Exercise Combination Cuts Blood Sugar in Type 2 Diabetics

WASHINGTON—Combining aerobic exercise and resistance training lowered blood-sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes, a new study has found.
The same improvement in glycemic levels wasn't seen among patients who performed aerobic exercise or resistance training alone, according to the study, which will be published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Patients who walked and lifted weights also lost more fat and trimmed their waistlines more than people who did just one type of exercise even though the time devoted to exercising was similar—findings researchers said apply to everyone.
Although it's accepted that regular exercise provides big benefits for people with Type 2 diabetes and helps many reduce the use of diabetes medications, the exact exercise type has been unclear.

Flying Snakes, Caught on Camera

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — Five related species of tree-dwelling snakes found in Southeast and South Asia may just be the worst nightmares of ophidiophobes (people who have abnormal fears of snakes). Not only are they snakes, but they can "fly" -- flinging themselves off their perches, flattening their bodies, and gliding from tree to tree or to the ground.

Environmental Toxin May Play Important Role in Multiple Sclerosis: Hypertension Drug Possible Treatment

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2010) — Researchers have found evidence that an environmental pollutant may play an important role in causing multiple sclerosis and that a hypertension drug might be used to treat the disease.
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The compound is an environmental toxin found in air pollutants including tobacco smoke and auto exhaust. Acrolein also is produced within the body after nerve cells are damaged. Previous studies by this research team found that neuronal death caused by acrolein can be prevented by administering the drug hydralazine, an FDA-approved medication used to treat hypertension.
The new findings show that hydralazine also delays onset of multiple sclerosis in mice and reduces the severity of symptoms by neutralizing acrolein.

Why EHRs aren’t meaningful to doctors and hospitals

Another good post on KevinMD blog which illustrates quite accurately the problem with Electronic Records implementation. In my view the excessive paper documentation required already decreases face to face time with patients. This will get worse as the data has to get inputted into computers. I have already seen many difficulties in this regard with the implementation of such records in our local hospital.
Uvealblues

Electronic health record (EHR) advocates in Washington don’t seem to get it. They don’t seem to understand that hospitals and doctors aren’t rushing to install EHRs because many EHRs, despite the constant talk that EHRs are a prerequisite for good care. Caregivers are not walking the talk, because in their view, EHRs,

• aren’t ready for prime time
• slow productivity
• decrease revenues,
• show scant returns on investment
• don’t talk to one another
• distract from time spent with patients
• are limited as communication tools

Quinine, artemisinin and our debt to traditional medical healers

Kevin MD blog always has great content, like the story below.
Uvealblues

The history of two modern pharmaceuticals—quinine and artemisinin serve to illustrate our enormous debt to traditional medical healers.

I Love LIving Life. I am Happy

I may have posted this on my blog, but it is worth reposting!
UvealBlues

What’s Next: Curling Up with E-Readers

Could electronic reading devices catalyze a new culture of global literacy? That’s the idea behind Worldreader.org, a start-up nonprofit with world-changing aspirations.

NKANDABBWE, Zambia — Hundreds of angry coal miners pushed toward the locked gate at Shaft 3, shouting and cursing as they neared the mine’s Chinese managers, who understood neither the English nor the Tonga words of the mob. As the workers butted up against the fence, the bosses grew more fearful and finally two fired their shotguns.
The Zambian miners scrambled in terror. Bodies pivoted, jounced and stumbled. Boston Munakazela did not know he was hit until he suddenly fell over and saw the blood on his chest and arms. Vincent Chenjele was knocked off his bicycle with a hole ripped in his belly. Wisborn Simutombo, bleeding from his arms, legs and stomach, pleaded with friends to pull him to safety across the coal-dusted road.
“We weren’t going to hurt them, but maybe the Chinese didn’t understand that,” Mr. Simutombo, 25, said recently, displaying scars left by the spray of shotgun pellets. “They were quick to shoot us though, and in Zambia the Chinese can get away with anything.”

As in many other African nations, the Chinese are an enormous economic presence in this impoverished but mineral-rich country, and their treatment of local workers has become an explosive political issue, presenting an awkward balancing act for governments desperate for foreign investment. “We’re an economy in transition, and we can’t afford to lose the cow that gives us milk today,” said Labor Minister Austin Liato.

