Health & Wellness
Nine out of 10 elementary students have been bullied by their peers, according to a simple questionnaire developed by researchers at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine. What's more, nearly six in 10 children surveyed in the preliminary study reported participating in some type of bullying themselves in the past year.
The group found that the most commonly observed complication was preputio-glandular fusion that was seen in 25 cases (52%.). The other complications were as follows: meatal stenosis in 11 (23%); urethral fistula in 5 (10.4%); partial glandular amputation in 4 (8%); and a distal urethral fistula in 3 (6%). Lysis of adhesions and revisions were performed in all cases of preputio-glandular fusion. The patients with meatal stenosis underwent meatotomies. The urethral fistula cases were repaired by simple closure and not a hypospadias type repair. Partial glans amputations were patched only with buccal mucosa. There was one patient with a completely open distal urethra that appeared to be more of a megameatus in my interpretation that was repaired by a Mathieu in a tabularized incised plate urethroplasty type technique.
About 3% of people, or 6.8 million adults, were morbidly obese in 2005, up from 2% or 4.2 million people in 2000, says Roland Sturm, an economist with the RAND Corp., a non-profit think tank.
The great majority of us will never understand the sensation which the author Lynne Duffy wrote about in her work Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens. In spite of that, according to recent studies by Dr. Jamie Ward of College University, London, we all possess a small degree of this rare quality of intermixing images, sounds and other sensations, called "synesthesia."
Synesthesia, branded in the past as a result of mental disorder, drug addiction, or excessive imagination, today is studied in the field of neurology as a peculiar capacity possessed by some individuals for associating, before a determinate stimulus, sensations apparently unconnected or belonging to another sense. It is such that synesthetes can hear a certain sound when contemplating a work of art, evoke a certain taste when touching the surface of something, or smell a characteristic aroma when listening to a melody. Strange? Yes; but real without a doubt.
Current guidelines advise individuals with hypertension (high blood pressure) to eat more fruits and vegetables, according to background information in the article. Compounds known as polyphenols or flavonoids in fruits and vegetables are thought to contribute to their beneficial effects on blood pressure and cardiovascular risk. "Tea and cocoa products account for the major proportion of total polyphenol intake in Western countries," the authors write. "However, cocoa and tea are currently not implemented in cardioprotective or anti-hypertensive dietary advice, although both have been associated with lower incidences of cardiovascular events."
Dirk Taubert, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany, conducted a meta-analysis of 10 previously published trials, five of cocoa's effects on blood pressure and five involving tea. All results were published between 1966 and 2006, involved at least 10 adults and lasted a minimum of seven days. The studies were either randomized trials, in which some participants were randomly assigned to cocoa or tea groups and some to control groups, or used a crossover design, in which participants' blood pressure was assessed before and after consuming cocoa products or tea.
Roxarsone, the most common arsenic-based additive used in chicken feed, is used to promote growth, kill parasites and improve pigmentation of chicken meat. In its original form, roxarsone is relatively benign. But under certain anaerobic conditions, within live chickens and on farm land, the compound is converted into more toxic forms of inorganic arsenic. Arsenic has been linked to bladder, lung, skin, kidney and colon cancer, while low-level exposures can lead to partial paralysis and diabetes, the article notes.
Use of roxarsone has become a topic of increasing controversy. A growing number of food suppliers have stopped using the compound, including the nation's largest poultry producer, Tyson Foods, according to the article. Still, about 70 percent of the 9 billion broiler chickens produced annually in the U.S. are fed a diet containing roxarsone, the article points out.
The difference between the two groups -- those eating at a table where leftover bones accumulated compared with those whose leftovers were removed -- was greater for men than for women.
"The results suggest that people restrict their consumption when evidence of food consumed is available to signal how much food they have eaten," said Brian Wansink, the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell, and author of the 2006 book, "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think."
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©AP Photo/ Eugene Hoshiko |
A dog helps his owner carry a grocery basket Thursday Feb. 12, 2007, in Shanghai, China. |
WASHINGTON - Pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical may have sickened or killed 39,000 cats and dogs nationwide, based on an extrapolation from data released Monday by one of the nation's largest chains of veterinary hospitals.
Comment: As in childhood, it is in adulthood. Bullies grow up and manage to get into government with dire consequences for the world population. The study of grown-up 'bullies' in power is better known as Political Ponerology.