Red kiwis coming soon

A new variety of red-fleshed kiwi has been analyzed by a team of researchers in Italy and New Zealand. Kiwis of any colour are known for their nutritional value, their flesh being rich in calcium, iron, potassium, folic acid and vitamins A, E, and especially C. However, as reported in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the red kiwi has been cultivated to also contain high amounts of chemicals called anthocyanins, antioxidants common in other plants that give the red kiwi its colour and which may also protect against heart attacks and strokes. Red kiwis are as healthy as their green and yellow counterparts, perhaps more so. The kiwis have not yet hit markets, but should be available soon.

-Chris Damdar

Source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Sober talk on transit

“The reason you invest money in transit is to get more people to use it,” said civil engineering prof Richard Soberman, at a centre for environment seminar on Wednesday. But he harbours no illusions that this would help meet the goals of the Kyoto protocol. For a recent Transport Canada study on the effect of public transit investments on greenhouse gas emissions found that even aggressive investment in public transit would still result in an increase of 14 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions over 1990 levels, (a far cry from the Kyoto target of reducing 1990-level emissions by six per cent by 2010), but better than the business as usual scenario, which predicted a 30-per-cent rise.

Soberman has been at the forefront of transportation policy debates in Toronto for the last few decades. He supports the construction of a new Scarborough subway to replace the aging Scarborough RT. Also, the need to give surface transit vehicles priority over cars, thus preventing streetcars from getting “stuck in the midst of a bunch of upholstered roller skates,” as he put it.

And he offered some policy prescriptions. One was in managing the cost of running public transit-70 per cent which is taken up by labour costs, according to him. “This is an industry that cries out for part-time labour,” he exclaimed. Another was revising the governing structure of transit agencies, which are currently staffed by elected officials-and their two-and-a-half-year planning horizons, said Soberman-replacing them instead with professional (and perhaps political) appointees, who may be better able to push forward a more unified transit vision.

-Mike Ghenu