Epilepsy’s Big, Fat Miracle

Evelyn, Sam’s twin sister Beatrice and I don’t eat this way. But Sam has epilepsy, and the food he eats is controlling most of his seizures (he used to have as many as 130 a day). The diet, which drastically reduces the amount of carbohydrates he takes in, tricks his body into a starvation state in which it burns fat, and not carbs, for fuel. Remarkably, and for reasons that are still unclear, this process — called ketosis — has an antiepileptic effect. He has been eating this way for almost two years.
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But what we are doing is mainstream science. Elizabeth Thiele, the doctor who prescribed and oversees Sam’s diet, is the head of the pediatric epilepsy program at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. In fact, the regimen, known as the ketogenic diet, is now offered at more than 100 hospitals in the United States, Canada and other countries. We’re not opposed to drugs; we tried many. But Sam’s seizures were drug-resistant, and keto, the universal shorthand, often provides seizure control when drugs do not.


Link

The Girl Effect

How to Make the Dollar Sound Again

BY disclosing a plan to conjure $600 billion to support the sagging economy, the Federal Reserve affirmed the interesting fact that dollars can be conjured. In the digital age, you don’t even need a printing press.

Related

• Times Topic: Gold Standard

This was on Nov. 3. A general uproar ensued, with the dollar exchange rate weakening and the price of gold surging. And when, last Monday, the president of the World Bank suggested, almost diffidently, that there might be a place for gold in today’s international monetary arrangements, you could hear a pin drop.

Let the economists gasp: The classical gold standard, the one that was in place from 1880 to 1914, is what the world needs now. In its utility, economy and elegance, there has never been a monetary system like it.

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This is why Mr. Bernanke has set out to materialize an additional $600 billion in the next eight months.

The intended consequences of this intervention include lower interest rates, higher stock prices, a perkier Consumer Price Index and more hiring. The unintended consequences remain to be seen. A partial list of unwanted possibilities includes an overvalued stock market (followed by a crash), a collapsing dollar, an unscripted surge in consumer prices (followed by higher interest rates), a populist revolt against zero-percent savings rates and wall-to-wall European tourists on the sidewalks of Manhattan.

As for interest rates, they are already low enough to coax another cycle of imprudent lending and borrowing. It gives one pause that the Fed, with all its massed brain power, failed to anticipate even a little of the troubles of 2007-09.

Burmese Dissident Is Freed After Long Detention

Let's hope she stays free!

YANGON — Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was freed from seven and a half years of house arrest on Saturday and was greeted at the gate of her compound by thousands of jubilant supporters.

Seeing the Natural World With a Physicist’s Lens

Yet for all these apparent flaws, the basic building blocks of humaneyesight turn out to be practically perfect. Scientists have learned that the fundamental units of vision, the photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or phabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped.

“Light is quantized, and you can’t count half a photon,” said William Bialek, a professor of physics and integrative genomics at Princeton University. “This is as far as it goes.”

So while it can take a few minutes to adjust to the dark after being fooled by a flood of artificial light, our eyes can indeed seize the prize, and spot a dim salting of lone photons glittering on the horizon.

Photoreceptors exemplify the principle of optimization, an idea, gaining ever wider traction among researchers, that certain key features of the natural world have been honed by evolution to the highest possible peaks of performance, the legal limits of what Newton, Maxwell, Pauli, Planck et Albert will allow.

Chemicals in Fast Food Wrappers Show Up in Human Blood

TORONTO, Ontario, Canada, November 8, 2010 (ENS) - Chemicals used to keep grease from leaking through fast food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags are migrating into food, being ingested by people and showing up as contaminants in blood, according to new research at the University of Toronto. The contaminants are perfluoroalkyls, stable, synthetic chemicals that repel oil, grease, and water. They are used in surface protection products such as carpet and clothing treatments and coating for paper and cardboard packaging.
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"In this study we clearly demonstrate that the current use of PAPs in food contact applications does result in human exposure to PFCAs, including PFOA," said Mabury, the lead researcher and a professor in the university's Department of Chemistry.
Elevated levels of PFOA in blood have been associated with changes in sex hormones and cholesterol, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances. Exposure to PFOA also has resulted in early death and delayed development in mice and rat pups, the agency says.
Rats that ingested PFOA for a long time developed tumors. However, based on differences between rats and humans, scientists have not determined for certain whether this could also occur in humans, the agency says.
"We found the concentrations of PFOA from PAP metabolism to be significant and concluded that the metabolism of PAPs could be a major source of human exposure to PFOA, as well as other PFCAs," said Mabury.

