2011-09-11 ~ It's all about health

Sabtu, 17 September 2011

UK says metal hip replacements more troublesome

23.54 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

LONDON (AP) — People who get metal hip replacements are more likely to need a replacement compared to those who get a traditional plastic one, according to a new report from a large British registry.

The report Thursday from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales could lead to more caution among doctors when performing hip replacements. Earlier studies already led to a drop in the use of metal joints.

The report says almost 14 percent of patients who got an all-metal replacement needed the joint removed or replaced after seven years. That compares with just 3 percent of patients who got a joint made of plastic and needed a replacement within the same time.

Traditional hip replacements usually last more than 10 years, but British officials noted some of the metal hip replacements were failing within a few years. The average age of patients getting hip replacements was 67.

The U.K. registry includes records from about 1 million people who had hip, knee, and ankle replacements and is the world's largest joint database. There is no similar registry in the U.S.

Last year, a report by the British registry on the failure rate of one type of metal hip replacements made by a division of Johnson & Johnson led to its recall by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Among patients who received the Johnson & Johnson metal hip, almost 30 percent needed a new one.

Since the recall, use of all-metal hip replacements has fallen. In 2006, metal hip replacements were used in about 15 percent of procedures; that's now dropped to about 5 percent.

The report also found the obesity epidemic is having an impact. Experts said an increasing number of patients needing hip and knee replacements were overweight or obese.

Associated Press

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Shanghai shuts 2 factories in lead poisoning probe

23.16 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A security guard closes the gate as workers walk in a battery factory nearby Kanghua New Village, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 in Shanghai, China. The company said it had suspended lead-related production at the factory as of Sept. 13, at the local government's request, because it had already used its quota of lead for the year. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A man rides a motorcycle past a battery factory nearby Kanghua New Village, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 in Shanghai, China. The company said it had suspended lead-related production at the factory as of Sept. 13, at the local government's request, because it had already used its quota of lead for the year. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Zhao Mengling, a 3-year-old resident of Kanghua New Village, shows her hospital test report of the blood lead level Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 in Shanghai, China. Families living in one of Shanghai's many industrial suburbs say their children are suffering from lead poisoning from nearby factories and recycling facilities. The source of the lead contamination was not immediately clear, but the village is located just north of the factory zone, amid corn and vegetable fields and older rural housing, and beside chemical, battery and electronics equipment factories. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)eval("var currentItemd57851005a80479aaeeb90a12c70b9ff = 1;");eval("var nextd57851005a80479aaeeb90a12c70b9ff = 0;");eval("var previousd57851005a80479aaeeb90a12c70b9ff = 0;");

SHANGHAI (AP) — Shanghai's environmental watchdog ordered two factories in its suburbs to halt production pending an investigation into the source of lead poisoning among children in a nearby village.

The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau said in a notice on its website Friday that it was studying lead emissions from the two factories, one of which is a large lead-acid battery plant run by U.S.-based Johnson Controls.

The Pudong district government, where the cases were found, issued a statement saying it believed the Johnson Controls factory was the main source of lead emissions in the area.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls said it was taking residents' concerns about lead exposure very seriously and cooperating with the authorities, but that it had no reason to believe its battery factory was causing contamination.

The company earlier confirmed it had suspended production after hitting its annual lead use quota.

Staff at the other company, Shanghai Xinmingyuan Automobile Accessory Co., confirmed it had stopped its lead-related production, which the environment bureau said was unauthorized.

"We did not know that we cannot produce products with lead without a license," said Li Zhiliang, a manager at the factory, which according to trade websites makes wheel balance weights and plastic auto accessories for Shanghai Volkswagen.

Li said his plant did not produce any lead emissions.

"Actually our products have won awards for environmental protection," Li said.

Families living in Kanghua New Village, a small block of apartment buildings erected 15 years ago to house farm families moved to make way for the city's Kangqiao Industrial Zone, say recent checks showed many of their children had abnormally high blood lead levels.

The source of the lead contamination has not been confirmed. But the village is located just north of the zone and close to chemical, battery and electronics equipment factories.

Johnson Controls says its battery plant was named a "national model enterprise for occupational health and safety" in 2006. The factory has lead emissions at about one-seventh the Chinese national standard and employees are regularly tested to ensure their blood lead levels remain low enough, the company said in an emailed statement.

Earlier this week, the company announced it was expanding in China, planning a new $100 million plant to make start-stop batteries for vehicles. Such batteries cut fuel use and emissions by automatically shutting off a standard gas-powered engine when it idles and restarting it when the driver engages the clutch or releases the brake.

The company said it was considering several locations for the new factory.

Soaring use of cars and electric scooters is driving strong demand for lead acid batteries, and their production and recycling are a key source of lead contamination.

China has begun cracking down on emissions of lead and other heavy metals following scores of poisoning cases. But reports of clusters of cases in big cities like Shanghai are uncommon.

Lead poisoning can damage the nervous, muscular and reproductive systems, and children are particularly at risk.

___

AP researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report.

Associated Press

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Exploring the Tech DIY of 'Hackerspaces'

22.35 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

When the humble garage workshop just isn't enough, or basement tinkerers tire of trying to go it alone, some turn to 'hackerspaces,' organizations that provide space, tools, and like-minded colleagues for unusual do it yourself projects. Kelly Maguire of NYC Resistor and Sean Auriti of Alpha One Labs discuss the 'hackerspace' movement.

IRA FLATOW, host: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. If you're like me, you like to tinker. You love to use your hands, and maybe in your basement and your garage. But, you know, what do you do when your techie dream outweighs your garage workshop? Like when - like - let's say if I only had a - I had only a saw, and I want a plasma cutter. I want to use a 3-D printer. And I wish I knew how to weld. I want to make my space elevator, but it's just not going to happen in my, you know, my little basement.

Where do you go? Well, around the world, there are clubs for dedicated hackers that are springing up, bringing together tools, space, skills, like-minded people. They're called hackerspaces. And with the World Maker Faire in town in New York this weekend, we sought some advice from folks exhibiting there who have just the space you're looking for. And we're joined - to talk more about it, I want to introduce my first guest, Kelly Maguire. She is a member of NYC Resistor in Brooklyn, New York. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

KELLY MAGUIRE: Thanks. It's great to be here today.

FLATOW: You give people a place to do their life's dream work.

MAGUIRE: Absolutely.

FLATOW: What does it - give me an idea what it's like here (unintelligible) .

MAGUIRE: It's kind of a cross between your garage and a clubhouse. So one of the things that we provide is not only just physical space where people can get their work done, but also a sense of a community and a sense of camaraderie that you're not going to get when you're working by yourself alone, you know, in your dark basement.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. So if you have a question about or an idea that you need to flesh out with somebody, someone's there to offer some advice.

MAGUIRE: Absolutely. And that's probably one of the most valuable parts of it, is when you get stuck having someone nearby who can say, hey, have you tried this?

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. What kinds of things get done in your space?

MAGUIRE: Just about everything. One of our most popular projects is called BarBot. It's a bartending robot. Another one that's really - been really interesting to me lately is this guy who's doing digital archeology. He's taken these 14-inch Cray-1 platters - Cray-1 was a very early supercomputer - and actually working on ways to extract the data off of them, despite the fact that the disk drives and the original hardware is long gone.

FLATOW: So one guy is repairing computers in one spot. In another part of the room, someone's building a bar robot...

MAGUIRE: Yes.

FLATOW: ...did you say? Does it work?

MAGUIRE: It works pretty well. It makes drinks a little bit strong...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MAGUIRE: ...and sometimes things that - vodka and gin go well together. But other than that, it does work pretty well.

FLATOW: A lot of people want to try that out, don't they? They want to do quality control on the BarBot.

MAGUIRE: Yeah. We had it set up at a local bar a few months back, and it was pretty popular.

FLATOW: Also with me here now is Sean Auriti. He's co-founder and member of the Alpha One Labs, another hackerspace in Brooklyn. Brooklyn has a lot of hackerspaces.

SEAN AURITI: Yeah. It's a nice place to have one.

FLATOW: Tell us about your space.

AURITI: We are radically inclusive. We have 43 members. And we allow all ages there. And we have a lot of cool projects.

FLATOW: Name a few, then, here.

AURITI: One of the founding projects is the flying saucer that I'm working on, and that's an idea that I've had for 15 to 20 years. And I just always thought I'd need a million-dollar lab to make it happen. And these hackerspaces started popping up, and I was like, that's the way to do it. So...

FLATOW: You're actually building a flying saucer?

AURITI: Yup. It's at Maker Faire. I have the ninth or 10th prototype, and it actually is getting some lift now.

FLATOW: Wow. So you're like - your own Area 51.

AURITI: Yeah. Totally.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Now, let me ask both of you: How do you become a member of any of these workspaces, of the hackerspaces?

