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Stature of Limitations in China

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In a newly competitive society, being short can mean being passed over. To some people, the answer lies in a painful surgery that adds inches.

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By Ching-Ching Ni, Times Staff Writer

BEIJING �� She's an acting student. She sits in a wheelchair. He's a business major. He relies on crutches to get around.

Each of them willingly had a doctor break their legs and insert steel pins into the bones just below their knees and above their ankles. The pins are attached to a bulky contraption that looks like a metal cage. For six months or so, they will wear this stretching device even though it delivers excruciating pain eased only by medication.

They dial the adjustment knobs daily, forcing the ends of the broken limbs to pull away from each other even as they heal. As new bone grows, the device forces it apart again, resulting in more new bone to fill the gap. Patients on the device typically gain about 3 inches in six months.

It may sound like medieval torture, but people who are determined to stand taller say it's nothing short of a dream maker.

At about $6,000, the treatment is out of reach for the average Chinese urbanite, who makes just more than $1,100 a year. But for some with money, it's a price they're willing to pay. In this increasingly competitive society, height has emerged as one of the most visible criteria for upward mobility.

"I was not tall enough to apply to film school before," said the 20-year-old acting student, who was accepted to the Beijing Film Academy after adding 3 inches to her 5-foot-1-inch frame. The school's website says female acting department applicants must be at least 5 feet 3.

"I'm taking a year off from school to do this," said the 22-year-old business major, who at 5 feet 4 worried that his height would keep him from getting coveted white-collar jobs. "I want to feel better about myself." Like most who undergo the procedure, the students asked not to be identified, for reasons of self-consciousness.

For decades, height was largely a nonissue in China. Deng Xiaoping was one of the giants of the country's modern history even though he stood only about 5 feet tall.

But then came the market-oriented reforms of the 1980s, and Chinese began to face an explosion of lifestyle choices. Cosmetic surgery and other appearance-related industries became big business.

These days, China is inundated with images of long-legged success stories. From fashion magazines to billboards to TV shows, young people look up to icons such as Lu Yan, an international supermodel who stands 5 feet 10, and NBA star Yao Ming, who at 7 feet 6 is trumpeted as the walking Great Wall of China.

To help produce a taller nation, Beijing has been advocating more milk consumption for school-age children. The average Chinese woman is about 5 feet 2, the average man about 5-6. Partly the result of improved nutrition and living standards, they're about 0.8 inch taller than a decade ago, making the Chinese among the fastest-growing people in the world.

The country's obsession with height has created a market for such items as calcium supplements, herbal tonics and special shoes with massaging soles. The latest exercise machines sold here are said to feature infrared energy to stimulate growth hormones.

Now leg extensions have taken the beauty business to new heights.

"Before the economic reforms that changed China, we weren't getting enough food to eat, so we paid little attention to how we looked," said Zhang Chunjiang, a spokesperson at a height consulting business in Beijing. "Today we have enough to eat and we care a lot about how we look."

Using surgery to boost the height of otherwise healthy people is a relatively new concept. The technology is based on the work of a Russian doctor and was originally intended to correct uneven limbs. The surgery is offered in about a dozen countries, including the United States. Most doctors outside China are reluctant to do it for purely cosmetic reasons.

"We do more leg lengthening than any other place in the world, but only 5% of that is for cosmetic purposes," said Dr. Dror Paley, a director of the International Center for Limb Lengthening in Baltimore, which has performed about 8,000 leg-lengthening procedures since 1987. Most of the surgeries are performed on patients who suffer from birth defects or trauma, Paley said, adding that he requires lengthy psychological evaluations before he will do the procedure for cosmetic reasons.

"Unlike most plastic surgeries, the risks here are huge," he said. "You can end up permanently crippled."

In China, apparently, an increasing number of people think it's worth the risk.

In the old days, when the government handed out the most desirable jobs, many college-educated Chinese didn't have to worry about finding work on their own. But now the job market is a seller's market, and seemingly irrelevant factors such as height play a role in who is hired.

"In China, the competition for jobs is too fierce," said Xia Hetao, one of a handful of physicians in the country who specializes in leg lengthening. "All else being equal, height becomes a deciding factor." Many employers list height requirements in their job descriptions. Help-wanted ads are loaded with examples.

A garment manufacturer was looking for a female secretary for its Beijing office recently. At the top of the list of requirements was age �� between 25 and 40 �� and height �� at least 5 feet 4.

An ad for the restaurant chain TGI Friday's was more lenient: women above 5 feet 1 and men above 5 feet 4.

Would-be drivers must also pass a height test. According to the website of the Beijing Public Security Bureau of Traffic Administration, applicants must be at least 5 feet 1 to drive a car and 5 feet 4 to drive a truck or bus.

Though many educational institutions are trying to increase enrollment and no longer have height requirements, others such as the Beijing Film Academy's acting department continue to seek candidates of a certain stature.

