Article: New drugs fight metastatic breast cancer

Canadian scientists have determined newer drug therapies, especially aromatase inhibitors, improve the survival of women with metastatic breast cancer.

The study -- led by Dr. Stephen Chia of the University of British Columbia -- is the first to demonstrate that drugs available since the 1990s have had a significant impact on population-based metastatic breast cancer survival rates.

The research confirms clinical trials that showed survival improved by approximately 30 percent as systemic therapy became more widely used.

Currently, women with metastatic breast cancer survive an average of approximately 24 months. That marks a significant improvement from the estimated 18-month survival noted during the early 1980s, the researchers said.

"Our population-based study of a large cohort of women with a recent diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer is the first to demonstrate a significant improvement in survival over time," the scientists wrote. "While the study does not definitively attribute these improvements to a single therapy, the greatest differences in survival were associated with the introduction of the aromatase inhibitors, docetaxel and trastuzumab in the later two cohorts."

The research is reported online in the journal Cancer and will appear in the Sept. 1 print issue.

source:www.sciencedaily.com

Article: New Device Enables Research Into Microscopic Communities And Their Impact On Human Health

A typical human mouth teems with as many as 700 different species of microbes. A handful of these have been specifically implicated in promoting gum disease, dental cavities, and bad breath, but for the most part, the make-up of this complex ecosystem and its impact on human health remain largely unexplored. A new device created by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers, however, may make some of the most reclusive members of this and other microscopic communities much more accessible for laboratory study.

The vast majority of microbes are notoriously resistant to growing in laboratory cultures because they are so intricately linked to their own unique ecosystems. Microbiologists have coaxed less than one percent of the bacterial species that inhabit natural environments into growing in culture. But a microfluidics device created by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Stephen R. Quake and colleagues at Stanford University -- an intricate system of miniscule valves and chambers -- may help scientists who want to identify and characterize new microbes circumvent the need to culture them at all.

Research on the device published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has far-reaching implications for the rapidly developing field of microbial ecology, as well as advancing microfluidics technologies, which could do for biology what silicon chips did for electronics. Quake and his colleagues have already used the device to analyze a rare bacteria found in the human mouth, using just a single cell.

Various methods have given scientists a glimpse of the profound diversity that characterizes different microbial worlds. One approach is to look for variations in the sequence of a specific gene found in all microorganisms; another is a complete inventory of all the pooled genes in a microbial community. These types of studies, however, yield few insights into the character of individual members of a microbial ecosystem, leaving most species almost entirely enigmatic.

Those unstudied organisms are biology's dark matter, Quake says. Like the dark matter that astronomers can only infer must exist in the universe, these organisms have never been studied directly. Quake and his colleagues hope their new technology will change that.

"We are hoping to open a whole new chapter in how one understands the microbial universe," Quake said. "Microfluidic tools can give us direct access to this dark matter," Quake says.

Quake's research lies at the nexus of physics, biology, and biotechnology. His microfluidics chips, which he designs to tackle problems in fields including structural genomics, systems biology, microbial ecology, and synthetic chemistry, are akin to having a fully automated laboratory on a postage stamp-sized wafer. Remember the early days of electronics with all of those big vacuum tubes and wires" Next came the transistor and finally the silicon chip, which dramatically revolutionized computers and modern electronics. Microfluidics is following the track of silicon chips and promises to revolutionize biology in the same manner.

The microfluidic chip designed by Quake and his colleagues for the current study is equipped with tiny chambers and valves that allow researchers to isolate microbes at the nanoliter scale. Because each microbe is isolated in a vanishingly small volume of liquid, the concentration of its genetic material within that solution is actually quite high -- meaning Quake and his colleagues can easily amplify and analyze the genome of an individual cell, eliminating the need to persuade the organism to multiply in a laboratory culture. The chip offers the potential to discover untold new species of microbes lurking within deep sea vents, ordinary dirt, toxic sludge, or virtually any environment.

To demonstrate the power of the new device, the scientists first used it to target a possible new phylum, of which one member is a rod-shaped bacterium that live between the gums and teeth of humans. The candidate phylum, called TM7, has no cultivated or sequenced members. The scientists demonstrated that they could inject a solution containing multiple types of microbes into a chip, and manipulate tiny valves to direct individual rod-shaped bacteria into miniature chambers. Once individual microbes were isolated, the researchers could extract the DNA and amplify it using routine methods.

In this way, the researchers were able to sequence and assemble more than 1,000 genes, providing insight into the physiology of this previously unstudied group of bacteria. Most TM7 genes, they found, had remarkably little similarity to genes in known bacterial groups. But some of the genes hinted at interesting aspects of the organism's biology, such as an unusual gliding motion that groups of TM7 bacteria might use to get around, and a gene shared with bacteria known to cause chronic inflammation.

source;www.medicalnewstoday.com

Article: Nature's secrets yield new adhesive material

Scientists report they have merged two of nature’s most elegant strategies for wet and dry adhesion to produce a synthetic material that one day could lead to more durable and longer-lasting bandages, patches, and surgical materials. As published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, the scientists, supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, have designed a synthetic material that starts with the dry adhesive properties of the gecko lizard and supplements it with the underwater adhesive properties of a mussel. The hybrid material, which they call a geckel nanoadhesive, proved in initial testing to be adherent under dry and wet conditions. It also adhered much longer under both extremes than previous gecko-based synthetic adhesives, a major issue in this area of research.

According to the authors, their findings mark the first time that two polar opposite adhesion strategies in nature have been merged into a man-made reversible adhesive. “Our work represents a proof of principle that it can be done,” said Phillip Messersmith, D. D.S., Ph.D., a scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. and the senior author on the paper. “A great deal of research still must be done to refine the fabrication process and greatly reduce its cost. There’s no reason to believe that these improvements can’t be achieved, but it’s going to take time.”

Dr. Messersmith said the inspiration for the geckel nanoadhesive came about two years ago when he noticed an article about the adhesive force of a single hair from the foot of gecko. As lizard fans have long marveled, geckos climb walls and other dry, steep surfaces not by producing a glue-like substance but through a natural adaptation of the hairs that cover the soles of their feet.

