization, helps people with advanced cancer and their families to make Informed chOices about treatment and provides them emotional support and counseling, including bereavement care. Its home care teams aid those with terminal cancer. Patients are referred to CanSupport by the Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital at AIIMS, Dharamshila Cancer Institute and other hospitals. The home care team offers medical and nursing care and practical advice to family members. CanSupport's day care program allows patients with a good prognosis to come to a center, usually accompanied by family members. There they spend time with volunteers, enjoy massages, aromatherapy and other forms of alternative healing. On the first Wednesday of every month, cancer patients and survivors drop in for an interactive session where they share their experiences and feelings http://www .cansupport. org/

Mission CanSupport's mission is 10 enable people with advanced cancer and their families 10 make informed

•

HELPLINE

Call: +91 11 26711212 TIming,: TueSday. Thursday & saturday 10A_M t05 PM

My two best friends have since told me they have had questionable mammograms. Kelly was told to return in six months for another biopsy. I think that is set for April. I am also concerned about MarySue. Her sister had a double mastectomy last year. And like Kelly, MarySue was told to return in six months. We will all continue to believe that time will be on our sides and everyone wi II prove to be healthy, again. I told both of my friends that 95 percent of all lumps are harmless so we are going to believe in that for now. If either one comes back positive, I don't know what I'll think. I am convinced that I am the chosen one for the problem amongst my friends and family and that seven of them will never have to worry. Breast cancer strikes one in eight women over their lifetimes-way too many of us. We all need to stick together in this. Thanks for asking me to write this. I probably never will again. I have too many butterflies to chase, a 10-year-old daughter, husband, home, butterfly gardening class to teach, volunteer gardening at the local botanical gardens, weekly butterfly monitoring for the Ohio Lepidopterists, and volunteer stewardship work at the Kitty Todd Preserve. And oh, yeah, I have to work full time. #k

April is Cancer Control Month

Survivors of breast cancer wear pink T-shirts of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure group that sponsors races to earn money for research to find a cure for breast cancer and provide support to those diagnosed with the disease. Above: This photo of the Race for the Cure in Toledo, Ohio on September 17,2006, was taken by Jackie Riley, a three-month survivor who had healed from a mastectomy but was undergoing chemotherapy treatment, which had made her hair fall out. "Only a handful of bald women were walking the race," Riley says.

ancer survival rates are increasing, with Left: The race in Washington, D.C. approximately 10 million survivors in the United States. New understanding of dishttp://cms.komen.orglkomen/index. eases, better diagnostic tools, and innovative htm treatments help provide hope and healing to those who have been diagnosed with cancer. Race lor the Cure is a series of runs and walks that raise funds Cancer patients are living longer and fuller lives. and awareness for the fight against breast cancer, celebrates surDespite these advances, cancer is still the vivors and honors those who have lost their battle with the disease. second leading cause of death in our country, and some cancers, such as breast, prostate, The pink ribbon is the universal symbol of breast cancer awareness. lung, leukemia and melanoma, continue to be too prevalent. As we observe Cancer Control Month, I commend the strength and courage of cancer survivors, whose perseverance is an inspiration to all Americans. Our nation is grateful for the generosity and skill of our medical professionals. These healers, along with the loving family members and friends of cancer patients, reflect the compassionate spirit of our people and help build a healthier future for our citizens. Cancer can be prevented, treated, and defeated, and we will continue to strive to reach the day when the battle to beat cancer has been won. -President George W. Bush In 1938, the US. Congress passed a resolution requesting the President to issue an annual proclamation declaring April as "Cancer Control Month."

According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.

Baikunth Baishya, 43, walking through his dry paddy field in Jamtola village, west of Guwahati, Assam during a drought-like period in 2006.

A key feature of the U.S.-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative that takes it beyond the American-Indian cooperation of the Green Revolution is public-private partnership. Industry and business can help commercialize new technologies, reshape curricula to suit today's needs and identify necessary research areas.

griculture in India is facing several challenges. Productivity of principal food crops has reached a plateau. Agricultural education is stagnating. The farm business has become global. Issues such as global warming and climate change, new pests and diseases, nutrition security, food safety and agricultural trade regimes have emerged. Agricultural practice is becoming technologically challenging and trade in agricultural commodities has become complex. The need to reorient agricultural education to meet these new challenges is being felt in India as well as in the United States. Of late, policy makers have realized that these issues can be addressed only through a paradigm shift in human resource development, research, technolo-

gy generation and dissemination. This was the backdrop in which President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manrnohan Singh spoke about enhanced cooperation in agricultural education and research in the joint declaration they signed in March 2006. This cooperation is based on the U.S.-India Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Research, Service and Commercial Linkages-known as Agricultural Knowledge Initiative or AKI. The idea was to revive the two countries' historical ties in agriculture, in the context of contemporary challenges. A key feature of this initiative is public-private partnership, so that private industry can be involved in all spheres of activity, from education and research to commercialization of new

technologies. Industry could help reshape curricula to suit its requirements and identify research areas that have the potential for rapid commercialization. The initiative is being implemented through the AKI Board, co-chaired by Ellen Terpstra, U.S. Deputy Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Below left: Students from Cornell University and three Indian agriculture universities visit a corn field to learn about manual harvesting in Kothapally village in the Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh in January 2007. Below: Calum Turvey, professor of agriculture finance at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, explains to Indian students the characteristics of a medicinal plant during field visits in January 2007.

Progress on the U.S.- India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative ecognizing agriculture as an area of critical importance for bilateral cooperation where U.S. and Indian interests converge, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the Agricultural Knowledge Initiative during the Prime Minister's visit to Washington, D,C. in July 2005. Building on a long, successful history of cooperation in agriculture, the Agricultural Knowledge Initiative is intended to help India modernize its agriculture sector. The Initiative, reinforced in a joint statement during Bush's visit to India in March 2006, supports India's efforts to build a market-oriented agriculture that is conducive to research, technology transfer, trade and investment. It focuses its activities on food processing and marketing, biotechnology, water management, and university capacity building. In addition, the joint work of the initiative emphasizes the development of effective policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks to increase Indian agricultural productivity, help Indian farmers prosper, and

strengthen agricultural trade between India and the United States. Significant progress has already been achieved in each of the initiative's focus areas.In biotechnology, USAID's program to develop and commercialize the first biotech food crops are in the final stages of development and regulatory approval. This biotechnology activity has already established strong partnerships among US and Indian seed companies, universities and research institutes. On water management, more than 50 universities in the United States and India are now engaged in joint water resource projects that are developing new irrigation technologies and water conservation practices. University partnership grants have stimulated market-oriented initiatives in Indian state agricultural universities, such as the new agri-business supported Food Industry Center at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana. Fellowships have allowed Indian scientists and US university students to visit each other's countries.

President George W. Bush greets a student in the middle of a field during his visit on March 3, 2006, to the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University in Hyderabad.

Agricultural Services, and Mangala Rai, Secretary of the Indian Department of Agricultural Research and Education. The board has representatives of private companies such as Wal-Mart, Monsanto, ITC Limited and Venkateshwara Hatcheries. Eminent agricultural scientists who ushered in the Green Revolution-Norman Borlaug and M.S. Swaminathan-are honorary advisers. "The modus operandi for this is partnership. It is not as if one is giving and the other is taking," explains Rai. Though the area of cooperation and

and exchange. The thinking is to let this initiative retain an identity that is distinct from other ongoing research programs. The work plans are being supported by a grant of Rs. 3.5 billion (about $80 million) from the Indian Government over a period of three years. The American side has secured funding of $8 million in fiscal year 2006, with a total of $24 million pledged through 2008. "Through this initiative, we have the opportunity to facilitate technology transfer, trade, and investment and bolster agricultural research, education, and extension between our two

All stakeholders involved

collaboration is wide ranging, it was

countries," noted Ambassador David C.

demands of farmers and industry.

decided to focus on four core areas initially-agricultural education, food processing and marketing, biotechnology and water management. Joint working groups have been formed for each of these and detailed work plans are being implemented. The idea is to take up projects that focus on knowledge generation, sharing

Mulford at the end of the fourth meeting of the AKI Board in New Delhi last November. "Part of our joint work is to develop effective policy, regulatory, and institutional frameworks, which will increase Indian agricultural productivity, help Indian farmers prosper, and strengthen trade."

India has 40 state agriculture universities, five deemed universities (institutes and departments that have been granted autonomy regarding coursework, admissions, fees, etc. by the University Grants Commission), one central agricultural university and more than 200 agricultural colleges. They churn out close to 14,000

Indian agricultural universities are in the midst of a major exercise to revise their curricula. For the first time, all stakeholders, including private industry, have been involved in order to improve the design and delivery of course content. This exercise has now been thrown open to faculty from the U.S. land-grant universities as well as industry representatives, under the AKI. Their involvement is being sought to upgrade undergraduate and post graduate courses at agricultural universities so that they are able to meet the

graduates and 7,800 postgraduate and doctoral degree holders every year. But there are 25,000 professors. Clearly the ~ student to faculty ratio is highly skewed ~ => due to a declining interest from students. ~ o "The situation can be corrected only ~ .,', through wide ranging reforms in our edu- ~ cation system, making it relevant to all the ~ stakeholders," says S.L. Mehta, vice ~ chancellor of Maharana Pratap University ii! => of Agriculture and Technology in ยง? Udaipur. He was speaking at the AKI ~ .., Curriculum Development Workshop held in New Delhi on January 22-23, 2007. "The focus should shift to learning from teaching," says Mehta, who heads a committee whose recommendations on agricultural education are at the core of the review process. The panel has suggested increasing practical content in all courses, from the present 36 percent to 50 percent, besides introducing new courses in entrepreneurship development, agribusiness, biotechnology, international trade, patent regimes and environmental science in various disciplines. In order to develop a cadre of skilled professionals, one to two years of experiential learning has been recommended. Measures for faculty improvement include mandatory training in national and international institutes, rotation within the state agriculture university system and exposure to industry. There sharing the American experience in curshould be movement of students and fac- riculum development, training and faculty ulty across states and freedom for students exchange programs, endowment of industry-sponsored chairs in Indian universities to select course modules of their choice. One key way agricultural education can and workshops for specific review and be made interesting as well as relevant is planning. "It is not that our curriculum is to make classroom teaching interactive the answer. But our system could offer through the use of new media techniques. India some help in terms of course develThese can also be used to promote non- opment, teaching methodologies, systems formal education and distance learning. and procedures, faculty training, etc.," said Under AKI, this is being done through Ronnie Coffman, international professor

Buildup to the Green Revolution ndia followed a path of science-led growth in agriculture after independence in 1947, with a view to attaining self-sufficiency in food production. A comprehensive educational system was developed to take up location- and situation-specific research. The knowledge thus generated in agricultural colleges and laboratories was transferred to farmers, enabling them to improve productivity and profitability. With funding from the U.S. Agency for Intemational Development (USAID), a system of state agricultural universities was developed in the I960s, pattemed on the U.S. landgrant system. Indian students, researchers and teachers studied at American universities. They played a key role in events leading to the Green Revolution in the 1960s and subsequent improvements for dairies, fish farming and oilseed production.