At the Foreign Ministry, it's common knowledge that most candidates must meet an informal height standard, an official there said.

"It's an image issue," the official said. "If you are very short or have some other defects on your face, for example, it could affect the government's image."

So far, fighting the "shortness" bias hasn't been easy. In one case, a woman sued after she was turned down for a government job in the southern city of Shenzhen because of her height. The suit was tossed out last year by the court, which said it didn't have the power to control the internal practices of the government agency.

"The law says everyone has the right to work, but society has to set some limits because our resources are too limited," said Sun Dongdong, a law professor at Peking University. "To eliminate height requirements is unrealistic. If an employer has only one opening and many candidates, he has the right to hire who he thinks is the most appropriate."

Such benefits of height aside, those contemplating leg lengthening have reason to think twice. State media haven't been shy about reporting on botched operations.

Some of those who have undergone the procedure have suffered nerve or tissue damage, infection or improper healing of the bone, leaving them unable to walk or even stand.

If done properly, however, the procedure should have a very low failure rate, said Xia, the physician. He said he had performed more than 1,400 of the operations since 1996, usually between 100 and 180 a year. Only about eight patients didn't recover fully, he said.

Zhang Wanzhong, a surgeon in the eastern city of Hangzhou, said he had performed more than 2,000 of the procedures, accounting for about 10% of his orthopedic business.

"I try to dissuade people from doing it," Zhang said. "But some insist they suffer from so much discrimination they feel insecure, depressed, even suicidal. It's become a kind of mental sickness."

Xia recalls a patient who was shorter than his girlfriend. Her parents said they would rather die than see the couple wed. The suitor checked into Xia's clinic, and once he became taller than his girlfriend, they married.

Xia's oldest patient was a 52-year-old retired engineer who enjoyed ballroom dancing but was so petite she couldn't find a suitable partner.

"Some people say why don't you stick to real patients. I say they are real patients and they really do suffer," Xia said.

Most patients undergo the operation in secret and spend their "growing" time in the privacy of a hospital or at home. While in pain, they say, they try to concentrate on the results.

"I can't wait to buy all new clothes, especially pants �� mine will all be too short for me," said Dong Mei, a patient of Xia. "I won't need to wear those uncomfortable high heels anymore."

Every day, the 24-year-old beautician practices taking baby steps with the help of a walker, inching along in her metal braces, which she sometimes covers with knitted leg warmers.

"I do makeup and skin treatment for clients," she said. "If I don't look good, how can I convince my customers I can make them prettier?"

Dong, who had been 4 feet 9, said she had grown 5 inches.

"The difference is obvious," Dong said, just weeks away from removing her braces. "I used to be shorter than my sister-in-law. Now I am slightly taller than her. I like to sing and dance. They said maybe I could be in a soap opera. I can do so many more things now with my life."

In Sicily, an Appetite for the New

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ICILY is fast becoming the next culinary destination as its imaginative chefs deconstruct generations of grandmother's cooking, reinvent the island's tradition of sweet and sour combinations and serve local ingredients in lighter and more creative ways.

"Our passion for food and palate are different than it was in the 10th century," said Corrado Assenza, the chef and an owner of Caff�� Sicilia in the gorgeous hilly Byzantine town of Noto. Mr. Assenza, the fourth generation to run the cafe, is among the most creative practitioners of the new Sicilian cooking, glazing capers with honey, turning bergamot into marmalade.

"We need to have new traditions to be in touch with our land, new kinds of combinations of ingredients, new fragrances," he said. "One side of our tradition is that the best recipes are made with the best ingredients. The other side applies to thinking with the modern brain what the food means today."

So the eggplant Parmesan of my childhood has become an eggplant flan with Parmesan fondue and velvet tomato sauce at Il Mulinazzo, a restaurant with two Michelin stars in Villafrati, just outside Palermo. The elegant French quenelle has been reinvented as fish gnocchi at the Sheraton hotel in Catania. Chocolate sauce, traditionally served with rabbit, is now gracing pork at Il Duomo in Ragusa, and basil has been given new life as a filling for chocolates and a flavoring for sorbetto at Caff�� Sicilia.

This tipping point in Sicilian history, culinary and otherwise, is described in Nino Graziano's cookbook, "My Sicilian Cooking" (Bibliotheca Culinaria, 2003). Mr. Graziano, one of the foremost practitioners of the new Sicilian cooking, is the owner of Il Mulinazzo.

"After the dark years in which the island was associated only with the Mafia, people have begun to associate it with something positive," Mr. Graziano wrote. "Rather than ask who was killed where, tourists are now more likely to inquire about a particular grape variety, the late ripening peaches or a rare cheese. We have extraordinary ingredients at our disposal, transformed by artisans and not by agribusiness."

And some of the island's young chefs, having traveled the world, now realize how blessed they are at home. They are harvesting wild ingredients like fennel and saffron, there for the taking in the hills and fields.