Roughly one-tenth the thickness of a human hair, each gecko hair splits multiple times at the end. These split ends contain cup-like structures called spatulae that vastly increase the hair’s surface area. Whereas a human hair touches a surface just once, the gecko makes multiple contacts with the suction-like spatulae. With roughly a half million hairs on each foot, scientists estimate a gecko has a billion spatulae at work as it scampers up a wall.

Messersmith knew that researchers have attempted for several years to produce synthetic adhesives based on the adherence strategy of the gecko. What caught his eye in this article is gecko adhesion doesn’t work well in water. Messersmith, who studies the underwater adhesion of mussels, had an idea. What if each synthetic gecko-inspired polymer, called a pillar, was coated with a man-made adhesive protein inspired by the mussel" As Messersmith mused, nobody had ever tried it and, if successful, this hybrid approach might spawn a new and potentially superior direction in designing temporary adhesive materials.

As reported in Nature, Messersmith’s idea turned out to be correct. He and his colleagues designed a small nanopolymer array that mimicked the natural spatial patterns of the hair on the foot of a gecko. They then coated their creation with a thin layer of a synthetic compound. This unusual compound mimics the reversible bonding action of a mussel adhesive protein that Messersmith’s group has studied for the past several years.

In their initial experiments, which were led by graduate student Haeshin Lee, they found that the wet adhesive force of each pillar increased nearly 15 times when coated with the mussel mimetic and applied to titanium oxide, gold, and other surfaces. The dry adhesive force of the pillars also improved when coated with the compound.

“That actually wasn’t so surprising to us,” said Lee, the lead author on the study. “The mussel-inspired adhesive is extremely versatile in that it can bond reversibly to inorganic surfaces under wet and dry conditions.”

As Lee noted, the next research hurdle was whether their hybrid geckel nanoadhesive would continue to stick to surfaces after multiple contacts. This has been a major challenge with other gecko-based adhesives. They typically stick well at first but lose their ability to adhere after a few cycles of contact with a tipless cantilever.

Using the cantilever and repeatedly touching it down, Lee developed a camera to visualize the process down to individual pillars. He found that the geckel hybrid maintained 85 percent of its adherence under wet conditions after 1,100 contacts with the tip. Under dry conditions, the level of adherence was 98 percent.

“This isn’t quite a home run, but it’s somewhere in between a double and a triple,” said Lee, who devised on his own a special imaging devise to visualize individual pillars during the experiments.

Messersmith said that while the results are extremely promising, his group still must tackle several practical problems before it can scale up its research. “Any time that you fabricate an array of nano pillars of this type over large areas, you must have a very effective way of doing it without losing the efficacy of the approach,” said Messersmith. “We’ll also need to reduce the fabrication costs to make geckel commercially viable.”

But Messersmith said he envisions great possibilities for geckel. “Band aids already adhere well, except if you go swimming, take a shower, or somehow expose it to a lot of water,” said Messersmith. “So I think the most important thing with this adhesive is the added value of resisting immersion in water.”

“I should add that the essential component of the wet adhesive polymer on the pillars contains a chemical that we have discovered last year adheres well to mucosal surfaces, such as those inside our mouth,” he noted. “It may be possible to develop patches in the future that can be applied on the inside of the cheek to cover damaged tissue.”

source:www.hindu.com

Article: Fourth and Long 7.26.07: NFC Preview and Playoff Picks

This week, we move on to the considerably more wide open NFC. Teams move up and down in this conference like a yo-yo, and to say some teams are one player away is not that much a stretch. With that said, here is what my crystal ball says.....


NFC East

1. Philadelphia Eagles - Division Winner, 1st Round Bye

While some teams are one player away from being a contender, the Eagles are probably one player away from NOT being a contender. The health of Donovan McNabb is the paramount issue this team faces. He played great until his knee injury last year, then the team played great in his absence and made the playoffs. How that really effected McNabb's mentality and ego will be another big factor in the way this year goes for them.

McNabb will have a lot of developing weapons at his disposal this year. Brian Westbrook is one of the best overall backs in the league, producing almost 2000 yards rushing/receiving as he was able to stay healthy for almost the entire season. For the Eagles to be as dominant as they could be though, either third year vet Reggie Brown or second year man Hank Baskett will have to step up and lead the team in receiving. If they both develop their full skills, the Eagles could have their best 1-2 receiving threat in years. Adding former Ram Kevin Curtis as a slot receiver also opens up a new dimension for the team, and will open up tight end LJ Smith for more mid length passes as well. Keep in mind that we're talking about a team that had the third ranked pass offense in the league actually improving, and you get an idea how many points they could put up.

The defense was in the top third of the league against the pass, lead by possibly the best secondary in the league. Brian Dawkins is still a disruptive force at safety, and both Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown are good if not great starters at corner. Up front, they need to improve against the run, where they ranked 26th last year. To that end, they revamped their linebacker corps, especially with the addition of Takeo Spikes. If Javon Kearse and fellow defensive end Darren Howard are able to join McNabb and Westbrook in staying healthy all year, the D could actually be the Eagles strong point.

The Eagles this year might be a lot like a Fabrege Egg - fragile, but pretty to watch if they do not break.

2. Dallas Cowboys - Wild Card playoff team

More questions abound here. Is Wade Phillips the man to win the first playoff game in a decade in Big D? Will Terrell Owens melt down in his second season, or step up and reclaim his position as the top wideout in the league? Will Tony Romo recover from his infamous fumble to make the Pro Bowl again?

The biggest question - and this will be a blow to Owens' ego - is the one about Romo. The framework is there for the offense to be good - Leonard Davis added to an already decent offensive line, one of the most dynamic receiving corps in the league and an underrated running game. A full off season as the starter working with the "A" team should do nothing but take Romo to the next level, but how many times have we seen a player hit the sophomore wall? Of course, Romo is a mature second year player at 27 years old, and should handle the pressure well.