Left: Indian and American university students learn about organic farming from research head N. Selvaraj at the Horticultural Research Station in Odhagamandalam, Tamil Nadu in January 2007. Below: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, right, inspects wheat produced by farmers in Badshapur, Haryana, in November 2006.

of plant breeding and director of international programs at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 2006, 15 Indian scientists and researchers completed fellowships at American universities on distance learning, bio-fuels, animal and plant diseases, and biotechnology, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellows Program. Another 12 Borlaug fellowships are being given during 2007. Also, under the Cochran Fellowship Program, 12 Indian experts will spend two weeks in the United States to work in food processing and marketing. Also, the USDA's National Agricultural Library and U.S. land-grant universities have begun working with their Indian counterparts to develop a plan to strengthen India's library and information systems. Faculty and scientists will be trained to

develop teaching resources, using multimedia, Webbased technologies and training in the transmission and retrieval of digital resources. The U.S. National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges has awarded five grants to American universities to work with Indian partners on projects that focus on university curriculum development, animal diseases, and trade. Examples of joint initiatives focusing on experiential learning in agricultural education already exist. Cornell University runs a course on international agriculture development, in which students of three Indian agricultural universities participate through a vittual classroom. Lectures delivered in Cornell classrooms are video streamed to students at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore; Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Hyderabad; and

management in rural America," says K. Vijayaraghavan, founder director of Sathguru Management Consultants in Hyderabad, which coordinates the exchange program. "On the other hand, the visit of the Cornell students to India allows them to understand ...complex dimensions of improving the livelihood of rural communities, the potential of integrating the food chain from farm to market and the use of information and communication technologies." "And an American student would not be considered educated if he or she has no understanding of what is happening here," says Coffman, of Cornell. Most agro-business companies that recruit from landgrant colleges ask students if they have any experience of emerging economies like India and China.

Long-term spinoffs

Robin Bellinder, professor of horticulture at Cornell University and K. Mahendran, professor of agribusiness management at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, both members of the Indo-American study group, at the tea processing plant of Beeyu Overseas Limited in Odhagamandalam, Tamil Nadu.

The Agricultural Knowledge Initiative has approval to run for three years, but senior officials connected with it feel that it will lay the foundation for several long-term joint projects that may have spin-offs for other countries. The pigeon pea genomics project is one example. In this project, the Hyderabad-based International Crop Research Institute for Semi-arid Tropics is also participating, besides several Indian agricultural research institutions and universities, and the University of California-Davis. The pigeon pea is one of the most important pulse crops in India, but is marked by poor productivity due to lack of improved varieties, poor crop management, pest attacks and disease prevalence. Deciphering the genome of this crop holds the key to solving many of these problems. Mangala Rai says more areas of cooperation will be included in the initiative in future. "For example, nanotechnology has been flagged, but we have not taken it up right away. We want to move step by step. The focus is on four areas now." Under the biotechnology component, a strategic alliance has been envisaged for training and research on development of transgenic crops with resistance to economically important viruses, tolerance to drought, heat and salinity and micro-nutrient utilization efficiency. Rai feels that the initiative has even greater significance for the future of Indian agriculture than the Indo-U.S. partnership had in the Green Revolution era. 4t.

the University of Agriculture Sciences, Dharwad. The second module of this course takes Indian students to the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York for two weeks. There they are exposed to farming practices in rural America, functioning of community markets and rural supply chains. The third module brings American students on a three-week trip to rural India, during which 20 Indian and 35 American students visit farms, markets and Dinesh C. Shanna is a New Delhi-based writer who was food processing centers. American students, along selected by the Indian Ministry of Science and Technology with Ilfaculty and staff from Cornell, came to India in for the National Award for Outstanding Effort in Science January 2007 as part of this course, while Indian stu- and Technology Communication in Print Medium for 2006. The award was presented March 1, 2007, in New dents were in Cornell for two weeks in October 2006. Delhi, on National Science Day. www.dinesh.net.in "Visits to retail centers, post-harvest technology centers and research farms expose Indian students Please share your views on this article. to innovations that have taken place in ... food chain Write to editorspan@state.gov

Developing new technologies to increase crop yields, generate economic growth and reduce poverty mall shoots of wheat, in long straight rows like green ribbons, emerged out of the ground where the no-till planter had sliced a swath through the dry, yellow rice stubble and into the soil. Saranjit Singh, the farmer who owned the field, pointed out where the new wheat crop was sprouting through the dried stalks of the summer rice crop. "Not only have I saved myself the headache of plowing, I spend less on seeds and save about 2,500 rupees per acre on diesel," Singh said. "By using this new technology and not plowing the soil as I did in the past, I also save time, getting the crop in quicker, giving me higher yields." Resource conservation tillage has been practiced in the North American Great Plains since wind erosion led to the "dust bowl," driving thousands of farmers off the land and contributing to the Great Depression of the 1930s. More

Farmers produce sunflowers, cucumbers and cauliflower in the fields near Hyderabad.

Auburn University Cornell University Linked with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University; University of Agricultural Science, Dharwad, Karnataka;Acharya N.G. RangaAgricultural University, Hyderabad;working with India Council on Agriculture Research Iowa State University Linked with University of Agricultural Science, Bangalore KansasState University Michigan State University Partneredwith MaharasthraState Agriculture Marketing Board and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University North Carolina Agriculture and Technical State University Ohio State University Linked with Punjab Agricultural University PennsylvaniaState University Working with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Purdue University Linked with University of Agricultural Science, Bangalore TexasA&M University TuskegeeUniversity Working with Acharya N.G. RangaAgricultural University, Hyderabad

efore the mid-1800s, there were no public universities in the United States,only private educational insti~ tutions. The cost of going to school at one ~~ of these was often too expensive for the \average American family In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Act, which gave 10,000 acres of federal government land to each state to sell and to use the money to create a public university for agricultural and technical education. Named after Justin S. Morrill, a representative and senator from the state of Vermont who sponsored the legislation, the Morrill Act was intended to provide a broad segment of the American population with practical education that was relevant to their lives. Just 15 years later the U.S. Congress recognized the need for more intensive research in agriculture development and signed the Hatch Act in 1887. This authorized federal funds for University of California-Davis each state to establish an agricultural Linked with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University experiment station associated with its landUniversity of Florida grant university. Just a few years later in University of IlIinois-Charnpaign/Urbana 1890, the Second Morrill Act was passed, Partners include Hindustan Lever,Brittania, Mahindra which added historically black universities Virginia Tech University in the southern United States to the landWorking with Tamil Nadu Agricultural grant system. In 1994, the system added University and India Council on Agriculture Research the 29 American Indian tribal colleges. There are now land-grant universities in

all 50 states. In addition to teaching, these universities conduct agriculture-related research and provide education and services to local rural and urban communities. Advisory committees help to determine educational needs and priorities. A distinctive aspect of the land-grant system is that the universities obtain funding from a diverse group of sources: local county taxes, state funds, and the federal government. They also receive substantial support from businesses, industry and private foundations. Today, land-grant universities in the United States offer many courses other than agriculture, but their original mission is still distinct compared to other public universities: academic instruction in classrooms; non-formal or continuing education

U.S. land-grant universities assisted India during the Green Revolution in the 1960s and many of the state agricultural universities established at that time, such as Punjab Agricultural University, were modeled after the U.S. system.

Agricultural Research ...

Nate France, a science major at Oregon State University, tends his winter squash on a pocket-sized, student-run organic farm on the hills outside Corvallis, Oregon.

through extension programs; and research undertaken by experimental stations and other university centers. Many of these universities are now among the most distinguished public research institutions in the United States. U.S. land-grant universities became actively involved in international work during the past 50 years They were invited to collaborate with the US. Agency for International Development (USAID) to implement programs overseas. U.S. land-grant universities assisted India during the Green Revolution in the 1960s and many of the state agricultural universities that were established during that time, such as Punjab Agricultural University, were modeled after the U.S. system. Today, under the IndoU.S. Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, landgrant universities are actively collaborating with Indian universities. Continued investment in the land-grant system has greatly contributed to the success of U.S. agriculture. Partnerships between U.S. land-grant universities and Indian institutions have shared valuable science, technology and expertise. As U.S. and Indian cooperation in agriculture continues, such relationships will strengthen and expand. -D.M.

intensive research on zero-till farming began in the 1960s. Today, it is well known in the United States and Europe that no-till or reduced tilling reduces labor and fuel costs. When combined with other resource conservation technologies, such as laser leveling of fields and direct seeding, farmers save water, fertilizer, seed and time. The extra layer of last season's rice stubble acts as a mulch to help regulate soil temperature and extend the growing season. Reducing tillage also has broader environmental benefits, as carbon is captured in the soil instead of being released into the atmosphere. The U.S. Agency for International Development (US AID) is helping to introduce no-till and other new cropping techniques to Indian farmers with the Rice Wheat Consortium for the Indo-Gangetic Plains, one of the programs of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a global alliance that mobilizes science and technology to enhance agricultural production, raise farmers' incomes and reduce land degradation in South Asia. Farmers across Haryana, Punjab and Western Uttar Pradesh are quickly picking up on some of the new techniques developed by the consortium, and by 2006 more than 500,000 farmers had been reached by the program.