"A few years ago you couldn't pay people to harvest the almonds," said Faith Willinger, the Italian food expert, writer and cookbook author, who lives in Florence. "Now Sicilians realize theirs are the best. Like the oregano, the capers, the grapes - everything is so vibrant. The vegetables are amazing because they are grown on volcanic soil."

These new chefs are also bridging the gap between peasant cooking and that of the monz��, the French-trained chefs the aristocracy employed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Monz�� is Sicilian for monsieur.

There are at least a half a dozen places like Il Mulinazzo where the food reflects this innovative cuisine. When I visited Sicily at the beginning of the year, we made it to only four, whetting my appetite to someday go back and try the rest.

I found chefs who are putting together foie gras with pine nuts and basil sauce, and raw chopped tuna with olive oil flavored with green oranges.

The menu at Il Mulinazzo has many French touches: Mr. Graziano worked for several years in France. But the dishes highlighted on the menu are taken from the Sicilian tradition, like pur��e of fava beans enriched with scampi, ricotta and extra virgin olive oil. The earthiness of the beans and the sweet creaminess of the ricotta play off the ocean flavors of the scampi.

On New Year's Eve the tasting menu at Il Mulinazzo took its cue from the plainest of peasant ingredients, artichokes and potatoes. But the potatoes were coarsely mashed, the influence of Norman rule, Mr. Graziano said. And the luxurious Beluga caviar topping was an international addition.

In the beginning, Mr. Graziano said, it was difficult to convince people to abandon the old ways, long and slow cooking in vast quantities of olive oil, seasonings applied with a heavy hand. But as time passed, the message got through. On New Year's Eve at Il Mulinazzo everyone in the handsome, festive dining room, with the exception of our table of four, was Italian.

At Il Timo, the restaurant in the Sheraton hotel in Catania, Saverio Piazza, the executive chef and food and beverage director, has created what he calls fish gnocchi, borrowing from haute cuisine and recalling a quenelle or mousse of fish paste poached in a broth. His featherlike gnocchi are made with butter, flour, butter and sea bass. They are served in a sauce of scampi, tomatoes and garlic.

Mr. Piazza says outside influences, including Japan, have increased the popularity of raw fish in Sicily, where restaurants in coastal towns serve it just hours old. "The traditional way was fried tuna with onion sauce with vinegar, a type of sweet and sour," he said. "The first raw fish to be served were the neo nato, newly born anchovies or sardines. Little by little we got to swordfish carpaccio. Now there is prosciutto of tuna."

Mr. Piazza loves to play with uncommon combinations of spices and vegetables, often using them as a base for simply grilled or saut��ed fish. He infuses eggplant with cinnamon and serves it with sea bass; red mullet rests on a bed of zucchini saut��ed with cardamom. "I close myself in the office, and I imagine the taste," he said.

One of these sessions produced eggplant marmalade made with sugar and bay leaf and served in a tart shell topped with a lemon twist.

Ciccio Sultano, whose Ristorante Duomo has a Michelin star, was one of the first local chefs to be noticed abroad for his reinvention of Sicilian dishes and for returning lost ingredients to contemporary cooking.

Always playful, he serves shrimp and squid fried in a delicate batter of semolina. It comes to the table wrapped in a paper cone, like French fries.

"I like people to be entertained, to have fun," Mr. Sultano said. "My work is to rediscover and identify the lost flavors of traditional cuisine and to renew them, inserting them into a modern and innovative context, while at the same time remaining true to the historical significance of the territory."

His dish of octopus, pork and citron seems unlikely until you taste it. The octopus is boiled and ground "like a salami," he said. The pork is prepared like headcheese, but with orange and lemon, giving both the seafood and the meat similar textures. The accompanying salad of citron, onions and parsley contrasts with and lightens the richness of the octopus and pork.

But the most daring experimenter with the strong sweet and savory elements in Sicilian cooking is Mr. Assenza of Caff�� Sicilia.

As we sat in his wonderful old cafe, housed in a 1749 building, he plied us with example after example of his startling honeys and jams, cakes and preserves. "Using a combination of ingredients," he said, "you pass from low use of sugar to high use at the end of a meal."

For example he marinates raw fish in honey suffused with extra virgin olive oil and orange, lemon and saffron, and then serves it with lemon granita. And he pairs oysters with almond granita and what Mr. Assenza calls chili pepper candy, hot peppers glazed with honey.

The combinations are fascinating and endless, and at times they seem improbable. But one bite changes all that, astounding and delighting the palate.

One of Mr. Assenza's gems is a basil marzipan filling for chocolate. The brilliant creations of his mad genius - dozens of marvelous little boxes filled with jars containing honey-glazed capers; honey combined with wild fennel, saffron, white pepper or bergamot - line the shelves behind the glass counters of the cafe.

"This is my link with the Sicilian tradition of sweet and acid," he said. "We have the best ingredients and we honor Sicily by amplifying the quality of the ingredients."

