The Cost of SuccessLife in Beijing's Cellars

As speculators and increasing demand drive up Beijing's real estate prices, those who cannot afford the rent are going underground -- literally. Hundreds of cellars and air-raid shelters are being rented out as living spaces in the Chinese capital.

For 27-year-old Dong Ying, Beijing is a city of dreams. Two years ago, the sports teacher relocated from a small city in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang to the Chinese metropolis. Here, she hoped, her wishes for a more interesting life would be fulfilled.

Since then she goes from fitness club to fitness club every day, working as a trainer. She pedals, she bends and straightens and basically ensures that the affluent city residents stay in shape. To reach her students, she spends four hours each day travelling on the city's subway.

She earns around 3,000 yuan (around €350 or $450) per month, a sum she would never have earned doing similar work in her hometown. And here she can enjoy the big city. "I am happy," says the young woman, who is wearing a pink Nike sports shirt. "I love my work, and I feel free."

Going Underground

But there is a severe flaw in her Beijing lifestyle. Dong Ying lives, literally, underground. The only accommodation she can afford is a tiny room in the cellar of an apartment building. Every month she pays the equivalent of €52 ($68) for the room, around 15 percent of her income. Other tenants must live even further down, on the cellar's second level, where the rent is even cheaper.

A bed, a small cupboard and a desk just fit into Dong Ying's barren room. A communal toilet and bathroom are at the end of the hallway. Anyone living here must eat out every day because any kind of kitchen is prohibited for safety reasons. Still, Dong Ying can find something positive to say about her home: "The house management is OK. The corridor is clean."

Dong Ying is one of hundreds of thousands of Chinese sentenced to a life underground -- migrant workers, job seekers, street vendors. All those who can't afford life above ground in Beijing are forced to look below.

Dong Ying's room is one of around a hundred similar dwellings under a modern apartment block on the outskirts of the Beijing district of Chaoyang. While the wealthier residents enter the building, then go right or left to an elevator, the underground dwellers head past a cellar for bicycle storage, and then downstairs. There's no emergency exit.

Running Out of Options

Generally it's not the people living in the apartments above who rent out their cellar spaces: It tends to be apartment managers who put the unused spaces to work. In doing so, they tread close to breaking rental laws. Some even rent out official air-raid shelters -- which is actually totally prohibited.

The demand for underground accommodation may even rise in the near future. The Beijing city administration recently gave permission to level dozens of outlying villages in order to make room for new living and business areas.

Thousands of migrant workers live in those villages, often in primitive conditions. The citizens of Beijing call them the "ant people" because of the way they live on top of one another. Demolishing the villages will leave them with few options. They will either find accommodation farther outside the city, or, if they want to live close to their workplaces, they will have to go underground.

Beijing's officials pride themselves on the fact that the city has no slums like those in, say, Nairobi or Bangkok. The areas of brick hovels without so much as a toilet, which used to shape the cityscape in many districts, have begun to vanish. What the city fathers don't admit, though, is a still-unresolved problem -- that many millions cannot afford a normal apartment in Beijing. The city's housing market in some ways symbolizes the new communist China -- a society in which the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.

On average, apartments in Beijing rent for the equivalent of €350 per month, about as much as Dong Ying earns. And prices are rising. At the start of the year, tenants paid around €314. A year earlier, it was €266.

Speculating on Real Estate

One reason for the high prices is that demand outstrips supply. There are relatively few apartments available for rent in Beijing. Over two-thirds are privately owned, of which a large share were in the past sold cheaply by authorities or factories to their employees.

Social housing, moveover, has only begun to develop. Last year 8,000 rental properties were built for those on minimal incomes, and this year there should be 10,000 -- a mere drop in the ocean for Beijing.

Even those with enough money to buy their own homes are not necessarily fortunate. New housing developments keep springing up, and the amount of new property available is growing, but prices have also shot sky-high in the past few months. Buyers are currently paying €2,546 per square meter on average.

For rich Chinese, like the wealthy coal barons from the Shanxi province, Beijing apartments are investments worthy of speculation, like stock market shares or gold. These speculators don't think about renting the apartments out. They simply aim for properties with rising prices, so they can sell them on and turn a profit.