Don't Give This to Your Daughter - Despite What Your Doctor Says

It's been four years since Gardasil debuted as a blockbuster vaccine with sales that rocketed to over $1.1 billion in its first nine months. Touted as a wonder vaccine that would end cervical cancer, it was supposed to be the savior of both mankind and Merck's Vioxx-damaged bottom line. But now, according to CNN Money, it's a dud.
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he real reason Gardasil is a flop is that people have become educated about this vaccine.
They've looked at the science and weighed the risks vs. the supposed benefits, and have made a choice not to get it for themselves or their children.
The word is out: despite what the CDC would have you believe, Gardasil's safety record is in serious question. As of September 28, 2010, the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has more than 18,000 Gardasil-related adverse events listed in it, including at least 65 deaths.
As a vaccine used in the developed world, the science speaks for itself: Gardasil can't – and never will -- replace Pap smears, which are the reason that the incidence of cervical cancer is so low in the United States after decades of including pap smears in routine medical care for women.
Today, cervical cancer is not even in the top 10 cancers that kill American women every year.
As a vaccine for children, it doesn't make sense to vaccinate to try to prevent an infection that is cleared from your body without any negative effects within two years in most healthy persons, and is not transmitted in a school setting like other airborne diseases that are easily transmitted in crowded conditions.
Gardasil is designed to prevent only two of at least 15 strains of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer in those who do not clear the virus from their body within two years and become chronically infected.
There is also some evidence that Gardasil-induced immunity may wane after about five years. Pre-licensure clinical trials did not follow young girls or women for decades to find out if the vaccine does, in fact, prevent cervical cancer.
What went wrong with Gardasil is that this may be a vaccine that set many more health care consumers on a course of self-education that helped them make an informed decision about whether or not to take it – and there are several good reasons why many are deciding NOT to take it.

Valproic acid at half normal dose shows benefit in patients with retinitis pigmentosa

Results of a preliminary clinical analysis suggest that valproic acid may be an effective treatment for photoreceptor loss associated with retinitis pigmentosa.

Protecting Your Home From Afar With a Robot

When Robert Oschler, a programmer, leaves his home, he knows it is secure. And if he ever has cause for concern, he can open his laptop and survey the house through the eyes of his watchdogs.
His robot, a modified version of the Rovio from WowWee, has a camera, microphone and speakers atop a three-wheeled platform. From anywhere with a Net connection, he can send his robot zipping around the house, returning a video signal along the way.
“As creepy as it sounds, you could even talk to the guy and say, ‘Get out of there. There’s nothing valuable. I’m calling the police,’ ” he said.

AMA Warns of ‘Catastrophe’ Without 13-Month ‘Doc Fix’

Last June Congress passed a “doc fix” to hold off drastic cuts in Medicare payments to doctors — but only for six months.
Those six months are almost up, and now there’s a 23% reimbursement cut due to kick in Dec. 1 and a 25% cut on Jan. 1, according to the American Medical Association. Once again, the AMA is warning of the effects if Congress doesn’t come up with a longer-term solution.
If Congress doesn’t come up with a fix before it adjourns for the Thanksgiving holiday, it will be “catastrophic for seniors who rely on the Medicare program,” AMA President Cecil Wilson said at a press conference in San Diego, where the physicians’ group is holding a meeting. The AMA wants at least a 13-month patch for the payment problem.

Relying on these piecemeal fixes does nothing to address the larger problem: the payment formula being used now consists of automatic, across-the-board reimbursement cuts if spending reaches a certain level. No one likes that formula, but it would be very expensive to revamp permanently.

The Science Behind Why We Love Ice Cream

Why people prefer certain foods over others depends largely on a combination of taste and texture. While taste sensations are fairly well understood, scientists are just beginning to unravel the mystery of food texture.

Now, researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia have found that an enzyme in saliva called amylase, which breaks down starch into liquid, could play a key role in determining the appeal of various textures of food. A new genetic study shows that people produce strikingly different amounts of amylase, and that the more of the enzyme people have in their mouth the faster they can liquefy starchy foods.

Gallery: Military’s Freakiest Medical Projects

Some of the Pentagon's extreme medical innovations have already debuted in the war zone. And with myriad applications outside of combat, these advances in military medicine mean that revolutionary changes for civilian care aren't far behind

Study Says Drowsy Drivers Are Involved in 17% of Fatal Crashes

Study Says Drowsy Drivers Are Involved in 17% of Fatal Crashes

Hard-to-read fonts easier to retain

PRINCETON (US) —Ideas published in a hard-to-read typeface are harder to learn, but easier to remember.

Misremembering Our Predictions Blinds Us to Past Forecasting Errors

An ever-deepening academic literature shows our utter inability to predict what will make us happy or sad. Add to that, however, new work which shows that we also don't remember, ex post, what made us happy or sad -- or if we even felt anything at all. It's such magnificent obliviousness.

