Lack of empathy, of which bullying is the most violent expression, is a critical issue facing our youth today. To many educators, the problem has almost taken on a life of its own, and surfaces in the classrooms, hallways and playgrounds in the form.
Rolling Prairie, IN, November 14, 2010 - Lack of empathy, of which bullying is the most violent expression, is a critical issue facing our youth today. To many educators, the problem has almost taken on a life of its own, and surfaces in the classrooms, hallways and playgrounds in the form of students being mean to each other.
University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research analyzed 72 studies on the empathy of nearly 14,000 college students between 1979 and 2009. Their report shows today's college students are about 40 percent lower in empathy than students two or three decades earlier.
Out of this concern, and the near loss of a teen to suicide, youth advocate, Betty Hoeffner, president of the youth self-esteem and empathy-building nonprofit, Hey U.G.L.Y. - Unique Gifted Lovable You - partnered with educators and curriculum writers to develop social and empathy learning programs geared for students aged 9 to 19. Called Empathy Learning Activity Plans (ELAPs) the nonprofit built in mandated learning standards in areas such as math, English, health and social studies to help teachers easily incorporate into their existing curriculums.
Health & Wellness
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Heart broken: Researchers believe the pain of losing a loved one can kill
Heart broken: Researchers believe the pain of losing a loved one can kill
The immense grief of losing a loved one means that many people die within three years of their husband or wife.
Researchers at St Andrews University have identified a 'widowhood' effect which they claim does not just affect elderly couples, also occurs amongst those in their 30s and 40s.
They found that 40 per cent of women and 26 per cent of men died within three years of their partner.
The study, which will be published next year in the journal Epidemiology, identified a range of causes including cancer, heart diseases, accidents and suicides.
© Oblivion999
But there's a particular type of fast food that goes back just a half-century, dating to the post-war rise of car-centered cities and suburbs. It relies on regimentation, weird additives, flavor "engineering," super-cheap (but highly subsidized) ingredients, and super-expensive marketing. I won't bore you with why I think this type of fast food sucks; wouldn't want to be labeled a food snob!
But let's talk about that marketing. Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has just put out an extraordinary report [PDF] on fast-food industry marketing.
Here's the report's headline number: $4.2 billion, which is how much the industry spent marketing its wares in 2010.
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Washington - US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners that are being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.
"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.
"No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.
© Pat Roque/Associated Press
A store attendant arranges toys made by Mattel. The toymaker announced the recall of toys with small magnets or lead paint on Aug. 14, 2007.
A store attendant arranges toys made by Mattel. The toymaker announced the recall of toys with small magnets or lead paint on Aug. 14, 2007.
Too much exposure to the metal can cause serious illness. In young children, it can impair neurological development.
In its lead strategy, Health Canada identifies four categories of consumer products that children are likely to come into contact with and ingest in significant quantities, some of which may contain lead:
- Products intended to be or likely to be placed in or near the mouth, such as pacifiers, baby bottle nipples, crib toys, mouthpieces of musical instruments.
- Children's equipment, furniture, toys and other items intended for use by a child in learning or play, such as strollers and high chairs.
- Products intended for use in preparing, serving or storing food or beverages, such as cutlery, tableware and cooking utensils.
- Consumer products intended to be or likely to be melted or burned in enclosed spaces, such as candles and fuel for indoor lanterns.
They're arriving at airports across the country. Some complain they are invasive and an assault on our privacy. But are body scanners at security checkpoints dangerous?
Some scientists and two major airline pilots unions contend not enough is known about the effects of the small doses of X-ray radiation emitted by one of the two types of airport scanning machines.
The Transportation Security Administration's advanced imaging technology machines use two separate means of creating images of passengers -- backscatter X-ray technology and millimeter-wave technology.
Some scientists and two major airline pilots unions contend not enough is known about the effects of the small doses of X-ray radiation emitted by one of the two types of airport scanning machines.
The Transportation Security Administration's advanced imaging technology machines use two separate means of creating images of passengers -- backscatter X-ray technology and millimeter-wave technology.
© AFP/Getty Images
Dose of radiation may be 20 times higher than estimated
Dose of radiation may be 20 times higher than estimated
As we wrote in our newsletter this week: scanners and backscatter devices are under pressure from all sides. Despite the best efforts of Michael Chertoff and the TSA, word is out that Backscatter X-ray scanner technology that is being used in airports is exceedingly harmful, along with being an invasion of privacy.
An increasing number of people are becoming informed and are deciding to opt-out of the radiation and the X-rated detail of you and your family. Naturally, this has forced the TSA to threaten more invasive physical searches, as they try to coerce people into taking the "easier" option. This is a sign of desperation, since the success of these machines in airports will determine the future of their presence throughout America. They already are being deployed in street roving vans, and are most likely headed to a mall near you if the public doesn't continue to raise its voice.
The study led by Hyon K. Choi, M.D., Dr.P.H., of the Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues found an association between fructose consumption and increased risk of gout in women.
The findings were also presented at the American College of Rheumatology annual scientific meeting.
Gout, which has something to do with uric acid, is a common and very painful inflammatory arthritis and fructose-rich beverages like sugar-sweetened sodas and orange juice are known to increase uric acid levels in the blood, which suggests that using fructose beverages may increase gout risk, according to the background information in the study report.
"Risk Assessment in the hands of centralized corruptible agencies is no protection for consumers as the disease and health epidemic in the U.S. linked to over processed, industrial foods show. Even while the U.S. is at the epicenter of the food related public health crises, the U.S. government is trying to export its Food laws which deregulate the industry and over regulate ordinary citizens and small enterprise. This deregulation of the big and toxic and over regulation of the small and ecological is at the core of
Food Fascism ..."
The Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, is equally straightforward:
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."What's the truth?
Michael Taylor, the Monsanto executive who gave this country rBGH, deregulated GMOs, and kept GMOs all unlabeled, thanks to Obama, is "The Food Safety Czar" at the FDA.
That Czar, "[t]he person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history," has been using "food safety" as a weapon against small local farms and local food co-ops. (For any who missed the Rawesome Raid, here's the video on youtube.)
"Why I believe that giving up milk is the key to beating breast cancer..."I had no alternative but to die or to try to find a cure for myself. I am a scientist - surely there was a rational explanation for this cruel illness that affects one in 12 women in the UK?
I had suffered the loss of one breast, and undergone radiotherapy. I was now receiving painful chemotherapy, and had been seen by some of the country's most eminent specialists. But, deep down, I felt certain I was facing death. I had a loving husband, a beautiful home and two young children to care for. I desperately wanted to live.
Fortunately, this desire drove me to unearth the facts, some of which were known only to a handful of scientists at the time.
Anyone who has come into contact with breast cancer will know that certain risk factors - such as increasing age, early onset of womanhood, late onset of menopause and a family history of breast cancer - are completely out of our control. But there are many risk factors, which we can control easily.
