Soda Stand
Sugary Drinks
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By: Catherine Zuckerman
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Obesity is a global problem. Once found largely in industrialized places, the condition is now on the rise in developing nations too - and sweet beverages are partly to blame.
Taxing could help curb the trend. In recent years at least 10 countries have introduced surcharges on sugary drinks in an effort to reduce consumption. The U.K. is considering a tax; on the Pacific island of Nauru, where most people are overweight, both sodas and flavored milks are taxed.
Oliver Mytton, who studies public health at Oxford, says markets are feeling the impact. In France, for instance, fewer sweet drinks have benn sold since a 2012 tax was implemented. What isn’t clear yet is how much the levies are affecting waistlines. Still, says Mytton, they’re “a step in the right direction.”
Counting Calories
By: Kelsey Nowakowski
Worldwide, average daily food supply per person has steadily increased from 2,200 to 2,800 calories over the last 50 years, due primarily to advances in agriculture. This trend has had a dual effect, decreasing undernourishment rates in many developing nations while enlarging belt sizes in all regions. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, global consumption of sugar, salt and saturated fates is expected to grow. Whether food is abundant or scarce, it seems, calories count.
Baby Pictures
By: Johnna Rizzo
Photograph: Frans Lanting
“The number one thing parents want to see is if babies have 10 fingers and 10 toes,” says engineer Karl-Heinz Lumpi. His team developed software that shows the digits in full-color 3-D. Beyond allaying parents’ curiosity, the more exact image of what’s going on in the womb may play a role in diagnostics. Doctors who were formerly resigned to a blurred heartbeat can now see inside that organ’s chambers.
It’s all in the lighting. The image starts out like a traditional 3-D ultrasound’s. Then a computer program adds virtual illumination, mimicking how light plays across human skin - reflecting, casting shadows and giving shape. As in regular photography, the light soruce is movable. Plus the image is rotatable, so wrigglign fingers, or a floating umbilical cord like this 8-month-old fetus’s, likely won’t hinder a thorough exam.