Generosity Might Keep Us Health

Psychologist Liz Dunn spoke with us from the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine, about the link between greed and long-term health. Christie Nicholson reports

Do Cortisone Shots Actually Make Things Worse?

But that cautionary experiment and others didn’t slow the ascent of cortisone (also known as corticosteroids). It had such a magical, immediate effect against  pain. Today cortisone shots remain a standard, much-requested treatment for tennis elbow and other tendon problems.

But a major new review article, published last Friday in The Lancet, should revive and intensify the doubts about cortisone’s efficacy. The review examined the results of nearly four dozen randomized trials, which enrolled thousands of people with tendon injuries, particularly tennis elbow, but also shoulder and Achilles-tendon pain. The reviewers determined that, for most of those who suffered from tennis elbow, cortisone injections did, as promised, bring fast and significant pain relief, compared with doing nothing or following a regimen of physical therapy. The pain relief could last for weeks.

But when the patients were re-examined at 6 and 12 months, the results were substantially different. Overall, people who received cortisone shots had a much lower rate of full recovery than those who did nothing or who underwent physical therapy. They also had a 63 percent higher risk of relapse than people who adopted the time-honored wait-and-see approach. The evidence for cortisone as a treatment for other aching tendons, like sore shoulders and Achilles-tendon pain, was slight and conflicting, the review found. But in terms of tennis elbow, the shots seemed to actually be counterproductive. 
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But in the decades since, numerous studies have shown, persuasively, that these overuse injuries do not involve inflammation. When animal or human tissues from these types of injuries are examined, they do not contain the usual biochemical markers of inflammation. Instead, the injury seems to be degenerative. The fibers within the tendons fray. Today the injuries usually are referred to as tendinopathies, or diseased tendons.

The Claim: Lying on Your Left Side Eases Heartburn

THE BOTTOM LINE Lying on your right side seems to aggravate heartburn.

Big Insurance, Big Medicine

ObamaCare is already driving a wave of health-care consolidation—and higher costs. 

ObamaCare's once and future harms have been well chronicled, but the major effects so far are less obvious and arguably more important: A wave of consolidation is washing over the health markets, and the result is going to be higher costs.
The turn toward consolidation among insurance companies is not new, and neither is it among doctors, hospitals and other providers. Yet the health bill has accelerated these trends, as all sides race to anticipate and manage political risk and regulatory uncertainty. This dynamic is leading to much larger hospital systems and physician groups, and fewer insurers dominated by a handful of national conglomerates. ObamaCare was sold using the language of choice and competition, but it is actually reducing both.

 

Scenes from Thailand

The last time we focused on Thailand, the government crackdown on Red Shirt protesters was taking place in Bangkok. Since then, much of the damaged part of downtown Bangkok has been repaired, and the Red Shirts continue their protests both in the streets and online. Thailand has also been hit with severe flooding, struggled with terrorist attacks, and celebrated Queen Sirikit's 78th birthday. Collected here a a handful of recent photographs from around Thailand. (31 photos total)

Seeking Proof in Near-Death Claims

At 18 hospitals in the U.S. and U.K., researchers have suspended pictures, face up, from the ceilings in emergency-care areas. The reason: to test whether patients brought back to life after cardiac arrest can recall seeing the images during an out-of-body experience.
People who have these near-death experiences often describe leaving their bodies and watching themselves being resuscitated from above, but verifying such accounts is difficult. The images would be visible only to people who had done that.
"We've added these images as objective markers," says Sam Parnia, a critical-care physician and lead investigator of the study, which hopes to include 1,500 resuscitated patients. Dr. Parnia declined to say whether any have accurately described the images so far, but says he hopes to report preliminary results next year.
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Yet the fundamental debate rages on: Are these glimpses of an afterlife, are they hallucinations or are they the random firings of an oxygen-starved brain?
"There are always skeptics, but there are millions of 'experiencers' who know what happened to them, and they don't care what anybody else says," says Diane Corcoran, president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, a nonprofit group in Durham, N.C. The organization publishes the Journal of Near-Death Studies and maintains support groups in 47 states.
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Several follow-up studies have found that people undergo profound personality changes after near-death experiences—becoming more altruistic, less materialistic, more intuitive and no longer fearing death. But some do suffer alienation from spouses or friends who don't understand their transformation.
Other relatives understand all too well.
Raymond Moody, who first coined the term near-death experience in his 1975 book "Life After Life," explores the even stranger phenomenon of "shared death experiences" in a new book, "Glimpses of Eternity." He recounts stories of friends, family and even medical personnel who say they also saw the light, the tunnel and accompanied the dying person partway on his or her journey.  "It's fairly common among physicians who are called to resuscitate someone they don't know—they say they've seen a spirit or apparition leave the body," says Dr. Moody.
Meanwhile, in his book, "Visions, Trips and Crowds," David Kessler, a veteran writer on grief and dying, reports that hospice patients frequently describe being visited by a deceased relative or having an out-of-body experience weeks before they actually die, a phenomenon called "near-death awareness."  While some skeptics dismiss such reports as hallucinations or wishful thinking, hospice workers generally report that the patients are otherwise perfectly lucid—and invariably less afraid of death afterward.