Phillips comes over from San Diego, where he lead a Chargers defense that was disruptive and lead the league in sacks. There are no superstars, but they were able to be a top 10 team against the run. The weakness was against he pass, where the cornerbacks will get help from the addition of Ken Hamlin. If Phillips is able to protect Roy Williams' coverage deficiencies, there could be a big improvement here as well.

The 10 year drought should be finished, as the Cowboys will be a challenging playoff matchup for any team in the NFC.

3. Washington Racially Insensitive Name - will make some Wild Card noise

Washington is an interesting team. Joe Gibbs has not done much to add to his legacy since his return, but this could be the season he does. If he sticks by young QB Jason Campbell - provided Campbell deserves the faith - they could lead the team towards a playoff berth for the second time in Gibbs fourth season.

Campbell will need to be good in order to improve a passing game, as his receivers have a lot of unrealized talent. Santana Moss has the talent to be a Pro Bowl starter, and tight end Chris Cooley is slowly emerging as one of the best in the league. If Antwan Randle El plays consistently at the level he has shown flashes of, and Brandon Lloyd realized he is not as great as he thinks he is, the passing game could emerge as a strength.

The rushing game is in good shape, with Clinton Portis returning to platoon with Ladell Betts, who filled in last year when Portis went down to injury and rushed for over 1100 yards while providing 53 catches as well. If they adjust well to sharing, they could be the top tandem in the league.

The defense, usually a strong point of Gibb teams, was awful last year, falling all the way to 31st overall. To improve, they have a revamped secondary, with Shawn Springs returning from injury, former starter Fred Smoot returning from a humbling time as a Viking, and former Cardinal starter David Macklin. None are superstars, but each can be solid and the competition from a deep field should help. They join a hard hitting, young safety tandem in Sean Taylor and top pick LaRon Landry. To help out against the run, London Fletcher-Baker and his 146 tackles from a year ago was added at the linebacker position. Little has been done to help out the defensive line though, so Fletcher-Baker should have plenty of opportunity to increase that total.

4. New York Giants - not in the playoffs

What do you get when you take an 8-8 playoff team featuring a shaky young QB and:

1. Take away an All-Pro running back who carried the team on his own more often than not last year;
2. Cut the most experienced member of a good offensive line, who just happened to protect your young, shaky QB's blindside, and;
3. Do nothing to improve a porous defense that would have a hard time stopping a brisk wind?

The final answer will be on the field this year in the Meadowlands, but a good guess is that it is not going to be pretty.

On top of all these issues, coach Tom Coughlin is also coaching for his life this year, which should make his normally frenetic side line presence that much worse. If the team hated playing for him when they were winning, how are they going to deal with him losing?

Not all is hopeless for the Giants, as there are a few rays of hope out there. Manning, for all his inconsistencies, still has the talent that made him the top pick a few years ago, and if he can tap into that, he could make a big difference. Jeremy Shockey is an elite talent at tight end in spite of his elite mouth, and Brandon Jacobs could be a solid starter at running back.

That's a few too many if's for Coughlin to save his job though.


NFC North

1. Chicago Bears - Division Winners, host Wild Card game

The most important man on the offensive side of the ball this season is going to be.....Cedric Benson. Not who most people would put the emphasis on, but when the passing game was struggling last year it was the running game that helped take a bit of the pressure off and keep the Bears in games. If the running game - which was ranked only 15th last year - falls off appreciably without Thomas Jones, then that is going to put a whole lot of added pressure on Rex Grossman.

More pressure is one thing that Grossman doesn't need as there will eventually there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. Grossman will not answer any of the doubters - or get a contract extension - until he puts the Bears on his back and wins a meaningful game essentially on his own, something he has the talent to do. Let's not forget that the reason why Grossman's bad games are so maddening is that he can be so good. Leveling off to just an OK level would do this team wonders.

Defensively, I was ready to talk about how much Lance Briggs holdout would hurt the team by not allowing Brian Urlacher to be the dominant force he can be, on top of Tank Johnson no longer being around. However, with reports that Briggs will be on board for the entire season, and Tommie Harris being on track for a full recovery, the defense should be just as good as it was last year, if not better.

The defense will keep them in almost every game and, if Benson and Grossman play consistently, the offense should win a lot more than they lose.


2. Green Bay Packers - challenging for the Wild Card

Can the old lion make one more run at the playoffs with one of the youngest group of pups in the league? Brett Favre returns for one more season, and the supporting cast might be good enough to help him into the off season one last time.

The biggest question comes at running back, a position that Ahman Green manned so ably for seven years. Green is off to greener pastures (pardon the bad pun) in Houston, leaving former Texan Vernand Morrency to pick up the slack. He averaged 4.6 YPC in relief of Green last year, and if he is able to do that this year, the Pack should be Wild Card contenders until the final weekend.

The rest of the offense looks good. Donald Driver is as underrated a #1 receiver as there is in the league. He'll be joined by second year man Greg Jennings, who showed good potential, even while playing through a fairly severe ankle injury. If tight end Bubba Franks manages to rebound to any sort of relevance, the Pack should put up some big point totals.

Defensively, the Pack were good last year, and a very young group of starters - only one player on the defense will be over 30 on opening day - returns intact. A year of experience for players like AJ Hawk will do nothing by make them better, as will another year under coordinator Bob Sanders tutelage. The secondary and linebacking corps are both solid, but the key to the defense will be the pass rush, led by Aaron Kampman and Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila. If they improve upon their 46 sacks last season, the defense could be dominant.

3. Detroit Lions - not in the playoffs

When Jon Kitna came out and said the Lions would win at least 10 games this season, I wondered what planet he was living on. Confidence is nice to have, but for a team that has won only 22 games in the past five year, that might be a bit much to swallow.

That's not to say things aren't (finally) going in the right direction for the Lions. Coach Rod Marinelli had brought some much needed discipline to the team, and the pieces have slowly come together under offensive guru Mike Martz. Jon Kitna is a solid QB which a lot of teams would love to have as their starter, and will put up big numbers this year with a group of receivers that was well above average even before adding Calvin Johnson in the draft.