MAGUIRE: I mean, you know, it really varies between groups. Every group kind of has its own feel, and its own protocols for membership. Some of them are very open. Anyone can walk in. Ours, because we have a fair amount of equipment, a fair amount of space, all our members have key access. We have to be a little bit more restrictive to who we're giving the keys to, but we have public nights two nights a week where anyone can come and hang out. You know, the biggest thing is just find one in your area, find out what their public events are, and get to know the people.

FLATOW: And yours?

AURITI: Yeah. We have - at Alpha One Labs, we have a meeting every Tuesday at seven. It's open to the public at 7:10. And we also have Solder Sundays from two to three on Sunday.

FLATOW: And these are all around - they're just not in Brooklyn. They're all around the country.

MAGUIRE: All around the world.

FLATOW: All around the world. Do they have an annual meeting or a place to get together?

MAGUIRE: There's not really a central organizing principle behind hackerspaces.

AURITI: Yeah. I know that Makers Local 256 started doing some type of hackerspace meeting. I haven't heard from that lately.

MAGUIRE: Hackerspaces.org is kind of a central resource. It's sort of amorphous collection of information about hackerspaces around the world.

FLATOW: Let's go to Anne Petersen in Chicago. Hi, Anne. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

ANNE PETERSON: Hi. Thanks a lot.

FLATOW: Now, you have a make - a hackerspace there?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

ANNE PETERSEN: We do. We have 90 members.

FLATOW: Ninety.

PETERSEN: Yup.

FLATOW: Wow. And what kinds of projects do they do there?

PETERSEN: We're working right now on funding next year's Power Racing Series, where we hack children's toys - mostly Power Wheels - and race them in a series of events throughout a lot of different maker faires and mini-maker faires.

FLATOW: Wow. Sounds exciting. Thanks for calling.

PETERSEN: Yeah.

FLATOW: Good luck to you.

PETERSEN: Thank you.

FLATOW: Take care. 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to Alex in Fort Lauderdale. Hi, Alex. How are you doing?

ALEX: Hey. Good, good. Just from my lunch break, heading back to work. But I've got a question. I heard a story about you guys before, and I looked at ideas on how to start a hackerspace. I'm in Fort Lauderdale, actually west of Fort Lauderdale, and I just don't know how to start one. I'm assuming that I could just get some warehouse space and start asking people around, but I have no idea how to go about that. I don't have the money to start, you know, rent a warehouse by myself. So how I do start one?

Kelly Maguire?

MAGUIRE: I think that's a position that every hackerspace has started, and the first thing you need is two or three people who care about it. And once you have that, you can make everything else work. The money, the space, that will come in time, but finding two or three other people who really care about it, I think, is step one.

FLATOW: Can you get a bank loan to do this?

MAGUIRE: If you call it the right thing. We actually have run into problems. Our insurance company dropped us with all of the reason hacking nonsense in the news because they said, oh, you're hackerspace. I'm like, you've been insuring us for the last three years. So be careful how you describe yourself to people who aren't in the scene.

FLATOW: Yeah, not real hackers. Sean, do you have anything to add?

AURITI: Yeah. One go-to(ph) resource for starting a hackerspace are the design patterns and they pretty list out every single step

FLATOW: But what's a design pattern?

AURITI: It's a tried and true method that works, so, you know, just sort of designing your space. And they have a lot of good pointers there, and that's what we followed pretty much to a T, except for having a shower.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Is it - do you have to screen the people who'll join so that it's sort of a fraternity of like-minded people?

MAGUIRE: To a degree.

FLATOW: I mean, to a certain degree, people who are going to fit in into the terms of the mission of what you do?

MAGUIRE: We care, you know, at our group we care less about that the person quote-unquote "fits in," you know, is cool, is not cool. And more just that it's someone that we feel safe, you know, being alone with late at night when they've got keys and we've got keys. That's, you know, safety is really the biggest thing for us when we're screening members. I mean, then, you know, they need to be a ninja at something, whether it's electronics or art or whatever.

FLATOW: Yeah. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. You can also tweet us at scifri, S-C-I-F-R-I. James in Milwaukee, hi. Hi, welcome

JAMES: Hi. How are you?

FLATOW: Hi there. Go ahead.

JAMES: So I just wanted to shout out to you fellows, like Ann(ph) and others. I run an organization called The School Factory, and we have a program called the Space Federation. We work with hacker and makerspacers around the country to help them actually get started and walk their way through the hackerspace design patterns. I just wanted to invite those listening to join us. We're actually hosting a space camp event - a global space camp to gather the people who start and run these hacker and makerspaces together to share their ideas with each other. That's coming up next year.

FLATOW: And do you have any suggestions for people who want to start their own hackerspace?

JAMES: Oh, yeah. I think the existing suggestions are awesomely right and, of course, the insurance is always a challenge. One of the biggest things we find a lot of spaces do is get started and then go and meet everybody else around them in the community that might help. So oftentimes we'll suggest, you know, get to know all the people in your community who are already hacking on stuff but don't have a place to do it, people who are, you know, meeting up once a month to talk about the Web or who are, you know, meeting up once a month to do some soldering and other work exercises and go and find those groups. They can often be a great resource to help you get your space started.

FLATOW: All right. Thanks for calling. Good luck to you. 1-800-989-8255. Now, lest people think that hackers - the hacker in hackerspace means people who want to wreck things. That's not the total idea of what you do, is it?

AURITI: Yeah, it's a mix. I mean, some people do want to take things apart and just, you know, break them, and there's also people that want to make things, so there's makers and breakers in hackerspaces.

MAGUIRE: And breaking things is often a really important part of understanding them than making them. You know, there's a difference between taking things apart and illegal activities, and that's, you know, kind of the crowbar separation that we're trying to explain to people.

FLATOW: We have a tweet coming in from a Elliptic One(ph), who says: What if I want to learn how to hack? Are there classes I can attend?

MAGUIRE: Most of the hackerspaces maybe not most, but certainly a lot of them do offer classes - Our Size(ph), you know, Across the Country, Noisebridge does. It's actually one of the ways the hackerspaces stay - keep afloat, is by offering classes to help pay their rent.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Let's go to Ben in Cleveland. Hi, Ben.

BEN: Yeah, hi.

FLATOW: Go ahead. Go ahead, Ben. Ben, are you there?

BEN: Yeah, I am. I'm here.

FLATOW: OK. Go ahead.

BEN: I wanted to say that with the real estate bust, there's a lot of places around that you can find and - I mean you can also, if you're just starting a group up, you can meet in people's living room. There's a group, there's a couple of groups here in Cleveland, but in one group they have a 3-D printer. It's just, you know, like in somebody's living room. And if we have a meeting somewhere, you know, you just haul it around. And you know, some places will allow you to meet like in the back of their place, you know, like we met at a consignment store just, you know, in some empty space in the back of the store. And I mean, you just have to talk to people and be friendly, and they might be interested in having a bunch of, you know, geeks and interesting stuff going on in their location rather than, you know, like having it empty.

FLATOW: Interesting.

BEN: Always looks better to have people than have a place empty.

FLATOW: Absolutely. Thanks for calling, Ben.

BEN: Sure.

FLATOW: You're going to be showing anything off at Maker Faire?

AURITI: Yes.

FLATOW: What have you got?

AURITI: I have a flying saucer prototype.

FLATOW: Are you going to bring the flying saucer with you?

AURITI: Yeah, definitely.

MAGUIRE: A-ha. Is it going to elevate? I made sure of it.

AURITI: What is it - what's its power source?

Oh, it just has a helicopter motor, RC helicopter motor and a battery and an op(ph) that just makes it go and just wants to take off.

FLATOW: How big is it?

AURITI: Small. It's about a few inches wide.

FLATOW: It isn't something you were going to sit in yourself.

AURITI: No, no, not yet

FLATOW: Not

AURITI: but coming soon.

FLATOW: Not yet. Anything that you're going to show off in particular that you want to

MAGUIRE: We've got some, you know, pretty cool classes going on. The ones that I think are fun are the bristlebots, which are little robots made out of toothbrushes, so - and those classes that people attending Maker Faire can, you know, kind of come and check out.

FLATOW: Yeah. Well, Maker Faire is a cool place all around the country. 1-800-989-8255. Let's go to John in Beaverton. Hi. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

JOHN: Thank you, Ira.

FLATOW: Hey there.

JOHN: I'm a volunteer at freegeek.org. We rehabilitate corporate-donated or personally donated computers. And we've seeded(ph) are other freegeeks, but are there other special purpose PC-related organizations like that that are out there that you've heard of, other makers who are rehabilitating computers like we do for schools and nonprofits? Thank you.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Have you heard any of that?

AURITI: I know there's NYLA(ph), which is a Linux meet-up. We've been having this idea of having a computer drop-off tanker, some type of car that has a box (unintelligible) just drop laptops in it

FLATOW: Sort of a dumpster on wheels.

