SONG FOR MERRY CHRISTMAS

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

Away In A Manger

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

A small Christmas songs for the enjoyment

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Child Death Rates Narrow Between Poor and Rich Countries

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FILE - In this file photo taken Oct. 4, 2006, Pakistani hospital staff members attend newly born babies in Karachi, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil, File)Death rates of young children have dropped to record lows in developingcountries. Experts say there are two main reasons for the decrease. Theyare improved government action, and simple protective health measures.Experts say the two have helped narrow the death rates between the richestand the poorest families.The United Nations says 12.7 million children under the age of five died in 1990. By comparison, U.N. officials say about 6.3 million young children diedlast year. That is a huge drop, but still represents about 17,000 deaths everyday.

Eran Bendavid is a population health expert at Stanford University inCalifornia. He credits simple things for the sharp drop in deaths among lowand moderate-income countries. They include malarial bed nets and oralrehydration salts for treating diarrheal diseases.

“The poorest of the poor – we’re talking about countries where the people liveor $1 or $2 per day on average – have seen enormous declines in mortality.Their children are surviving at rates they have never seen before in thosecontexts.”          

Eran Bendavid worked with other researchers at Stanford’s School ofMedicine on a study. They used population and health studies to investigatechild mortality rates in 54 countries. The research involved information about1.2 million women in more than 929,000 families.

The investigators compared death rates between 2000 and 2007 with recordsfrom 2008 to 2012. They found under-five death rates fell 4.3 deaths for every1,000 live births among poor families. Among middle-income families, rates fell3.36 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Among the wealthiest families, ratesfell 2.06 deaths per 1,000 births.

Eran Bendavid says that in countries with good governance, international aidcan reach people who need it. But he found problems in corrupt or lawlessnations. There, the number of child deaths increased during the same period.

“Now, if you have Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, if you have situations likeyou have now in Pakistan where aid workers are being vilified and attackedfor providing vaccines, you know, where you have a governance that reallyhas no ability to provide the basic conditions for public health to work, basicsafety, the legitimacy for health workers to go and do what they need to do,then even those simple and basic and easy interventions can’t beaccomplished.”

The study noted a major improvement in the child death rate between rich andpoor in several countries. They include Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ivory Coast,Egypt and Ghana.

The findings were reported in the journal Pediatrics.

I’m Hector Vergel

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Landing on a Comet, 317 Million Miles From Home

By JONATHAN CORUM NOV. 11, 2014

The Rosetta spacecraft’s Philae lander is attempting to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. RELATED ARTICLE

1/4 MILE

Intended landing site

Panorama by The New York Times

NOV. 6 Comet 67P/C-G is shaped like a duck, with two lobes separated by a neck. In this image, the comet’s head is at center, with the neck in shadow and body in the background. Philae’s intended landing site, named Agilkia, is a relatively flat area on the comet’s head.

ROSETTA

PHILAE

COMET

RELEASING THE LANDER Rosetta will angle toward the comet and release the Philae lander on Wednesday at 3:35 a.m. Eastern time. Philae will take about seven hours to descend onto the comet’s head.

1/4 MILE

Panorama by The New York Times

NOV. 4 The comet’s head is in the foreground and the body is in the background. Rosetta was about 20 miles above the comet’s surface when it took the four photographs used to make this panorama.

500 FEET

Panorama by The New York Times

OCT. 28 The comet’s neck, seen from 5 miles above the surface. Rubble appears to have fallen from some of the overhanging ledges and small cracks visible on some of the ledges at center left might lead to future landslides.

500 FEET

Panorama by The New York Times

OCT. 24 The rugged surface of the comet’s body casts long shadows and the comet’s neck stretches out of sight at upper right.

500 FEET

Panorama by The New York Times

OCT. 18 Looking up at the underbelly of the duck-shaped comet’s larger lobe. The largest boulder at lower left is named Cheops, after the Egypian pyramid, and is about 150 feet across.

1/8 MILE

Panorama by The New York Times

OCT. 8 The underbelly and side of the comet’s larger lobe. The largest boulder casting shadows on the flat plain at center left is called Cheops and is about 80 feet high.

ROSETTA The Rosetta spacecraft is a roughly seven-foot cube with a solar-panel wingspan of 105 feet.

OCT. 7 Comet 67P/C-G is framed by one of Rosetta’s solar wings, which is 46 feet long. A stream of gas and dust extends from an active area of the comet’s neck, about 10 miles away.

Rosetta

RELATIVE SIZE Rosetta’s wingspan of 105 feet is barely visible in this illustration of relative size. The comet and spacecraft are shown separated by about 6 miles.

1/4 MILE

Panorama by The New York Times

OCT. 2 The neck of the comet.

1/4 MILE

Panorama by The New York Times

SEPT. 30 Philae’s intended landing site, a relatively flat and boulder-free area on top of the comet’s head.

SEPT. 14 The comet’s head and Philae’s intended landing site are at upper right.

SEPT. 12 Philae’s backup landing site, on the comet’s body near the neck.

Panorama by The New York Times

SEPT. 7 The comet’s underbelly in shadow. The large boulder named Cheops is on the flat plain just left of center.

1/8 MILE

SEPT. 5 The underside of the comet’s head is partially obscured by the comet’s body, at left.

Panorama by The New York Times

SEPT. 2 A clear view of the comet’s two-lobed structure.

AUG. 20 A white cross marks Philae’s intended landing site on the comet’s head.

AUG. 14 Looking down at the comet’s head, where Philae will attempt to land.

AUG. 13 The comet’s flat belly, from a distance of about 70 miles.

AUG. 11 Comet 67P/C-G, as seen by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope array.

Photo illustration by The New York Times

A COMET OVER BROADWAY The body of Comet 67P/C-G is about as long as Central Park.

Comet’s location when

Rosetta was launched

Rosetta launched

in March 2004

Sun

Mars

Earth

Rendezvous

with Comet

67P/C-G

Orbit of

Jupiter

Attempted

landing

CHASING A COMET Rosetta launched in 2004, made several loops through the inner solar system gathering speed and then spent years chasing down Comet 67P/C-G. The spacecraft arrived in August.

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