They revamped the running game by picking up Tatum Bell and TJ Duckett in the off season, preparing for the liklihood that Kevin Jones won't be ready for opening day. Bell should be able to handle the load, especially since tackle Geroge Foster also came over from the Broncos in the trade for Dre Bly. When he returns, Jones could ideally slide into being a productive third down back, as he is a pass catching threat out of the back field. Even if they end up as a running back by committee, they should improve on the pathetic 70 yards they averaged last year.

The defense has the potential to be good, but that would require every player playing up to their potential. Since it is almost a guarantee that someone will disappoint, I doubt they will be as good as they could be. However, if Shaun Rogers is healthy for a full season and Cory Redding didn't peak in his 8 game run last year, they will be better than the atrocity they were last year.

With a high scoring offense and hopefully and not as highly scored on defense, Lions games should at least be exciting this year, even if they don't come too close to 10 wins. Maybe next year though.....

4. Minnesota Vikings - not in the playoffs

It's going to be an ugly year for Vikings fans. No ifs, ands or buts about that one.

The offense is all about youth. Tarvaris Jackson will get his first full season in at QB after not showing a whole lot after taking over late last year. He has some skill, but not too many rookies or second year starters can step in and lead a team on their own. He has no one to really throw to, as Bear and Titan cast off Bobby Wade is projected to be the top wideout this year, with rookies and unproven players behind him on the depth chart.

The running game is the only part of the offense that looks respectable, with 1200 yard rusher Chester Taylor returning to share time with first round pick Adrian Jackson. They will put up some numbers, but teams that don't have to respect the pass will be able to stack the line against them.

The defense was the bright spot last year, as they were tops in the league against the run , though they were awful against the pass. With coordinator Mike Tomlin gone to coach the Steelers, a drop off can be expected on this side of the ball. They couldn't produce a decent pass rush last year, and they added no one to make that change this year. You know you have issues when you have one of the top two or three corners in the game in Antoine Winfield and still give up an average of 240 yards per game through the air. If the pass rush issues continue, look for teams to pick apart everyone on the secondary not named Winfield.

NFC South

1. New Orleans Saints - Division Winners, 1st Round Bye

The Saints won't surprise anyone this year, but that doesn't mean anyone will be able to stop them either. They had the top passing attack in the league last year and have actually improved it going into this season. Add that to Reggie Bush likely improving as a runner and these guys are scary on the offensive side of the ball.

Drew Brees will have second year standout Marques Colston to throw to again, and that combo should improve from last years 70 catches and 8 TD's now that they know how good Colston is. Top draft pick Robert Meachem should start as the second receiver and should develop into a valuable possession receiver. They also added skilled tight end Eric Johnson to further bolster the passing attack.

The running game is potentially just as scary, with Deuce McAllister being as solid as ever and Bush developing into one of the top threats in the league. He learned late last year that it is sometimes better to allow himself to be stopped at the line for no gain than to try and make something out of nothing and get caught for a loss. Look for a massive improvement in his 3.6 YPC to go along with another 80+ catch season.

Defensively, they remain pretty much the same, though they did add depth to a secondary that helped them rank 3rd in the league against the pass last year. They were not as good against the run, but another year in the system and growth should help them improve on that a bit, if not much. With an offense that good though, they just need a defense that won't get blown out with any regularity and they certainly have that.

2. Carolina Panthers - Wild Card team

The Panthers will be looking to make the disappointment of last season a distant memory, and have made the changes necessary to accomplish that.

With a fully healthy line coming into the season, the Panthers have switched to a zone blocking scheme which suits the skills of the line much better, and should open up more room for a running game that was shut down last year. With a running game that is consistently eating up yards, QB Jake Delhomme should return to his Pro Bowl form after a bad year.

Delhomme also suffered from the injuries to his linemen , getting sacked much more than he was accustomed to. He still has Steve Smith to throw too, so should improve on his 17 TD throws form last year. If he falters though, look for David Carr to step in and be productive.

Defensively, the Panthers should continue to be solid, and may even improve form their ranking of 7th last year. Julius Peppers leads a disruptive pass rush which can throw any team off their game and, if Dan Morgan plays a full season, the linebacking corps should step up to stop the run. If they get solid play out of a secondary lacking stars, the Panthers might not need to score much to win a lot.

Atlanta Falcons - not in the playoffs

I would have picked the Falcons to miss the playoffs even before the whole Michael Vick debacle, though here is something you might not believe - the team might actually be better off WITHOUT Vick.

If you have the right kind of character on your team, adversity can make it band together and actually play above their talent level. Even without Vick, the Falcons should again be one of the top rushing teams in the league behind the dynamic duo of Warrick Dunn and Jerious Norwood, and they have the defensive talent to keep games at least close.

The major change, of course, will be with Joey Harrington at QB. With a solid running game around him, Harrington's passing ability could very well improve the offense by adding a dimension Vick never seemed to have as a passer. Harrington did OK in Miami last year, and all reports are that he is adjusting well to new coach Bobby Petrino's offense. He could surprise everyone and have a solid if not spectacular season.

I would bet they would still love to undo that Matt Schaub trade though.

4. Tampa Bay Buccaneers Not in the playoffs

Jon Gruden is either the most overrated coach in the league or a genius who keeps tinkering until he gets things right.

He has definitely been tinkering this year, bringing in Jeff Garcia and naming him the starter over promising youngster Chris Simms, even before training camp starts. After that vote of confidence, Tampa was the first place calling when Daunte Culpepper was released. As with almost all Gruden teams, the QB situation should be making news all year long.

Elsewehere on offense, they improved the offensive line with Luke Pettitgout and draftee Arron Sears, so Cadillac Williams will have no excuse not to have a big year. BJ Askew was added to be a lead blocker as well. Receiver is a bit of a problem position behind the ageless Joey Galloway, who had better stay ageless or it won't matter who is throwing the ball - there won't be anyone to catch them.

