Kari Lydersen
AlterNetThu, 10 Jul 2008 22:29 UTC
The idea of burning waste tires for energy is catching on, and one city is hoping to build the biggest facility yet. But some residents are concerned.
Green is not the color most people would associate with burning tires.
But that's how developers of a proposed tire-fueled power plant in hardscrabble Erie, Pa., describe their project. They say the plant, which would turn 900 tons of tires each day into a 90-megawatt power supply, would be an ecologically beneficial investment since it would keep tires out of landfills or illegal dumps and generate electricity with one-tenth the emissions of traditional coal-fired power plants.
The obesity epidemic is largely of our own making. The solution has to come from healthy activities, not the pharmaceutical industry.
One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. And the ones that mother gives you soon will control your cholesterol.
Childhood long ago ceased to involve idyllic hours chasing small animals through the field or even careening around the neighborhood on a bicycle. But do we really need to liven it up with Lipitor?
To the cocktail of drugs young children already are taking, the American Academy of Pediatrics is now recommending that some kids as young as 8 might benefit from cholesterol-reducing medication. The reasons are too familiar: Our kids are growing too fat (just like their parents), eating lots of the wrong foods (just like their parents), getting insufficient exercise (just like their parents), and showing the warning signs of serious future health problems -- high cholesterol levels -- that are precursors to heart attacks (just like they are for their parents).
As unwelcome as they are, higher gasoline prices do come with a plus side - fewer deaths from car accidents, says a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
An analysis of yearly vehicle deaths compared to gas prices found death rates drop significantly as people slow down and drive less. If gas remains at $4 a gallon or higher for a year or more, traffic deaths could drop by more than 1,000 per month nationwide, said Michael Morrisey, Ph.D., director of UAB's Lister Hill Center for Health Policy and a co-author on the new findings.
In the first in-depth study of its kind ever done in the Southeastern United States, researchers at the University of Georgia and Emory University have discovered a link between thunderstorms and asthma attacks in the metro Atlanta area that could have a "significant public health impact."
While a relationship between thunderstorms and increased hospital visits for asthma attacks has been known and studied worldwide for years, this is the first time a team of climatologists and epidemiologists has ever conducted a detailed study of the phenomenon in the American South.
The team, studying a database consisting of more than 10 million emergency room visits in some 41 hospitals in a 20-county area in and around Atlanta for the period between 1993 and 2004, found a three percent higher incidence of visits for asthma attacks on days following thunderstorms.
The biggest U.S. outbreak of measles since 1997 has sickened 127 people in 15 states, most of whom were not vaccinated against the highly contagious viral illness, federal health officials said on Wednesday.
The outbreak was driven by travelers who became infected overseas -- 10 countries are implicated -- then returned to the United States ill and infected others, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thanks to a vaccination program dating to 1963, measles is no longer endemic in the United States, with ongoing transmission of the virus declared eliminated in 2000.
IN RECENT months health authorities have implored parents to be responsible and vaccinate their children.
As well as whooping cough, diptheria, tetanus, polio and German measles (rubella), vaccines are now urged against hepatitis B and the "new" disease Haemophilis Influenzae b (Hib), which causes a host of invasive infections including the brain disease meningitis.
However, leading doctors and scientists here and overseas are seriously questioning the value of mass vaccination programs and claim vaccinations may in fact be doing more harm than good by sabotaging our natural immune systems.
A total of 135 people in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in East Siberia have been diagnosed with yersiniosis, a bacterial stomach infection, as of Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for the local consumer safety regulator said.
Of the 135, thirty four children and four adults remain in hospital.
Yersiniosis is an infection contracted through eating undercooked food or liquids contaminated by the bacteria. The disease, which usually affects young children, typically develops from four to seven days after exposure and may last up to three weeks.
Ellen Wulfhorst
ReutersThu, 10 Jul 2008 11:36 UTC
Get out of the way, road rage. Here comes desk rage.
Anger in the workplace -- employees and employers who are grumpy, insulting, short-tempered or worse -- is shockingly common and likely growing as Americans cope with woes of rising costs, job uncertainty or overwhelming debt, experts say.
"It runs gamut from just rudeness up to pretty extreme abusive behaviors," said Paul Spector, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. "The severe cases of fatal violence get a lot of press but in some ways this is more insidious because it affects millions of people."
Kate Devlin
TelegraphTue, 17 Jun 2008 05:29 UTC
Scientists may have discovered the reason why some people always look glum.
Limited or very specific facial expressions could be explained by the fact that some humans have fewer muscles in their face than others, research from the University of Portsmouth suggests.
The findings could perhaps explain why certain people, such as the character Victor Meldrew in the television series One Foot in The Grave, seem to have a permanent scowl.
Babies born to women with low levels of vitamin D during pregnancy may be at increased risk for tooth enamel defects and early childhood tooth decay, a Canadian study finds.
Researchers at the University of Manitoba analysed the vitamin D levels of 206 women in their second trimester of pregnancy and found only 21 (10.5 per cent) of the women had adequate vitamin D levels. The women's levels of vitamin D were related to the frequency of milk consumption and prenatal vitamin use.