The benefits are clear. Less work and more income mean that farmers can recover the 3,500-rupee investment for laser-assisted precision leveling in their fIrst crop. The consortium also promotes the use of other resource saving techniques, such as raised beds, crop rotation and inter-cropping, to help farmers become more efficient producers. The Rice Wheat Consortium is promoting no-till with a technology innovation coming out of Punjab Agricultural University-the Combo Happy Seederwhich cuts, chops and lifts the rice straw, allowing for direct seed drilling instead of the traditional method of plowing the fields before planting. The crop residue is then dropped as mulch behind the machine after the seed is drilled into the soiL Saranjit Singh's fIeld is just one example of how the results of agricultural research are being disseminated to farmers in India to promote more efficient agricultural production and management practices. Advances in science and technology from agricultural research contributed to considerable gains in agricultural productivity throughout the world in the 20th century. Research resulted in better soil, nutrient, water and pest management and more efficient and economical methods of

George Deikun, India Mission Director for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), addressing the third conference on "Linking Markets and Farmers: Exploring Leading Practices to Foster Economic Growth in Rural India, " in New Delhi on March 12, 2007.

Agricultural Research ... harvesting, storing and processing agricultural products. Scientific research also contributed to a better understanding of the complexity of agricultural systems and the natural ecosystems that sustain farming. This led to research into the development of agricultural practices based on ecological principles, such as no-till farming. These developments contributed to an abundant and affordable food supply for most of the world. For example, it was scientific research that made possible the improvements in Indian crop yields during the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. In the early 1960s, India faced a severe food crisis and was barely able to feed its growing population. Agronomists from international agricultural research institutes, working with Indian scientists, introduced

high yielding varieties of wheat to India. The improved crop varieties, along with increased use of fertilizer, raised crop yields. The growth in Indian agriculture was rapid enough to move the country from the severe food crises of the early 1960s to the food surpluses of the early 1990s, despite the population increasing by more than 400 million people between 1963 and 1993. Underlying this growth in agriculture were huge investments in irrigation, research, farm credit and farmer development programs. The growth occurred despite macroeconomic policies and market regulations that penalized agriculture and are still causing distortions. Although the gains were impressive, not all parts of India benefited equally. The challenge for the 21st century is to ensure that

espite india's achievement of food security since the "Green Revolution," close to half of all Indian children are still chronically malnourished and more than 2.4 million (25 percent of the global figure) die each year from preventable or curable diseases. Micronutrients such as iodine, vitamin A and iron are essential to proper nutrition and public health. Their presence in small quantities allows the body to produce enzymes, hormones and other substances necessary for growth and development. Their absence reduces disease resistance and increases maternal and child morbidity and mortality. Globally, an estimated 250 million preschool children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, which causes night blindness and eventually blindness, growth retardation, damage of mucous membranes and reproductive disorders. Lack of vitamin A in children significantly increases the risk of severe illness, and death, from common infections including diarrhea. Annually, between 250,000 and 500,000 young children go blind from vitamin A deficiency, about half of them dying within 12 months of going blind. Enhancing the nutritional value of staple foods can help to improve the nutrition of poor people who are forced to rely on staples and are often not able to afford a balanced diet. Rice is one such staple. Because of the high per capita consumption of rice in India and other Asian countries, fortifying its nutritional value can improve the lives of millions. Through bio-fortification, crops that are rich in nutrients can be developed. The U.S. Agency for International Development has supported research on biofortified golden rice in India '\ through HarvestPlus, an international research alliance that â&#x20AC;˘. seeks to reduce micronutrient malnutrition through the fortification of staple foods around the world. Through research on the enrichment of Indian rice with beta-carotene, the effort aims for marketable, enriched rice varieties within five years, to significantly reduce vitamin A deficiency in India.

rowing up on a farm in the midwestern state of Minnesota, I was an active member of our local 4-H Club. This involved participating in activities that helped me to learn practical skills in agriculture as well as communication, leadership and citizenship. The highlight of every year was the chance to exhibit a dairy cow, beef steer and sheep at the local county fair. Lots of us farm kids brought animals we had raised to be judged against other animals. My brother, sisters and I often won championship prizes for the best sheep at the fair and, sometimes, were selected to go on to the Minnesota State Fair with our prize animals. Beginning in the early 1900s, the seed of the 4-H idea of practical and "hands-on" learning arose from the desire to make public school education more connected to country life and to help rural youth. These programs became a means to introduce new technology to agricultural communities. In the process, young people would share their experiences and new knowledge with adults, many of whom had limited education and were often not ready to accept new agricultural innovations coming from universities and government research institutes. When the U.S. Congress created the Cooperative Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1914, it included boys' and girls' club work. This soon became known as 4-H Clubs-Head, Heart, Hands and Health. Activities were designed to help rural boys and girls become productive and self-directed members of their communities. 4-H is the youth education and outreach program of the U.S. landgrant universities and clubs have direct ties to the technological innovations and new research of the universities. There are 4-H clubs in all 50 states and they are one of the largest youth development organizations in the United States, with more than 6.5 million members aged 5 to 19, more than 500,000

volunteers, 3,500 staff and 60 million alumni. For youths to develop self-confidence and a sense that they matter in the world, they must experience success at solving problems and meeting meaningful challenges Activities in 4-H clubs that promote mastery of skills encourage young people to take risks, seek out new challenges and focus on selfimprovement. 4-H presents opportunities for youths to become active and engaged citizens of their communities and to experience generosity. To mature, they need to feel their lives have meaning and purpose. They need to learn how to give back to others. Generosity can also entai I the development of a sense of compassion and tolerance for diversity and learning to respect others. 4-H also provides opportunities for young people to experience Above: Inspecting an ear of sweet corn in Huntsville, Ohio to see if it is ripe. Right: Young 4-H club members play with corn kernels at a 4-H Fair in Rock County, Wisconsin.

"I pledge my Head to cleaner thinking, my Heart to greater loyalty, my Hands to larger service, and my Health to better living, for my club, my community, my country, and my world."

independence and to learn to make wise choices, improve their ability to think and make decisions and to act on their own. With a healthy sense of independence, they can develop responsibility and discipline. 4-H programs are now also found in more than 50 countries. They operate independently, as there is no international 4-H organization. Many state 4-H programs in the United States support international exchanges of 4-H alumni and other young adults, who live with host families in foreign countries to increase global awareness, learn about development challenges, and study foreign languages. In the United States and other countries, 4-H is helping to prepare the agriculture leaders of the future. For more information contact: http://www. national4-hheadquar ters.gov

Agricultural Research ... Right: Near Matiala village in Ghaziabad, Dr. Olaf Erenstein, an agro-economist with the Rice Wheat Consortium, discusses the benefits of no-till farming with Dr. M.L. fat, project director for Cropping Systems Research in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, and farmer Saranjit Singh. Far right: Retired Colonel S.c. Deswal in afield of carrots at his 500-acre Sunshine Farm in Uttar Pradesh. Conservation methods such as raised beds have helped to reduce water use and labor costs by 30 percent and improved the quality of his produce.

people everywhere have access to the latest innovations and knowledge that could improve incomes, achieve food security and improve nutrition. Nearly 300 million poor people are still found in India and most of these live in rural areas and depend, either directly or indirectly, on agriculture. Since the bulk of food consumed in India is produced locally, increases in crop yields and diversification of agriculture to more nutritious and higher value crops could improve the health and livelihoods of millions of people. Poverty cannot be reduced without large investments in agricultural research. Countries with strong agricultural economies have a record of sustained investments in agricultural science and technology. Farmers near Khandera village in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, examine a no-till seeder, a new way of planting wheat that does not require plowing.

The United States is a world leader in agricultural research. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has four agricultural research agencies: the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the Economic Research Service, the Forest Service, and the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, which provides funding to the land-grant universities. The ARS has 2,000 PhD level scientists carrying out research at more than 100 U.S. laboratories. Much of this work is in partnership with university and industry organizations, and many ARS laboratories are located at the land-grant universities. Joint ventures between universities and the private sector are also becoming more numerous. India has one of the largest public agricultural research systems in the world, led by the Indian Council of Agricultural

Research (ICAR). It employs more than 20,000 scientists, of whom approximately 12,000 are engaged in research full time. In the developing world, only Brazil and China have comparable levels of expenditure and professional staff.

More funds for research Yet India's investment in agricultural research is less than half of that of developed countries. To be competitive in the world economy of the 21st century, India will need to allocate more funding for research and improve the effectiveness of its agricultural research institutions and extension programs. Increasingly scarce water supplies are also going to require improvements in water management and price reforms in supplying water for irrigation and power. Marketing and trade policies also need to be liberalized to exploit growing

The USAID-supported work on introducing no-till agriculture in India shows that farmers are willing to adopt new technology once they understand how it will benefit them.

opportumties for marketing of high-value livestock products, fruits and vegetables. With limited scope for expansion of farmed land, the main sources of agricultural growth will be enhanced productivity, profitability and competitiveness. There will also need to be a shift from resource- and input-based agricultural growth to knowledge- and sciencebased growth. In this paradigm shift, the dissemination of knowledge and innovations plays a critical role. The USAID-supported work on introducing no-till agriculture in India shows that farmers are willing to adopt a new technology once they understand it and how it benefits them.