The vaunted Tampa Bay defense fell to 17th in the league as the core group of players are nearing their expiry date, so the Bucs made seven defensive draft picks. The top pick was defensive end Gaines Adams, who will be relied upon to help revive a stagnant pass rush that produced only 25 sacks in 2006. Kevin Carter was brought in from Miami to help out as well, and Larry Coyer was brought in to coach the revamped defensive front. The secondary is still solid, though produced only 11 interceptions last year.

This is Gruden's first do or die year in his career, and how he handles it will impact how this team does. If all the offensive tinkering pays off, the Bucs could get out of the basement, but Gruden will likely keep tinkering until they're eliminated, which could be early in the season as they have a very tough start to the schedule.

NFC West

1. St Louis Rams - Division Winner, host Wild Card game

The Rams were 8-8 last year while giving up almost 150 yards on the ground each game and almost 25 points. In order to jump ahead of the Seahawks, who have been the class of a weak division the past few years, they remade that porous defense.

Sixth year veteran James Hall was brought in from Detroit to help the pass rush, while they used their first pick on tackle Adam Carriker to help stuff the run. Leonard Little will enjoy the help at end that Hall will give, and might even improve on his 13 sacks now that he has someone to split the attention with. The secondary is starless but solid, while the linebackers are the weakest group on defense, but should be helped by the new concentration on run stopping from the line.

If the defense can cut back on the points allowed just a bit, the offense is more than ready to step up and take the Rams to the next level. Marc Bulger - provided he doesn't hold out - will lead a group that could put up the most points in the league. Stephen Jackson is second only to LaDanian Tomlinson as an all around threat out of the backfield, and he actually put up more total yards than his Charger counterpart last year. At receiver, they added Drew Bennett and Dante Hall to accent the duo of Tory Hold and Isaac Bruce, one of the top tandems of all time.

The pieces are in place for the Greatest Show on Turf to make a revival. If the defense responds to the attention the Rams paid to it this off season, it could be quite a successful run.

2. Seattle Seahawks - challenging for the Wild Card

The offense is starting age, as their two major stars - QB Matt Hasselbeck and RB Shaun Alexander - will both be over 30 on opening day. It's an age that is not kind to rushers who have carried as much as Alexander has, and Hasselbeck has had injury issues. Even when he is healthy though, he has shown a tendency towards inconsistent play and inaccurate throwing. If these two rebound to their 2005 form, things should be OK for the 'hawks, but if they're anything like they were last year it will be a long season.

Hasselbeck could have the best receiver he has ever played with if Deion Branch is fully adjusted to the offense, which he should be by now. Beyond Branch though, the receiving corps is not deep as third year vet DJ Hackett will be the second starter and an aging Bobby Engram will be the third receiver. Branch was Tom Brady's favorite option when he was a Patriot, but Patriot receivers have not done well after leaving the nest. Branch will have to break that trend in order for the Seahawks to make the playoffs.

Much like many other teams in the conference, the defense in Seattle won't scare anyone, but it just needs to avoid blow outs to give the offense a chance to win. They did concentrate on the D in the draft, using their first three picks on CB Josh Wilson, DT Brandon Mebane and DE Baraka Atkins. Since they gave up their first round pick to the Pats for Branch, they didn't have a pick until 55th overall, but they did OK with they had.

In free agency, they added Patrick Kerney who, if he stays healthy, should help out the pass rush. The secondary is a mix, as it is weak at corner and strong at safety. Like I said, the defense isn't designed to win, just to not lose. It might be a recipe to get back to the playoffs, but not win to put another ring on Mike Holmgren's finger.

3. San Fransico 49ers - not in the playoffs, but might make some Wild Card noise

As the younger players start to mature, it seems that the 49ers are slowly rising out of the mess they faced in the first few years of this century. Alex Smith rebounded from a horrible rookie season to show a lot of promise in his second year. He looked a lot more poised on the field and responded with nearly 3000 yards throwing while upping his TD total and reducing his INT's.

A big reason that Smith made the advances that he did was the maturation of Frank Gore into a top running back, leading the team in both rushing and catching. With defenses having to account for Gore, it allowed Smith a lot more time in the pocket to make plays. He will have a new toy this year as well, as they traded for former Seahawk Darrell Jackson. While not a superstar - and possibly a slight attitude problem - Jackson was productive last year, with 63 catches and 10 TD's. Fifth year receiver Arnaz Battle is a solid second option, but they may be wasting time with Ashley Lelie who has come no where near his potential with either Denver or Atlanta.

They spent BIG money on the defense in the off season, bringing in LB Tully Banta-Cain from the Patriots to help out on the pass rush and then spending a ridiculous amount of money on CB Nate Clements. Clements definitely upgrades a weak position for the Niners, but at $90 million was it worth it? Their top pick in the draft was LB Patrick Willis, who should step in and start on the inside immediately.

The offensive pieces are coming together, and a year from now, the defense may have gelled enough to make the 49ers a legitimate threat in the NFC.

4. Arizona Cardinals - not in the playoffs

You know that saying you hear at the start of every season? How every team is a playoff contender until the ball is snapped? I think they coined that phrase about the Cardinals. Each year is supposed to be THE year that they break out and contend, but this will not be THE year.

Offensively, they have three stars and a potential star. Running back Edgerrin James has had a Hall of Fame career, but must feel like a tool after watching the Colts win the Super Bowl without him while he averaged 3.4 YPC playing behind traditionally the worst line in the league. How that affects his ego will have as much to do with how he bounces back as how the line plays in front of him this year.

The passing game is in good shape, lead by two All Pro wideouts in Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald. They'll be catching passes thrown by a potential future All Pro in Matt Leinart, who showed that he could play in the league last year. What level he'll play at could very well be decided this year.

Most of the problems with the Cardinals stem from their inconsistency on the offensive line. No team can win without a decent line, and the Cardinals have juggled a new one together out of a top five pick in Levi Brown, a former Cowboy backup in center Al Johnson, a free agent from the Bills in Mike Gandy, Oliver Ross who was a backup tackle for them last year, and Reggie Wells, who started at right tackle last year but moves to left guard. Stranger things have happened, and chemistry counts for more on the offensive line than it does almost anywhere else in sports, but it has the makings of another long season in the desert.