Lungs Can 'Taste' Dangerous Bacteria, Researchers Say

The same taste buds we have on the tongue to detect bitterness also exist on lung muscle so that the airways can "taste" dangerous illness-causing bacteria, according to new research published Sunday that could lead to better treatments for respiratory conditions.
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The finding "suggests that nature has designed multiple pathways to prevent things from going down the wrong way," said Y.S. Prakash, an airway biologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who wasn't involved in the work.

Dr. Liggett said that because bitter taste receptors are so effective at opening the airways, he estimated that a drug that targets taste receptors could be three times as effective as current respiratory medications on the market.

His group is now screening some of these compounds for ones that are potentially safe and effective and can be used in spray form rather than a pill to activate receptors in the lung.

Medicare Faulted on Surgery Evaluation

Researchers are casting doubt on Medicare's methods for trying to reduce surgical deaths and complications, suggesting the agency focus more on actual outcomes of surgeries than on how operations are conducted.

In a study published Monday, researchers at the University of Michigan said the better way to lower death and complication rates could well be to publicize such rates, hospital by hospital.

How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do

And that is one of the secrets of elite athletes, said Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York Road Runners, the group that puts on the ING New York City Marathon. They can keep going at a level of effort that seems impossible to maintain.

“Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running,” Ms. Wittenberg said.

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The mentality was I will do whatever it takes to win,” he added. “I was totally willing to have the worst pain. I was totally willing to do whatever it takes to win the race.”

But the question is, how do they do it? Can you train yourself to run, cycle, swim or do another sport at the edge of your body’s limits, or is that something that a few are born with, part of what makes them elites?

Sports doctors who have looked into the question say that, at the very least, most people could do a lot better if they knew what it took to do their best.

“Absolutely,” said Dr. Jeroen Swart, a sports medicine physician, exercise physiologist and champion cross-country mountain biker who works at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa.

“Some think elite athletes have an easy time of it,” Dr. Swart said in a telephone interview. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And as athletes improve — getting faster and beating their own records — “it never gets any easier,” Dr. Swart said. “You hurt just as much.”

But, he added, “Knowing how to accept that allows people to improve their performance.

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To find this motivation, the athletes must resist the feeling that they are too tired and have to slow down, he added. Instead, they have to concentrate on increasing the intensity of their effort. That, Dr. Swart said, takes “mental strength,” but “allows them to perform close to their maximal ability.”

Vision: A Quick High for Sex May Damage Vision

Users call them poppers: a class of chemicals called alkyl nitrites that can be inhaled for a quick high, or to enhance sexual pleasure. Now doctors in France are warning that they can also cause eye damage and impaired vision.

Antoine Dufour - Trilogie Acoustic Guitar

A replacement for walking sticks for the visually impaired

From Israeli designer, Norm Klopper

Deaf Cats Have Enhanced Vision

Recent research explains how the deaf can have extraordinary sight. 

Gene Sites Tied to Obesity Identified in New Research

An international research consortium says it has identified 18 new gene sites linked to obesity and 13 others associated with how fat is distributed in the body, advances that shed new light on the complex biology underlying one of the world's most pressing public-health problems.

Corruption in Afghanistan: An Aid Worker’s Experience

I think as aid workers we all accept that an uncorrupted social or economic transaction would be suspicious in its own way here. Most accounts of living or working in Afghanistan touch on corruption for a reason, after all, and I’ve learned that Afghans are as exhausted by it as we are.

It is more than the bribes offered to be seen sooner in a clinic, or those required to get access to appropriate and unexpired medicines, or those requested for an official’s signature on a cooperative agreement. It is actually the corruption of priorities that challenges the very core of what we’re trying to do, day to day.

Later

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?

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It’s hard to ignore the fact that all these tools are at root about imposing limits and narrowing options—in other words, about a voluntary abnegation of freedom. (Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.) But before we rush to overcome procrastination we should consider whether it is sometimes an impulse we should heed. The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: “Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.” In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point. The procrastinator’s challenge, and perhaps the philosopher’s, too, is to figure out which is which. ♦

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all#ixzz11Ue6bsxe

World divided over new scramble for African land

A World Bank report has confirmed that 45 million hectares of land in developing countries were bought in 2009, a tenfold jump from the previous decade.

