SPAN: November/December, 2007 by SPAN magazine

Born in the Heartland Growing up in a small town in the Midwest meant playing every summer day outdoors, coming in after dark only when your mother called for you. It meant snowball fights and making snowmen in the winter. In the fall, it meant raking leaves all day into piles and then running and jumping in them. And in the spring, it meant waiting for the last huge chunk of ice to melt on the driveway under the basketball hoop so you would not fall down playing "horse!" It meant running through backyards with no fences, riding your bike everywhere in town, your dog following you to school and waiting for you when you got out. It meant family picnics in the field at the old Mulford farm, throwing dirt balls into the stream and standing barefoot in the ice cold spring water where the watercress grew. It meant doing everything as a family, from eating meals together to shoveling snow, from playing baseball to spring-cleaning the house, from taking family vacations in northern Wisconsin to replacing the storm windows with screens in summer. It meant hard work and happiness, but most of all, it meant freedom.

this, even as they experience difficulties and frustrations. Many of these feelings found expression in a style of rock music that emerged in the late 1970s. In contrast to many of the popular groups of the era, the artists who played "heartland rock" were not theatrical. Instead of elaborate stage-sets and costumes, they came out in T-shirts and jeans; instead of synthesizers and programmed electronic percussion, they brought out guitars and backed up their songs with a strong beat from a traditional rock drum kit. In their personal lives, too, these artists tended to stay or return to their home communities, rather than living a glamorous lifestyle in New York or Los Angeles. According to the All Music Guide (www.allmusic.com/). a database of music, "At its core, heartland rock was straightforward rock 'n' roll infused with Americana-more streamlined than garage rock, but not as traditionalist as roots rock." The All Music Guide also notes that work in this style, "was united by the attitude that music should be about something." What it is about is the lives, dreams and disappointments of ordinary working people, usually those in rural areas. An entry Willie Nelson (left) and Neil Young at the 21st annual Farm Aid concert in Camden, New Jersey, in 2006.

in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia says the theme of isolation is central to heartland rock. This can be seen in the songs of the most prominent rockers in this style: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp and Bob Seger. Many of Springsteen's songs, like "Promised Land," speak bitterly of the broken promise of America. His song "Born in the U.S.A." has a refrain that sounds like a proud patriotic anthem. Yet, the verses describe the pain of a returned war veteran finding it hard to make his way in life back home. In "Night Moves," Bob Seger sings of the yearning of young lovers and romantic encounters "out past the corn

Ambassador David C. Mulford and his wife, Jeannie, at Roosevelt House with their silkscreen color print by Italian artist Nicola Simbari. It depicts a typical American Midwest scene-a young girl riding her bike in the backyard, with sheets drying on the clothesline. The Ambassador says the picture makes him think of his wife as a child growing up in the small town of Hastings in Nebraska.

fields where the woods get heavy." "Look at the stars," he sings in another song, "they're so far away." Mellencamp was born in the state of Indiana in a town called Seymour. It was founded in the mid-1800s at the intersection of two railroads on the Great Plains.

The usual avenue for bettering women's circumstances in the developing world is education. Women with more education have access to better jobs outside the home, better control of their fertility and better bargaining power with their husbands. Education has other benefits, too, so it's understandably a big investment priority for most governments. But education changes attitudes slowly. So, how about TV, a quicker fix? In the last decade, cable television has arrived in remote Indian villages, bringing with it commercial television programming heavy on game shows and Indian soap operas. Before you laugh ... consider that the most popular Indian series take place in urban settings. Their emancipated female characters are welleducated, work outside the home, control their own money and have fewer children than rural women. One of the most popular shows since 2000, Kyunki ... Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi ... (Because a Mother-in-Law Was Once a Daughter-inLaw, Also), describes the life of a wealthy Mumbai family and features plots revolving around family and gender. So, Jensen and Oster asked, does the arrival of these shows change attitudes in ways that improve women's lives? The authors followed women in 2,700 households in villages in four states (Bihar, Goa, Haryana and Tamil Nadu) and the capital, New Delhi, from 2001 to

2003. Access to television in remote Indian villages has changed substantially in the past few years. Of the 180 villages the authors studied, 65 already had cable in 2001, and by the end of 2003, 21 more had access. Not surprisingly, when a village gets access to cable, villagers tend to watch more TV: Forty percent report watching weekly before cable came to town compared with 80 percent after. What's the effect? In the places that didn't get cable by 2003, and in the places that already had it at the beginning of the period studied, attitudes concerning women remained relatively stable. (They were more pro-women in places that already had cable.) But in the 21 villages that got cable between 2001 and 2003, women's attitudes changed quickly and substantially. The authors focus on three measures: autonomy (whether the woman gets to make her own decisions about shopping, health and whom she visits), attitudes toward beating (the number of circumstances in which women view beating as acceptable), and whether women prefer having male children. After a village got

