Health Science & Tech News
February 24, 2009 by Beverly Hills Times
Filed under News
Banning indoor smoking is paying off. In Pueblo, Colorado, heart attack hospitalizations fell after a law passed banning smoking in public and workplaces, says the Center for Disease Control; 399 heart attack hospitalizations occurred 18 months prior to the smoke ban law and 237 in the 18-month period after the ban. Areas near, but not affected by the ban had no decline in heart attack hospitalizations during the same period. Reports showed smoke-free laws reduce hospitalizations not just for smokers, but non-smokers as well, limiting exposure to secondhand smoke.
Astronomers once thought that major galaxies in Earth’s cosmic neighborhood —our Milky Way—was weak compared to the larger Andromeda. Now studies say the Milky Way is larger and spinning faster than believed. Scientists found that it is 15 percent larger in breadth and 50 percent heavier. The American Astronomical Society presented its findings at a convention in Long Beach, California. The news is not terrific. A bigger Milky Way means it has the strength to cause a hefty crash into a neighboring Andromeda galaxy sooner than predicted. But don’t panic…if it happens it’s billions of years away.
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Astronomers say a region on Mars is venting methane gas. This could signal life on the planet because on earth the gas is produced by living organisms such as bacteria in swamps, cow stomachs and termite bellies. Research says the gas in the Martian atmosphere comes from a specific part of the planet with geology similar, in some aspects to that on Earth.
Reports say wildlife rescuers from San Diego to San Francisco have a bird mystery: Battered, bruised and disoriented, California brown pelicans are diving on highways and airport runways,farm fields and backyards miles from their usual coast haunts. The birds generally fly in formation over beaches, but are spotted diving across Culver Boulevard, in Playa del Rey and on the L.A. airport runway. On the 110 Freeway, drivers reported lots of dead pelicans and one bird nose dived into a car. The International Bird Rescue Research Center in San Pedro received dead pelicans sightings in unusual places and all the birds were disoriented and severely fatigued. Bird rescuers rushed pelican blood samples and carcasses to state wildlife authorities and laboratories specializing in detecting potentially fatal algae toxins that could be responsible for the dead and dying birds.
According to Newsweek, a noted anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, of UC Berkeley, says she has documents detailing the illegal sale of human organs (mostly kidneys) sent to reputable medical centers and used for transplantation. She shared information with officials at several hospitals who deny involvement or knowledge of trafficked organs. The World Health Organization estimates one fifth of the 70,000 kidneys transplanted around the world each year are from the black market.
Creamy peanut butter was recalled by an Ohio company after it was linked to a salmonella outbreak in Minnesota, according to The Wall Street Journal. The product is sold to restaurants and hospitals under the King Nut brand.
Several States are overturning 30-plus years of the tobacco industry’s opposition to federal safe cigarette legislation. The States are passing their own laws requiring the sale of self-extinguishing cigarettes. The number of states passing such laws will be 32 in 2009, significantly increasing numbers in 2007. By the time 2009 comes to a close, 14 additional states will require that fire-safe cigarettes must extinguish themselves if dropped or left unused and burning. Fire-safe cigarettes will be mandatory in Delaware, Iowa, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas, going into effect in 2009 in Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Washington and Wisconsin. Six more states will enact laws in 2010 and seven others have proposals on the drawing board. Check out Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes. So far the legislation has been met with strong opposition from lobbying firms.
I.B.M. lab researchers caught a three-dimensional image of a biological virus for the first time with a technique similar to magnetic resonance imaging, a technique that physicians use to see inside the body. Although on the level of M.R.I., results were found to be 100 million times more clear and effective. Researchers, at the computer maker’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California stated in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they captured a 3-D image of a tobacco mosaic virus with a spatial resolution down to four nanometers. Atomic force and scanning tunneling microscopes provided images of individual atoms, but can destroy some biological samples when they target electrons to get the image.
Reports state that the Twitter accounts of some 30 celebrities and organizations, such as President Obama, Britney Spears and Fox News were hijacked by hackers. The accounts were immediately locked down and the issue is being investigated. Account owners were reported back in control of their accounts. The hackers used accounts to send offensive messages about celebrities and well-known people. The hacking was a serious breach of security and immediate security to solve the problem was put on task.
Yellowstone National Park, famous for geysers and one of the world’s biggest volcanos, reported hundreds of tiny earthquakes in a matter of weeks. In centuries past, the volcano erupted with 1,000 times more power than the 1980 blast of Mount St. Helens which threw ash into Louisiana. No eruptions that big have happened as long as humans have inhabited earth and even though geologists say a lava flow is unlikely, some observers say that the tiny earthquakes signal an imminent catastrophe because Yellowstone is 40,000 years overdue for an eruption. A volcano observatory spokesman, Al Nash said the park’s seismic activity hasn’t changed and the volcano alert level is normal.
Scientists say that human actions such as hunting, commercial fishing or conservation regulations that put size limits on fish, add to the rate of evolutionary change in plants and animals. Reports claim these actions may work against the health and longevity of a species, hurting our own prospects for survival on earth. An example used was years ago after decades of heavy fishing, Atlantic cod evolved to reproduce at younger ages and smaller sizes. Findings are based on studies of 29 species, mostly fish, and animals and plants like bighorn sheep and ginseng. Canadian and American university researchers found the rate of evolutionary change to be three times higher in species subject to harvest selection than in other species. Data suggested that size at reproductive maturity in species under pressure shrunk in 30 years by 20 percent, and organisms were reaching reproductive age about 25 percent sooner.
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