Moreover, two-thirds of these controversial “land grabs” have been in Africa where critics say public and governmental institutions offer weak defences against western multinationals and Far Eastern state companies seeking farm land for food and biofuels.

Vdara ‘death ray’ captures imagination of world’s media

On warm days, Vdara’s glass-sheathed curve focuses the sun into an intense beam capable of melting plastic and burning skin.

MGM Resorts is examining the CityCenter hotel’s architectural flaw. Company executives call what it causes a “solar convergence phenomenon.”

The news media, however, prefer “death ray” — the term used by hotel employees — conjuring 1950s sci-fi and hysterical masses running for their lives. Death Ray ... Las Vegas ... It has proved too tempting for the world’s media. And the media can resist anything but temptation.

Hat tip to Gaye Nickles

Sensational Technology

Josh Silver designs some funny-looking eyeglasses that can easily and cheaply match prescriptions for those in even the poorest villages.

Las Vegas Faces Its Deepest Slide Since the 1940s

The nation’s gambling capital is staggering under a confluence of economic forces that has sent Las Vegas into what officials describe as its deepest economic rut since casinos first began rising in the desert here in the 1940s.

Even as city leaders remain hopeful that gambling revenues will rebound with the nation’s economy, experts project that it will not be enough to make up for an even deeper realignment that has taken place in the course of this recession: the collapse of the construction industry, which was the other economic pillar of the city and the state.

Unemployment in Nevada is now 14.4 percent, the highest in the nation and a stark contrast to the 3.8 percent unemployment rate here just 10 years ago; in Las Vegas, it is 14.7 percent.

August was the 44th consecutive month in which Nevada led the nation in housing foreclosures.

A Different Kind of Eyeglasses

Most people with this condition, called presbyopia, eventually give in and get reading glasses, bifocals or glasses with progressive lenses.

But what if there were another alternative that didn't require people to carry an extra set of glasses or have only part of their field of vision in focus at any one time?

View Full Image

Zoom Focus Eyewear LLC

TruFocal eyeglasses from Zoom Focus Eyewear

Zoom Focus Eyewear LLC, of Van Nuys, Calif., has just such an option, and with it won this year's Silver Innovation Award. The solution: eyeglasses, called TruFocals, that the wearer can manually adjust to give clear, undistorted vision whether reading a book, working on a computer or looking into the distance.

A Finding on Malaria Comes From Humble Origins

It has taken 10 years for Dr. Beatrice H. Hahn to build the world’s most comprehensive treasury of great ape dung samples.


And now it has yielded an unexpected gem: The most dangerous form of malaria originated in gorillas, not chimps, as had long been believed.

In and of itself, knowing that does nothing to help defeat malaria. But malaria experts were pleased to learn it — and it shows what wonders can be performed when you have 2,700 fecal samples in your freezers and a little imagination.

The Claim: Gargling With Salt Water Can Ease Cold Symptoms

THE FACTS Nothing but time can cure the common cold, but a simple cup of salt water might ease the misery this winter.
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In a randomized study published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2005, researchers recruited almost 400 healthy volunteers and followed them for 60 days during cold and flu season. Some of the subjects were told to gargle three times a day. At the end of the study period, the group that regularly gargled had a nearly 40 percent decrease in upper respiratory tract infectionscompared with the control group, and when they did get sick, “gargling tended to attenuate bronchial symptoms,” the researchers wrote.

Other studies have also found gargling helpful against sore throats and congestion.

Regimens: Massage Benefits Are More Than Skin Deep

Does a good massage do more than just relax your muscles? To find out, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles recruited 53 healthy adults and randomly assigned 29 of them to a 45-minute session of deep-tissue Swedish massage and the other 24 to a session of light massage.
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Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.

Volunteers who had the light massage experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment, than the Swedish massage group, and bigger decreases in adrenal corticotropin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.

Phys Ed: Can Exercise Make Kids Smarter?