cable, women's preference for male children fell by 12 percentage points. The average number of situations in which women said that wife beating is acceptable fell by about 10 percent. And the authors' composite autonomy index jumped substantially, by an amount equivalent to the attitude difference associated with 5.5 years of additional education. So far, these results concern measures of attitude rather than behavior-indicating, perhaps, that TV just teaches women to give the answers that surveying do-gooders want to hear. But the authors also measured the women's average number of births and the likelihood that their children were enrolled in school. When cable came to town, boys' rates of school attendance stayed the same, while girls between the ages of 6 and 10 were 8 percent more likely to go to school. The effects on fertility were even more dramatic: For women under the age of 35, average number of births fell annually by more than half. It's possible, however, that this shows a change in the timing of births rather than overall lifetime fertility, given the study's relatively short duration. Jensen and Oster think that TV works its magic on women by providing them a new televised set of peers and in turn changing their attitudes. Supporting this conclusion is evidence that TV's emancipatory effects were larger in places where women initially held more traditional attitudes. For example, in the places where women had formerly held high preferences for sons, the share preferring sons fell 20 percentage points with the arrival of cable, compared with a 12 percent decline overall. Americans' average TV-viewing time of four hours a day may still be too much of a good thing. But the women of rural India, who are just getting started on their favorite cable shows, should perhaps call the TV the Empowerment Box instead of the Idiot Box. Joel Waldfogel is a professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Symphony Silicon Valley in San Jose, California, performs the Classic Arcade Medley segment. Frogger, the video game that inspired the concert, is playing on the screen.

ideo games are culturally significant." Try that statement, made by video game industry insider Tommy Tallarico, on a group of friends, and you are likely to unleash heated debate. Tallarico co-produces a live concert with renowned symphony orchestras playing music from video games, and he says the show's popularity among "garners" and musicians alike underscores the growing cultural importance of video games. Video Games Live (www.videogameslive.com)--which features costumed characters, orchestras, choral groups and a light show that rivals any rock concert-started with three performances in 2005. It has progressed to a schedule of about 30 performances around the world in 2007, some of which have drawn thousands. Music in video games is composed to be no more than background music but is as "emotional, powerful as any movie score out there," says Tallarico. Audiences tend to be rowdy, cheering or chanting frequently.

One oboe player said that, before he played Video Games Live, he never had someone cheer for him, despite having played in orchestras for 40 years. He liked it. "It looks like these types of productions are catching on," says Daniel Ozment, assistant conductor of the Master Chorale of Washington, a professional choir. "It's a lot of fun to do." Concerts are not advertised in large-city newsp~pers but rather rely on "cell-phone movies" posted on YouTube (www.you tube.com), buzz from social networking sites and flyers in video game stores. "It is a huge shift from what we traditionally do," says Ozment. As traditional, classical orchestras struggle as a result of dwindling audiences, they are trying more popular fare to attract younger people. In 2004, when the Los Angeles Philharmonic took what was then a bold step by playing music by Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu from the video game Final Fantasy, the concert sold out in three days, according to a trade journal. Craig Mulcahy, trombonist for the National Symphony Orchestra, says the Video Games Live concert his orchestra played at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in June 2007 drew "the youngest crowd we have

Synchronized lighting, live action and audience interactivity mark a performance of The Halo segment in San Francisco, California.

had. There were lots of teens there, and both nights we did it were completely sold out. I imagine we'll do more in the future." The National Symphony Orchestra's summer concert schedule also includes "Fantastic Planet"-music by Beethoven, Debussy, Vaughn Williams and Stravinsky played with outer-space film footage from NASAand "Bugs on Broadway," symphonic accompaniment to cartoons. "Operas were created to bring in people who might be attracted by the costumes or the stories," Tallarico says. He gets e-mails from audience members who never had been to the symphony before. "I tell them about Beethoven's Ninth, about Wagner," he says. Ozment says his group, which sang some portions of the concert in a "madeup language," enjoyed rehearsals. "It's still classical music, in a way. The only difference is that some of our singers who performed in this concert were very excited about this music, because they grew up playing these [video] games." Mulcahy, who at 33 is one of the younger members of the orchestra, says that he has played several of the games featured in Video Games Live. "Even when I was not playing [trombone], I was turning around, watching the screen and enjoying the music," he says. The $30 billion video game industry has changed significantly in the last 15 years, according to Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. As computers store more digital information, the musicality of video games has improved dramatically. In 1972, the first commercial game, Pong, went on the market. Video Games Live starts with an orchestral imitation of the game's bleeps and bloops. The music progresses to the complex score from Halo 3, a game that earned more than $170 million in sales in the first 24 hours of its release in September 2007. It has since also set the record for the most money eamed in a day by an entertainment product, topping figures set by the film Spider-Man 3. Douglas A. Gentile, a psychology professor at Iowa State University and a critic of the violent content of many video games, says that as video games become more of an art form, they also could become more dangerous. Gentile wrote a book about the violent effects of video games on children and adolescents. "Great art does have an effect on us," he says, noting that the American Academy of Pediatrics will release an update on media violence in the next year that will include more information about video games. Gentile says violent games "increase aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors in the short-term and the long-term." Video Games Live producers support the video game industry and do not see its products as a danger to young people. But they are also happy to think the show is turning some members of its audiences toward serious music. "We do want to get in touch with that younger generation and find a way to make them aware of what we do and how cool this music is, even when it doesn't have a video on the screen," says Ozment, the chorale director. "There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of music written in the last 200 years that have stories in them-you find the picture in your head." ~ Elizabeth

Kelleher is a USINFO staff writer.