Brian Wingfield contributed reporting for this article.

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Where smiles grow in Carlsbad

[Jerry��:] ��Ѿ��ˣ��Ƿ��һ��ĵ��ĩ��ͼ��ˡ��ѻ��ͬѧһͬȥѰ�Ҵ��㼣��ܴ��Ϣ�أ��ǵ��ߴ��޵��ů��︴�գ��ȷ��һ��ܴ��Ȼ�ĺ�ʱ��Jerry��Ͱ��Ͳ�ס��~~��ű��ü��һͬȥ��¼��õ�ʱ�⡣�ٺ٣�ÿ�괺�춼��в�ͬ��ջ񡣽��Jerry��ܰ��ǣ��Ҳ�͸��ҵ��һƪ��LA Times��ɼ��ʱ��Travel��05/03/27��¡��˼�¼��Carlsbad��صĸ��ܣ��Ե�һ�˳Ƶ��ַ��渵��˺��(Carlsbad��λ��ݵ�һ��)��Ȼ��ֵĽӴ��ͷŵĲ��ǵ��壬��Ҫ��ǵ��ꡣ�ڹ��У��ǵ��ǻᱻ��ϴˢ��ǵ��л��֡��˵��:"I tell people I'm going to get planting ideas, but the real motivation is cultivation of my inner garden.--�Ҹ��߱��ҽ�Ҫȥ��ò��ֵ�˼�룬Ȼ��Ķ��Ҫȥ��Ļ�԰��"�ܸ��һ�仰Ŷ~~��ÿ��˵��ж��һ��԰��Ҫ��ǲ��ϸ��֡��ˮ��ʩ�ʵĵط��So,��Ҫ��ÿһ��ϴ��Ļ��ᣬ��ߵ�Carlsbad֮�У�"The Flower Field help me find spring. And they make me smile."��ּ򵥵��ã��ܶ��ͷ��һ�е��ҽ��ܴ��Ȼ��ӵ��Ϊ�Լ��Ļ�԰��һ����...... ---Jerry Yue

By Rosemary McClure, Times Staff Writer

This is a tale of two gardens. One is mine; the other is Ed Frazee's. The only thing they have in common is dirt.

Every year about this time I look at my garden, with its scruffy winter grass and droopy year-old impatiens, and flee down the coast to see Frazee's garden, a.k.a. the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch. I tell people I'm going to get planting ideas, but the real motivation is cultivation of my inner garden.

The Flower Fields help me find spring. And they make me smile.

Frazee's garden, more than 60 years in the making, is a commercial bulb-growing ranch in northern San Diego County. It is open to the public for eight weeks each year when the flowers are in bloom. Vibrant bands of color �� yellow, pink, orange, magenta, purple and white �� march across 50 rolling acres. Carlsbad has grown up around the ranch, sandwiching the Flower Fields among a shopping mall, an amusement park and acres of California-tan homes and businesses, but suburbia seems distant when you stroll through the rows of brilliant flowers.

More than 150,000 people make the spring pilgrimage to admire the legacy of the master planter, who died last year at 87.

He was 16 when he quit school to cultivate flowers; his choice was the ranunculus, a member of the buttercup family. As the ranch grew, first along U.S. 101 and later near Interstate 5, it attracted the attention of travelers during the bloom cycle. Spring became synonymous with Frazee's flower garden.

But the winter of 2004-05 caused high anxiety. "We were nervous this year because of the heavy rainfall and erosion," said Lynne Seward of guest services. "But once it was time, it was like flipping a switch."

My niece Gaylean and her preschoolers Brooke and Ethan joined me on this trip. I didn't tell the sprites we were going to see flowers. I told them we were going to nearby Legoland. I probably could have avoided this rash promise, because the offer drew only blank looks.

"Is Legoland a big store?" asked 4 1/2 -year-old Ethan, hopefully. Of course, there would be toy purchases, along with long lines for food and half-hour waits for rides. But it could have been worse; several of the rides for older kids had 90-minute waits.

The 128-acre theme park, with its 5,000 Lego models, is aimed at the 2-to-12 set. Ethan enjoyed the activities and rides, but Brooke, 2 1/2 , didn't fare as well. Most of the attractions intimidated her. But the park is well-organized, tidy and nicely landscaped, so her mom wasn't disappointed.

Both Brooke and Ethan were delighted with our hotel, the Grand Pacific Palisades Resort, which faces the Flower Fields and is across the street from Legoland. The kids liked its tot lot, a kiddie water park and the fact that it had plenty of room to play. The adults liked the price: Our nicely furnished two-bedroom, two-bath condo cost $179 per night, included a kitchen and could sleep up to seven people.

We found lots to do in the area. We parked along Carlsbad Boulevard, which parallels the coastline, to run down the steps to the beach and play. Ethan built a fort with driftwood; Brooke dug in the sand. We all chased seagulls, trying to interest them in a bag of bread. It was the first time I'd ever seen a seagull refuse food. Perhaps we were too enthusiastic.