The defense that was awful last year - remember that Monday night game against the Bears? - switches to more of a 3-4 scheme under new head coach Ken Whisenhunt, who saw how much success the Steelers had with that scheme over the years.

Whisenhunt may be the coach to finally lead the Cardinals out of the basement, but it will take at least a year of figuring things out - especially the offensive line - to make it all work.

source:www.411mania.com

article; Health officals investigate mouse found in chips

Jack Hines, 66, has resided in Havre since 1970. He was customed to eating potato chips every evening for a late night snack. That is until last Tuesday, when, in his normal routine, he said he reached for a handful of chips while watching television. As he put the handful to his mouth horror struck him — there was a dead mouse in his handful of Lays K.C. Masterpiece barbeque potato chips. “I got him up to my lips and I felt that fur,” Hines said and he retold the story of almost biting into a mouse he believes was fried right alongside the chips at the Frito-Lay processing plant in Utah. Hines said as the chips were one of two bags that he purchased the week of July 4th. One bag traveled to a family barbeque, the other stayed on the shelf until last week when he opened it for a snack. Hines said he had been snacking on the bag of chips for a few nights before finding the small, crispy mouse. It startled the widower so much, he said, that he involentarily tossed the mouse over his head and it went through an open window behind him. Hines said he called the manager at Gary & Leo’s IGA the next morning, after he had some time to get over his queasiness. IGA’s manager Tracy Job advised him to call the Frito-Lay company, so he did — three times. “I figured I should do something about it,” Hines said. “The spokesperson from Frito-Lay wanted to know how I could prove it. He said they wouldn’t be able to tell anything until they retrieved the mouse. They thought I was doing it just for the money, but that ain’t the reason I done it. It was because I know how kids and everyone likes eating chips and if it was a younger child, they probably would have ate it and got sick or something.” When asked if there was any other way the mouse could have ended up in the bag, he said, “I don’t know how. Like I said, the bag was sealed when I opened it and I would have noticed if there were holes in the bag. I didn’t smell nothing funny about them.” Frito-Lay told Hines on Wednesday that a representative would come to his house Sunday and pick up the mouse for “processing.” That was before Hines notified the Hill County Health Department on Friday of the incident and a community health official beat the chip company to the "evidence." The mouse and potato chip bag were collected Friday afternoon by the Hill County sanitarian Clay Vincent. Vincent said he was going to forward the contents of the chip bag to the state's Department of Health and Human Services, which he said will work state-to-State to see that the proper protocol is followed in determining whether the mouse was, in fact, inside the barbeque potato chip bag before Hines opened it. Frito-Lay sent the representative to Hine’s home with the first name Delores, who refused to disclose her last name to the Havre Daily, during the Sunday afternoon visit. “Have you got the product?” Delores asked Hines immediately upon entering his home. “Nope. Health board’s got it,” Hines said. When the Havre Daily asked if she had questions for Hines, Delores said, “I’m not from the company and I can’t divulge information.” At which time she left the home, and Hines continued his own investigation n searching his on-line banking to verify the date of purchase for the Lays K. C. Masterpiece barbeque chips that turned up the mouse. Another mouse incident similar to this case occurred on March 19 at Lewis-Palmer Middle School in Monument, Colo. That mouse was not fried and Frito-Lay led the investigation. In the Colorado case, Frito- Lay’s pathologist determined that mouse chewed it’s way into the bag after it left the store shelves, according to an Associate Press article published in March 2007. "We take all reports like this very seriously," Jared Dougherty, Frito-Lays spokesperson, said in a phone interview Friday afternoon. "We are working with the consumer. The gentleman did not want to release what he called his evidence until (Sunday) July 22 and that is when we will be picking up the product. We will review the product to see exactly what happened. In most cases like this, there is a rational explanation. In the majority of cases, it happens after the product leaves our control. " "It looks like an unsubstainted claim," Dougherty said. "We do have the manufacturing code. He told us that he purchased this product on July 2. He contacted us on July 18. There was a significant amount of time from when he purchased the product and the time he contacted us. We can't guarentee the integrity of the product after the consumer purchases it." When asked about the similar claim in Colorado, Dougherty said, "I think it is imperative to point out the fact that the other incident happened after it left our control. That mouse chewed it's way into the bag after it was sold." "What's concerning to me with this incident is the unsubstianted claim here," Doughterty said. "This gentleman has already requested monetary compensation from us. It makes us very sceptical." The Hill County health official said their actions of collecting the evidence were standard practice. "Anytime that you get food that might be found with something that is in there that should not be, the county collects that," Clay Vincent, Hill County sanitarian said. "What I will do is fill out a form that has as much information about the incident as possible — where the product was made, the lot number, so on and so forth. After the form is completed I will then ship it (the product, mouse and form) to the state health department." From there the health department will deal with the company to try to figure out how this particular object got into the bag. "Our concern is to have a safe food source," Vincent said. "It doesn't matter if it's a mouse or a nail, a nut or bolt. We want to determine the origin of where it came from and make sure that problem is taken care of." "All we are doing is basically going backwards and trying to see how the thing got in there," Vincent said. "The states will make sure that inspections are done in the manufactoring plants and figure out how it (the mouse) got in the bag. It may have chewed it's way into the bag, it may have been on the conveyer belt or it may have happened some other way. We don't know, but that's where you start the whole investigation." Vincent will ship the bag and mouse to the state health department today and said it might take them a little while before they get to it as they are dealing with other states and factories. "It may take a week or two, " Vincent said. Hines said he believes the mouse was fried along with the chips. "There were no holes in the bag. All you have to do is look at it and you can tell, " he said Friday afternoon. "It ain't got no eyeballs or nothing on it — it looks like it was deep fried." The Hill County Health Department and Frito-Lay company said they would issue statements as more information in the investigation is revealed. "We are working with the health department and we are still waiting to do our own analysis of the product," Doughterty said.

source:www.havredailynews.com

article; Colloidal Silver Can Leave You Feeling Blue

People take the dietary supplement for everything from colds to a pick me up, but the Harvard Health Letter says the substance can have a strange side effect – turning the skin a bluish color.