Never playa video game ver since video games were invented, parents and teachers have been trying to make them boring, Any [American] child of the 1980s and 1990s will remember Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and Math Blaster Mystery The Great Brain Robbery, games that promised to make skills acquisition fun. They'll also remember ditching Mavis Beacon for something with guns as soon as their parents' backs were turned. Making games educational is like dumping creamy Velveeta cheese on broccoli. Liberal deployment of the word "blaster" can't hide the fact that you're choking down something that's supposed to be good for you, With video games starting to eclipse movies in revenues and popularity, the educational-gaming movement has gone into overdrive. Industry bigwigs and civic-minded intellectuals are increasingly peddling the idea that video games can cure society's ills. There's a booming subgenre of games, like Nintendo's Brain Age, that claim to stave off senility via simple puzzles and arithmetic problems A Harper's cover story last year asked whether video games were the best way to teach kids to read, (Short answer maybe,) There's even a Washington, D,C.-based group called the Serious Games Initiative (wwwseriousgamesorg) that advocates for "a new series of policy education, exploration, and management tools utilizing state of the art computer game designs .." Take that, Reader Rabbitl All of these ideas are premised on the notion that video games can and should be more than mindless fun. But all of this noodling about games' untapped potential raises some philosophical questions When does a game stop being a game and turn into an assignment? Can a game still be called a game if it isn't any fun? The company Persuasive Games (persuasive games.com/) makes for an interesting case study, Persuasive has gotten a lot of press due to its recent collaboration with The New York Times on "newsgames." Persuasive's releases are essentially the Blaster series for the new millennium but geared toward adults instead of children with overprotective parents, Cartoon ish and uncomplicated, with graphics reminiscent of old, 16-bit gaming systems, these games generally play like Sims expansion packs that were too boring to be released. Persuasive's first game for the Times, Food Import Folly, is a rousing examination of the ins and outs of Food and

that.s trying to teach you something. Drug Administration (FDA) import inspection. Newsgames are an interesting idea, but this one is less informative than a simple article and less fun than doing the Jumble Food Import Folly didn't make me think long and hard about FDA policyI just ended up left-clicking furiously in an attempt to "win." In taking the fun out of video games, companies like Persuasive make them less alluring to people who love games and more alluring to people who don't. Your boss, for example. Many of Persuasive's projects were commissioned by corporations as nontraditional job-training tools. "Our employees learn without realizing they are learning," Don Field, Cisco's director of certification told BusinessWeek-a highly dubious statement. ~ E The training games that I tried are unsparingly, ter- ~ rifyingly banal. Take Stone City, a game ~ Persuasive wrote to train employees of Cold Stonei Creamery, an ice cream parlor chain with head- ~ quarters in Arizona. You playa scoop jockey who ~ has to fill customers' orders. At the end of the Â§ game, you're told just how much ice cream you ~ wasted, and how much your poor performance will ÂŤ end up costing Cold Stone over the span of one Mavis Beacon's heyday. But the fundamental conyear The only fun to be had in Stone City comes ceptual problem still remains: Animating mindfrom deliberately mishandling the orders. (At my less, boring repetition doesn't make the repetition Cold Stone franchise, everyone gets strawberry.) any less mindless or boring. No sane Cold Stone Compared with the video-gamelike widgets employee will be fooled into thinking that Stone that other companies are peddling, Stone City is City is anything other than a soul-crushing trainGrand Theft Auto: Vice City. The California-based ing exercise. Can't there be some better way to do company called Seriosity, for one, claims to be didactic gaming? brainstorming a virtual work environment that I think game designer and theorist Raph Koster mimics online worlds like Second Life and World has it right. "[J]ust strapping an incentive structure of Warcraft. "[T]oday's multiplayer games," the on rote practice doesn't work very well, compared company explains, "embody tasks that are analo- to. building a long-term goal structure, and then gous to corporate work." Imagine: a virtual office, presenting challenges on the way," Koster writes with virtual paper to be filed, virtual meetings to on his personal blog. The perfect embodiment of be dreaded, and virtual gossip to be shared over this idea is Sid Meier's Civilization series. In these virtual coffee. I have seen the future, and it makes games, players build a society from the ground up, me want to go back to chisels and stone tablets, interacting with other, competing civilizations or at least get a job working construction. This is along the way. It's addictively fun, and you learn a not fun. This. Is. Evil. lot about history along the way I have learned that The graphics and game play in modern edu- a Greek trireme will sink if it ventures more than 1.6 tainment software have certainly improved since kilometers off shore. Civilization is goal-driven,

instructional without being unctuous, and fun without being mindless. It's a considerable accomplishment, and one that the socially conscious game developers would do well to emulate. The basic issue here is that it's easier to make a fun game educational than it is to inject fun into an educational game. In his 2005 book, Everything Bad Is Good lor You, Steven Johnson argues that games like The Sims and Grand Theft Auto make us smarter by training the mind in adaptive behavior and problem-solving. Most overtly educational software, though, ignores the complexities that make games riveting and enriching. The seriousgaming types think they can create educational software from whole cloth. In reality, they have a lot _to_le_a_rn_fr_o_m_G_ra_n_d _Th_e_ft_A_ut_O.