Looking ahead The key factors affecting agriculture in the 21st century will be the application of biotechnology and information technologies, as well as the globalization of markets, knowledge, education and consumer preferences. To be competitive, agriculture will have to produce value-added products that meet food safety regulations, be environmentally sustainable and respond to the increasing demand for higher quality. Agriculture development will also have to ensure a balance between food security and conservation of natural resources. Current and planned collaboration on agriculture between Indian and American scientists and universities suggests that knowledgebased research and new technologies will bring practical solutions to help Indian farmers and attract greater private investment. M.S. Swaminathan, known as the father of India's Green Revolution for his contributions in plant breeding, favors the genetic modification of crops as a way to increase yields. "The way ahead lies in harmonizing organic agriculture and the breeding methods based on the new genetics," he says, despite his interest in organic farming. Perhaps the genetic modification of crops taking place now may be the next stage in the process of developing new high-yielding varieties that Swaminathan bred and introduced to India more than 40 years ago. ~ Daniel Miller, who grew up on a farm in Minnesota, is a project development officer in India with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Kristin Easter is USAIDlIndia's communications officer and has lived in India for almost five years. Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

ggplant is one of the most important vegetables grown in Asia. It is the most-consumed, and most-sprayed, vegetable in India, where it is grown on more than 500,000 hectares, making it one of the main sources of cash for many farmers. Unfortunately, much of the eggplant in India is destroyed by the insect known as the fruit and shoot borer. To control this pest, farmers often have to spray the crop with hazardous pesticides (up to 80 times), increasing their costs of production and poisoning their crop, to the extent that farmers often won't eat their own produce. USAID's Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II, under a unique collaborative agreement, has worked with U.S. land-grant universities, U.S.-based seed companies, Indian research institutes, Indian state agricultural universities and private seed companies to develop varieties of eggplant resistant to the fruit and shoot borer. These biotechnological advances have been brought about by genetically engineering eggplant to contain Bacillus thuringensis, or Bt gene. This is a species of bacteria-producing proteins which are toxic to the fruit and shoot borer, but not harmful to animals or humans. It will greatly reduce pesticide use and improve yields (by reducing pest damage), which will increase farm-

Much of India's 500,000 hectares of eggplant-also known as aubergine or baingan in Hindi-is destroyed by an insect, the fruit and shoot borer, and heavy spraying poisons the crops. U.S. and Indian agriculture universities have developed a gene that produces bacteria that is toxic to the insect, but not to humans or animals.

ers' income. Growing Bt eggplant could reduce crop protection costs by 50-80 percent and result in gains of more than $400 per hectare. Innovative models of public-private partnerships like the one that has led to the development of Bt eggplant can be advantageous for all parties: the public sector, which obtains access to proprietary technologies and scientific innovations and product development investments; the private sector, which can reduce the cost of technology approval processes; and farmers, who receive new transgenic seeds at affordable prices. The first genetically modified eggplant hybrid seeds, likely to be commercialized this year, will be distributed to farmers through private seed companies, thus triggering the growing of food crops developed using biotechnology in India. -D.M.

ourrows ahead of me, on the Friday afternoon fl ight from Washington, D.C., to Chicago, some passengers are getting nervous. Summer storms have delayed takeoff, and they are in danger of missing their next connection: a cab ride to Wrigley Field to catch the opening pitch in a Chicago Cubs baseball game, with starter Greg Maddux pitching to the Boston Red Sox in the teams' first face-off since the 1918 World Series. Cubs fans, you see, are a dedi-

Top: The Chicago skyline behind Wrigley Field. Left: Chicago Cubs batter Moises Alou watches his fly ball soar into right field during an April 2003 game against the Montreal Expos played at Wrigley Field.

A young boy stands up waving his glove as he watches the Chicago Cubs defeat the San Francisco Giants in July 1996, under the lights at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

cated and numerous lot, spread across the country. I've lived on both coasts and in between, and wherever I tell people Chicago is my hometown, they eagerly ask about the Cubs. Not Michael Jordan and the six-time champion Chicago Bulls basketball team. Not the Chicago Bears football team. And certainly not my beloved White Sox, the other Chicago baseball team. So after a lifetime spent avoiding the other side of town, in the interests of investigative journa~ism, I venture to Wrigley Field, the home ballpark of the Cubs, to

experience its mystique. On Saturday afternoon, as I wait to catch the EI train to the game, a trickle of fans decked out in Cubs caps and T-shirts gathers on the platform. We squeeze into a train that gulps up more with each stop. The train reaches the Addison Street stop for Wrigley Field, and a tide of excited fansincluding many Red Sox loyalists-pours out. Built in 1914, Wrigley is the oldest ballpark in the National League. For many ardent baseball lovers, it is the sport's true mecca. Until the fall of 2004, the two teams were wed in the folly of famous curses: the Red Sox doomed to lose the World Series, year after year, for trading Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920 and the Cubs for kicking a faithful fan

out of Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series because he brought along his allegedly smelly pet goat. With the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004, the Cubs bear their jinx alone -a characteristic that no doubt will further endear them to their supporters. The throng sweeps me past peanut vendors on the street and the red-and-white "Wrigley Field Home of Chicago Cubs" marquee sign into the ballpark. As I take my

seat, I glance at the stadium's venerated features: the ivy covering the outfield wall, the old-fashioned scoreboard, Ernie Banks' uniform number waving from a flag on the left-field foul pole. But what I notice most of all (besides the game, of course: Cubs win, 76) is how much the view of the ballpark opens out to the surrounding community, appropriately dubbed Wrigleyville. From my seat, I can look outside the park and see fans watching the game from the rooftops of nearby apartment buildings, some of them barbecuing, others seated on bleachers as though they're actually part of Wrigley Field. And the truth is, they are. ~ Kenneth Terrell is a deputy editor with U.S. News & World Report.

hroughout America's history, many of its citizens, or their ancestors, have come from Ireland. Every year, on March 17, even Americans who have no Irish ancestry join in the fun of watching or marching in parades, wearing something green, pinching those who don't wear that color and having traditional Irish food and drink, including green beer. Saint Patrick's Day is not an official holiday in the United States, but in some large cities-such as New York, with the largest Saint Patrick's Day parade outside Ireland-it may as well be a day off from work since so many people are partying. The city of Chicago, Illinois, dyes its river green, and Savannah, Georgia, dyes the water in its downtown fountains green. Other towns paint green stripes down the centers of their main streets. The first recorded Saint Patrick's Day parade , ~ in America was held in Boston, Massachusetts, •• in 1737, almost 40 years before there was a United States. More than half of the soldiers who . fought in the Revolutionary War against British colonial rule had Irish ancestors. Nine men of Irish ancestry signed the Declaration of Independence. During the war, in 1780, General George Washington had so many soldiers of Irish descent in the Continental Army that he declared a holiday for all the troops under his command on March 17. The day commemorates the death of Patrick, who died in the year 493 after being credited with bringing Christianity to his homeland, where he is considered the patron saint The

color green is associated with him as it is one of Ireland's national colors. Other images that are used in costumes and decorations on Saint Patrick's Day in the United States are: leprechauns, a mythical, magical creature from Irish folklore; and the threeleaf clover, or shamrock, a symbol of Ireland that Patrick had used to explain the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to the Irish people. • It's common to hear Americans say they are "Irish for a day" on Saint Patrick's Day, as they embrace the contributions that Irish immigrants have made to the nation. U.S. Census figures indicate more than 43 million Americans are of Irish descent, with a large number of them tracing their roots to ancestors who came to the United States to escape the Irish potato famine in the 1840s. But it's also a common belief among many other Americans that they have "a littie Irish" in them, as the Irish immigrants intermarried and moved across the country, becom' ing part of the "melting pot" of nationalities and cultures that make up the United States. At least 19 American presidents have claimed to be partly Irish. 44

!.~

Above: The Chicago River goes green for Saint Patrick's Day. Top right: A shamrock costume in the St. Louis, Missouri, parade. Middle right: Shamrock eyeglasses and earrings in the Denver, Colorado, parade. Right: As long as it's green, who cares in the Springfield, Missouri, parade. Left: Dressed up as Saint Patrick in the Denver parade. The poodles wear green, too, so they don't get pinched.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE "I'm the product of a fast-track mother and a workaholic father-arriving late for work is my attempt to develop a more balanced lifestyle. "

-== =-

crowd. As it migrates into clinical practice, fMRI is making it possible for neurologists to detect early signs of Alzheimer's disease and other disorders, evaluate drug treatments, and pinpoint tissue housing critical abilities like speech before venturing into a patient's brain with a scalpel. Now fMRI is also poised to transform the security industry, the judicial system and our fundamental notions of privacy. I'm in a lab at Columbia University in New York, where scientists are using the technology to analyze the cognitive differences between truth and lies. By mapping the neural circuits behind deception, researchers are turning fMRI into a new kind of lie detector that's more probing and accurate than the polygraph, the standard lie-detection tool employed by law enforcement and intelligence agencies for nearly a century. The polygraph is widely considered unreliable in scientific circles, partly because its effectiveness depends heavily on the intimidation skills of the interrogator. What a polygraph actually measures is the stress of telling a lie, as reflected in accelerated heart rate, rapid breathing, rising blood pressure and increased sweating. Sociopaths who don't feel guilt and people who learn to inhibit their reactions to stress can slip through a polygrapher's net. Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, and CIA double agent Aldrich Ames passed polygraph tests and resumed their criminal activities. While evidence based on polygraph tests is barred from most