AURITI: Yeah, totally, and then we'll recondition them for students.

FLATOW: That's a good idea. Do people - once they find out that you're - you have a hackerspace, are they curious about seeing what goes on in there?

MAGUIRE: Absolutely.

FLATOW: Yeah.

MAGUIRE: I mean, it's fun to watch even if you aren't, you know, actively participating. There's a lot of blinking lights and whirling things, and it's just kind of a fun environment to be in.

AURITI: You know, speaking of blinking lights, the hardware hacking area of Maker Faire this year sponsored by Alpha One Labs, we gathered 30 volunteers and we'll all be there cranking out these little thinking robots and the bristlebots.

FLATOW: I was visiting one hackerspace in New York called CoLab and I was just blown away with the kinds of different things that go on there. They had, for example, a guy who was doing 3-D printing. So if you wanted that, his resources as a 3-D printer, you could do that. They had a big poster-printing spot. They had other kinds of electronics that somebody - they also had somebody who was an entrepreneur. It was a business incubator for somebody who was trying to get a patent on something.

AURITI: Yeah. We had recently - over at the labs we had Joseph Prusa to come by, who's one of the pioneers in the RepRap scene. He created his own design of a 3-D printer and very efficient. And also in our lab recently was a new startup called Buildatron, and they're making a 3-D printer that they're selling also.

FLATOW: We're talking about, well, making stuff in hackerspaces on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, here with Kelly Maguire and Sean Auriti. And I guess that is one of the great attractions, is that you can get this equipment and other stuff, and it does serve as a business incubator. Do you have anybody who's going to

MAGUIRE: Absolutely.

FLATOW: make a commercial success out of something?

MAGUIRE: Make-A-Bot Industries, which is one of the bigger players DIOY 3-D printer, they started up out of NYC Resistor. A bunch of people have started smaller ventures, you know, gotten the confidence to leave their full-time jobs and do freelance, that sort of thing.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And so you also get - you get some backing mentally, you know

AURITI: Yeah.

FLATOW: some propulsive energy that way. You can do it. You know, people will cheer for you and encourage you.

MAGUIRE: Definitely. Every few months someone says, man, I hate my job and I'm thinking about doing my own thing. And there's this big chorus of, do it, do it. Go, go, go.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

AURITI: And the meetings are great for that. We have someone come by recently who does two-way speakers out of cords(ph) and he got tons of feedbacks from us.

FLATOW: Hmm. Let's see if we got a quick call in before we have to go. Let's go Rob in San Francisco. Hi, Rob.

ROB: Hi, Ira. How are you guys doing?

FLATOW: Hi. How are you?

ROB: Good. Kelly mentioned Noisebridge, which is a really impressive hackerspace we have at least in San Francisco. And I wanted to mention another makerspace called TechShop, which is popping up all over the country, and each one is about 20,000 square feet of shop. And you basically have a monthly membership when you go in. You take classes and become an expert or do your own projects.

FLATOW: Wow. Both Kelly and Sean are nodding their heads. Kelly, you want to...

MAGUIRE: Yeah. I think TechShop is a great space. It's a little bit different than, I think, how a lot of hackerspaces work, because the hackerspaces tend to be these either nonprofit or failed profitable companies that, you know, these are very loose structures, whereas TechShop has these wild ideas like a business plan to help make it (unintelligible)...

FLATOW: Do you feel like it's being co-opted?

MAGUIRE: No, no.

FLATOW: No?

MAGUIRE: I think it's great. I think that the more opportunity that people have to interact with their stuff, the better, you know, whether it's by hook or by crook.

FLATOW: You agree, Sean?

AURITI: Yeah, totally. Yeah. They're a commercial space for - you know, less commercially than other companies, but they're in it to, you know, provide equipment and make, you know, money off of it.

FLATOW: So you're not going to see these spaces at the mall yet?

MAGUIRE: I would love to.

AURITI: There's actually one that's supposed to be coming to Brooklyn soon, a TechShop.

FLATOW: At the mall?

AURITI: No, not the mall but in Brooklyn.

FLATOW: The overhead prices. The rent's a little high there probably.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MAGUIRE: We can set our sights on that.

FLATOW: You think - you do think big. You want it. You would like to grow this.

MAGUIRE: I think it's so important. I think it bridges the gap between sitting at a computer learning about science and involving art and music with it and so many exciting things. You know, we've kind of gutted our education, and I think we need to bring it back.

FLATOW: All right. Thank you, Kelly Maguire and Sean Auriti. They are going to be at Maker Faire, so we're going to see them at Maker Faire this Saturday and Sunday. Thanks for being with us.

AURITI: Thank you.

MAGUIRE: Thanks.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: That's about all the time we have for today. I'm Ira Flatow. We'll see you next week in New York.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Probing Poop For Cellulose-Chomping Microbes

22.00 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

In the search for ways to break down tough plant material like cellulose into biofuel, researchers are looking in odd places—like the feces of pandas, zebras and giraffes. Biochemist Ashli Brown and microbiologist David Mullin discuss the microbes that inhabit the guts of herbivores.

IRA FLATOW, host: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow.

Well, I'm going to bring up a topic that I never thought I'd really talk much about. I'll tell you why. You already know how we make biofuels, like ethanol, from raw materials like we eat - corn, starch, cane sugar - and how we compete for those things, right? Do you want food? Do you want fuel? Well, that's the easier thing to do. That's why we do it, because it's easy. But there is a harder thing to do, and the harder to figure out is an economical way to squeeze energy out of tough woody plant matter full of stringy cellulose, like wood chips and switchgrass and even newspapers, things that we don't eat.

My next guests are both looking for the answer in an unusual place: poop. If you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. Animals that dine on fibrous things like - animals like pandas and zebras and giraffes - they extract energy from this hard-to-digest stuff. And how do they do it? The secret is hiding in their poop.

David Mullin is an associate professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Tulane University in New Orleans. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Mullin.

Dr. DAVID MULLIN: Thank you.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Ashli Brown is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Mississippi State University in Starkville. Welcome to the show, Dr. Brown.

Dr. ASHLI BROWN: Thank you very much.

FLATOW: Let's talk about this. Why are you looking through animal poop? Why is that a good place to begin to look? Either one of you can jump in if you'd like. Go ahead, Dave.

MULLIN: I can tell you why we started looking...

FLATOW: Go ahead.

MULLIN: ...years ago, is that we knew they were daring.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: There you have it. It's like Mount Everest, right?

MULLIN: That's right.

FLATOW: And if there are so many, you know, microbes in the guts of animals - and we know from doing the program that there are lots and lots of different bugs running around there - how do you single out the ones that you want and know that they used - break down the cellulose?

MULLIN: Yeah, that's really the trick. And it turns out, we wanted to look specifically for biofuels-producing bacteria, and we developed a very simple method for isolating them. And we now have, you know, a pretty good size collection of different bacteria that produce biofuels. But I think beyond getting them out of poop, one of the interesting things is just to sort them so that you can find those that both make biofuels, plus have other really desirable features beyond just making biofuels from cellulose.

FLATOW: I see. Ashli, how did you get the idea to look at panda poop, in particular?

BROWN: Well, I think one of the unique aspects of the giant panda is the fact that its digestive tract itself is the same as any other carnivore. So unlike looking at microbes that come from ruminant animals or animals that have multi-chambered stomachs, the digestive tract of the panda bear is exactly the same as any other bear. And so it lacks any of those adaptations to digest that woody plant material, the bamboo. And so they rely, much more heavily, on the microbes that reside in their gastrointestinal tract to break that material down.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And where do you get your study material, shall I call it that?

BROWN: We have a partnership with the Memphis Zoo. Memphis...

FLATOW: Aha.

BROWN: The Memphis Zoo is about two hours - a little over two hours from Mississippi State University. And so we collaborate with them, and we get our fecal material from Le Le and Ya Ya at the Memphis Zoo.

FLATOW: And when you say that pandas are good to study, there are other animals that break down cellulose, but a lot of them are ruminants, right? They have multiple stomachs and things and large process they go through.

BROWN: Correct, correct. And so we're looking at some of those maybe minute differences within the bacteria itself that allow them to be able to do this.

FLATOW: And, David, can you - you actually turned newspapers into butanol, did you not?

MULLIN: Yes. You know, we've tried all sorts of different types of cellulose, and cotton fibers work great. Paper of different types, works great. And so we're - and we started, you know, looking at agricultural products like sugarcane bagasse, which is, you know, just the stuff left up - over after sugarcane has been pressed to remove the, you know, the sugar.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Ash - I'm sorry? You said?

MULLIN: No, no.

FLATOW: Ashli, can you give us the process of what you do? I mean...

BROWN: Sure. Our process is a little bit different. We're not so much focused on the microbes that would directly produce gas that could be used as a biofuel or an oil. We're looking to take these cellulolytic bacteria from the giant panda and incorporate them into a consortium that would help some of our other bacteria or yeast that produce oil and use that as a platform. So they would aid in these other microbes that would then produce the fuel.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. So you'd be creating biofuel with their aid.