Justin Peters is a writer in Washington, D.C, and the editor of Polite. Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

The 11 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in the early 1800s by Joseph Smith in New York state. He said an angel revealed to him the Book of Mormon and that it had been written by a man of that name living in America in ancient times. This book is the founding scripture of Mormonism. The word "latter-day" in the church's official name stems from the Mormons' belief that after the death of the early apostles of Jesus Christ, the Christian Church fell into apostasy and needed to be restored in the latter days. Mormons believe this period began in 1820 when Smith said he began receiving visions. Smith's teachingssuch as that the Garden of Eden was in the U.S. state of Missouri, that God had revealed to him the idea of plural marriage, that Christ had appeared to ancient Israelites living in the Americas, and rites such as proxy baptism and marriage ceremonies for deceased ancestors-put Mormonism out of the mainstream of most Christian churches. Persecuted in their early history, Mormons kept moving to practice their beliefs in freedom, eventually settling in Utah. -L.K.L. from the Ute tribe, meaning "people of the mountains." Utah was an important midway point for migrants and travelers heading west across the United States. An ambitious effort to link the railway network of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, creating the first transcontinental railroad, was completed in northeastern Utah in 1869, accelerating the settlement of the American West. Utah's first modem communities were established in the midl800s by Mormon pioneers in what was then Mexican territory. Utah, called Deseret by these settlers, soon became a US. territory, but not a state, due in part to the federal government's objection to polygamy, which was preached and practiced by the Mormons. The Mormon Church issued a manifesto ending official approval of polygamy in 1890 and Utah became a state in 1894. There are breakaway factions that still engage in polygamy, which is illegal. They live in remote parts of Utah and neighboring states. Utah's constitution granted women the right to vote in 1895, making it one of the first states to do so. Utah is considered a "red state," meaning it consistently votes Republican. In 2004, President George W. Bush won Utah's five electoral votes by a margin of 46 percent, his largest margin of victory. Both of Utah's US. Senators, and two of its three US. Representatives are Republicans. The residents of Salt Lake City, however, have consistently elected a Democrat for mayor for the last three decades. The current mayor, Rocky Anderson, has been an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and has gained international notice for his environmentalist agenda. Utah's residents are among the youngest and healthiest Americans. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Utah has the highest birth rate, largest household size, and the highest rate of married couples with chi! dren. Utah's population has the fourth-longest l,i e expectancy, the fewest smokers and the lowest umber of cancer deaths in America.

Please share your views on this article. "Write to editorspan@state.gov I

""" ~I â&#x20AC;˘~".. ,_ Jeremy Barnum is assistant info~mation officer JElli"O " for electronic media at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, a native of Utah and a letl-O lover.

Utah's youthful residents do, however, possess a sweet tooth. Jell-O, the official snack food of Utah, is a jiggly and sugary substance made from gelatin that is colored but still translucent and comes in flavors from cherry to lemon. Utahns love their Jell-O plain or jelled in a mold mixed with various fruits, occasionally carrots and even processed milk. Education is a priority for Utah families and the state boasts the highest literacy rate in the United States at 94 percent. Utah has 10 public and three private universities and colleges, and ranks second in the country for per capita higher education spending. The world's first artificial heart transplant and the first artificial limb, an arm, were pioneered by faculty at Utah universities. This year, a University of Utah researcher, Mario Capecchi, won a Nobel Prize along with two other scientists for work on the principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells. I Utah's universities have courses in more I than 50 languages and it is estimated that Adventure racers more than 130 languages are spoken in the rappel down a cliff state. Many Utahns learn foreign languages to during a March perform voluntary tours as Mormon missionsnowstorm in the aries around the world. mountains east of Utah has maintained a relatively resilient Moab, Utah. and vibrant economy due in part to the "cando" attitude of its young, growing workforce. The unemployment rate, 2.6 percent, is very low compared to the 4.6 percent national average. Yes, that old, beehive symbol and "industry" motto seem to be apt. But if you visit, don't forget to indulge your sense of awe. ~

Known as haldi in Hindi, Jiang huang in Chinese, manjal in Tamil (and just plain "yuk" as the yellow stain on a white T-shirt from the splatting of ballpark mustard), turmeric has a medicinal history that dates back 5,000 years. At that time it was a key medicament for wound healing, blood cleansing and stomach ailments in India's Ayurvedic system of medicine. The first record in PubMed of research on the biological activity of curcumin dates back to 1970, when a group of Indian researchers reported the effects of the compound on cholesterol levels in rats. The pace of studies picked up in the 1990s; one of the leaders was Bharat Aggarwal, a former scientist at Genentech , who, before turning to curcumin, had taken another approach to seeking cancer treatments. That work led him circuitously to the compound. In the 1980s, Aggarwal and his team at Genentech were the first to purify two important immune moleculestumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha and beta-that路 have been identified as potential anticancer compounds. These molecules can, in fact, kill cancer cells when deployed in localized areas, but when circulated widely in the bloodstream, they take on different properties, acting as potent tumor promoters. The TNFs activate an important protein, nuclear factor kappa B (NF kappa B), which can then \ turn on a host of genes involved in inflammation and \ cell proliferation. \ This link between inflammation and the unchecked l proliferation of cancer cells prompted Aggarwal to return to his roots. In 1989, he moved to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and began looking for compounds that might quell inflammation and \ have an anticancer effect. Remembering from his youth in India that turmeric was an anti-inflammatory in the Ayurvedic literature, he decided to give the spice a try. "We took some from the kitchen and threw it on some cells," he remembers. "We couldn't believe it. It completely blocked TNF and NF kappa B." Right: The turmeric spice is derived from the tuberolls underground stems, or rhizomes, of the plant. Below: Turmeric plants.

