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Older chemists seem unable to resist football
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NOVEMBER 3, 1997 C&EN
Bill Floyd of Sequa Chemicals, Chester, S.C., sent in a wire service story about a retired chemist, age 60, who is playing football at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio. The athlete in question is Edgard Barreto, who was born in Brazil, earned his degree and played football at Ashland, worked in industry and taught chemistry, and now makes his home in Naples, Fla. Barreto confirmed by telephone that he is indeed cavorting on the gridiron at Ashland. He's in a master's program (nonchemical) there and wanted to use the two semesters of NCAA eligibility left over from his playing days some 40 years ago. "I'm practicing every day," says Barreto, who is 5 feet 10 inches and 175 lb, "but I really can't compete with those young guys. Besides being 40 years younger than me, they're faster and bigger." The football squad has 110 guys, he reports, but only 55 are on the travel team. At home games, however, all 110 suit up and man the sidelines, he says, "and that's what's fun. If we get far enough ahead in a home game, I might get to play, but it hasn't happened yet." Correspondent Floyd, meanwhile, is 43 and starts at left offensive guard for the semipro Chester Bulldogs. "Most of my teammates are in their 20s," he says. "Friends ask if I'm not too old for this, and I tell them about Edgard (the two exchanged notes recendy). Several have wondered about a lifetime exposure to chemicals pickling the body, or perhaps the mind. I tell them I'm hardheaded like George Foreman—somebody's got to show me I'm too old!"
Coral Sea study relates seasickness with gender Chris Cooper, Nicola Dunbar, and Michael Mira of the medical faculty at the University of Sydney, Australia, have reported an epidemiological association between gender and motion sickness [Lancet, 350,892 (1997)]. They got their data from the crew and passengers of an ocean liner on the Coral Sea, off the northeast coast of Australia, bound for New Caledonia in March 1997. A tropical cyclone named Justin developed in the vicinity, and the liner ran into gale-force winds and very rough seas. Visits to the ship's hospital shot upward as people
by K, M, Reesç
onboard suffered "unusually severe" motion sickness (that is, seasickness). The three scientists say, "In the first controlled, epidemiological study of its kind, we recorded the rate of motion sickness among 1,350 passengers and crew during the lOday voyage. We obtained the age, sex, and deck and cabin number (indicating the presence of a porthole) of all passengers and crew from the ship's manifest and crew list. The ship's hospital log provided the reason for presentation of all medical consultations during the voyage." Cooper and coworkers plugged their data into a computer and analyzed them using a backward stepwise logistic regression model with the number of people who reported to sick bay. The dependent variable was seasickness—47.8% of the people who turned up complained of that ailment. The Australian scientists found three factors that favored an individual's reporting at least once with seasickness. The three were: being female, being young, and being a passenger rather than a crew member. The severity of seasickness also was significantiy greater among females, young people, and passengers. Cooper and colleagues say they were surprised to find seasickness occurring more often among females than among males. However, they point out, "motion sickness is known to be associated with migraine, which is more common in women, and our findings lend support to the hypothesis that the two conditions may share a common etiology." The findings also agree with the observation that motion sickness abates with age. The researchers found no association between motion sickness and cabin location by deck and the presence of a cabin porthole. This finding, they say, "is likely to be of interest to cruise-ship passengers, many of whom are advised, on the basis of anecdotal accounts, that these features provide relief from seasickness by providing visual orientation with the horizon."
Department of obscure information • More than 1.3 million parking tickets were issued in Washington, D.C., in 1995. • Annual onion consumption in the U.S. is 17.7 lb per capita. • U.S. cars, trucks, and buses burn more than 140 billion gal of gasoline and diesel fuel annually.