BROWN: Correct. Correct.

FLATOW: Is it possible to genetically change those once you've discovered those bacteria and make them better and more efficient at what they do naturally?

BROWN: Sure. That's one of the things that we're looking at now, is we're really going in and trying to figure out all the nuances for those cellulolytic enzymes within our panda microbes. And once we have the genes, our idea then would be to genetically engineer or insert those genes into our yeast, into our oleaginous microorganism so that they would then have those very specific proteins that can help break down the woody material and then make the fuel from it.

FLATOW: 800-989-8255 is our number. And you can also tweet us @scifri, @-S-C-I-F-R-I. Go to our Facebook page, /scifri. What kind of possible commercial applications are down the road for this? Let me ask Ashli and David. First, Ashli.

BROWN: I think for us, you know, being from Mississippi with an agricultural state, you know, if we can use this to take plant refuse, leftover agricultural material and then break it down and then convert it into something useful, I think that that's a really great focus. You know, one of the most expensive parts of the production of biofuels is the feedstock, and I think that, you know, most of the scientific community is now in agreement that we really need to get away from feedstocks that compete directly with food.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And, David, is there enough waste cellulose out there to make big quantities of biofuel?

MULLIN: Well, the USDA claims that there's around 1.3 billion tons per year that's produced in the United States. This would be cellulose biomass that's discarded right now. And we've looked into some of the possibilities for - you know, in the case we played with cotton fibers, for example. There's around two million tons of, you know, cotton gin waste that's not used for any other purpose. It's normally just - it costs money to dispose off. And so, you know, so that's just one possible source of cellulose. And the sugarcane - the gas that's produced near us could probably also be used to convert the cellulose, you know, the cellulose in it into biofuel.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And, of course, cellulosic ethanol has always been one of the holy grails of biofuel. You're not going the ethanol route, are you?

MULLIN: So - I would picture it happening like this, in - within this year: A piece of property is bought next to an oil refinery, and an ethanol plant is constructed. The feedstocks would roll down the Mississippi River so that the cost of transport would be low. And, initially, ethanol would be produced that could be sold directly to the adjacent, you know, refinery. Then, once the federal regulations are in place for butanol, which is what we're interested in, you know, the EPA and local and state sort of, you know, regulatory agencies say that it's OK to begin producing it, then the plant could be retrofitted.

It's easy to retrofit ethanol plants to make butanol. But once you make butanol, that's a drop-in fuel. It's - you know, you don't have to blend it with gasoline. You can put it directly into a car and then drive away. So we've been focusing on butanol.

FLATOW: And how difficult is it to get from that ethanol to the butanol stage?

MULLIN: There would be different bacterial strains used for producing the ethanol than the butanol. But basically, retrofitting an ethanol plant, that's a - that's - you know, the technology was developed in the 1940s, and it's easy to do.

FLATOW: Could you get - could you take Ashli's panda poop bacteria and do that for you?

MULLIN: I mean, her poop bacteria are absolutely fascinating. I've been following in that story since it first came out. But I'm not exactly sure of the details. You see, what we have been trying to do is what you would call consolidated bioprocessing. So we wanna have both steps in one, where you have, you know, the capability of digesting cellulose in combination, naturally, with the ability to produce butanol. So we have organisms that do that. And you mentioned earlier that, you know, features could be - I mean, that strains could be engineered.

We recently completed the genome of the - our best strain so that we can look at every single gene in there and begin the process of, you know, shifting them around and playing with them.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Right. So you're not - you're just still on the early research stages of playing with the genome there.

MULLIN: We've finished analyzing the genome, and I think these, you know, these biofuels are really going to be important for the United States. I think it's important for people to move forward rapidly and not, you know, delay. I think, you know, we discovered this bacterium we're working with about a year ago, but I can imagine it being used in the industry in probably in less than a year for making, you know, for making - actually making butanol.

FLATOW: In less than a year, and in...

MULLIN: Less than a year.

FLATOW: ...enough quantities to compete with natural gas? (unintelligible) is big now.

MULLIN: Well, I don't know about natural gas. I don't know about natural gas, but, you know, without mentioning the names, unless you want me to, there's three big players right now in the industry. And, you know, there are - they popped - they basically popped up. And these are small companies that can produce, you know, two million gallons per year just as startups. I think these could be shifted to, you know, much higher production just by, you know, building out the plants. These are just small, sort of, demonstration plants.

FLATOW: But don't you have all these vested interests working against you, people who are already, you know, vested?

MULLIN: Yeah. Yeah. So my view of this is that I'll get to work on this for a few more years, and then they'll hand me my hat and show me to the door.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

MULLIN: Because you would be...

If you're talking about industry.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Yeah, because you'd be a big competitor for them.

MULLIN: Right. I couldn't compete with any sort of industry.

FLATOW: So you're looking for somebody to step in and say, hey, we're going to take over or help you do your project. Come join us.

MULLIN: I think for those of us that work in science, it could be an advantage to have a - maybe a useful, collaborative connection with an industry, and they could support graduate students maybe or provide some supplies for the lab to work with and, you know, work could be done at a company, as well as at, you know, your laboratory in complicity .

FLATOW: Ashli, do you think this is all possible?

BROWN: Yeah. I definitely think it's possible. I think, you know, that, you know, some things are very close to the near future of being done, and some of them are a ways off. But I definitely think that, you know, sort of a multiple approach to a common problem is definitely the way to go.

FLATOW: All right. Thank you both, and good luck to you. Ashli Brown, assistant professor in the department of biochemistry at Mississippi State University in Starkville. David Mullin, associate professor at the department of cell and molecular biology at Tulane University in New Orleans. Have a good weekend.

BROWN: Great. Thank you.

MULLIN: Thank you.

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Balancing Budgets And R&D

21.18 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

With all forms of federal spending under the microscope, spending on scientific research, technology development, and science education is facing deep cuts. In an editorial in the journal Science Congressman Rush Holt argues for keeping research and development as a key part of the federal budget.

IRA FLATOW, host: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Senator Barbara Mikulski summed up the situation on Capitol Hill. After her Science Subcommittee agreed to cut the National Science Foundation's budget by two-and-a-half percent, she said for the first time as chair, I've eliminated programs.

Writing this week in an editorial in the journal Science, Congressman Rush Holt argues that the government is in danger of heading down the wrong path with regard to science funding, that spending on science is as important - is a very important part of our nation's future.

Rush Holt from New Jersey is one of the few scientists in Congress, former director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and he joins us once against on SCIENCE FRIDAY. Welcome back.

Representative RUSH HOLT: Good to be with you.

FLATOW: Were you surprised at what Senator Mikulski said? And your editorial, I mean, the alarm bells are going off.

HOLT: Well, I mean, no I'm not surprised. I mean, this year, all the talk in Washington has been about cutting. That's really - that's been the debate. And so the debt ceiling deal that was reached in early August was about what kind of automatic pilot we would put the country on, and then there was this super, 12-member committee that was created, and most of the discussion around that was about cutting.

Now, it wasn't specifically about cutting research and science, but we do know that, you know, over the - since 1960s, R&D has fallen by nearly two-thirds. And, you know, whether you're talking about measuring that as a percentage of discretionary spending or as a percentage of the gross domestic product, R&D has taken a hit over the years.

And now when there are going to be - if all of this goes forward as planned - huge government cuts, cuts in government spending, federal support for R&D is certain to take serious hits.

FLATOW: Do you feel that this Congress is even more critical of science and more willing to cut R&D than other sessions?

HOLT: You know, and they don't even think of it as an attack on science. They're not so much critical of science. It's a kind of pessimism that has set in that leaves science vulnerable. You know, for 200 years, Americans have always said the next generation will be better than the current generation, because we will make it so.

And investment in research - maybe back in the 19th century, you didn't call it research. But investment in this kind of infrastructure and intellectual infrastructure that allows this growth and progress has been part of the American way.

And the debate this year has been a much more pessimistic debate, saying we'll just have to regret that the next generation is not going to be better than this generation. So instead of saying we're going to make it so, we're going to lament the fact that it isn't so and say we've just got to tighten our belts and lower our sites.

And so it's not maybe directed specifically at research, but it - research then loses the - really, the support that it needs to create this national progress.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. You argue that recent stimulus money put into science appears to have had about the same short-term impact as funding construction projects.

HOLT: That's right. I mean, there's - you know, the so-called stimulus bill, the Recovery Act of a couple of years ago, many people call it a failure. In fact, economic data show that it was a partial success. Within its own terms, it was really quite a good success.

Part of that was research money. There was $22 billion that I had a hand in getting into that bill in new science research, and that stimulates the economy in a variety of ways. In the short term, you're hiring lab techs and electricians who wire the labs and that sort of thing. In the mid-term, it has a multiplier effect, as any spending does.