Silver has several uses in conventional medicine, the article in the August 2007 issue of the Letter points out. Silver sulfadiazine is used to treat serious burns. Fabric impregnated with silver is sometimes used as a dressing for wounds or skin infections. And silver nitrate is occasionally used to treat warts and corns.

But there’s no proof that taking colloidal silver by mouth has any benefits, the authors say. As for harm, brain and nerve damage from silver exposure is rare, but colloidal silver can cause kidney damage, stomach distress, and headaches, they say.

The most common problem associated with silver exposure is argyria: The skin turns a bluish gray as granules of silver accumulate in the body.

The conjunctiva, the membrane that covers the eyes, and internal organs may also be affected. Once silver is deposited, there’s no way to get it out, so the discoloration may be permanent.

Will the colloidal silver products currently on the market turn you blue? The health letter says if you use them for a short time and in recommended amounts, probably not. But some people overdo it.

For example, a 59-year-old man was sent to the emergency room because he looked cyanotic—the bluish color that indicates you’re not getting enough oxygen. It turned out he’d been taking a homemade version of colloidal silver whenever he felt a cold coming on.


source:www.consumeraffairs.com

article; 15-Year-Old Shot By Oakland Police Officer

Police murder and terrorism against young Black people has been rampant in Oakland for decades, dating back before the OPD murdered 17-year-old Black Panther Bobby Hutton in cold blood in front of the community in 1968, two days after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, all the way up to a few years back, when some Oakland cops calling themselves “the Riders” got caught kidnapping and beating people, planting dope on people and falsifying police reports, among other things, costing the city $110 million in court-ordered victims’ retribution money.

If you’re a young Black male living in Oakland, chances are that you have been terrorized by the police on one or more occasions. There’s definitely nothing new about police beating, shooting or killing Black people, but we’re talking about it because this is a case that the people who believe that the system will help us could learn from. This is a clear example of how the police are nothing but a lawless occupying army in our community, in the same way that the U.S. army is in Iraq.

We have to critically understand that the police are enemies of the Black community. Look at the circumstances around this case. Why wasn’t anyone fired and indicted? The officer who shot Lorante was reportedly put on paid leave (or paid vacation) after the shooting. If somebody shot that cop, they would be indicted for murder while the investigation was in the process.

This is a reason why the Black community has to begin to organize to defend itself against America’s biggest gang: the police. I talked to the parents of Studesville about this case and the history of police violence in the Bay Area. His mom Cinnamon, requested that her last name not be used.

JR: Cinnamon, can you give us a recap of what happened on July 3?

Cinnamon: On July 3, the (police) officers claim that they saw my son place something into his mouth, which appeared to them to be narcotics. He then drank from the beverage that he was holding and that “gave them the reason to initiate contact” between my son and themselves.

They got out of the vehicle and, probably intimidated by the police because of a previous experience he had regarding police brutality, he probably ran out of fear. And when he ran, the officers were in pursuit. One actually chased him on foot, and as he ran through yards, the other officer drove around the corner to catch him on the opposite side.

The officer that was chasing him on foot radioed in, and he claimed he saw my son dispose of a weapon. Even though that message went clearly through the police radio, the officer that was waiting on the opposite side, on 107th Avenue, for my son to come through the yards proceeded to warn my son to stop and give up. My son continued to run from the officer that was behind him, continuously running towards the officer that was in front of him and, according to the article, when he reached approximately 40 feet from the officer on 107th Avenue, my son was shot in the neck by the police officer.

Rev. Sanders: One newspaper I read said that he (the police) took a head shot once he saw the child running down the street, looking like he was reaching for his belt. But I know that these kids be sagging out here. Most Black youth be sagging. You know the difference between someone reaching for a pistol and somebody running down the street trying to pull their pants up. I’m kind of thinkin’ that’s what went down, because I see how my son dresses, and he ain’t never got no hip-huggers on.

JR: Well, Rev. Sanders let me ask you: Being a Black man right here in the Bay Area, can you give us a little bit of the history and how they act in the Black community?

Rev. Sanders: I got a history with police and within the community understanding the way it is because my father and my uncle were Black Panthers. Richard O’Neal (uncle), who’s in jail right now, was just indicted with those eight men for allegedly killing an officer and conspiracy (the San Francisco 8 case). My family roots deal with the Civil Rights Movement.

I know that there have been clashes in the Bay with the police officers. My uncle, Richard O’Neal, was shot 7 times in the back on McAllister Street by police officers in 1977. My father was also in protest with him. So I grew up very aware that there were oftentimes problems with the police officers in Frisco and in Oakland.

That fueled my own behavior, because I just did a 10-year sentence in prison, and I did 6 out of the 10. And when I came back to the streets, I definitely wanted to reach out to my son, to try to snatch him out of that. His mom really pushed very hard in the last couple of weeks to really get us close together. We had to overcome a lot of hurdles because I know the dangers lurking, not only by the police department but the traps and vices in the ghetto community itself.

JR: How is Lorante right now? What is his condition like?

Rev. Sanders: I just left the hospital about 30 minutes ago, and he’s very uncomfortable. He can’t talk, His chest is open. They just closed his sternum yesterday. They left it open because they wanted to try to take the bullet out of the spine, if the bleeding would have stopped. I think that the neurologist said that they think it should just stay where it is. They don’t think that it is going to move into the spinal column.

source:news.ncmonline.com

Articel: Water parasite leaves hundreds hospitalised

A parasite in the water supply of a village 70km north of Amman has given hundreds of people severe diarrhoea and high fever, requiring them to be hospitalised.

Over the past 11 days, at least 800 residents of Bani Hassan village, near Mafraq, including children and the elderly, have been taken to hospital for treatment against the highly resistant parasite, according to medical sources in Amman.