Top: A subject being prepared for a scan at the Columbia University fMRI Research Center. FMRI enables researchers to create maps of the brain's networks in action as they process thoughts and sensations. Above: Joy Hirsch, founder and director of the research center. U.S. courtroom trials, the device is being used more frequently in parole and childcustody hearings and as a counterintelligence tool in the war on terrorism. Researchers believe that fMRI should be tougher to outwit because it detects something much harder to suppress: neurological evidence of the decision to lie. My host for the morning's experiment

is Joy Hirsch, a neuroscientist and founder of Columbia's fMRI Research Center, who has offered me time in the scanner as a preview of the near future. No one has yet launched commercial fMRI lie-detection services but customers could one day include individuals who believe they've been unjustly charged with a crime. The first phase of today's procedure is a baseline interval that maps the activity of my brain at rest. Then the "truth" phase begins. Prompted by a signal in the mirror, I launch into an internal monologue about the intimate details of my personal life. I don't speak aloud, because even little movements of my head would disrupt the

scan. I focus instead on fonning the words clearly and calmly in my mind, as if to a telepathic inquisitor: Then, after another signal, I start to lie: I've never been married. 1had a girlfriend named Linda in high school back in Texas. 1 remember standing at the door of her parents' house the night she broke up with me. In fact, I grew up in New Jersey, didn't have my first relationship until I went to college, and have been happily married since 2003. I plunge deeper and deeper into confabulation, recalling incidents that never happened, while trying to make the events seem utterly plausible. I'm relieved when the experiment is over and I'm alone again in the privacy of my thoughts. After an hour of data crunching, Hirsch announces, "I've got a brain for you." She lays out two sets of images, one labeled TRUTH and the

Daniel Langleben (right) and his research team at the University of Pennsylvania comprising (from left) Kosha Ruparel, James Loughead, Samantha Busch and Ruben Gur. A pioneer in fMRI lie detection, Langleben developed a hypothesis that in order to lie, the brain first has to stop itself from telling the truth, then generate the deception-a process that could be mapped with a scanner.

other DECEPTION, and gives me a guided tour of my own neural networks, complete with circles and Post-it arrows. "This is a very, very clear single-case experiment," she says. In both sets of images, the areas of my cortex devoted to

The goal of detecting deception requires far more public scrutinv than it has had up until now. language lit up during my inner monologues. But there is more activity on the deception scans, as if my mind had to work harder to generate the fictitious narrative. Crucially, the areas of my brain associated with emotion, conflict and cognitive control-the amygdala, rostral cingulate, caudate and thalamus-were "hot" when I was lying but "cold" when I was telling the truth. "The caudate is your inner editor, helping you manage the conflict between

telling the truth and creating the lie," Hirsch explains. "Look here-when you're telling the truth, this area is asleep. But when you're trying to deceive, the signals are loud and clear." I not only failed to fool the invisible inquisitor, I managed to incriminate myself without even opening my mouth. The science behind fMRI lie detection has matured with astonishing speed. The notion of mapping regions of the brain that become active during deception first appeared in obscure radiology journals less than six years ago. The purpose of these studies was not to create a better lie

detector but simply to understand how the brain works. One of the pioneers in the field is Daniel Langleben, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania. Back in 1999, he was at Stanford, examining the effects of a drug on the brains of boys diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]. He had read a paper theorizing that kids with ADHD have difficulty lying. In Langleben's experience, however, they were fully capable of lying. But they would often make socially awkward statements because "they had a problem inhibiting the truth," he says. "They would just blurt things out." Langleben developed a hypothesis that in order to fonnulate a lie, the brain first had to stop itself from telling the truth, then generate the deception-a process that could be mapped with a scanner. Functional imaging makes cognitive operations visible by using a powerful magnetic field to track fluctuations in blood flow to groups of neurons as they fire. It reveals the pathways that thoughts have taken through the brain, like footprints in wet sand. When Langleben ran an online search for studies of deception using fMRI, however, he found nothing. He was surprised to find "such a low-hanging fruit," as he puts it, still untouched in the hothouse of researchers hungry to find applications for functional imaging. After taking a job at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine later that year, he mapped the brains of undergraduates who had been instructed to lie about whether a playing card displayed on a computer screen was the same one they'd been given in an envelope along with $20. The volunteers-who responded by pressing a button on a handheld device so they wouldn't have to speakwere told that if they "fooled" the computer, they could keep the money. Langleben concluded in 2002 in a journal called Neurolmage that there is "a neurophysiological difference between deception and truth" that can be detected with fMRI. As it turned out, other researchers in labs across the globe were already reaching for the same fruit. Around the same time, a UK psychiatrist named Sean Spence reported that areas of the prefrontal cortex lit up on fMRI when his subjects lied in response to questions about what

The Cortex Cop

orall the promise of fMRI lie detection, some practical obstacles stand in the way of its widespread use: The scanners are huge and therefore not portable, and a slight shake of the head-let alone outright refusal to be scanned-ean disrupt the procedure. Britton Chance,a professor emeritus of biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania,has developed an instrument that records much of the same brain activity as fMRI lie detection-but fits in a briefcase and can be deployed on an unwilling subject. Chance has spent his life chasing and Quantifying elusive signals-electromagnetie, optical, chemical and biological. During the Second World War, he led the team at the MIT Radiation Lab that helped develop military radar and incorporated analog computers into the ranging system of bombers. In the 1970s, long before the invention of fMRI, Chance began using a related technique called magnetic-resonance spectroscopy to study living tissue. The first functionally imaged brain was that of a hedgehog in one of his experiments. Now 93, Chance still rides his bike to the university six days a week to teach and work in his lab. His mind is as acute as ever. After glancing through a book

they had done that day. Researchers from the University of Hong Kong provided additional confirmation of a distinctive set of neurocircuits involved in deception. For fMRI early adopters, these breakthroughs validated the practical value of functional imaging itself. "I felt this was

to confirm a data point, he resumes the conversation by saying, "I'm back online." He explains that his goal is to create a wearable device "that lets me know what you're thinking without you telling me. If I ask you a Question, I'd like to know before you answer whether you're going to be truthful." To map neural activity without fMRI, Chance uses beams of near-infrared light that pass harmlessly through the forehead and skull, penetrating the first few centimeters of cortical tissue. There the light bounces off the same changes in blood flow tracked by fMRI. When it reemerges from the cranium, this light can be captured by optical sensors, filtered for the "noise" of light in the room, and used to generate scans. Though near-infrared light doesn't penetrate the brain as deeply as magnetic resonance, some of the key signatures of deception mapped by fMRI researchers occur in the prefrontal cortex, just behind the forehead. The first iteration of Chance's lie detector consisted of a Velcro headband studded with LEOs [light emitting diodes] and silicon diode sensors. Strapping these headbands on 21 subjects in a cardbluffing experiment in 2004, a neuroscientist at Drexel named

Scott Bunce was able to accurately detect lying 95 percent of the time. The next step, Chance says, is to developa system that can be used discreetly in airports and security checkpoints for "remote sensing" of brain activity. This technology could be deployed to check for deception during standard Questionand-answer exchanges (for example,"Has anyoneelse handled your luggage?") with passengersbeforeboardinga plane, or during interviews with those who have been singled out for individual searches. With funding from the Office of Naval Research, Chance and his colleagues are working to replace the LEO headband with an invisible laser and a hypersensitive photon collector to create a system that can pick up the neural signals of deception from across a room. Before undertaking this project, Chance consulted with Arthur Caplan, director of Penn's Center for Bioethics. "Dr. Chance was a little uneasy about it," Caplan recalls. "But there are certain public places where we lose the right to privacy as a condition of entering the building. Airport security staff is allowed to search your bag, your possessions, and even your body. In my view, there's

one of the first fMRI applications with real value and global interest," Langleben says. "It had implications in crime and society at large, in defense, and even for the insurance industry." The subject took on a new urgency after 9/11 as security shot to the top of the

Britton Chance of the University of Pennsylvania has developed an instrument that records much of the same brain activity as fMRI lie detection but fits in a briefcase.

no blanket rule that says it's always wrong to scan someone without their consent. What we need is a set of policies to determine when you have to have consen!." Chance believes the virtues of what he calls "a network to detect malevolence" outweigh the impact on personal liberties. "It would certainly represent an invasion of privacy," he says. "I'm sure there may be people who, for very good reasons, would not want to come near this device-and they're the interesting ones. But we'll all feel a bit safer if this kind of technology is used in places like airports. If you don't want to take the test, you can turn around and fly another day." Then he smiles. "Of course, that's the biggest selector of guilt you could wan!." -S.S.

national agenda [in the United States]. Despite questions about reliability, the use of polygraph machines grew rapidly, both domestically-where the device is employed to evaluate government workers for security clearances-and in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where Defense

I managed to incriminate mvself without even opening mv mouth. Department polygraphers are deployed to extract confessions, check claims about weapons of mass destruction, confirm the loyalty of coalition officers and grill spies. The need for a better way to assess credibility was underscored by a 2002 report, The Polygraph and Lie Detection, by the National Research Council. After analyzing decades of polygraph use by the Pentagon and the FBI, the council concluded that the device was still too unreliable to be used for personnel screening at national labs. Stephen Fienberg, the scientist who led the evaluation committee, warned: "Either too many loyal employees may be falsely judged as deceptive, or too many major security threats could go undetected. National security is too important to be left to such a blunt instrument." The committee recommended the vigorous pursuit of other methods of lie detection, including fMRI. "The whole area of research around deception and credibility assessment had been minimal, to say the least, over the last half-century," says Andrew Ryan, head of research at the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute. The institute put out a call for funding requests to scientists investigating lie detection, noting that "central nervous system activity related to deception may ... prove to be a viable area of research." Grants from the institute, the Department of Homeland Security, DARPA [The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] and other agencies triggered a wave of research into new lie-detection technologies. "When I took this job in 1999, we could count the labs dedicated to the detection of deception on one hand," Ryan says. "Post-200!, there are 50 labs in the U.S. alone doing this kind of work." Through their grants, federal agencies began to influence the direction of the research. The early studies focused on discovering "underlying principles," as Columbia's Hirsch puts it-the basic neuromechanisms shared by all acts of deception-by averaging data obtained from scanning many subjects. But once government agencies like the Department of

