Juvenile crime, as all crime, has been increasing. Brutal crime among young offenders also is increasingly evidenced in reports, particularly on urban areas. Some offenders are psychotic and their offences may range from suicide to mass murder. Others are anti-social and given to minor acts of defiance. Ease of access to weapons, drug addiction, unemployment, and economic motives, are the more obvious circumstances leading to crime; but modern societal stress, breakdown of family life, deviant role models, threats of nuclear war and the confusion in values which produce unstable feelings and distorted ideas, all contribute to aggravate violence among youth.

Cancer, which is not a single disease but a spectrum of diseases that includes more than 100 kinds, is characterized by the unrestrained growth of cells. Cells naturally grow and multiply, but in a healthy body this growth is controlled by a complex series of regulatory mechanisms. Cancer occurs when this regulation fails and cell division goes haywire. In most cancer cases, unrestrained growth leads to the formation of tumours which spread into and often kill normal tissue. When not attended to, such a tumour (which is called malignant) ordinarily leads to death, but there can be a long delay between its onset and the appearance of obvious symptoms.

In connective tissues (such as bone, cartilage, tendon, muscle) cancers are called sarcomas; in epithelial tissues (such as skin, bladder, lung, breast) they are called carcinomas; and in cells of the blood system they are named leukaemias.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the industrialized world and is rapidly becoming a major disease in the Third World as well. Though the aetiology is still undetermined, certain cancers are linked to certain environmental and lifestyle factors such as carcinogenic substances in the work environment, cigarette smoking, excess exposure to the sun, alcohol, diets high in fat and low in fibre, and stress.

Speculating about the origins of cancer, many oncologists describe a cancer personality - repressed and depressed - and draw attention to the loss or bereavement which commonly precedes the onset of the disease. Lung cancer patients are most often people unable to express strong emotions. Cancer of the cervix occurs most often among women with a tendency to helplessness or a sense of hopeless frustration derived from some unresolved conflict in the preceding six months. Overall, the most important factors in the development of malignancy are: a loss of raison d'être; an inability to express anger or resentment; marked self dislike and distrust; and most significantly, loss of an important emotional relationship.

The consumption of animal flesh (whether meat, fowl or fish) or the use of animal products (leather goods, products of bone-processing, eggs and cheese) is unethical, unaesthetic, uneconomic, and without nutritional justification. It may be considered unethical because human beings should not needlessly kill sentient animals. The consumption of animal flesh is not the most economic method of obtaining the highest yield of nutritional products from agricultural land. The economic and social costs of meat consumption include hugely inefficient use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution from livestock faeces, rising rates of heart disease and other degenerative illnesses and spreading destruction of forests.

Trade protectionism is the result of governments acting to save certain sectors of their economies from foreign competition. The impact of this on the fledgling industries is considerable but they are in no position to retaliate. Protectionist policies have also been directed by developed countries against each other, but this is usually carefully negotiated to avoid retaliation.

Plant disease can be simply defined as any deviation from normal vegetative health and growth; and more scientifically as an injurious physiological process caused by the continued irritation of a primary causal factor, exhibited through abnormal cellular activity and expressed in characteristic pathological conditions called symptoms.

Some diseases can be attributed to inanimate and nonparasitic factors such as adverse environmental conditions. Physical and mechanical damage brought about by violent storms, improper cultivation practices, etc, besides being disastrous in themselves, may prepare the way for widespread infection by other disease agents. Living agents such as insects not only interfere directly with plant metabolism, but also frequently carry other disease agents from plant. A number of economically important disease-causing factors are plants themselves: bacteria and fungi. Algae are responsible for some relatively unimportant tropical plant diseases. Among flowering plants only a few forms are of occasional importance. Several slime moulds, numerous viruses and nematodes are also important agents of plant disease.

The symptoms of plant diseases may be death (necrosis) of all or any part of the plant, loss of turgor (wilt), overgrowths, stunting, or various other changes in the structure of the plant. A rapid death of foliage is often called blight, whereas localized necrosis results in leaf spots. Necrosis of stems or bark results in cankers. Overgrowths composed primarily of undifferentiated cells are called galls, or, less commonly, tumours. Chlorosis (lack of chlorophyll in varying degree) is the most common nonstructural evidence of disease. In leaves it may occur in stripes or in irregular spots (mosaic). These symptoms grade into one another and overlap. Often two or more bacteria, fungi, viruses or a combination of them together attack a plant to produce much greater damage than that resulting from a single agent alone. Furthermore, a plant which is already suffering from a deficient environment is more susceptible to attack by such agents.