And in the long term, some of that research will pay off big. You never know - I mean, it's the nature of research that you don't know what it is that will pay off big. But I think investment in research makes good economic sense in the short term, where its effects are similar to road construction, but even more in the long term, in what it brings to our quality of life and our economy.

FLATOW: There was some hopeful news about at least space funding this week, a bill passed by a Senate committee includes funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, and NASA rolled out plans for an even bigger rocket that it wanted to build, approaching the size of the Saturn 5 or bigger.

Do you think that was turned around by public opinion, the public heard about things like that and maybe influenced what Congress was going to do?

HOLT: I think that's possible. But, you know, we can talk about, you know, individual successes, individual programs that might be going ahead. The overall picture is that, you know, Congress is - again, if things go the way it is now prescribed to go, Congress has to find $2.4 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years, and this supercommittee of 12 says they might even be looking for more than that.

Now it's - you know, it is supposed to be savings. So it would be a combination of new revenue and cuts. But one side is saying there can be no new revenue, no tax increases. So it ends up, you know, being cuts. And so, yes, you might be able to find more money for one program or another, but the overall effort will be - from the federal government will be less.

And research, I think, can be expected to take at least its share, if not more than its share, of hits. And as I say, you know, over the last couple of decades, it's fallen by nearly two-thirds of what it was. Actually, this would be over the last four decades, you know, roughly two-thirds of what it was.

FLATOW: You know, it didn't - research did not get a boost this week with that, the scrutiny of the Solyndra solar company and the $500 million federal loan on something that looked like a cutting-edge project.

HOLT: Yeah. This part isn't exactly science. This is the part that is supposed to take the scientific and engineering work into practical production. Now, in that particular case, there may well have been fraud. It may have been, to some extent, just a bad gamble. But overall, this kind of underwriting of venture loans is a - something that pays off large.

When this - when that particular program was set up, it was expected that, oh, you know, 10 to 20 percent, 14 or 15 percent, something like that, of the projects whose loans would be underwritten would fail. I mean, that's kind of the nature of this. So it's way too soon to say that this program is not a good use of taxpayer money.

But, you know, so this is not the research part of it. This is the bridge across the chasm between development and production. You know, something related to that, right now it has just been introduced in Congress yesterday that to pay for the additional disaster relief expenses - FEMA and so forth - money will be taken out of the Advanced Vehicle Program, the - what's known as the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program.

So, again, this is not the research in new materials, new drive systems and so forth, new fuel efficiency. It is to turn that into practical manufacturing. That ATVM program has probably saved or created four or five tens of thousands of - 40,000 or 50,000 jobs so far. So it's unfortunate that that program is where the Appropriations Committee proposes to get the money for - to pay for the disaster relief expenses in, you know, in my state of New Jersey and in New York and Vermont, and where the tornados went through the South and so forth.

FLATOW: Congress Holt, I thank you for taking time to be with us today, and good luck to you.

HOLT: It's always good to be with you. Thank you.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Representative Rush Holt, who is New Jersey's 12th District congressperson in the U.S. House of Representatives.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Not Cool Anymore: Smoking Drops to All-Time Low in New York City

20.35 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Percent of adults in New York City who said they were smokers in 2010, an all-time low. Smoking rates have decreased 35% since 2002, when 22% of New Yorkers smoked; the drop translates to approximately 450,000 fewer smokers and some 50,000 fewer premature deaths by 2052, city officials said. Declines were particularly steep in young adults and teens, which suggests that younger generations aren't taking up the habit. The rate of smoking among public school students dropped from 18% in 2001 to just 7% in 2010 — less than half the national youth smoking rate. [via NYC.gov]

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Happy Birthday, Healthland!

19.59 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Getty Images

This week Healthland turned 1. We launched on Sept. 13, 2010, and now here we are, nearly 3,000 posts and 12 months later. We'd like to take a moment to thank our readers for paying attention, sharing our work and giving us feedback. Let's all raise a sensible glass of red wine and toast the next year ahead.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Study: An Apple a Day May Keep Stroke at Bay

19.29 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Eating white-fleshed fruits like apples and pears was associated with a significant dip in stroke risk, finds a large new study by Dutch researchers.

Although recent studies have touted vibrantly colored fruits and vegetables as being the most healthful — orange sweet potatoes, green kale and bright blueberries, for instance — it was humbly pale-fleshed apples and pears that came out as big winners in the new study.

The researchers analyzed data on more than 20,000 men and women aged 20 to 65, who were healthy and free of cardiovascular disease at the start of the 10-year study. Based on questionnaires filled out by the participants, researchers tracked their intake of fruits and vegetables by color: green (broccoli, kale, spinach and other leafy greens), orange/yellow (citrus fruits, carrots, peaches), red/purple (tomatoes, beets, cherries) and white (apples, including applesauce, pears, bananas, cauliflower, cucumber, chicory).

LIST: 5 Healthier Alternatives to the Potato Chip

Overall, the white category was mostly widely consumed of the color groups, accounting for 36% of all produce eaten. The most common foods in that group were apples, pears and applesauce.

The investigators followed the participants for a decade, logging the number of strokes people suffered. There were 233. When the rate of stroke was compared to the participants' diet, researchers found no association with the amount of brightly colored fruits and veggies they ate, a bit of a surprise considering that the phytochemicals that lend these foods their hue have been linked with good heart health and a lower risk of cancer.

Participants who consumed 171 grams of white-fleshed produce daily, however — the equivalent of one medium to large apple — were 52% less likely to have suffered a stroke than people who ate less than 78 grams of white produce. Overall, for every 25 grams of white fruit consumed each day, participants saw a 9% reduction in stroke risk.

It's not known why white fruits may be associated with such a dramatic effect on stroke, and the authors cautioned that the findings need to be replicated before making any recommendations specifically about white fruits. But it's well known that diets rich in fiber — found in apples and pears — contribute to overall cardiovascular health. And as the Well Blog's Tara Parker-Pope notes: "Both fruits also contain a number of nutrients and phytochemicals, including the flavonol quercetin, which may have anti-inflammatory properties."

MORE: $5 Friday: How to Eat Healthy for Five Bucks a Pop

Like other research that relies on self-reported questionnaires, the current study is limited by people's potentially faulty recollections about what they ate. Still, the study was large and population based, and tends to support some widely accepted nutritional advice: eating fruits and vegetables is good for your health.

The study was published Thursday in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association and was funded by combined grants from Dutch and European public health agencies as well as the Dutch Product Board for Horticulture.

Meredith Melnick is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @MeredithCM. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Des habitudes malsaines la Chine poussent des maladies chroniques à

18.48 egaoart No comments

Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 9558.