Defense Polygraph Institute started looking into fMRI, what began as an exploration of the brain became a race to build a better lie detector. Paul Root Wolpe, a senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, tracks the development of lie-detection technologies. He calls the accelerated advances in fMRI "a textbook example of how something can be pushed forward by the convergence of basic science, the government directing research through funding, and special interests who desire a particular technology." Langleben's team, whose work was funded partially by DARPA, began focusing more on detecting individual liars and less on broader psychological issues raised by the discovery of deception networks in the brain. "I wanted to take the research in that direction, but I was hellbent on building a lie detector, because that's where our funders wanted us to go," he says. To eliminate one major source of polygraph error-the subjectivity of the human examiner-Langleben and his colleagues developed pattern-recognition algorithms that identify deception in individual subjects by comparing their brain scans with those in a database of known liars. In 2005, both Langleben's lab and a Department of Defense Polygraph Institute-funded team led by Andrew Kozel at the Medical University of South Carolina announced that their algorithms had been able to reliably identify lies. No Lie MRI and Cephos [two companies that have expressed interest in commercializing the ability to detect deception] originated in the world of medical diagnostics. Cephos founder Steven Laken helped develop the first commercial DNA test for colorectal cancer. "FMRI lie detection is where DNA diagnostics were 10 or 15 years ago," he says. "The biggest challenge is that this is new to a lot of different groups of people. You have to get lawyers and district attorneys to understand this isn't a polygraph. I view it as no different than developing a diagnostic test." Laken got interested in marketing a new technology for lie detection when he heard about the number of prisoners being held without charges at the U.S.

base in Guantimamo Bay, Cuba. "If these detainees have information we haven't been able to extract that could prevent another 9/11, I think most Americans would agree that we should be doing whatever it takes to extract it," he says. "On the other hand, if they have no information, detaining them is a gross violation of human rights. My idea was that there has to be a better way of determin- . ing whether someone has useful information than torture or the polygraph." Cephos' lie-detection technology will employ the patents and algorithms developed by Kozel's team in South Carolina. Laken and Kozel recently launched another Department of Defense Polygraph Institute-funded study designed to mimic as closely as possible the emotions experienced while committing a crime. After this research is complete, Laken may start looking for Cephos' first clients-ideally "peo-

rain research in India has stron U.S. connections and evidence 0 that is the National Brai Research Centre in Manesar, Haryana the only center in India totally dedicat ed to brain research. Most facult members have been to American uni versities as students, researchers. 0 professors or have worked on project funded by U.S. agencies. The cente also works with the National Institute o' Mental Health in the United States. An Indo-U.S. workshop on Develop mental Neuroscience and Imagin organized in New Delhi in late February, il another example of this cooperation. Th. workshop was sponsored by the Indo U.S. Science and Technology Forum an brought together scientists and facuIt members from leading American univer路 sities and Indian institutes. "The goal of the workshop was t provide a platform for updating, dis cussing and establishing research col laborations to advance the applicatio of brain imaging technology and unde . stand the developmental brain process es in humans," says Dr. Nandi Chatterjee Singh, Indian coordinator a

pie who are trying to show that they're being truthful and who want to use our technology to help support their cases." No Lie MRI debuted its services in September 2006. Its technology is to be used in a planned network offacilities the company is calling VeraCenters. Each facility will house a scanner connected to a central computer in California. As the client responds to questions using a handheld device, the imaging data will be fed to the computer, which will classify each answer as truthful or deceptive using software developed by Langleben's team. For No Lie MRI founder Joel Huizenga, scanner-based lie detection represents a significant upgrade in "the arms race between truth-tellers and deceivers." Both Laken and Huizenga play up the potential power of their technologies to exonerate the innocent and downplay the potential for aiding prosecution of the

the workshop and an assistant professor at the National Brain Research Centre. She had worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Ohio University before returning to India in the fall of 2002. Issues related to development of the brain from the fetus stage to adulthood were discussed during the workshop. "The complementary brain research capabilities of the Indian and U.S. researchers were evident during the three-day program and a number of collaborations have been proposed. Indians have the computational and neuro-anatomical expertise, whereas U.S. researchers have strong imaging capabilities," says Dr. Singh. Dr. P.K. Roy, an additional professor at the National Brain Research Centre, has worked with the University of Connecticut, University of California, Berkeley, and the Medical College of Wisconsin as a research scientist and guest professor. He discussed how MRI (magnetic resonance

guilty. "What this is really all about is individuals who come forward willingly and pay their own money to declare that they're telling the truth," Huizenga says. (Neither company has set a price yet.) Still, No Lie MRI plans to market its services to law enforcement and immigration agencies, the military, counterintelligence groups, foreign governments and even big companies that want to give prospective CEOs the ultimate vetting. "We're really pushing the positive side of this," Huizenga says. "But this is a company-we're here to make money." Scott Faro, a radiologist at Temple University Hospital who conducted experiments using ÂąMRI in tandem with the polygraph, predicts that the invention of a more accurate lie detector "is going to change the entire judicial system. First it will be used for high-profile crimes like terrorism and Enron. You could have cen-

imaging) can offer a glimpse into degeneration and repair of the nervous system. Dr. Hubert Priessl of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences explained the role of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) in investigating information processing in the

ters across the country built close to airports, staffed with cognitive neuroscientists, MRI physicists and interrogation experts. Eventually you could have 20 centers in each major city, and the process will start to become more streamlined and cost-effective. "People say tMRI is expensive," Faro continues, "but what's the cost of a sixmonth jury trial? And what's the cost to America for missing a terrorist? If this is a more accurate test, I don't see any moral issues at all. People who can afford it and believe they are telling the truth are going to love this test." The guardians of another innovation that changed the judicial system-the U.S. Constitution-have already sounded the alarm. In September 2005, the Cornell Law Review weighed the legal implications of the use of brain imaging in courtrooms and federal detention centers,

Above: The National Brain Research Centre in Manesar.

human brain, while Dr. Scott Holland, associate professor at the University of Cincinnati, discussed using fMRI to stUdy language development in children.

The National Brain Research Centre, which was inaugurated in December 2003, obtained its first fMRI facility in September 2006. The technology is to be used to learn how the brain reacts when humans make certain cognitive choices, says Dr. Roy. -G.A.

calling fMRI "one of the few technologies to which the now cliched moniker of 'Orwellian' legitimately applies." When lawyers representing Cephos' and No Lie MRI's clients come to court, the first legal obstacles they'll have to overcome are the precedents ban-ing socalled junk science. Polygraph evidence was excluded from most U.S. courtrooms by a 1923 circuit court decision that became known as the Frye test. The ruling set a high bar for the admission of new types of scientific evidence, requiring that a technology have "general acceptance" and "scientific recognition among physiological and psychological authorities" to be considered. When the polygraph first came before the courts, it had almost no paper trail of independent verification. FMRI lie detection, however, has

precedents designed to prevent what's called invading the province of the jury, says Carter Snead, former general counsel for the President's Council on Bioethics. In 1973, a federal appeals court ruled that "the jury is the Liedetector" and that scientific evidence and expert testimony can be introduced only to help the jury reach a more informed judgment, not to be the final arbiter of truth. "The criminal justice system is not designed simply to ensure accurate truth finding," Snead says. "The human dimension of being subjected to the assessment of your peers has profound social and civic significance. If you supplant that with a biological metric, you're losing something extraordinarily important, even if you gain an incremental value in accuracy." No Lie MRI's services to corporations could run afoul of the 1988 Employee a:

~ ~ I '" ~ ~ I

evolved in the open, with each new advance subjected to peer review. The Supreme Court has already demonstrated that it is inclined to look favorably on brain imaging: A landmark 2005 decision outlawing the execution of those who commit capital crimes as juveniles was influenced by fMRI studies showing that adolescent brains are wired differently than those of adults. The acceptance of DNA profiling may be another bellwether. Highly controversial when introduced in the 1980s, it had the support of the scientific community and is now widely accepted in the courts. The introduction of fMRI evidence at trial may have to be vetted against legal

Polygraph Protection Act, which bars the use of lie-detection tests by most private companies for personnel screening. Govemment employers, however, are exempt from this law, which leaves a huge potential market for fMRI in local, state and federal agencies, as well as in the military. It is in these sectors that fMRI and other new lie-detection technologies are likely to take root, as the polygraph did. The legality of fMRI use by govemment agencies will probably focus on issues of consent, predicts Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. "From a constitutional standpoint, consent covers a lot of sins," he

explains. "Most applications of the polygraph in the U.S. have been in consensual circumstances, even if the consent is prompted by a statement like, 'If you want this job, you must submit to a polygraph.' [For example, when someone is suspected of drunken driving, the] police can say, 'Would you blow into this Breathalyzer? Technically you're free to say no, but if you don't consent, we're going to make life hard for you. ' " Today's fMRI scanners are bulky, cost up to $3 million each, and in effect require consent because of their sensitivity to head movement. Once [lie detection] technology becomes commercially available, however, these limitations will seem like glitches that merely need to be fixed. If advances make it possible to perform brain scans on unwilling or even unwitting subjects, it will raise a thicket of legal issues regarding privacy, constitutional protections against self-incrimination, and the prohibitions against unlawful search and seizure. The technological innovations that produce sweeping changes often evolve beyond their designers' original intentions-the Internet, the cloud chamber, a 19th-century doctor's cuff for measuring blood pressure that, when incorporated into the polygraph, became the unsteady foundation of the modem counterintelligence industry. So what began as a neurological inquiry into why kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder blurt out embarrassing truths may end up forcing the legal system to define more clearly the inviolable boundaries of the self. "My concem is precisely with the civil and commercial uses of fMRI lie detection," says ethicist Paul Root Wolpe. "When this technology is available on the market, it will be in places like Guant<'mamoBay and Abu Ghraib in a heartbeat. "Once people begin to think that police can look right into their brains and tell whether they're lying," he adds, "it's going to be 1984 in their minds, and there could be a significant backlash. The goal of detecting deception requires far more public scrutiny than it has had up until now. As a society, we need to have a very serious conversation about this." ~ Steve

Silberman

(digaman@wiredmag.com)

is a contributing editor with Wired.