*

Button pushers

In the tiny Village of Carlsbad, we found a local favorite, Fidel's Norte. The 29-year-old Mexican restaurant is one of four owned by the Montañez family of Solana Beach. It has both expected and unusual entrees �� I tried savory calabacitas (zucchini casserole) �� and features fast, friendly service.

Our explorations also took us to the Museum of Making Music, adjacent to Legoland, which invites visitors to "spend an hour traveling down musical memory lane." The exhibition focuses on a century of innovations that shaped American popular music. There were more than 500 instruments to look at and many buttons to push. I pressed one to watch Eric Clapton play an acoustic guitar and another to hear a Moog synthesizer.

The buttons were addictive. Before long, I had the Beach Boys singing "Help Me, Rhonda," the Drifters crooning "Saturday Night at the Movies" and the Byrds rhapsodizing "Turn! Turn! Turn!" I was rocking, but Gaylean was nervous. A docent trailed her and the kids around the museum, probably worried about the damage little hands could inflict on a 100-year-old player piano.

There were no such concerns at the Flower Fields ranch. Kids are part of the equation, with a playground and child-friendly displays. The ranch is now owned by the Paul Ecke family and has added more visitor attractions near the main entrance: There are artist-designed landscapes, a greenhouse of new poinsettia varietals and the Walk-of-Fame Rose Garden that features 170 All-America Rose Selection winners.

In the distance, visitors see the hillside ranunculus fields. Although the day was gloomy when we visited, gray skies couldn't tame the color. If anything, the bright blocks of flowers seemed more vibrant than they might have in full sun.

We could see some people walking the dusty path to the blooming fields. We decided to catch a ride on a farm wagon pulled by a vintage tractor.

"This is a 1948 John Deere," our driver-guide said when asked about the mottled-green vehicle. "It may not look like much right now because we just got it, but wait a few months and it will be a beautiful sight to behold."

The tractor popped and wheezed, and I wondered aloud if it didn't need a little work right now.

The tractors and wagons belong to the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum in nearby Vista and are driven by volunteers, who charge $3 per passenger to raise funds for their museum.

Our Johnny Popper popped and bounced along the path to a distant field. The ranunculus are planted in blocks with their bloom times staggered. Because we visited early in the season, only distant blocks were in bloom. As the season progresses, flowers closer to the entrance bloom.

We left the wagon and meandered along a pathway, passing thousands of flowers, their blooms nodding slightly in a gentle breeze. Some of the plants were as tall as Brooke.

I could have stayed all day. But after three hours of tractors, wagons and flowers, the kids were famished. So I asked for a recommendation.

"Tip Top Meats," was the answer.

"Uh, we want to sit down and eat," I said.

"Yes, Tip Top Meats. It's great and tourists don't go there. Only locals."

We drove a couple of blocks and spotted a sign that read: Tip Top Meats European Delicatessen. The parking lot was nearly full. Inside we found a market and deli, and a German-style restaurant with a variety of fare �� both American and European �� for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You could order pancakes, a sausage plate or a hamburger. Sandwiches were about $5, and dinner entrees just a bit more.

We found a table and congratulated ourselves on our luck at getting such a great recommendation. As Brooke and Ethan wolfed down their sausage and eggs, I asked what they'd liked best about the journey.

It would have been nice to hear that they'd come to appreciate the Flower Fields as I do. But I braced for the answer to be Legoland.

"The hotel!" said Ethan. "Can we go back and play on the slides?"

I sighed. Maybe it was time to go home and plant some new impatiens.

Predicting cavities

USC scientists are studying the sugar proteins in saliva to determine who is most at risk for tooth decay.

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By Linda Marsa, Special to The Times

The sad truth is this: Some people are almost destined to suffer from tooth decay �� regardless of whether they drink fluoridated water, avoid sweets, and brush and floss with determination.

They can blame their genes. The tendency to develop cavities is inherited. On the other hand, family history isn't always a good indicator of risk.

Soon a new saliva test may be able to identify those most at risk for cavities, how many they're likely to develop and even predict which parts of the mouth are the most vulnerable. That way, preventive steps can be taken before cavity-causing bacteria take hold in the mouth.

The test would be most beneficial for children; by adulthood, decay has taken root.

"This is exciting research," says Dr. Lawrence A. Tabak, a dentist and director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda, Md.

"A test that would identify children who are most at risk for dental decay would be a tremendous step forward because it would allow us to target preventive measures in a highly focused way," Tabak said.

Developed by USC School of Dentistry scientists, the Caries Assessment and Risk Evaluation test measures sugar proteins in the saliva; these sugar chains also coat the surfaces of the teeth.

These proteins' effect on the teeth is similar to the way "good' and "bad" cholesterol act on blood vessels, says Paul Denny, a USC saliva researcher and a co-inventor of the test.

