Curiosities
Questions that have always intrigued you about the world will appear in this, your section,
and be answered by other readers. Please address your answers and questions to ‘Curiosities’.

Does giving blood benefit the donor?

Further to the answers given in NI 282 researchers in Finland and the US have good reason to believe that donating blood on a regular basis actually confers major health benefits.

Dr Jerome Sullivan from the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Charleston, North Carolina proposed in 1981 that iron is the major risk factor in cardiovascular disease. He noticed that younger women don’t get heart disease, even if they have a hereditary condition that gives them extremely high cholesterol levels. After the menopause, however, the risk increases to match that of men. Dr Sullivan believes that this is because younger women menstruate and therefore do not accumulate excess iron in their tissues until after the menopause. Men accumulate it from the age of 20 onwards.

Recent research at the University of Kansas has supported Dr Sullivan’s theory by showing tha t men who donate blood three times a year reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease by 50 per cent. There is also evidence to suggest a reduced cancer risk of 40 per cent.

The American findings are backed up by other studies at the University of Kuopio in Finland.

This news does not mean that cholesterol has no part to play in heart disease. Rather it means that the big biochemical picture is more complicated than we first thought. It is certainly good news for blood banks which are always in need of new donors!

Meredith Smith
Heathmont, Australia

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Is there an organization that recycles computers and small electrical goods?

Over 400 tonnes of computer equipment is discarded each week in the ‘Square Mile’ of the City of London alone. Cyber-cycle is a non-profit-making company which will collect obsolete computer equipment from businesses, refurbish it and sell it on – with guarantees – to schools and community groups at low cost. Cyber-cycle can be contacted on 0171 241 4111.

Ralph Skrimshire
Woodbridge, England

Another outfit that recycles computers is Mana Organization, Unit E, Ashburton Estate, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England.

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awaiting your answers

What was the ‘World Citizens Movement’ and who was Gary Davis? Where can I read about them?

F Bowring
Sheffield, England

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I have been looking for a UK-based car insurance company that offers some ethical content but have drawn a blank. Does anyone know of one?

Simeon Hope

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If you have any questions or answers please send them to Curiosities, New Internationalist, 55 Rectory Road, Oxford OX4 1BW, UK, or to your local NI office (see inside front cover for addresses).

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS SECTION ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF NI.

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The NI Crossword
No. 5 by Axe

CRYPTIC

Across
 1    Cascades where the queen meets her end (8,5)
10    Japanese island alright, in a way, but seeing no end to it (7)
11    Authority of a bishop takes grip in the interior (7)
12    Army of Shi’ites invades Panama lines (4)
13    The mission statement of the croupier is perfect (5)
14    Pulverize this type of novel (4)
17    Castro’s guerrilla’s repeated links with North Russian antagonist (7)
18    Regarding the heart of the acrid problem that pursues California... (7)
19    …the endless state experiment about nothing is for the Chinese philosophers! (7)
22    Convert book about Hosea, minus the last page, back to emergency fuel (7)
24    Landing in France - in Paris or Lyon environs (4)
25    Messenger of love embroiled in grudge (5)
26    Parliament? Commons at least! (4)
29    Type of lettuce which will wilt under 31... (7)
30    …sounds more fixed, but begins to move to 29 from here... (7)
31    …when put in a greenhouse, effectively! (6,7)

Down
 2    Plagiarize Tati trick in the mime where the head is removed (7)
 3    Furniture supplier with branches in India? (4)
 4    Quail, so to speak, under first rally, then faint under the African (7)
 5    Spies wreck a comeback for the old language (7)
 6    Make bail arrangements in the Midi-Pyrenees region... (4)
 7    …for old ANC leader - from hut complex - in the French composer hearing (7)
 8    The church woman beheaded, Catherine Short, caught in frolic and left loudly (5,8)
 9    The ‘Typhoon’ and the ‘Hurricane’ feature strongly in this air battle! (8,5)
15    Spell ‘disorientate’ phonetically (5)
16    Film the earth’s surface (5)
20    The pipe one must lubricate thoroughly (3-4)
21    Northern gale, veering south-east at first, makes land in West Africa (7)
22    The state of having a song in my head? (7)
23    Alcoholics Anonymous involved in hint I got drunk discovering the Caribbean (7)
27    The Yugoslavian initially coming from the south-eastern region of Belgrade (4)
28    Briefly, Mother, I am hurt (4)

QUICK

Across
 1 The alternative name for the Mosi-oa-tunya on the Zambesi (8,5)
10 Japanese island taken by the Americans, June 1945 (7)
11 Mediator or referee (7)
12 Radical Shi’ite faction based at Borj al-Barajneh, Lebanon (4)
13 Epitome (5)
14 The compressed flesh of plants (4)
17 Citizen of troubled Russian Republic (7)
18 Relating to part of the stomach or the heart (7)
19 They believe in the forces of yin and yang (7)
22 Motor fuel containing 10% ethanol as an economical measure in wartime (7)
24 Paris’ second airport (4)
25 Legate or representative (5)
26 The —— of Worms, 1521, outlawed the teachings of Martin Luther (4)
29 Isostatic phenomenon which has only 10-20% of its bulk visible (7)
30 Agent of erosion, beginning life in a cirque or corrie (7)
31 The corollary of the ‘greenhouse effect’ (6,7)

Down
 2   Mimic (7)
 3   Hardwood found naturally in the Far East (4)
 4   Central African, formerly colonized as part of German East Africa (7)
 5    Semitic language, dialects still used by some Christian sects (7)
 6    French city, capital of the Tarn department (4)
 7    President of the ANC, 1952; Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1960 (7)
 8    Church of 600 million followers, split from the Eastern Orthodox Church, 1054 (5,8)
 9    General term given to a violent air turbulence starting in equatorial latitudes (8,5)
15    Aspect of the moon according to the degree of illumination (5)
16    Hard exterior (5)
20    The reservoir, or the means of extraction from it, of liquid mineral (3-4)
21    African country of which the Gambia is an enclave (7)
22    Autonomous Caucasian state, capital, Tbilisi (7)
23    Inhabitant of the western part of Hispaniola (7)
27    The largest ethnic group remaining in the Republic of Yugoslavia (4)
28    Badly wound (4)

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