The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7379 p726
10 December 2005

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Tracking noodles across the centuries more
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? more
Poisoning the planet more
Nature and the unnatural in conflict / Self-restraint among physicians more

Tracking noodles across the centuries

We usually think of noodles as one of our fast-food constituents, but it appears that they are by no means a modern invention. The noodle is described as a strip of dried dough, incorporating eggs, which is commonly used an ingredient of soups.

In the 13 October issue of Nature a group of scientists from China and the US describe their investigation of an early sample of noodles. They state that noodles have been a staple food in many parts of the world for at least 2,000 years, although it has not been established whether they were invented by the Chinese, the Arabs or the Italians.

Some noodles were discovered in a well-preserved, sealed earthenware bowl from the late Neolithic site at Lajia in north-west China. Abundant seed-husk phytoliths and starch grains were present, indicating that millet was the source. This was ground and converted into dough, which was then stretched into long thin strands for boiling into noodles.

The archaeological site is situated on a terrace on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, and has been excavated since 1999. The bowl was found some 3m deep in a floodplain sediment, the Neolithic settlement having been destroyed by earthquakes and floods some 4,000 years ago.

The bowl was found upside down and embedded in brown-yellow fine clay. The noodles found inside were about 0.3cm in diameter and 50cm long, resembling a traditional Chinese noodle made by pulling and stretching dough by hand. Phytolith samples revealed millets, and starch grains show the same origin. Unlike modern Italian pasta and Asian noodles, which are generally made from durum and bread wheat, respectively, there was no evidence of wheat, barley or other non-grass constituents. Thus, early plant domestication and food production in ancient China relied upon millet crops.

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What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

When in 1820, in his “Ode on a Grecian urn”, John Keats wrote “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?” he could never have imagined what those words might signify two centuries later, in a world where greed and fanaticism had come to rule many human affairs.

Now that many city dwellers have to live or work in high-rise flats or towering skyscrapers, the question of escaping from them in an emergency, whether caused by floods, earthquakes or insane bombers, has taken on added urgency.

In Science for 14 October the problem has been outlined. In the aerial strike on the World Trade Centre in September 2001, the collapse of the two towers killed some 2,750 people. It has been calculated that, had the towers contained their full quota of occupants, some 14,000 deaths would have resulted from the blocking of staircases. Improving the situation, it is claimed, demands a deeper understanding of the collective behaviour of crowds.

A team led by a computer scientist at the Maia Institute in Monaco has secretly filmed pedestrian movements in 10 cities and has measured different patterns of walking. Pedestrians in London, they found, move faster than those in New York. The researchers are seeking rules to describe how individuals unconsciously navigate crowded spaces without collision.

When fear is prominent, other factors arise. The more urgently people want to leave a crowded room with narrow exits, the longer it takes for them to get out. A study has shown that the optimum exit speed is about 1.38m per second. The tendency to look to others for support in an emergency impedes movement, and architectural design and evacuation planning must be taken into account in reducing the peril.

Until new tall buildings can be replaced with others of better design, efforts should be directed towards better emergency arrangements. Lifts should be redesigned to be usable during emergencies, with independent power supplies and computer controls that prevent doors opening on a burning floor. New escape routes linking one building with another are desirable. The prime need is for better stairs, better lifts and improved fire drills to guide the movement of crowds.

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Poisoning the planet

My attention has been drawn to some recent alarming reports of people using toxic compounds indiscriminately to deal with what they regard as threats to their livelihood.

In September The Times reported that 102 birds of prey were poisoned in England in 2004, and that the habit might have serious repercussions further afield. Until 1997 the pesticide most frequently abused was alpha-chloralose, but since then the favourite has been the carbamate compound carbofuran. Aldicarb and bendiocarb have also featured. Why such highly toxic substances should apparently be rather easy to obtain is unclear.

In August The Scotsman reported that a gamekeeper was convicted of killing 16 buzzards, a goshawk and a crow by planting carrion laced with carbofuran on an open hillside. In such a situation any child who had picked up one of the bait birds might have been fatally poisoned. Moreover, the keeper in question was found to have in a coffee jar in an unlocked garage enough toxic material to kill several hundred people.

In another incident, dead pheasants, cut open and smeared with mevinphos to attract buzzards or foxes, were found near a public pathway leading through a wood. They clearly constituted a severe threat to any passing child who might have investigated them.

Now that the countryside is being increasingly opened to ramblers, this situation is worrying. Some restriction surely needs to be placed upon the availability of highly toxic preparations designed for pest control. Yet some of them seem to be readily accessible to the public, and not restricted to people who have been trained in their proper use.

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And I quote …

Nature and the unnatural in conflict
“Mankind is so separate from the wildlife of Nature that the two things are not comparable at all. Man’s highest concern individually and collectively is into moral problems, with right and wrong. If he imports these considerations into the study of wild birds and animals, he will distort the truth of what he sees.”
—Viscount Grey of Fallodon: ‘The charm of birds’ (1927)

Self-restraint among physicians
“We shall have to learn to refrain from doing things merely because we know how to do them.”
—Theodore Fox, to the Royal College of Physicians (1965).

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