In an experiment published last month, researchers recruited schoolchildren, ages 9 and 10, who lived near the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois and asked them to run on a treadmill. The researchers were hoping to learn more about how fitness affects the immature human brain. Animal studies had already established that, when given access to running wheels, baby rodents bulked up their brains, enlarging certain areas and subsequently outperforming sedentary pups on rodent intelligence tests. But studies of the effect of exercise on the actual shape and function of children’s brains had not yet been tried.
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Previous studies found that fitter kids generally scored better on such tests. And in this case, too, those children performed better on the tests. But the M.R.I.’s provided a clearer picture of how it might work. They showed that fit children had significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and “executive control,” or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply. Since both groups of children had similar socioeconomic backgrounds, body mass index and other variables, the researchers concluded that being fit had enlarged that portion of their brains.
Meanwhile, in a separate, newly completed study by many of the same researchers at the University of Illinois, a second group of 9- and 10-year-old children were also categorized by fitness levels and had their brains scanned, but they completed different tests, this time focusing on complex memory. Such thinking is associated with activity in the hippocampus, a structure in the brain’s medial temporal lobes. Sure enough, the M.R.I. scans revealed that the fittest children had heftier hippocampi.

Freeze! Zap! Bye-Bye, Fat

Fat cells, watch out.
Two new devices—one that deflates fat cells, one that destroys them—have just been cleared for "body contouring" in doctors' offices by the Food and Drug Administration.

Zeltiq grabs onto love handles and belly pouches and freezes the fat cells inside, causing them to self-destruct over several months. Zerona is a low-level laser that rotates around the waist, hips and thighs, forcing the fat cells to empty in a matter of weeks. In both cases, there are no incisions, no downtime and no need for anesthesia. The fat is reabsorbed by the body.
Several other devices that claim to painlessly blast away fat with ultrasound, radio waves or lasers are already on the market or hoping for FDA approval soon. These high-tech weapons in the battle of the bulge are less invasive than liposuction—which involves loosening fat internally and vacuuming it out with a tube, a procedure that nearly 200,000 Americans had last year.
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That's partly why some obesity experts are wary of the new fat-blasting techniques. The devices can't target visceral fat, only subcutaneous fat, and if patients continue to consume more calories than they burn, they may hasten that process of accumulating harmful fat instead.
Some experts also worry that forcing fat out of fat cells can increase the level in the bloodstream.
"Fat is very toxic," says Dr. Jensen. "It's not something you want in large amounts floating around free. You want it inside a cell, protected."
Another danger is that losing fat cells could will lower leptin levels, signaling to the brain to eat more.

Swatting 'Superbugs' in Hospitals, Homes

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs have become a big public health concern, but the existing antibacterial cleaners and soaps on the market are often based on harsh chemicals that kill everything they come into contact with or leach out into the environment. In other cases, their effect is only temporary.

Now scientists are working on a new crop of antimicrobials—microscopic weapons that prevent or defeat bugs—to improve their effectiveness, kill specific types of bugs, or reduce their potential side effects on people and the environment. Researchers hope the new antimicrobials can be used to attack bacteria, viruses and fungus on everything from the human body to materials used to build homes, hospitals, boats and medical devices.
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., recently developed a new way to kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA—one of the most widespread and deadliest superbugs—on contact using tiny tubes coated with proteins to destroy the bugs by deflating them like balloons.

3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution

SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses in the South Park district of San Francisco generally sell either Web technology or sandwiches and burritos. Bespoke Innovations plans to sell designer body parts.
The company is using advances in a technology known as 3-D printing to create prosthetic limb casings wrapped in embroidered leather, shimmering metal or whatever else someone might want.
Scott Summit, a co-founder of Bespoke, and his partner, an orthopedic surgeon, are set to open a studio this fall where they will sell the limb coverings and experiment with printing entire customized limbs that could cost a tenth of comparable artificial limbs made using traditional methods. And they will be dishwasher-safe, too.
“I wanted to create a leg that had a level of humanity,” Mr. Summit said. “It’s unfortunate that people have had a product that’s such a major part of their lives that was so underdesigned.” 

Why Do Doctors Dodge Your Questions?

Why Would A Good Doctor Give Useless Answers?

Choosing Wines at the Touch of a Screen

Another example of how Apple is leading technology... and cultural change...
Uvealblues

Once patrons make sense of the touch-pad links, which does not take long, they can search for wines by name, region, varietal and price, instantly educating themselves on vintner and vintage.
Since their debut six weeks ago, the gadgets have enthralled the (mostly male) customers at Bone’s. And to the astonishment of the restaurant’s owners, wine purchases shot up overnight — they were nearly 11 percent higher per diner in the first two weeks compared with the previous three weeks, with no obvious alternative explanation.
Other restaurateurs who are experimenting with iPad wine lists, from Sydney to London to Central Park South, report similar results.
The devices seem to be spurring deeper interest in wine and empowering bolder, more confident selections, they say, potentially revolutionizing the psychology of dining’s most intimidating passage.
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Bob Reno, the wine steward on a veteran staff, said he and his co-workers had initially been cynical. “We didn’t want to be replaced,” he said. “We had to find a way to make it work in tandem.”
But the waiters quickly came to appreciate the iPad’s ability to monitor and instantly update an inventory of 20,000 bottles, and they found that customers still sought reinforcing advice, particularly about pairing wines with food.
“With the information on the device, they seem more apt to experiment by buying a different varietal or going outside their price range,” Mr. Reno said. “It stuns me, but they seem to trust the device more than they trust me, and these are people I’ve waited on for 10 years.”