irstFreedomProject_

Boosts Enort to Protect Religious Liberty

By DAVID ANTHONY DENNY

he U.S. Department of Justice has launched a program to educate the public about laws protecting religious freedom and to build relationships with religious, civil rights and community leaders to ensure religious liberty concerns are brought to the department's attention. A key person in this effort, called the First Freedom Project, is Eric Treene, the special counsel for religious discrimination in the department's Civil Rights Division. Treene says that even though his division is charged with protecting the right of individuals to be free from discrimination and hate crimes on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin, "there had not been any concerted, focused effort to look for and bring religious discrimination cases" to light. According to statistics from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Treene says, religious discrimination complaints increased by 69 percent from the early 1990s to 2005, but race and sex discrimination cases stayed level or even went down during the same time period

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, only exacerbated the problem, according to Treene. "After 9/11 we saw an increase in hate crimes against Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim, as well as a doubling of complaints of discrimination against Muslims in employment," he says. Treene says U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' meetings with Muslim Americans provided the impetus for the First Freedom Project. The groups told Gonzales in January that they were pleased with the agency's record in this area, "but they wanted us to publicize it more generally"-for the education of the person on the street-to emphasize the importance and universal nature of religious liberty and the importance of protecting the rights of all persons, including Muslim Americans. "And that's what this initiative is all about," Treene says "It's not about protecting any individual's faith; it's not just about protecting Muslims. It's about protecting religious liberty as a fundamental human right." Gonzales announced the First Freedom Project in a speech to the Southern Baptist Convention on February 20. In that speech Gonzales prefaced the project's announcement by saying, "One of our most cherished freedoms-one we've sacrificed greatly to defend-is our religious liberty Nothing defines us more as a nation-and differentiates us more from the extremists who are our enemies-than our respect for

u.s.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

religious freedom." Gonzales continued, "Our great country was founded on these principles, and many of us today bel ieve it continues to thrive because of, not despite, them." The attorney general said the First

ings for nonreligious purposes, Gonzales said, Hearn was suspended twice for wearing her headscarf. "That's a difficult position for a young student to be in, facing down her school principal and administration," said Gonzales. "I

mericans call freedom of religion one of their "first freedoms" because it is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" During the debates on the adoption of the US Constitution, its opponents repeatedly charged that the document as drafted would open the way to tyranny by the central government. They demanded a "bill of rights" that would spell out the immunities of individual citizens. Several state conventions in their formal ratification of the Constitution asked for such amendments; others ratified the Constitution with the understanding that the amendments would be offered. In 1789, the first 1 a Constitutional amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures and became part of the fundamental law of the land. Freedom Project will create a Religious Freedom Task Force to review policies and cases. A public education program will include regional training seminars, a Web site and literature on how to file a religious discrimination complaint. Gonzales told the story of Nashala Hearn, a Muslim sixthgrader in Muskogee, Oklahoma, whose school told her that she could not wear a headscarf required by her faith. Though other students were permitted to wear head cover-

don't know how I would have reacted when I was in sixth grade. But Nashala stood up for herself, and she had the Department of Justice to back her up. "If you know of any Nashalas out there," he said, "who find themselves facing down religious intolerance, and who think they're all alone in their fight .. you tell them to come talk to me." ~ David Anthony

Denny is a

USINFO staff writer.

Far left: A traditional film projector. Left: The control panel of a Qube Cinema projector.

Text by GIRlRAJ AGARWAL Photographs by DANIEL WILKINSON

Thanks to digital technology, movie fans can enjoy premiere quality cinema at every show. Chennai-based Real Image Media Technologies, in collaboration with California-based Intel, is taking digital cinema across India. atching the debut show of any movie is an exciting experience. Not just because one gets to see it before others, but also in terms of picture and sound quality. As movie reels get older, exposure to light and dust take their toll. The film prints get scratched and their colors fade. But now, movie fans can enjoy premiere quality at every show thanks to digital technology. Chennai-based Real Image Media Technologies, in collaboration with California-based Intel, is taking digital cinema across India. "In India, digital cinema will enable simultaneous release and screening at much lower cost than conventional prints while

preserving quality over many runs. But what is even more attractive is that the exact solution developed for India is also relevant in the developed markets where digital cinema makes good sense for totally different reasons, such as quality," says Kumar T. Shiralagi. He was director of Intel Capital India at the time of SPAN's interview but recently joined NEA-IndoUS Ventures. Intel has also provided venture capital to Real Image through its $250 million India technology fund in May 2006. In January 2007, Real Image initiated digital screening of Indian films in North America with Mani Ratnam's Guru through Qube Cinema, its digital cinema technology. For the first time, theaters in

Chicago and Detroit screened an Indian movie digitally. Nearly 50 cinemas of the Landmark Theaters group in the United States are equipped with Qube Cinema. The technology is expected to reach more than 300 screens soon, tapping a huge potential market for Indian movies. In India, more than 200 theaters in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Kamataka and Kerala are equipped with Qube Cinema. Real Image was started by Senthil Kumar and Jayendra Panchapakesan, who first developed Qube Cinema in May 2004. "We are continuously upgrading our system. Qube Cinema servers and projec-

tors are designed in such a way that they are not limited to any hardware fonnat. Hardware can be upgraded easily because the system is based on software, which gives it flexibility," says Panchapakesan. Traditional film prints are costly and most producers can release only a limited number of prints. Due to this, smaller cities often get older, inferior quality prints. But things can change, thanks to digital cinema. A digital movie is nothing but a movie file that is projected on the screen using a server and digital projector. Its quality remains intact for a long time because the movie is stored on a disc, downloaded through optic fiber cable or via satellite. "A film print costs about 70,000 rupees, whereas for a digital print the cost is not more than 15,000, including all expenses. Due to this, a digital film can be shown in many theaters simultaneously and a producer can maximize his or her earnings in the first week itself," Panchapakesan adds. He and Kumar have established a subsidiary of Real Image in the United States called Qube Cinema Inc. to market the technology. "There are a limited number of players in the digital cinema market. We are not worried about competition because our packages are available at half the price quoted by well known companies like Dolby and Kodak. We can convert a traditional theater to digital at a cost of only Rs. 15 lakhs." But why would any theater spend so much money on going digital? "It's all about the future. You can show digital movies as well as traditional movies in such theaters. Apart from that, the number of digital movies is going to increase in the future and film producers would be releasing their movies in both fonnats. Then it would be more attractive to run digital copies than to wait for reels," says Panchapakesan. Kumar adds that Qube Cinema allows theaters to have subtitles in different languages for the same movie. "A movie-ondemand feature is also possible by connecting several theaters to central servers. Theaters can download the films they like and pay accordingly. Servers keep track of each show," says Panchapakesan. The journey of digital cinema has just begun. Digital Cinema Initiative, a body set up by Hollywood studios such as Disney, MGM and Fox, laid down the

Top: Jayendra Panchapakesan, one of the founders of Real Image Media Technologies, at the sound mixing cum preview room at his office in Chennai. Above: The Abirami Mega Mall in Chennai where the Tamil movie Chandramukhi was screened for 200 days using Qube Cinema. accepted standards for digital cinema in 2005. These mandate that the picture resolution should be 2,048 to 4,096 horizontal pixels, compression should be JPEG 2000 and the software should have strong

security features. Panchapakesan hopes that these standards would encourage producers to make more digital movies, which would help bring down distribution costs. But wouldn't digitalization encourage illegal copying of movies? "High quality encryption and watennarking would check this. Movie packages can have start and end dates for screening, which can be remotely modified if needed," says Kumar. ~ Please share your views on this article by writing to editorspan@state.gov

Text by GIRIRAJ AGARWAL Photographs by DANIEL WILKINSON

n eye test to find out if the patient is suffering from arthritis, hypertension or AIDS sounds a little futuristic. However, ophthalmologists at the Chennai-based Sankara Nethralaya say it is possible because most diseases affect eye tissues; AIDS leads to ocular lesions while arthritis creates dryness in the eyes. It is cutting-edge treatment like this that has become the hallmark of this eye hospital.

Sankara Nethralaya, a charitable notfor-profit institute, was started in 1978 by a young eye specialist, Dr. S.S. Badrinath. He had a dream of establishing an eye hospital where the latest equipment and technology would be available and the poor would have access to state-of-the-art facilities. Now, the hospital "treats about 1,500 patients every day and more than 100 surgeries are performed each day in the 22

S.v. Acharya (left), an Indian American who raised about Rs. 90 million from donors in the United States for Sankara Nethralaya, received an award from the hospital in October 2006. It was presented to him by U.S. Consul General David T. Hopper (right).

SPAN MARCHI APRIL 2007

Above: An ophthalmologist at Sankara Nethralaya examines a patient with a slit lamp biomicroscope, which provides a magnified image of the back of the eye. operation theaters," says Dr. Badrinath. Adding that about one-third of the patients are treated free of cost, Dr. Badrinath explains the philosophy behind Sankara Nethralaya-those who can afford to should pay and the poor should get the benefit of a subsidy. Sankara Nethralaya accepts financial help from contributors so that it can continue to offer free treatment and expand its operations. The nonprofit Sankara Nethralaya Ophthalmic Mission Trust, based in Rockville, Maryland, was set up in 1988 to generate funds in the United States for the hospital. One of its founder trustees and honorary treasurer is an Indian American, S.Y. Acharya, who raised about Rs. 90 million from donors in the United States. Acharya, who oversees the budget for the

Left: About one-third of the patients are treated free of cost at the hospital.