Recently experts have talked about a real estate bubble which threatens to burst. As discontentment grows among those citizens who earn good money but still can't afford their own apartments, the Chinese government wants to curb speculation with new taxes and rules.

'We Can All Live Together as a Family'

Wang Xueping, 30, is light-years away from owning her own apartment. At the moment she's trying to push her baby carriage out of the basement of Building 9 in the Jiqing Li residential complex in central Beijing. Two months ago, she and the child moved from Jilin province in northeastern China to join her husband, who's been driving cabs in Beijing for three years.

Now all three of them live in a cellar room that is 10 square meters (108 square feet) in size. "The main thing is that we can all live together, as a family," Wang Xueping says.

Meanwhile, fitness trainer Dong Ying has had good luck. She's moved cellars, into a room with a small shaft that allows a little daylight in. And she has a new boyfriend, who has just bought himself a new apartment. If they get married, Dong Ying's days underground will end.

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Water purification made simpler

Filtration systems used in homes in the developing world, says Kristen Jellison, can be made smaller and less expensive.

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Inside a growing number of homes in the developing world, sand and biological organisms are collaborating to decontaminate drinking water.

Arranged in barrels of concrete or plastic, these biosand water filtration systems (BSFs) remove 95 to 99 percent of the bacteria, viruses, worms and particles contained in rain or surface water. A layer of microorganisms at the top of the sand bed consumes biological and other organic contaminants, while the sand below removes contaminants that cause cloudiness and odor.

A BSF can produce several dozen liters of clean water in an hour. But it can weigh several hundred pounds and cost up to $30, an expense some families in developing countries cannot afford.

Kristen Jellison and her students are trying to build a BSF that is smaller than the standard system, but just as effective.

"Smaller, lighter BSFs," says Jellison, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, "would be cheaper, easier to transport and available to a broader global market. Preliminary research has shown the potential for smaller systems to remove most disease-causing organisms, except possibly viruses."

Jellison, who is affiliated with the university's STEPS (Science, Technology, Environment, Policy and Society) initiative, has devoted most of her career to improving drinking water. As a co-adviser to Lehigh's chapter of Engineers Without Borders, she helped lead efforts to design and build a 20,000-gallon water-storage tank and chlorination system in Pueblo Nuevo, Honduras.

With support from NSF and the Philadelphia Water Department, she has spent five years studying the parasite Cryptosporidium parvum and its transport and fate in water bodies. The parasite is found in multiple hosts, is difficult to eradicate, and can be deadly to people with compromised immune systems.

In an effort to identify possible sources of Cryptosporidium contamination in the Philadelphia watershed, Jellison studies the DNA of various species using a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). She also studies the impact on Cryptosporidium of biofilms, the slimy layers of microorganisms that form on rocks, pipes and other surfaces in water.

Jellison's group is conducting experiments on BSFs of various sizes, including systems that fit inside two- and five-gallon plastic pails. (The typical BSF is 3 feet high.) The group will change the depth of the sand column, add rusty nails to several pails (in an effort to increase virus removal), and alter other parameters.

"BSFs were developed in the 1980s," says Jellison. "This is the most comprehensive study to date to characterize the efficiency of different filter types."

Provided by Lehigh University

Are we becoming more stupid? Human brain has been 'shrinking for the last 20,000 years'

It's not something we'd like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb.

Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

This decrease in size follows two million years during which the human cranium steadily grew in size, and it's happened all over the world, to both sexes and every race.

Old big head: A 3D image replica of a 28,000-year-old skull found in France shows it was 20 per cent larger than ours

'Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,' Kathleen McAuliffe writes in Discover magazine.

'The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.'

She was reporting on comments made by Dr John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who argues that the fact the size of the human brain is decreasing doesn't necessarily mean our intelligence is in decline as well.

Some paleontologists agree with this diagnosis, that our brains may have become smaller in size, but increasingly efficient.

But others believe that man has indeed become steadily more stupid as he has evolved.

Several theories have been advanced to explain the mystery of the shrinking brain. One is that big heads were necessary to survive Upper Paleolithic life, which involved cold, outdoor activities.

A second theory is that skulls developed to cope with a chewy diet of rabbits, reindeer, foxes and horses.

As our food has become easier to eat, so our heads have stopped growing, according to supporters of this theory.