Certain combinations of sugar proteins fend off the bacteria that cause tooth decay (dental caries), while others promote decay by allowing the microbes to stick to the tooth's surface.

Although being cavity-prone is genetic, family history isn't always a good predictor.

"There is case after case of parents who have great teeth and their children who have rotten ones, and vice versa," says Denny. "How these genes are parceled out to prevent caries is an extremely complicated process, and every single sugar protein chain is a composite of up to 20 or 30 different genes."

The saliva test uses a piece of paper that is dipped into the person's saliva and then bathed in a battery of sensitive chemicals that can detect the presence of these different sugar proteins.

"The color the saliva spot turns can tell you the person's risk level," says Denny.

In a 2004 study, the saliva of 29 children ages 7 to 10 was compared to the saliva of 20 young adults, revealing that the makeup of sugar chain proteins could predict a child's cavity history with more than 98% accuracy.

More long-term research is needed, but Denny hopes the test will be available in dental offices within several years.

The test will enable families to take preventive measures, such as applying sealants to vulnerable teeth before the caries form.

The sealants can help prevent caries from getting established in the mouth and stop the lifelong process of deterioration that often leads to costly and painful root canals, crowns and loss of teeth.

Because sealants can be expensive, knowing which teeth �� or which people �� are more vulnerable could allow the sealants to be targeted only to potential trouble areas and could open the door for better insurance reimbursement.

"In the future," says Denny, "even a kid at the highest risk could arrive at adulthood without any cavities, with the proper preventive dental care." *

The saliva test as diagnostic tool

Saliva may eventually supplant blood and urine as the favored fluid for detecting disease. Because saliva tests don't require a needle or the collection of urine in a cup, they are easier to administer, more convenient and much less expensive.

"They're pain-free and as user friendly as possible because you just have to spit in a tube," says Dr. David T. Wong, a saliva researcher at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and School of Dentistry.

Saliva tests are already used to detect HIV, blood alcohol levels and illicit drugs. But they may soon be able to identify a host of diseases. In a 2004 study of 64 patients, for example, half of whom had head and neck cancers, researchers found that measuring elevated levels of cancer-related molecules in saliva enabled them to distinguish with 91% accuracy the cancer patients from the healthy control group.

Scientists at UCLA and other research centers are deciphering the set of proteins normally present in saliva, and the signature proteins produced by breast and ovarian cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and even viral and bacterial infections.

"We're looking for a biochemical marker or fingerprint for these disease processes," says Wong, describing the first step in devising a diagnostic test.

Federal Plans Aim to Control Use of the Desert

Development and off-road use in the Mojave and Algodones Dunes would increase. Critics threaten to sue.

[Jerry��] ��޼ʵ�ɳĮ��գ��̶ӣ��......ɳĮ��ӡ��ʲô��أ��ѻ��ˮ��ʳ��磬�Ƿ��ֵ��õĶ��أ��Խ𣿣��С˵��ڣ�û��ˮ��û�취��ˣ��Խ𡣽�ɳ�ó��˳��أ��˷Ѷ��ϡ��ĩ��ɳĮ��ǵ����ʲô��ֵ�𣿴��ǿ϶��ġ�ֻҪ��ϸ��룬�κ��ﶼ��ļ�ֵ��ɳĮ��Ȼ��ӣ��Ϊһ��ֵĳ��أ��Ǳ�ĵ��޷��ģ��ɳ��ԽҰ��(off-road vehicles)�˶��⣬��Ҫ��ΪɳĮ��ݲ��û����价��ԣ��֣�ֻ��ɳĮ�д��ڣ��ᵽ��desert totoise��Mohaveground squirrel(һ�ֹ��һ��󣬶��Ȥ��Լ��)��ˣ��ɳĮ��ã��ɭ�ֵ��һ��ܷ��Ҳͬ��Ҫʵ�б�Ҫ�Ĺ淶�͹��ƣ��ʹ��Դ�ĵ��ѧ�ġ��ġ��ɳ��ķ�չ��á��ƪ��LA Times��ɼ��ʱ��2005.03.25environment�档��Ѿ��˹��ɳĮ��Ĺ��ƻ�...... --Jerry Yue

By Janet Wilson and Julie Cart, Times Staff Writers

Federal officials on Thursday released a pair of desert management plans to accommodate recreation, development and wildlife in the booming western Mojave and in the Algodones Dunes, a popular destination for off-road vehicles in far southeastern California.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management said its design for 9.3 million acres of the western Mojave Desert is the largest habitat conservation plan in the United States, encompassing parts of four counties and numerous towns.

The plan, one of nearly 500 around the country, is aimed at expediting development in western San Bernardino, Kern, Los Angeles and Inyo counties while seeking to preserve more than 100 rare plant and animal species, including the threatened desert tortoise and Mohave ground squirrel.