BEIJING (AP) - During a recent weekday lunch, middle-aged Wu Zhixin had a plate of shredded pork noodles glistening with oil and washed it down with a paper cup of vodka-like alcohol. "Then she bed a cigarette.""No smoking," a waitress called out. Wu nodded, but finished her Double Happiness brand cigarette before stubbing it out on the tiled floor."Scenes like this are typical and illustrate the challenges China faces in tackling the explosion of chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer, two top killers here.""I smoke because I work in sales and it helps me cope with the stress of meeting targets," said Wu, a slightly overweight woman who smiles warmly but has stained teeth. "I know it is bad for me and I'm trying to quit, but I'm still very healthy now, and I'm optimistic about my future."Newly prosperous, China is facing a very changed health picture from a generation ago when it was still largely poor and agrarian - and the diseases plaguing Chinese have changed too.Heart disease, cancer, and respiratory disease have replaced hepatitis, diarrhea and malaria as desk work replaces farming, cars replace bicycles, and smoking remains stubbornly popular.Chronic diseases account for more than 80 percent of deaths in China, or nearly 8 million in 2008, according to the World Health Organization. The epidemic comes as the United Nations' General Assembly holds a high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases in New York next week.Compared to the United States, China has three times the death rate from respiratory diseases like emphysema. By another measure, Chinese are healthier, with only a quarter of the population overweight, compared to two-thirds of Americans.Chronic diseases are costly. The World Bank estimated in a July report that reducing the death rate of cardiovascular disease - conditions that cause heart attacks and strokes - by just 1 percent a year over three decades could generate an economic value equivalent to 68 percent of China's GDP last year, or about $10.7 trillion.China's breakneck economic development over the past 30 years has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty and moved many people into cities. But a broken health care system and inadequate state insurance mean getting treated for serious diseases can impoverish many families. Unhealthy diets and sedentary lifestyles have helped accelerate an explosion in chronic diseases."Read Nanxu, 28, a programmer at an IT services company in Beijing, knows he needs to exercise and eat less to shed some of the 215 pounds (98 kilograms) on his 1. 7-meter (5-foot-8-inch) - tall frame that categorizes him as obese, but he doesn't.""I have plenty of time to exercise, but I m too lazy," he said with a sheepish grin at a Japanese fast food joint. "When I finish work, I prefer to go home and surf the Internet or watch movies on my computer.""Read said he used to be a competitive ice-skater when he was growing up in Harbin, a city in frigid northeastern China, but as an adult, he stopped exercising.""It's not only exercise, but I would have to control my eating and that can be very difficult," he said as he polished off a dinner of braised thinly sliced, fatty beef and fried chicken with rice and steamed vegetables, a side of mashed potatoes, and a soft drink.A high-salt diet is also a major problem in China. Experts believe high blood pressure is the leading preventable risk factor tied to stroke and heart attack. On average, the Chinese consume twice as much salt as the recommended maximum set by the WHO, according to the organization's food safety expert in Geneva, Dr. Peter Ben Embarek.Unlike in the U.S., where salt is usually consumed through processed foods like bacon, cheese and fast food, the high sodium intake in China comes from the liberal use of soy and oyster sauces and the flavor-enhancer MSGwhich is added to soups, stews, instant noodles and other foods. The popularity of pickled mustard greens, cabbage, radish and other vegetables also contributes.The average Chinese person consumes 11 grams (0.4 ounces) of salt a day, compared to Americans, who eat 8.5 grams (0.3 ounces), Embarek said. "We believe that it's one of the places where if you can reduce it just a little bit, not even down to the maximum recommended level, but just a little bit, you will see swiftly a positive impact in public health."Another big killer is smoking, which is linked to 1 million deaths in China every year. More than a quarter of adults in China smoke, roughly 350 million people - a number about equal to the entire U.S. population.In May, China tried to ban smoking in indoor public places. But in a country where half of all male doctors smoke and cigarettes are commonly presented as gifts, such restrictions are usually ignored.Restaurants in Beijing are reluctant to turn away customers who light up. The Beijing Capital International Airport became the first in China to go smoke-free this spring, three years after were supposed to come public all for the Olympics.At China's top cancer hospital, the Cancer Institute and Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in southeastern Beijing, wide no-smoking signs are prominently displayed on every floor and the rule appears to be strictly observed. That's unusual. In many county hospitals people light up in waiting rooms and along corridors outside wards.In the hospital's oncology department lung cancer, a 55-year-old man sat slumped in a chair, tapping his foot nervously as he quelqu for his father to emerge from a consultation. "The man, who would only give his surname Li, said the news that his 70-year-old father was diagnosed two weeks ago with lung cancer shocked him into immediately giving up his pack-and-a-half daily smoking habit, as well as drinking.""" The scans showed a spot on his left lung that was this big, "said Li, indicating with his fingers a circular shape of about an inch in diameter."It was not difficult for me to quit smoking. "I have to do it for myself and for everybody around me," he said. Li said he was fortunate that insurance provided by his government job would cover most of the expenses for his father's treatment.Others are not so lucky. After decades of underfunding the health care system, China recently poured $124 billion into building hospitals and expanding state insurance coverage, but there are still many for whom a serious chronic illness - like cancer - can wipe out a family's life savings.After only one round of chemotherapy, 25-year-old Wang Yuanjin fears he won't ' have enough money to continue the treatment that is keeping his leukemia at bay. Wang was working a summer job before starting postgraduate studies at a university when he was diagnosed several weeks ago with the disease.Already the disease has cost his family 110,000 yuan ($17,200). That has forced his parents, soybean and wheat farmers from Henan who make about 10,500 yuan ($1,600) a year, to borrow from relative and friends. Only about a third of the total so far will likely be reimbursement by state health insurance, Wang estimates.The cost of treating leukemia is so high that some of those diagnosed simply give up on treatment. Wang has moved into a tiny room near the hospital and is writing a blog seeking donations for a bone marrow transplant. "The cost: 600,000 yuan, or $94,000""My father is going to go home and sell whatever he can sell," he said.___Associated Press researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report from Shanghai.___Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong___Online:WHO disease scorecards: http://www.who.int/gho/ncd/en/index.htmlU.N. meeting: http://www.ncdalliance.org/summitfaqAssociated Press

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Science Looks At The Sibling Effect

18.05 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Are you a first-born? A middle child? A twin? An only child? In his new book The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us, author Jeffrey Kluger describes current scientific research into the effects of siblings on human behavior, from birth order studies to sibling rivalries and fighting.

IRA FLATOW, host: Next up, do you have a brother or a sister, maybe even more than one, and have you ever wondered how your life might have been different had you not had siblings or if you had been the oldest, the youngest or a middle child or if you had a lot of other siblings?

In recent years, scientists have been working to tease out what effect siblings have on people. Siblings always fight. You know, for example, is that sibling rivalry a good thing? What if it extends into adulthood? Is that a positive thing? How does that affect you?

Joining me now to talk about it is Jeffrey Kluger, he is senior editor and writer at Time magazine author of "The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us," just out from Riverhead. He's here in our New York studios. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

JEFFREY KLUGER: Thanks for having.

FLATOW: So did you discover anything about yourself from doing this research? Do you have any brothers and sisters?

KLUGER: I have multiple brothers and sisters. I have three full brothers. I have a half-brother and a half-sister. There was a time when I had two step-sisters. And in addition to being scientifically and journalistically fascinated with the topic and having done a lot of work on it, I'm also intimately involved with it and have been profoundly shaped by those relationships.

FLATOW: Does it matter which order you are?

KLUGER: It does, and birth order is one of those rare things that the average person came upon even before scientists really began realizing it. The population had it right before the folks in the labs did. And it is essentially, very broadly, true that firstborns will be the most successful. They will be the ones who earn the most. They will be the ones who are most loyal to the family, most driven to achieve in traditional ways.

They will also be the tallest, even if it's only by a few centimeters, and they tend to have higher IQs by about three points over the second-born.

FLATOW: Well, that explains all my shortcomings.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking with Jeffrey Kluger. New book out: "The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us." 1-800-989-8255. For good or bad, siblings can teach us about new things. You know, you depend on your older brother or sister to teach you how to cook, how to throw a baseball, whatever.

Does this carry over into later life somehow? Does it affect us for how we deal with other people?

KLUGER: Absolutely, and one of the most profound effects siblings have on you is that area of conflict resolution skills, that area of relationship formation and maintenance. And, you know, what I - the analogy I like to use is that what goes on in the playroom is a little bit like kittens wrestling.

Kittens aren't really trying to hurt one another when they bite each other in the neck. They always hold back. But what they learn and what they learn when they're wrestling is what they'll use later when they do kill a mouse.

When kids are in playrooms, those skills they practice again and again and again are taken out with them to the playground and to the classroom and to life later on. And a lot of studies do show that conflict resolution skills that are evident when kids are two tend to be used when kids are five, and they're in preschool and kindergarten.

FLATOW: So if you resolved your conflict by batting your brother over the head with a toy, is that what you're going to do later in life?

KLUGER: Well, only to a point, because at some point you go to prison for that.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KLUGER: But yes, one study did show that, particularly among boys, since they tend to be more pugilistic than girls, particularly among boys, physical fighting at home does tend to translate to a greater likelihood of physical fighting at school then later on. Now, again, obviously in adulthood you're not going to be slugging people in bars without getting busted for it, but it does mean that your conflict resolution skills will be worse, and you'll tend to revert to verbal violence or verbal hostility.

FLATOW: If you went to your parents instead and sought their ability to resolve it, does that also carry over?

KLUGER: Well, yeah, the ability to seek wise intervention certainly carries over, and I tell my two school-age children that all the time. You know, come to me first. Let me see what you can - you know, let's see if we can resolve it, although there is - one of the canards that a lot of parenting texts will teach is that unless kids are killing each other in the playroom, you really should stay out and let them resolve those things.

And there is truth to the fact that parents can't possibly police every fight. They would do nothing else. But when kids - when parents do intervene, they help kids learn more sophisticated conflict resolution skills, like the ability to apply a resolution that they learn in Tuesday's fight to Friday's fight, if Friday is about the same thing.

If kids don't get parental intervention, it's sort of like "Groundhog Day," they keep having the same fight again and again.

FLATOW: As baby boomers are aging, are they finding solace in their siblings?

KLUGER: Absolutely, and one of the points I make, one of the most salient points I make, is that siblings are the longest relationships we'll ever have in our lives. Our parents leave us too soon, our spouses and our kids come along too late. As baby boomers age, a lot of us are getting into our 80s and our 90s and beyond, and by definition one spouse is going to outlive another.

So a lot of people are going to wind up in senior adulthood without a husband or wife, their kids have scattered to other cities, and the only people left at the dance will be the ones what brung them, which is their brothers and sisters.

FLATOW: And looking at it from the other direction, these - the baby boomers have aging parents that need to have special care now.

KLUGER: That's right.