Other experts say that with high infant mortality, only the toughest survived - and the toughest tended to have big heads. Therefore a gradually decreasing infant mortality rate has led to a proportionate decrease in the size of our brains.

A recent study conducted by David Geary and Drew Bailey, cognitive scientists at the University of Missouri, explored how cranial size changed as humans adapted to an increasingly complex social environment between 1.9million and 10,000 years ago.

They found that when population density was low, such as during the majority of our evolution, the cranium increased in size. But when a certain area's population changed from sparse to dense, our cranium size decreased.

They concluded that as increasingly complex societies emerged, the brain grew smaller because people didn't have to be as smart to stay alive.

But Dr Geary warns against stereotyping our ancestors as being more intelligent than us.

He said: 'Practically speaking, our ancestors were not our intellectual or creative equals because they lacked the same kind of cultural support.

'The rise of agriculture and modern cities based on economic specialisation has allowed the very brightest people to focus their efforts on the sciences, the arts and other fields.

'Their ancient counterparts didn't have that infrastructure to support them. It took all their efforts just to get through life.'

Dr Hawks, on the other hand, believes that the decrease in the size of our brains may actually show we are getting more intelligent.

The brain, he says, uses up to 20 per cent of all the fuel we consume. Therefore a bigger brain will require more energy and take longer to develop.

Dr Hawks notes that a boom in the human population between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago led to an unusual advantageous mutation to take place. 

He believes this could have resulted in the brain becoming more streamlined, our neurochemistry shifting to boost the capacity of our brains.

But it seems the size of our brains could be on the increase again.

A recent study by anthropologist Richard Jantz of the University of Tennessee found that our brain size is on the increase again.

He measured and compared the craniums of Americans of African and European descent from late colonial times to the 20th century and found that our brain size is on the move again.

The smartphones that are too clever for their owners

With hundreds of thousands of 'apps' available, smartphones allow users to do anything from checking their bank balance to booking a flight.

But 71 per cent of owners use them simply to make a call, text or check Facebook, research shows.

In fact, the study revealed that a typical person exploits only 10 per cent of their phone's functions.

Too many apps: Research reveals that people still mainly use their phones for making calls or texting, despite thousands of apps

The survey – of 2,000 users – also found more than half had felt ­pressured to get the latest or most ­popular smartphone, such as Apple's iPhone4 or a BlackBerry.

The devices, which will be the top gadget on Christmas lists this year, are really pocket computers. As well as the capacity for the downloadable programs known as 'apps', they can browse the internet and send and receive emails.

The research by Envirofone, which recycles mobiles, estimates there are 11million smartphones in the UK.

While there are many useful apps offering train information or sat-nav functions, others are bizarre.

A Zippo lighter app displays an animated picture to wave at concerts, while Annoy-a-teen plays a high-pitched sound that only teenagers are ­supposed to be able to hear.

Jon Butler, of Envirofone, said: 'The latest phones have become status symbols which look flash but aren't fully utilised.

Facebook worldwide friendships mapped

As we all know, people all over the world use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family. You meet someone. You friend him or her on Facebook to keep in touch. These friendships began within universities, but today there are friendships that connect countries. Facebook engineering intern Paul Butler visualizes these connections:

I defined weights for each pair of cities as a function of the Euclidean distance between them and the number of friends between them. Then I plotted lines between the pairs by weight, so that pairs of cities with the most friendships between them were drawn on top of the others. I used a color ramp from black to blue to white, with each line's color depending on its weight. I also transformed some of the lines to wrap around the image, rather than spanning more than halfway around the world.

In other words, for each pair of countries with a friend in one country and a friend in the other, a line was drawn. The more friends and distance between two countries, the brighter the lines on a black-blue-white color scale. The "stronger" connections were drawn on top, so they are more visually prominent.

It might remind you of Chris Harrison's maps that show interconnectedness via router configurations.

In areas of high density it looks more or less like population density. Or even more interesting, you can compare the above section to Ben Fry's All Streets, which maps all the roads in the United States. Physical connections look a lot like digital connections.

Most interesting though, I think, are not the places that are lit up, but the relatively dark ones, where Facebook has yet to reach. There are still huge sections of complete black:

Check out the high-resolution version and more details on the process here. One interesting note for the R fanboys. This was done in your favorite open-source stat software for computing and graphics.