Such plans allow home builders, miners, water and sewage companies, and others to destroy endangered and threatened species in exchange for setting aside or paying to preserve wildlife habitat elsewhere.

"Everybody out there in this tremendously large, 9-million-acre area will know which areas are targeted for conservation and which areas would be allowed for development," said Jan Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management's California office, which began developing the plan a decade ago.

Larry Lapre, the BLM staffer overseeing final development of the plan, said the fast-growing area covered under the plan stretches from the San Gabriel Mountains east to Baker, and from Olancha in the Owens Valley south to Joshua Tree National Park. It takes in Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Apple Valley, Lancaster, Palmdale and Ridgecrest.

"It's an hour away from 15 million people," he said.

"Lancaster and Palmdale in particular are experiencing very rapid growth, and Victorville is too.... It's suburban sprawl.

"Every time you do a subdivision in Victorville, you have to do a tortoise survey and a ground squirrel survey and a burrowing owl survey, and usually you find one of each," Lapre said. "Then you have to go get permits, and there's hundreds of those pending. Hundreds of housing projects are being delayed."

Under the new plan, developers could pay fees or set aside land, then acquire one "take" permit covering all the species.

Lapre, a biologist who has worked on such plans for years, said the large swaths of land that would be set aside for the tortoise and other wildlife would help preserve them.

But environmental groups disagreed sharply. Daniel Patterson said the Center for Biological Diversity would sue if necessary to block the plan, which, he said, would ignore an existing recovery plan for the tortoise.

The BLM plan for the Algodones Dunes, long a mecca for off-road vehicle enthusiasts, calls for opening all of the areas that were placed off-limits as a result of a temporary court settlement five years ago.

However, Bedrosian of the BLM said the closures on slightly less than one-third of the area �� 49,300 acres �� would remain in place until at least Oct. 15 while a federal judge considers competing lawsuits from off-roaders and environmentalists.

Most of the currently restricted area �� about 33,000 acres �� will be opened to limited motorized use. The BLM said it would issue up to 525 permits per day for that part of the dunes, prohibit overnight camping, and close the area from April to mid-October.

For the time being, the BLM proposes instituting a zoning system that divides the entire 160,000-acre dune system into eight management areas. The 26,000-acre North Algodones Dunes Wilderness area would be closed to any motorized travel, for example, and the 21,000-acre Gecko area would be open to unlimited off-road use.

Altogether, more than 85% of the dunes would be open to off-road vehicles.

Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, assailed the plan as a reversal of the 2000 court agreement and said it fails to provide protection for a threatened plant.

"The worst part is that the plan fails to deal with the crowds," Patterson said. "They totally failed to consider the carrying capacity of the dunes. The caps are only for a small area. It's a paper plan that will have no on-the-ground enforceability."

On holiday weekends, as many as 250,000 people roar over the dunes in sand rails, trucks and dune buggies. Four years ago, three people were killed and dozens injured, including a park ranger who was run over during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Bedrosian said the agency considers the 33,000 acres of limited use a "laboratory," adding that vehicle limits could be adjusted if necessary.

More Help Wanted: Older Workers Please Apply

Ed Wright, 71, a retired electrical contractor, works at two Home Depots, one in Lake Wales, Fla., in colder months and the other in Tullytown, Pa

Larry Gershell, 72, was a marketing executive until he retired at 65. He now works at a Borders bookstore in Manhattan.

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n a push to recruit older workers,

Borders bookstores lure retired teachers to sales jobs with discounts and the promise of reading and discussion groups. Pitney Bowes, the business services company, pays tuition for courses in computer programming as well as spare-time skills like golf and flower arranging.

After years of encouraging workers to take early retirement as a way to cut jobs, a growing number of companies are hunting for older workers because they have lower turnover rates and, in many cases, better work performance.

Some companies like Wal-Mart are making their pitches at senior centers and others are sending company brochures to churches and community libraries and posting their attractions on Web sites.

AARP, the advocacy group for older people, recently put on its Web site links to 13 "featured employers" - including MetLife, Pitney Bowes, Borders, Home Depot, Principal Financial and Walgreens - that are recruiting older workers with offers of health benefits, training and flexible work schedules. More than 71,000 people have used the Web site this month to seek job information.

At Home Depot, Ed Wright, 71, a retired electrical contractor, works the early shift from October to May in the electrical products department at the store in Lake Wales, Fla. Then, when the weather changes, he heads north and works part time from June to September in the Home Depot in Tullytown, Pa.

"I had heard you could do that, so I applied for a job here in Florida," he said. "It's the best of both worlds." Mr. Wright is not the only north-south commuter at the Lake Wales store. He said he had colleagues who went to Maine, Connecticut and Colorado in the summer.

Cindy Milburn, senior director of staffing at Home Depot, said the company was looking to older workers to fill a labor shortage a decade from now. "We wanted to plant seeds early on," she said, to build relationships with groups like AARP and government agencies that help people, including military retirees, find jobs.