Public Defender Service office in the District of Columbia, received an award from the hospital trust for this work and it was presented to him by U.S. Consul General David T. Hopper in Chennai in October 2006. Many doctors at Sankara Nethralaya have studied or worked on research projects in the United States. Dr. Krishan Kumar, who is involved in a nanotechnology project, was at the University of Southern California on a research fellowship from April to December 2000. Dr. K. Lily of the microbiology department , received a six-month fellowship in 2006 from Alcon, an eye care company based in Fort Worth, Texas. There has been institutional cooperation as well. The National Eye Institute, based in Bethesda, Maryland, has provided funds for several collaborative projects. When Sankara Nethralaya started a School of Optometry in 1985, Jay M. Enoch, dean emeritus of the School of Optometry at the University of California, Berkeley, helped it design the course content. The hospital ensures that it stays up to

date as far as equipment and facilities are concerned. A retina scanning machine that can detect the minutest of problems was acquired in March 2006 at the cost of Rs. 4.3 million. Dr. Badrinath cites the use of a YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) laser for surgical procedures in 1982 and photorefractive keratectomy eye surgery in 1993 as other examples. Besides providing routine clinical services, the institute is engaged in education, training and research as well. About 75 postgraduate students are being trained at

the hospital. According to Dr. Badrinath, the Indian Council of Medical Research recognized Sankara Nethralaya as a research center in the field of medical science in 1978, the very first year of its operations. Now experts at the institute are working on cutting-edge technologies. In August 2006 it started building a new research center, the Rs,: 360 million National Institute for Research in Visual Sciences and Ophthalmology, which Dr. Badrinath expects to be functional by the end of 2007. "This new facility will take care of all the research work in Sankara Nethralaya," says Dr. H.N. Madhavan, vice president and research director of the Vision Research Foundation at Sankara Nethralaya. Researchers at the Sankara Nethralaya are already working on nanotechnology and stem cell research. Once the new institute becomes operational there will be more extensive facilities for research in these fields as it will have wellequipped stem cell and nanotech research laboratories, Dr. Madhavan says. The institute's researchers say they have been able to develop a cornea from stem cells in such a way that it is not rejected by the body. "The cornea has been successfully transplanted into a rabbit. Now advanced trials are being planned," says Dr. Madhavan. Speaking about the work on nanotechnology, he says, "Nanotech can give us custom-designed medical machines made from particles 50,000 times smaller than a single strand of human hair and these machines would be able to save our vision." 44

Dr. 5.5. Badrinath, who started the Sankara Nethralaya in 1978, says that the hospital treats about 1,500 patients every day and more than 100 surgeries are performed each day in the 22 operation theaters.

SPAN MARCHI APRIL 2007

Matthew Sa1iforti: Pursuing tfie

Mind-Body Connection

atthew Sanford was in a car accident when he was 13. Among other injuries, he suffered spinal cord damage that paralyzed his body from the chest down. "It took me many years of trying to overcome my paralyzed body, to drag it through my life, before I started to practice yoga. I didn't start yoga until I was 25 and I am now 41 ," he says in a USINFO webchat (http:// usinfa. state. g ov/us i nfo/ Arc h i vel 2006/N ov/2 7 -62 5204. htm I). Sanford teaches yoga at the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Mind Body Solutions and his approach is to "spread my presence throughout my body regardless of whether I can flex muscles. There are connections between mind and body that are more subtle, more quiet but are crucial for people living with disabilities."

How do you teach yoga, a very physical exercise, to those who don't share the same physical disabilities? Yoga is a phenomenon that occurs at the intersection of the mind's intent and the body's limits. That means that principles of yoga do not discriminate-they can travel through any body. Not every one's poses will look the same, but at core the spine is wakening, regardless of disability. If you think of the instructions of yoga as efficient ways of spreading presence through the body, then it becomes more clear how it is possible.

What is the difference between Indian traditional yoga vs. modern day yoga? A short answer is the type of yoga that I study originates in Pune, India from yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar. But traditional Indian yoga is deeply embedded in the Hindu religion Modern day yoga, I believe, does not have the same religious undercurrents. At least in the U.S., it is a profound means of integrating mind, body and spirit. This integration makes the practitioner more present and thus can add depth to whatever his or her particular beliefs are. My work does not just focus on yoga. We do work within rehabilitation practices, delivery of health care, even managing stress in the workplace. The tagline is simply that minds and bodies work better together. I believe this is especially an important truth for people living with disabilities. So often we are encouraged to overcome our bodies and try to fit into life as if we were not different. I think this is a mistake. How has your work helped corporations? Is yoga the key to improving efficiency among lackadaisical workers? It does not have to be yoga. The work that most of us are doing is not like physics, nor are most of us lifting thousands of pounds per day What is happening is that the way we are working is dulling the mind-body relationship. Not only

does this make for a lackadaisical workforce, but it contributes to rising health care costs. We need to realize that presence within the body is an under-utilized asset. That living more vibrantly through the whole body, even while working, helps deepen one's sense of well being. Presence within the body also helps the clarity of one's thought process and on and on. Have you had to deal much with discrimination? With regard to just living with a disability within the U.S. culture, I would say I have experienced my share. With regards to yoga, I find that people are a little incredulous when they find out that I teach yoga But all it takes is them being in my class a little while. But generally, I find that people mean well and most have good hearts. They might limit me with their judgments but that is a fact about them, not about me. What is Iyengar yoga? It emphasizes alignment and precision within each individual pose. It uses props to aid practitioners with more difficult mindbody relationships. It breaks the poses down into parts more. All of this leads to it being the best method for someone to practice if they live with a disability. I want to know more about bed sores. Would yoga help me with this? Once you have a bed sore, the

best way for it to heal is to relieve the pressure. In general, however, yoga can improve the quality of your skin at a systemic level. It can help you feel generally more healthy. It also will make you more aware of body positions and the need to move and change position. This of course will help you prevent sores from forming. What inspired you to begin yoga after living so long as a paraplegic? I missed my body. I had given more of me than I needed to. It is possible to be present within the body without flexing muscles and I set off to explore that truth. There is freedom that comes with being more present within the body rather than less. This truth has kept me practicing all these years. I think any kind of social support is not enough for a disabled person. Though people are good-hearted, they are not able to understand exactly what a disabled person wants. But a kind wife, or parents, share a big part in their life. I wanted to ask: Are you married? And do you think your wife has helped you in your successful life? I (as a disabled man) want to say how thankfull am to my wife. I am married. I also have a son. He is 6. I have had very supporting friends and family. Trauma and disability do not just happen to one person, nor even to one family, but to a whole community. I, too, am grateful for all the support I have received. ~

A. P. Sharma

Devbrat Vashisth Bhiwani, Haryana The thought provoking article, "Youth Service for National Development," which talks about the AmeriCorps national youth service organization established by Susan Stroud, touched my heart. This would inspire youth for social service. We, especially young people, should learn from her life and work accordingly. "Young Volunteers" was also inspiring These lines in the article are especially inspiring: "I know each person has a true potential. They just need a chance to realize it." Organizations like these should be established in every part of the country, especially in metros. It would prove to be very good if students take part in such activities enthusiastically.

Rameshwar Kamboj Himanshu

Panchku/a, Haryana The article, "Tracking Indian History," on Stanley Wolpert is no doubt illuminating and creates a renewed interest in the life and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Although there is no dearth of Gandhian literature, there is a strange fascination that continues to divert probing intellects to go further into the unending labyrinths of his philosophy-simple, yet subtle. The attempt by Wolpert is a sincere quest to know the unknown of Gandhi's mystic personality. His study invokes a fresh interest in that era of sacrifices in which Gandhi was the leading personality. He continued to baffle, with his enigmatic charm, politicians, phi losophers, writers and thinkers. Any probe, however exhausting, does not seem to end anywhere. Such was the personality of Mahatma Gandhi. Wolpert deserves our unstinted praise for his systematic study of the two intellectual giants, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

Hazratpur, Uttar Pradesh "Youth Service for National -::-.-" ••.. Development" and "Having a Ball in the Heartland" would help in Rajasthan proViding new direction to youth. There is an effort in all the articles to §""ii~~~:~'?=,-':::<::::--'clean, hygienic and \ create a forum ~;"-_. h potable water, as in the days of yore it which would help as become a dumping pi f . ' bring India and the sewage and the 't' ace or chemical waste Swechha and other pro r~~s ~refuse. Voluntary endeavors of NGOs lik~ United States closer people like Vimlendu J~a his ~ke th?~e of Pravah are indeed laudable How to each other. rendering valuable servlc~s im sso~la es and other volunteers are keen in ing al.most everywhere, req~,re:~~~~~/he ~cologlCal mess p~ople are creatone side and the common men on th ,~;. hnfortunatelY,the Industrialists on they take it seriously efforts of these ~~Ose~ ave not imbibed the sense of clean ecology and until how voluntary organizations In America are a~y ~ot ~Ield the desired results. Jha might have learned on the part of the masses is sadly missin i I ell.oratlng ecological conditions but that commitment teers are recognized and the spirit behind~hn nd,a .One only prays the efforts of these young volunem ISSincerely adopted.

•.-..~=.... --

~il ~i~;ri~~y;;::e~er,

~~~~~J " ..- r~~~a~::d~~{:;ng

An Intertaith Kero ==~::,~~

Rajashekhar S. Patre

Bangalore, Kamataka, back many memories. I had the occaSion Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. s story b;~U~h~iversityof Arizona in 1960 where 1 was to meet Dr. King when he came to e a student.

:Ill: U

=•••••••••

III

Narhari Narayan Khune Nagpur, Mahar:s~~~tin Luther King, Jr. has .changed ~he The article was liked very much beca~se 0 ligious tolerance into the natIOnalfabric. hearts and minds of Americans, weaving re

he us. Consulate General in Mumbai and the IndoAmerican Chamber of Commerce co-hosted the "AIDS-Free India" event at the consulate lawns in Mumbai on March 15, 2007 to spread HIV/AIDS awareness and galvanize private sector commitment to combat it. The evening saw an elite gathering of more than 200 people from the corporate sector, Bollywood, government officials, NGOs and journalists. Hollywood film star and Youth AIDS Ambassador Ashley Judd, who had come to Mumbai to raise awareness about HIV, was the guest of honor. Judd, a brand ambassador for Population Services International, also interacted with children at the Apne Aap orphanage in New Delhi.

o revitalize public spac destroyed by the Decem ber 2004 tsunami, th International City/County Man agement Association, with fund ing from USAID, designed an built two community play grounds in Cuddalore an Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadui January. More than 1,000 men women and children donate their labor in both towns an designs were carried out b people in the U.S. state 0 Florida who have also surviv recent natural disasters.

Mr. Vikram J. Mahajan Disbursing/Embassy Thru Embassy Mail Room liS 1222