The large clinical trials needed to prove efficacy against cancer and other diseases have yet to be conducted. Aggarwal has gone on to publish studies showing that blocking the NF kappa B pathway with curcumin inhibits the replication and spread of various types of cancer cells. This work has served as a jumpingoff point for early, small clinical trials at M.D. Anderson using curcumin as an adjunct therapy to treat pancreatic cancer and multiple myeloma. Trials are beginning or underway elsewhere for prevention of colon cancer and Alzheimer's disease, among others. And early cellbased or animal studies have shown that curcumin may act against a range of inflammatory diseases, including pancreatitis, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, colitis, gastritis, allergy and fever. It has also shown some promise for diabetes and autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases. So far, the large clinical trials needed to prove efficacy against cancer and other diseases have yet to be conducted. But Aggarwal has nonetheless become an aggressive champion for a spice that Vasco da Gama brought back to Europe from his voyages eastward. Aggarwal's chapter in a new textbook that he co-edited is entitled "Curcumin: The Indian Solid Gold." M.D. Anderson, a world-leading cancer institution, has also begun to promote the use of curcumin more than would be expected for a treatment that has not gone through the rigors of full clinical trials. The "frequently asked questions" section [FAQs] on its Web site recommends buying curcumin from a specific wholesaler, for which Aggarwal has served as a paid speaker. That company even issued a press release declaring that its product is the "ingredient of choice" of M.D. Anderson. The FAQ section suggests that cancer patients gradually work up to a daily dose of eight grams a day, some 40 times the amount consumed in the average Indian diet. Most pharmaceuticals, in contrast, are meted out in milligrams. At one point, the Web site had even asserted: "By the end of eight weeks, a significant improvement is expected."

n my third birthday, I developed a fever, and on the fOUlih day, I started falling down. My right leg started limping. My parents thought it might be due to some injury or sprain. A number of oils and ointments were applied. The doctor who used to visit our village every morning on his bicycle also treated and plastered the affected leg for a month. But all these efforts were useless. A mouLvi sahib from the nearby mosque, who came every evening to invoke the blessings of the Almighty upon me, declared with complete confidence and conviction that it was an attack by an evil spirit. He said it could be cured only with the blessings of saints. Cradled in the feeble arn1S of my mother, Mariam Begum, while her tears rolled down her face to drench my embroidered brocade clothes, I could only watch her helplessness and disappointment with a child's inability to gauge its intensity. "We left no shrine or mausoleum where we did not pay our homage," my mother told me. "We contacted every saint to obtain his supplications in the form of Imam Zamin to be tied to the arm as an offering to the guardian-saint.

And there was no Friday night when we did not light a candle of hope in the niche of the mosque. But it seemed as though the evil spirit was determined to put out every flame of hope and desire." My parents, at last, submitted to the will of the Almighty after three years of continuous pain and agony. My father, Naimuddin, consoled Amma, saying, "Irrespective of his disability, he is the light of our home. It is he who will kindle a lamp at our doorstep." His patient words masked the heartache of the fiasco and failure that had sun路ounded all the attempts to heal me. In early 1962, my father came to know about a missionary health clinic near his paper shop in Kolkata, where paralyzed limbs of disabled children were treated through physical exercises. He immediately called me from my village, Astipur, in Bihar's Hajipur district. My physiotherapy continued for months. Suddenly, the China-India war broke out and people departed Kolkata en masse. We also

"Irrespective of his disability, he is the light of our home."

Mariam Begum and her SOI1 Anjum Nairn at the family home in Bihar. left for the village, abandoning the treatment. However, due to the exercises I had learned, I became able to walk without any support. My physiotherapist, Sister Thomas, was an extremely caring, loving and sincere nun. She told us that any fUliher improvement was not possible. She also convinced my father that the ailment was due to a disease called polio and not because of the curse of any evil spirit. The Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) had been developed in America and became readily available in Indian medical cl inics and hospital pharmacies before my father's death in 1996. Whenever he heard about the birth of any child, he used to reach there immediately to persuade the family to get the newborn vaccinated against polio and other deadly diseases. It became the one and only mission of his life. I also hope to continue his mission until my last breath. ~ -An excerpt from the unpublished autobiography, Tale of an Ordinary Man. Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