Do We Need $75,000 a Year to Be Happy?

People say money doesn't buy happiness. Except, according to a new study from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, it sort of does — up to about $75,000 a year. The lower a person's annual income falls below that benchmark, the unhappier he or she feels. But no matter how much more than $75,000 people make, they don't report any greater degree of happiness.
Before employers rush to hold — or raise — everyone's salary to $75,000, the study points out that there are actually two types of happiness. There's your changeable, day-to-day mood: whether you're stressed or blue or feeling emotionally sound. Then there's the deeper satisfaction you feel about the way your life is going — the kind of thing Tony Robbins tries to teach you.
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It's no surprise, then, that when the same polls are done in different countries, Americans come out as a bit of a mixed lot: they're fifth in terms of happiness, 33rd in terms of smiling and 10th in terms of enjoyment. At the same time, they're the 89th biggest worriers, the 69th saddest and fifth most stressed people out of the 151 nations studied. Even so, perhaps because of the country's general wealth, they are in the top 10 citizenries where people feel their lives are going well, beaten out by such eternal optimists as the Canadians, New Zealanders and Scandinavians.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2016291,00.html#ixzz0zVSJQt7u

SUNDAY, SEP 5, 2010 14:01 ET Our conflicted relationship with animals

Why do we get so angry with animal abusers, but eat more animals than ever before? An expert provides some clues.

Our collective animal passion has never seemed greater. Studies show we spend as much on our pets in a recession than when not in one, animal welfare laws continue to strengthen, and acts of animal cruelty caught on film and uploaded to the Web create global furor and condemnation. Animals, their furry forebears would surely say, have never had it so good.

Or have they? In his fascinating new book, "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat," Hal Herzog looks at the wild, tortured paradoxes in our relationship with the weaker, if sometimes more adorable, species. A professor of psychology at Western Carolina University, Herzog studies our complicated relationship with animals, from our devotion to our dogs, to our increasing devotion to that barbecued brisket.

We spoke to Herzog Friday about his new book, asking him about the notorious "cat bin lady" and "puppy throwing girl," whether children who harm animals grow up to be serial killers, and whether we'll have to come to peace with the undeniable similarities between the animals we love, and those we love to eat.

The Gospel of Wealth

How can Brooks  words comptete with the 5000+ advertisements we see here daily in America telling us  that material wealth = happiness--he is a  voice in the wilderness in a land where everyone is drinking the Benjamin Koolaid...

In the coming years of slow growth, people are bound to establish new norms and seek noneconomic ways to find meaning. One of the interesting figures in this recalibration effort is David Platt.

Platt earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. At age 26, he was hired to lead a 4,300-person suburban church in Birmingham, Ala., and became known as the youngest megachurch leader in America.

Platt grew uneasy with the role he had fallen into and wrote about it in a recent book called “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.” It encapsulates many of the themes that have been floating around 20-something evangelical circles the past several years.

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Next, Platt takes aim at the American dream. When Europeans first settled this continent, they saw the natural abundance and came to two conclusions: that God’s plan for humanity could be realized here, and that they could get really rich while helping Him do it. This perception evolved into the notion that we have two interdependent callings: to build in this world and prepare for the next.

The tension between good and plenty, God and mammon, became the central tension in American life, propelling ferocious energies and explaining why the U.S. is at once so religious and so materialist. Americans are moral materialists, spiritualists working on matter.

Platt is in the tradition of those who don’t believe these two spheres can be reconciled. The material world is too soul-destroying. “The American dream radically differs from the call of Jesus and the essence of the Gospel,” he argues. The American dream emphasizes self-development and personal growth. Our own abilities are our greatest assets.

But the Gospel rejects the focus on self: “God actually delights in exalting our inability.” The American dream emphasizes upward mobility, but “success in the kingdom of God involves moving down, not up.”

Platt calls on readers to cap their lifestyle. Live as if you made $50,000 a year, he suggests, and give everything else away. Take a year to surrender yourself. Move to Africa or some poverty-stricken part of the world. Evangelize.

I Love Living Life. I am Happy

This is incredibly inspiring...