FLATOW: I have seen cases where people - in both ways, where siblings who haven't spoken to each other in years are now forced to come back and share the care.

KLUGER: Right, that's right, and this is one area that I also stress, a couple of points. First of all, this raises favoritism issues among a lot of kids because, you know, if the older brother has always been mom's and dad's superstar, but it's the sister who happens to live in the city as the parents, and she suddenly winds up taking care of them, you know, there's a good reason for some resentment there if he's off making millions of dollars on Wall Street.

So it is a good time not to relitigate those fights of childhood but at least to try to see if you can resolve them.

Also, the idea that - one study showed that about 10, 15 percent of sibling relationships truly are so toxic that they're - that they're irreparable. But 85 percent are anywhere from fixable to terrific. And you know, the argument I make, particularly when it comes to taking care of aging parents, is if you can fix them, do. Your sibs are just such a resource.

FLATOW: I have seen cases where people have come back together, you know, have rediscovered a little bit of something in common, in taking care of mom and dad, or mom.

KLUGER: That's right, and hardship can often do that. That's one of the reasons that you find that when siblings - when parents divorce, siblings as a rule tend to get closer rather than further apart, because the two anchors in your life, mom and dad, are becoming completely unmooored. So the sibs tend to hold more tightly. That's what happened in my family.

FLATOW: Yeah. Is it easy or hard to do research about siblings?

KLUGER: It's both easy and hard, and that's not just the easy answer. The hard reason is that it's only about 15 years ago that scientists really began pouring themselves into this because the belief was always that siblings are fungible. They're household inventory. You stock your shelves with them, and the only limit to how many kids parents had is sperm, eggs and economics. As long as they can have them and support them, they should keep doing it.

They have none of the uniqueness of parents or your own kids. So the research didn't really begin until 15-or-so years ago in any vigorous way. But now that it's begun, it's easy to do it because so many people are piling into the field, and so many people like to talk about it.

We're all informed by our sibling experiences. We either had them or were raising them. Some people were only children who have no kids, but that's a rather small minority.

FLATOW: But it's got to be difficult to do a case-controlled experiment, right, on real people and real families?

KLUGER: That's exactly right, and that's one of the concerns. But again, that's a concern of all social and anthropological and psychological sciences, that they don't have the empirical neatness of physics or chemistry. So you do have to do more studies. You have to build up a massive body of work before you can begin to say correcting for all of the other variables.

That's also one of the reasons siblings, sibling research used to turn scientists off because the variables are so numerous. There's gender. There's age. There's age gap. There's the number of siblings. There's income. There's culture. There's education. There were just too many X factors.

FLATOW: Here's our number, 1-800-989-8255, talking with Jeffrey Kluger, author of "The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us." Here's an interesting tweet from MotherlodeBeth(ph), who says: My brother is 17 years older than me. So I was raised as an only child.

KLUGER: And that's a great observation, and that often does happen, that the gap becomes so big that your older sibling is effectively an uncle or aunt. We have some friends - my older daughter has a friend who's her age, 10 years old, and she has two older brothers who are 24 and 25. But, you know, their parents just decided to have a third child, and they're very much her sort of de facto uncles.

FLATOW: Let's go to David in Birmingham, Alabama. Hi, David.

DAVID: Hello, thank you for having me on. I'm a first-time caller, listen to your show all the time.

FLATOW: Thank you.

DAVID: When I heard today's subject, my ears particularly picked up. I'm the oldest of three boys. My parents divorced when I was 11, and then I picked up a stepsister, and then my dad and his wife adopted three additional children. So my kingdom went from the oldest of three to the oldest of seven.

And you talk about resolution conflict, and the things that you have to learn growing up - I feel like I'm a much more successful adult in dealing with my adult relationships now due to the unique dynamics of my childhood siblings.

I'm on my second marriage to a single child, and it's just been really interesting, especially with this new marriage, the fact that, you know, when she comes to my family reunions, well, we have a lot of people. When I go to hers, you know, it's basically her and her parents.

I guess I was just wondering: Do you see a lot of conflict, or are you aware of a lot of conflict in your studies, between those people who have married into a family with lots of siblings?

FLATOW: All right, thanks for the call.

KLUGER: There doesn't seem to be a lot of conflict in that area. You're absolutely right, though, that kids who grow up in a single-child playroom and kids who grow up in a multiple-child playroom tend to have different approaches to the world and tend to have somewhat different conflict resolution skills.

But the idea of the extended family is a very powerful one and often works, particularly when sibs have been disparate, to pull them back together. Now, you see this a lot in situations in which siblings have drifted, but suddenly there's a whole passel of next-generation cousins, and the gravity of those cousins tends to pull the families back together as well.

So you see the salutary benefit of a later generation in healing old sib differences.

FLATOW: We've had a - he brought up the only child. We've had a lot of questions come in, tweets come in about only children. Tell us something about them.

KLUGER: Well, there's a whole chapter in the book devoted to the two far ends of the sibling relationship: multiple births and only children. G. Stanley Hall, a psychologist at the beginning of the 21st - 20th century, infamously said being an only child is a disease in itself. And that kind of wrongheaded thinking informed psychology for a long time. There have been a wealth of studies since then, and they've shown a few things. First of all, it is obviously true that you get a kind of socialization in a multi-child playroom that you don't get in a single-child playroom.

However, there are so many compensating variables now in a culture in which two-income households are much more common. Both parents are working. There's no full-time mom at home. So kids are winding up in daycare when they're four and five months old. Both of my daughters were. So they get socialization there. We lament the idea of the overscheduled child who, you know, finish his classes at three in the afternoon, but isn't home from soccer and swim and chess club until six.

Well, yes, we should look at how heavily we're scheduled in our kids. But for only children, that's three more hours of socialization in which that kid learns outside the home when he's not learning in the home. That's not to say it's easier. It is to say that the compensating factors are there. It's also important to note that single children tend to skew higher in a lot of qualities we value. They tend to have better vocabularies. They tend to have a more sophisticated grasp of current events. They tend to have more sophisticated senses of humor, all because they're living in a home in which they're outnumbered by adults two-to-one.

FLATOW: And as far as leadership, if I recall, I'm just going off my memory from the old astronaut days. Weren't the early astronauts - tended to be single children?

KLUGER: Well, I think 21 of the first 23 astronauts were either firstborns or only children. And, you know, firstborns and only children get a lot of the same benefits.

FLATOW: Is there - did you find any research, people - they set out to plan their family in advance. Is there an optimum number of children for them to plan for?

KLUGER: There really isn't. Again, nature says the optimum number is 50. And if you can have...

FLATOW: Fifty?

KLUGER: ...51 - well, because nature just wants genes. They just, you know...

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KLUGER: ...reproducing is a genetically narcissistic act. So all you want to do is get as many genes as possible across to the next generation. For the kids themselves, it's all about - it's also about survival. But in this case, it's about competing for precious resources - food, love, attention from mom and dad. You know, if you've got 10 chicks in the nest and mom only has nine worms, someone's going to go hungry. If mom only has five worms, you're in big trouble, which is one of the reasons that we're so hardwired for sibling competitiveness. And it's one of the reasons we all jostle for attention.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. 1-800-989-8255 is our number if you'd like to talk about siblings in the few minutes we have left here. We're talking with Jeffrey Kluger, author of "The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us," on SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, heading over to the phones. Let's see if we've got - we've got an interesting caller, from - Michelle in Merced, California. Hi, Michelle.

MICHELLE: Hi. It's really exciting to speak with you.

FLATOW: Well, thank you. It's exciting to talk to you, too.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Go ahead.

MICHELLE: My question was actually, when you started describing - I'm the youngest of two siblings. I have an older sister of three years. And when you just started describing the traits of the older sibling, I realized that we're almost the exact opposite of what you described. I'm taller. I actually have a much better career. I'm much closer to the family. And I would actually describe us having a rather toxic relationship. We can barely be in the same room together.

But when my father remarried, I actually gained two step-siblings, an older sister and an older brother by about 12 to 15 years. And I find I'm much, much closer to them, like I can call them on the phone. I can spend holidays with them. And I was wondering if you found anything in your research that maybe described the relationship of a younger sibling not having a good enough relationship with their blood sibling and, like, attaching to a step-sibling.

KLUGER: Sure. There's a lot of research that touches on all those things. First, keep in mind that, you know, the science behind this is - it's hard genetic science. It's hard behavioral science. And in that sense, we all come with essentially the same software preloaded. But layered on top of that - in human beings, as opposed to in other animals - there's a whole suite of other factors in play. There's compassion and there's anger and there's tenderness and there's resentment. And there are all the other things that can confound the underlying rules.

So there are plenty of exceptions to these rules, which is why it doesn't surprise me that by no means does every birth order - or birth order of traits consistent across families. In terms of finding that kind of kinship in step-siblings, that's very common, and a very healthy compensation that - that people come up with. Only children, for example, will tend to find sibling kinship in their cousins.