West Nile Virus t was the summer of 1999 in New York. Hot, busy, touristy. Yet, it was anything but normal when people started showing up at doctors' offices and emergency rooms with fever and swelling of the brain. Physicians and political leaders were alarmed. Could this be a bioterrorist attack? Tissue samples were flown to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado, which soon identified the cause as West Nile Virus, not an obvious diagnosis since it had never appeared in North America before. In the minds of Americans, this was an exotic disease that infected people oceans away. Yet, it only took one infected mosquito to hop a ride on an airplane for it to spread to the United States. While the virus' appearance was a sur- ~z prise, it is now a predictable part of ~ American life. ~ "The. rapid spread of the West Nile Virus ~ is a perfect example of the threat of emerging infections and globalizing disease. Improving our capacity to respond to this virus has improved our preparedness for the next threat, which may be even more dangerous," says Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez, a behavioral scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov). The West Nile Virus was discovered in Uganda in 1937, and is today commonly found in Africa, Europe, West Asia and the Middle East. As of now, there are no prevalent cases of the West Nile Virus in India. In its first year in the United States, the disease caused seven deaths among more than 60 confirmed cases, a figure that has gone up to 900 deaths and 237,000 cases since then. From January to October this year, the United States reported a total of 2,511 new cases of the human West Nile Virus and 64 of those people have died. Since 1999, the West Nile Virus has been reported from all U.S. states, except Hawaii and Alaska. The virus is transmitted when a female mosquito bites an infected bird, which carries the virus in its salivary gland, and then infects other birds and mammals, including humans. People who contract the disease usually experience only mild complaints like fever, headache and swollen lymph glands. But the most dangerous manifestations of the infection are West Nile encephalitis and West Nile meningitis-diseases that affect the nervous system. While encephalitis is inflammation of the brain, meningitis is an inflammation of the membrane around the brain and the spinal cord. The easiest way to prevent the disease is to prevent mosquito bites through simple measures like using repellents and wearing long-sleeved clothing. The West Nile Virus is now recognized as a seasonal epidemic in North America that shoots up in summer and continues in the fall. In several southern regions of the United States, where temperatures are milder, the virus can be transmitted throughout the year. "We do anticipate that the virus will settle in over the long term ... We've had the West Nile virus in the US. for less than 10 years; in terms of ecology, this is a very short period and we have a great deal to learn, sti II," Zielinski-Gutierrez says.

Kim Harvey, director of plant operations at Iomai Corporation, which is developing needle-free vaccines and immune system stimulants targeting influenza and pandemic flu, looks over an automated vaccine patch manufacturing machine at their headquarters in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Calmette-Guerin vaccine, developed at the Institut Pasteur in Lille, France, in the early 20th century, is effective in children but does not prevent the infection in adults. Insertion of genes that code for additional protective proteins should improve BCG. â&#x20AC;˘ HIV has proven to be a difficult target for vaccination, but a vaccine that reduces the seriousness of infection and prolongs life, even while not preventing the disease completely, is likely to be the product of current clinical trials. The development of a vaccine that prevents infection entirely is less likely

in the near future. â&#x20AC;˘ Influenza remains a banal but deadly infection. Although the vaccines we have are very beneficial, better protection will be derived from the inclusion of more influenza proteins, adjuvants, and the combined use of live and killed vaccines. ~ Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin is an emeritus professor of pediatrics at the Universitlj of Pennsylvania, the developer of the rubella vaccine currently in use and also codeveloper of the newly licensed rotavirus vaccine. He is senior editor of Vaccines, the standard textbook in the field.

alliance's first few years. For example, a vaccine against hepatitis B had been available and used for more than 15 years in the developed world before the Global Alliance program came into existence. With financial backing from its partners, the alliance moved swiftly to make hepatitis B vaccines available for use in developing countries. The new hepatitis B vaccine reached more than 90 million infants in five years. In addition, the alliance was influential in encouraging vaccine manufacturers to combine hepatitis B vaccine with the established vaccine against diphtheria, typhoid and pertussis (DTP), allowing immediate inclusion of the new product into existing delivery systems. We are now seeing the fruits of those efforts as new suppliers

ufacturers that the developing world can be a profitable market. This activity has thus stimulated additional vaccine supply and reduced prices of some of the funded vaccines in a timely manner, compared to historical trends. In the past, broad adoption of a new vaccine in poorer nations has lagged as much as 15 to 20 years behind developed nations. In November 2006, the alliance board approved proposals allowing distribution of much newer vaccines, introduced in recent years in the United States and Europe, that will combat diseases that kill 1.5 million children annually. One new vaccine targets rotavirus, which causes severe and often fatal diarrhea, and the second prevents pneumococcus, a major cause of pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis.

but still takes a million lives in the developing world each year, 75 percent of whom are African children. A vaccine against malaria becomes an ever more critical need with the proliferation of malaria strains resistant to most known drug therapies. Even as USAID, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and developing world nations muster new resources and ideas on expanding immunization programs to reach every child, we have learned that the rewards of our efforts

have entered that market, resulting in substantial price reductions for poor countries. For years, USAID supported the development and promotion of a special type of syringe known as the auto-disable that is quick, convenient and safe. It can be used only once, thus reducing the danger that immunization could expose patients to HIV or other diseases through syringe reuse. The vaccination alliance purchased these devices by the tens of millions to allow a wide introduction of these safe syringes into immunization programs in the world's poorest countries. Enough syringes were provided for each country program for three years, and now all countries have taken on the cost of those syringes for routine use in their immunization programs. The alliance has also had a positive influence on the global business of vaccine production by demonstrating to man-

