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A Low-Tech Mosquito Deterrent
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: July 15, 2013
Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply, as Forecast
By GINA KOLATA
Published: July 16, 2013
Like-Minded Rivals Race to Bring Back the Chestnut Tree
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: July 15, 2013
Over the Fourth of July holiday, my wife and I joined some friends for a barbecue in their backyard. The guests were lively and the space was lovely — grassy and open but shady and surrounded by lots of shrubs and trees.
In other words, it was perfect for mosquitoes — and indeed, closer inspection showed that they were thriving in all that greenery.
But our friends had come up with a solution that saved us from having to deal with bug repellents or, worse, bites and itches.
On a low table, they set up a small electric fan, perhaps 12 inches high, that swept back and forth, sending a gentle breeze across the grassy area where people were sitting.
That was it. No citronella candles, no bug zappers, no DEET, nothing expensive or high-tech. Yet amazingly, it worked. As far as I could tell, no mosquitoes flew into the vicinity of the simulated wind; nobody was bitten. Moar
Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply, as Forecast
By GINA KOLATA
Published: July 16, 2013
A new study has found that dementia rates among people 65 and older in England and Wales have plummeted by 25 percent over the past two decades, to 6.2 percent from 8.3 percent, the strongest evidence yet of a trend some experts had hoped would materialize.
Another recent study, conducted in Denmark, found that people in their 90s who were given a standard test of mental ability in 2010 scored substantially better than people who reached their 90s a decade earlier. Nearly one-quarter of those assessed in 2010 scored at the highest level, a rate twice that of those tested in 1998. The percentage severely impaired fell to 17 percent from 22 percent.
The British study, published on Tuesday in The Lancet, and the Danish one, which was released last week, also in The Lancet, confirmed something that researchers on aging have long suspected but lacked good evidence to prove: dementia rates would fall and mental acuity improve as the population grew healthier and better educated. Moar
Like-Minded Rivals Race to Bring Back the Chestnut Tree