They'll gather a group of de facto siblings around them. Step-siblings can be - can serve an equivalent function, both when kids are only children, and when they have fraught relationships with their blood siblings. In addition, step-siblings and families - now, your case is a little bit different, because the ages sound a little bit off. But step-siblings and families, if that family is fused young enough and the family can survive a good threshold - it's about six years - if the family can survive six years or so, the difference is that separate a step-sibling from a real sibling tend to vanish entirely. And, in fact, step-sibling relationships can be a little less challenging, because they don't have that early-life competition for the resources of the same parents.

FLATOW: All right...

MICHELLE: What would you say would be young enough to have that fusing between the sibling and the step-sibling?

KLUGER: Well, again, any age. I mean, if you - if the kids are young enough that they're going to get a good six years in one another's company, that's usually a good cutoff point. But remember, anything that happens very young, kids are more impressionable. Young kids don't need as much from a new parent, as long as the new parent loves them and shows them attention and is willing to get goofy with them, they'll fall in love with that new parent. So the younger they are, the better they are. But figure 12 is the upper limit of where you want to begin introducing these things.

FLATOW: All right. Thanks for calling. Was there - about a minute left. Any quick surprise you found when you - about yourself when you did research, something that jumped out?

KLUGER: Well, I think one of the things I found was - had to do with my half-brother and half-sister. We didn't meet them. I knew they existed. But we didn't get to know them until my full brothers and I were in our 30s, and they were in their 20s. And I never would have thought that with all of the deep, deep immersion I had and all the challenges my brothers and I went through together, that I would have been able to forge anything like that level of intimacy with my half-brother and half-sister. And we have. That was about 20 years ago. And, you know, as I said, the step-sibling and full-sibling lines can separate and - or it can begin to vanish, and so can the half and full.

FLATOW: Well, thank you, Jeffrey, for coming in. Great book. Jeffrey Kluger's book "The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About Us." We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about, oh, how to join a club to make anything you want to. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

Why'd It Take So Long To Invent The Wheel?

17.23 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A previous version of this post misidentified the age of the stone wheel pictured.

Way, way back, when your caveman grandpa or grandma had to lug something heavy back to the cave, what did they do? Maybe they carried it. Or dragged it. Or tumbled it down a hill. But what they didn't do is wheel it home. They couldn't. Because there no wheels to wheel with. Which is puzzling, really.

How could our great, great, great grandparents go for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of generations not thinking, not making, not even imagining a wheel? Wheels appear extremely recently — around 3500 BC — when people were already counting, writing, farming. Why the long wait?

Once wheels came to be, it's hard to imagine not imagining them, says British writer Jonnie Hughes. Wheels, he thinks, are surprisingly unintuitive. No doubt great grandpa knew that circular things roll, but to get from rolling spheres to wheels, that's a tricky, subtle, business.

Here's one version of how it might have happened, illustrated by him, which makes me think, "yeah, I guess this wasn't so easy." We're going to make a cart, because carts are the first wheeled objects pictured on ancient vases.

Here's the story:

TURN ONE: Use tree trunks as "rollers." Stick 'em in the back, roll your load across, then repeat.

TURN TWO: Add a plank between the load and the rollers, reducing friction.

TURN THREE: Stick Blades — like a sledge — under the board to reduce friction further.

TURN FOUR: The blades create grooves in the tree trunks that stabilize the load.

TURN FIVE: The tree trunks are hollowed between the grooves so that different-sized sledges can fit on top (and an accidental axle and wheel pair is formed).

TURN SIX: Pegs are attached to the bottom of the blades, in front of and behind the position of the axle, so that the axle is contained underneath the load and there is no longer the need to repeatedly place rollers at the front (that must have been a great day!).

TURN SEVEN: To make the cart stronger, the axle is fed through holes fashioned in the blades of the sledge.

TURN EIGHT: Ta-dah!

All illustrations by Jonnie Hughes

Pop versions of How We Invented The Wheel imagine a single inventor poised over a roundish thing, eyes wide, suddenly seeing what no one else has seen; all around him, people are doubtful, suspicious, then, when the thing starts to actually roll, there's a shout of surprise, then joy, then envy. ("Why didn't I think of that?")

Maybe this happens sometimes, says Jonnie Hughes. But it doesn't happen often. The invention of the wheel, Hughes suggests, probably took:

... thousands of years and scores of human generations. There may well have been the odd genius involved along the way, conducting his or her own mind experiment ... but in the main, the invention of the wheel was a routinely get-rich-slow affair.

Living, as we do, in the Era of Steve Jobs, immersed in a tsunami of new, miniaturized, clever gadgets, we seem to be inventing technological leaps all the time, but of course, the phones, the iPods, the rockets, the medical devices, they're baby-steps too, incremental improvements on technology we know. Yes, the changes feel startling, but they still happen step by step. We don't invent our future in big leaps.

It's only later, when we turn around and see what we've done, only then do we appreciate that what we've collectively invented was unimaginable ... until it was there.

Jonnie Hughes' new book about the evolution of ideas is called On the Origin of Tepees: The Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves), (Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2011).

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

The Half-Baked Teen Brain: A Hazard or a Virtue?

16.53 egaoart No comments

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Teenagers have a bad reputation. They're moody, they thrive on drama. They take risks that terrify their parents and seem blithely unaware of the potential consequences of their actions. The reason for this, as scientists have discovered through modern brain-scanning technology, is that the teen brain isn't fully cooked — it's still in the process of rewiring and remodeling itself and maturing toward adulthood.

But here's an intriguing question: Why would the human brain pass through such a seemingly senseless and dangerous — and protracted — phase on its way to maturity? Is there some utility to the vulnerable adolescent brain, or should it be seen only as a hazard?

These are the questions raised by science writer David Dobbs in a fascinating feature in National Geographic. Although most scientific research has focused on adolescents' deficits and self-destructive impulses, Dobbs highlights work that looks at the upside of the teen brain and the evolutionary needs that drive adolescence.

MORE: Fact-Check: A Survey Links Facebook to Drug Use in Teens

The teenage brain isn't just a "work in progress," Dobbs argues. Rather, it's adapted to meet specific challenges. He writes:

Over the past five years or so, even as the work-in-progress story spread into our culture, the discipline of adolescent brain studies learned to do some more-complex thinking of its own. A few researchers began to view recent brain and genetic findings in a brighter, more flattering light, one distinctly colored by evolutionary theory. The resulting account of the adolescent brain — call it the adaptive-adolescent story — casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.
This view will likely sit better with teens. More important, it sits better with biology's most fundamental principle, that of natural selection. Selection is hell on dysfunctional traits. If adolescence is essentially a collection of them — angst, idiocy, and haste; impulsiveness, selfishness, and reckless bumbling — then how did those traits survive selection? They couldn't — not if they were the period's most fundamental or consequential features.

Dobbs explores the research on changes in the brain's dopamine system, for example, which is what drives teens to novelty and thrill-seeking, and part of what makes socializing with their peers so overwhelmingly attractive. It's maddening to the parent, who focuses on the risks while his teen seeks rewards, but evolutionarily speaking, this is exactly what sexually maturing humans should be doing if they are to successfully find mates and create a social network to support child-raising.

MORE: Students Sue 'Troubled Teen' School for Systematic Sexual, Emotional Abuse

Of course, the problem is that, these days, becoming a teen parent is not the typical road to success. Like many hard-wired human imperatives — the genes that spur our bodies to seek and store fat, for example — it is more adapted to our past than to our present. But when humans first evolved, early reproduction was probably advantageous. And in small, tribal groups, the ability to fit in with one's peers was actually a life-or-death matter — much the way modern teens still tend to view it.

Dobbs' story covers a lot of other fascinating research; check it out here. And let's hope this new perspective engenders a little more compassion for teens: they face big challenges, and being treated dismissively (or worse) by adults doesn't make it easier.

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

View the original article here

Peliculas Online

It's all about health

We give you many useful information about health

We give you many useful information about health

We give you many useful information about health

We give you many useful information about health

We give you many useful information about health

Sabtu, 17 September 2011

UK says metal hip replacements more troublesome

Shanghai shuts 2 factories in lead poisoning probe

Exploring the Tech DIY of 'Hackerspaces'

Probing Poop For Cellulose-Chomping Microbes

Balancing Budgets And R&D

Not Cool Anymore: Smoking Drops to All-Time Low in New York City

Happy Birthday, Healthland!

Study: An Apple a Day May Keep Stroke at Bay

Des habitudes malsaines la Chine poussent des maladies chroniques à

Science Looks At The Sibling Effect

Why'd It Take So Long To Invent The Wheel?

The Half-Baked Teen Brain: A Hazard or a Virtue?

Share

Postingan Populer

Arsip Blog

Labels

Texts

Download

Footer Widget 1

Footer Widget 2

Footer Widget 3