The two vaccines will be introduced on a staggered scale in a limited number of countries at first to ensure the completion of additional efficacy studies. Meanwhile, USAID has independently supported a number of parallel initiatives. For example, it has backed research to create vaccine-vial monitors, which allow vaccines to remain safely outside the cold chain for limited periods of time. This is an important advancement for teams attempting to deliver vaccines to remote villages where refrigeration does not exist or is difficult to maintain in transit. Current and future research supported by USAID is devoted to development of a vaccine against HlV/AIDS that will be appropriate for use against developing world strains of the disease and under the prevailing conditions of those areas. The United States is also investing in research to develop a vaccine against malaria, a disease that is rare in the developed world

could be even greater than we dreamed. A 2005 study from the Harvard School of Public Health showed that the benefits of immunization have been significantly underestimated in the past. Not only does immunization protect children from illness and death at an early age, but it also protects the child from the long-term effects of illness on growtH and development. Healthier children do better in school and become more productive and higher-earning adults. In fact, the study's authors equate the value of immunization in a child's life with that of primary education. Ensuring better health for the world's children is a gift our generation must

Below left: Health worker Radhika prepares to vaccinate toddlers with the DPT and BeG vaccines in Balia, Uttar Pradesh. Below: The Oral Polio Vaccine is given to an infant in Balia.

_d_el_iv_e_r_t_o_t_h_e_fu_tu_r_e_.

Kent Hill is the assistant administrator for U5AID's Bureau for Global Health and a member of the board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

I ~

Through Dance sing a concept called Dance Movement Therapy, Sohini Chakraborty and her team at Kolkata Sanved in Kolkata, West Bengal, have been trying to bring new meaning to the lives of victims of rape, violence, slavery and trafficking, as well as people facing mental challenges or living with diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The dance therapy is an alternative approach to healing and psychosocial rehabilitation. These sufferers, and also students in some West Bengal schools, are taught how they can use dance as a way of self-expression, thus building the confidence of those

Dancers of the Kolkata Sanved perform at the Max Mueller Bhavan in Kolkata in March 2007. who may be withdrawn due to inferiority complexes, psychological inhibitions or mental scars. Through Kolkata Sanved (www.sanved.org), a non-governmental organization which she founded, Chakraborty has been trying to articulate a language for those who are marginalized by hostile circumstances. The word sanved roughly translates as sensiti vity. Chakraborty's training as a dancer and her studies in sociology coalesced her approach to dance as something more than a performing art. While doing post-graduate studies, she was regularly performing on stage as a member of Dancer's Guild, a contemporary group that melds Indian traditional dance, folk dance, yoga etc. She was also associated with Kolkata's Rangakarmee theater group. One of its productions was Beti Ayee (A Girl is Born), focusing on discrimination against the girl child. "It affected my thinking. I was toying with the idea of doing something different with dance but didn't know what I was looking for," Chakraborty recalls. One reason for this search was her experience with shelter homes that housed girls and women rescued from trafficking.

"One of the special papers for my studies was criminology and so Movement Therapy, they are encouraged to emerge out of the I was familiar with the problem. But I wanted to meet these vic- feeling that "my body is impure" and believe that "I am creating tims of crime," says Chakraborty. In 1996, she volunteered to work my own body through my own expression." Chakraborty feels proud that Kolkata Sanved's trainers have with Sanlaap (www.sanlaapindia.org), an organization working to rehabilitate rescued girls. While teaching the girls to dance, comemerged from disadvantaged circumstances themselves and are bining classical and contemporary movements, Chakraborty found today confident enough to run workshops on their own in wellshe was unable to communicate her aims. The girls followed the known schools in the city. She also emphasizes that rehabilitation movements, but rather mechanically. Chakraborty started experiprograms for women should look beyond the traditional skills, taimenting on ways to help them open up. "For example, I told a girl, loring, handicrafts etc. "Why not teaching, why not information 'Suppose you are a tree. How would you express yourself?' " The technology?" Besides, it is a tremendous boost to the girls to be change in the participant's body language surprised Chakraborty. recognized as professionals in their own right. She also took the girls to theater performances and other such outFor teaching tools, Kolkata Sanved explores materials from ings from the shelter home to make them familiar with a world all sources. Not waiting for stretchy dance materials to be availthey had had little or no idea about. able from abroad, the trainers hunt in sports shops and pick up things like fitness rolling balls and power band sets to make At that time Chakraborty knew nothing about Dance Movement Therapy, which had been used in hospitals in Western hands flexible. countries, but in her own way she was getting results with her tenThe Kolkata organization is associated with the American tative attempts to draw out the girls and encourage them to artic- Dance Therapy Association and the Vanderbilt University Dance ulate their inner feelings. Through her continued studies in mod- Program in Tennessee, among others. At the assocication's annuern dance, Chakraborty eventually came across works of al convention in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2004, Kolkata Sanved American choreographer Martha Graham, Austro-Hungarian was the first organization representing India to participate with a presentation: "Surviving through Creation." Since then, papers dancer Rudolf Laban, and Marian Chace, who first introduced such as "Advocacy through Dance" (Tennessee, 2005) and dance as a therapy in U.S. hospitals in the 1940s. She also found the American Dance Therapy Association, established in 1966. "Using Indian Dance and Movement for Therapy" (California, 2006) have established the group's credentials. She read that dance therapists "found something healing happened in a student's psyche through improvisation of movements "The American Dance Therapy Association is a great support," while composing a dance, not from technique." Chakraborty felt Chakraborty says, "Whenever I need help they come forward." she was on the right track. Working with so many likeminded people has been a great Today, Kolkata Sanved, though learning process. Participants independent, works with more have learned that similar work than 20 other organizations, has been going on in cities and focusing on issues such as at the grassroots level in India, human rights, dance, education and mental health. Partner Nepal and Bangladesh. Chakraborty and the Kolkata groups include Sanlaap, All Bengal Women's Union, Apne Sanved team members are now working to prepare a curricuAap Women Worldwide, which lum on their techniques called works mainly with trafficked children and victims of violence, sampurnata (fulfillment). Her dream is to establish a fulland Anjali, a mental health organ- Dancers display the Dance Movement Therapy concept. The ization working within govern- strings signify a coordination of the body and mind. fledged institute drawing on all ment hospitals. Kolkata Sanved these experiences and learning workshops are also held regularly in rural areas. "We always work processes to help unspoken words find an articulated voice with outreach organizations," Chakraborty says. "They are already through body language. The process is already on. It has reached working there and know the community. That way, it's easier for us more than 2,000 children and young people from urban and rural