Conventional wisdom has long held that workers become more costly as they grow older, with more medical problems and more missed workdays. But "overall costs are not much different based on the age of employees," said Dan Smith, senior vice president for human resources at the Borders Group. "Training and recruitment costs are much lower than for younger workers. It all evens out."

Mr. Smith said nearly 16 percent of Borders's current 32,000 employees were 50 or older, compared with only 6 percent six years ago.

For one thing, the older workers are much less likely to depart after a few years. The turnover rate for employees 50 and older was one-tenth that of workers under 30, according to Mr. Smith. "Costs of training, recruitment and learning the job routine," he said, "are all much lower than for younger workers."

That is no small matter, especially in retailing, where 60 percent annual turnover, not counting part-time help, is the norm for specialty stores, according to the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group. If part-timers and temporary workers are covered, the turnover rate soars to 110 percent. (The group's survey did not cover department stores and outlet stores.)

Even with its loyal older people and a low turnover rate by retailing standards, Home Depot, which has 325,000 employees, hires 160,000 people each year, including part-time and seasonal workers and 20,000 for new jobs as the company adds stores, Ms. Milburn said.

Eileen Applebaum, a labor economist at Rutgers University, said the cost of turnover per worker was $2,335, on average, in a survey of representative California employers last year conducted by researchers at Rutgers and U.C.L.A. Simply holding down the turnover rate could mean annual savings in the millions of dollars for large employers.

The recruitment efforts for the elderly are reaching a willing audience, as more older people seek work because they need extra cash and health benefits and sometimes because they miss having a 9-to-5 routine with other workers.

In the 65-to-69 age group, "about one-third of men and almost one-fourth of women were working in 2004," said Joseph F. Quinn, a labor economist and dean at Boston College. "Already, there has been a dramatic change since the mid-1980's in the labor force participation of older workers."

The percentage of men in that age group still working rose to 33 percent in 2004 from 27 percent in 1994; the percentage of women in that age group working rose to 23 percent from 18 percent. According to AARP, almost one in three workers will be 50 or older within five years.

Larry Gershell, 72, for example, was a marketing executive when he retired at 65 after 40 years in book publishing. Within a year, he found a full-time job selling books at a Borders store in Midtown Manhattan.

"I like books; I like to read; I like to know what's going on," he said. "I love talking to mothers. I tell them not to worry about their kids who read comic books."

He also likes the relaxed atmosphere. "It's not stressful," he said. "No pain in the belly anymore. When I got home from my office, my wife used to say 'you want to kick the dog.' But we didn't have a dog." Now he takes home $30 worth of free books every month, a benefit he finds "marvelous, " and he also gets Borders's health benefits.

At Wal-Mart, which has 220,000 employees 55 and older, store officials are often sent on recruiting missions to churches, senior centers and meetings of local AARP chapters, said Sarah Clark, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman.

Older workers are still mostly in sales, office work and management, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by Jared Bernstein, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

But at Pitney Bowes, a manufacturing company that is also big in business services, almost 1 in 4 employees is over 50.

The company is "very aware of the demographic trends," said Bruce Nolop, Pitney's chief financial officer. "It will be very essential to appeal to the older portion of the work force."

Terry Dendy, 56, a large-format preparation-press operator, was recently hired at the company's digital imaging center in Manhattan. Mr. Dendy said he worried about his age when he looked for work after his former employer closed. "But I had friends in my age category at Pitney Bowes and they told me I should apply," he said. "I did, and after that there was no problem."

These recruiting successes, of course, also reflect economic realities as dwindling company-subsidized health coverage for retirees and inadequate savings and pensions force many older people to stay on their jobs or look for other work. Still, as baby boomers age, many are eager to work for benefits beyond the paycheck.

"They don't want to go fishing; they want to stay sharp," said Jeanne Benoit, principal director of human resources at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, a military research contractor in Cambridge, Mass., that creates prototypes for aerospace projects.

In industries with labor shortages, like nursing, older workers already have an edge. Nurses, who typically retire at 53, are being recruited at high rates, said Peter Buerhaus, associate dean of the school of nursing at Vanderbilt University. "They are probably the fastest-aging work force in the country."

In 2002 and 2003, hospitals raised pay scales and hired 130,000 nurses over age 50, which made up more than 70 percent of the 185,000 total hired in those two years, Mr. Buerhaus said.

Many of those nurses may well agree with Ellen Van Valen, 67, a Home Depot manager, who says that age has little do with the desire to work.

Ms. Van Valen, who is assistant manager for internal operations at the company's store in Stratford, Conn., supervises a group that includes five workers in their 60's.

"The older folks seem to catch on a lot quicker," she said. "They're used to life in general."

Ms. Van Valen plans to work full time until she is 75. "Every day is a learning process," she said. "Hey, I could become a store manager down the road, but not right now."

Home Depot, the hardware chain, now offers "snowbird specials" - winter work in Florida and summers in Maine.