to btgin to build Itadtrg in tht community."

aIea§ through worK§hop§, r~guhlr tmining da§§e§ and repliCation

But, it has not been easy to win recognition. "People thought it was just another form of dancing. We make it a point to say our aim is not to make just pretty dancers," says Chakraborty. She admits, though, that people started looking at her work as more than just a form of contemporary dance after 2003, when she got the Ashoka Fellowship for innovative use of dance from the Virginia-based non-profit society that for 25 years has recognized emerging leaders. "Judge the people by their skill, not what they are or have been," Chakraborty cautions. For example, rape victims and women rescued from prostitution suffer tremendously from a sense of shame. Through Dance

programs. Now 20 people have been selected from partner organizations to become full-fledged trainers to carry on and develop the theory and practice. "I believe it's a respecting process we go through when we use dance as a therapy," says Chakraborty. "We give respect to each other as human beings, without discrimination of any kind." Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkata-based freelance journalist who also translates literature and writes fiction.

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ometimes what seems like failure is actually an opportunity which should be taken advantage of and then things sort of work out." That's not the usual "achiever's success formula" that one would expect from an astronaut. But it's the message Sun ita Williams brought to young people across India from September 20 to October 7. As she traveled from Gujarat to Hyderabad, New Delhi and Mumbai, Williams was sometimes greeted like a rock star, royalty and a heroine all rolled into one. Yet, her message to enthralled youngsters was down to earth: she was not the brightest in her class, did not find college easy, was not always sure of her direction in life and did not always get the jobs she wanted. But she made the best of whatever opportunities came her way. And here she is now, in the history books as the woman who holds records for the longest spaceflight, 195 days, and the most hours outside a spacecraft, 29 hours and 17 minutes. Although she has had incredible experiences of floating in space and viewing the earth and the stars from a perspective few have known, Williams engaged her young audiences by reciting the small failures and unexpected turns of her life. And

Top: Layers of sedimentary rock found within the chasms of the Martian "Grand Canyon" -the Valles Marineris. When found on Earth, uniform patterns like these indicate the presence of sediment deposited in dynamic underwater environments. Above: An area of about three square kilometers of a Martian crater shows some of the planet's oldest and newest features. The old are the light-toned, layered mounds, and the new are the dark-toned sand dunes and intermediate toned ripples. shrinking carbon dioxide ice cap on the south pole-that would have been lost to onetime measurements. "It gave us the information to go from looking at Mars as a whole planet, with having telescopic views of it, to understanding it regionally," says Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. ~ Stephen Omes is a freelance science writer based in New Haven, Connecticut. Please share your views on this article. Write to editorspan@state.gov

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she goaded them to "step out and try something new." She liked animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. Well, she has a pet dog now, but no medical degree. She didn't want to cut her hair to join the U.S. Naval Academy, but she was afraid to live in New York City, where she had been accepted at Columbia University for veterinary studies. So, she cut her hair She had perfect eyesight and wanted to join the Navy diving program. Whoops! Someone else did better on the tests. Only the top of the class got to be jet pilots, so she learned to fly helicopters. What do you know? Helicopter pilots were exactly what NASA was looking for by the time she applied to be an astronaut. And once she became a NASA flight engineer aboard Expeditions 14 and 15 to the International Space Station, Williams, 42, said, it was "tough ... Iearning to live in space." Not easy Far from being a downer, Williams' message was inspirational, to the overachievers as well as the ordinary folks in her audiences. "Life is going to give you a lot of opportunities. Don't turn your back on them," she said, looking into their bright, eager faces. "I want to see you on the moon." - LK.L.

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