The disease is not fatal but causes unpleasant diarrhoea lasting up to two weeks.

The parasite, Cryptosporidium, which was first discovered in the late 1970s, infects humans and a wide range of domestic and wild animals, according to a report produced jointly by the Royal Scientific Society, the Jordan University for Science and Technology, and the Amman-based World Health Organization (WHO) Centre for Environmental Health Activities.

The report, released on 24 July, did not say how the parasite got into the village's water supply system.

Some say the aging water supply system was a fertile breeding ground for the parasite. Others blame farmers who tap into the pipelines to divert water to give to their cattle.

Residents of the desert village blame the water network. For the past few years they have been urging the government to repair their water network after noticing leaks and a build-up of rust on the pipes.

"We sent several letters over the past three years to the government urging it to renew the water network… But we were told to wait because of a lack of financial resources," said Fayez Shdeifat, a member of parliament from Mafraq.

Very resistant

Minister of Health Saad Kharabsheh told reporters on 24 July that the waterborne parasite was very resistant to traditional water treatment methods such as chlorine. He advised residents to boil water before using it.

The minister said no fatalities occurred as a result of the epidemic but residents of Bani Hassan say tens of people remain hospitalised or bed-ridden in their homes. The government vowed to begin replacing the ageing water network within two weeks. In the meantime, residents are relying on trucks to bring water from nearby villages.

Residents of nearby villages themselves fear the parasite could find its way into their water supplies. Government spokesman Nasser Judeh said three water experts had been dispatched to the area to conduct regular tests on water supplies "as a precautionary measure".

Judeh added that the government would use ultraviolet sterilisers on water sources in the area.

Officials from the Water Ministry say the cost of renewing Jordan's water network is very high. Currently it is believed almost half of the country's piped water is lost to leakages.

Cryptosporidium

Cryptosporidium needs a living host to grow and remains inactive in the environment. The most common symptom of cryptosporidiosis is profuse and watery diarrhoea. Other signs and symptoms include weight loss, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, and low-grade fever.

Symptoms often present sporadically, but disappear in less than 30 days.

The parasite infects humans, cattle, and domestic animals. It can be killed by heat or removed by filtration. The most common mode of transmission is from person to person. Persons become infected through hand-to-mouth contact.

The parasite may occur in contaminated water, such as streams or lakes that are open to contamination by human and animal faeces, or in food contaminated by animal faeces.

source:www.alertnet.org

article; Physically Challenged, I Never Gave Up - I Found My Niche In The World Of Fashion

While I was in the midst of becoming a ba’alat teshuvah I decided to go to Stern College in New York and use a year of college to focus on advancing my knowledge of Jewish studies. During the second half of the year I was surprised to see changes in my health that had never occurred before. I started to put on weight, my handwriting changed and my voice turned monotone. I didn’t pay much attention to these changes but they were signs of a serious disease that was starting to take hold of my muscular system, called Dystonia, which would drastically alter the course of my life.

That year I attended an NCSY convention in Florida in order to hear my brother give a speech and it was there that I met Harvey Tannenbaum whom I would eventually marry. After finishing at Stern I attended a NCSY camp outside Los Angeles where Harvey was the director. When camp ended I stayed for an extra month in Los Angeles with my grandmother and took an Abnormal Psychology course at U.C.L.A. While I was walking to the car after class one day, my right foot began to kick my left foot. This difficulty with walking started on an occasional basis and soon became an on-going problem.
Meanwhile, I went back to Vancouver, to stay with my parents as I awaited a marriage proposal. While I was in the kitchen helping my mother, I suddenly couldn’t continue to answer her questions, my upper lip felt so tight and stiff that it just wouldn’t move. This new change, added to my already monotonic voice, made my speech completely unintelligible. My family thought that I was joking around, since I wasn’t able to speak or walk properly. If only these changes were just a joke, but they were not.

Our family doctor sent me to a neurologist who gave me a whole gamut of neurological tests in existence at that time. All of the tests came back negative. According to the doctor I was in “perfect health” physically and, therefore, he felt that I needed to be seen by a psychiatrist to explore what was wrong with me mentally.

source:www.jewishpress.com

article;Brighter Smiles

We all have people we look up to whether it’s in our personal or professional life. One of those people in my professional life is the late Dr. L.D. Pankey. Dr. Pankey was a true visionary and has an advanced dental education institute named after him where dentists learn from his influential teachings.

I recently read an article he wrote in 1981, eight years before his death. It is interesting to read some of the things he wrote because it shows how much things have not changed and how well he understood people and his profession. I would like to share a few paragraphs from this piece:

“Another important element, then, in the future of dentistry is determining the answer to the question: Why don’t more people with needs go to the dentist? In-depth studies on consumer attitudes have turned up a host of reasons, but one surpasses all the rest. Most people who fail to seek dental care fail because they don’t perceive their need. More astounding than that is the fact that the majority of people who do go to the dentist don’t perceive the need either.

“If the public is ever to be enlightened about the importance of dental health, who will have to do the enlightening? I’ve never found anyone else I could depend on to do it. I had to build the one-to-one relationships with my patients that were needed to make my practice — and thus the future of dentistry — prosper and grow.

“People with dental needs are out there all right, but even when they do perceive their need they must be assured there’s someone available who will identify with what they’re feeling and devote themselves to helping them to be healthy, happy and whole.”

Statistically, there are 50 percent of you reading this that do not see a dentist on a regular basis. In 1981 there were no connections between oral health and systemic health. Today we know that a healthy mouth is so important to a healthy body yet still the same percentage of people do not see a dentist on a regular basis.

Next time we will take a look into the five major reasons why people do not seek ideal dental care. Those five reasons are money, time, lack of concern, fear and trust. Following that, we will look into how to go about choosing a dentist if you do not have one.

The dentist is not going to call you to make an appointment; you have to call. After you make that call, it is up to you and your dentist to discuss the specific barrier(s) that are preventing you from obtaining optimal oral health.

Don’t take your teeth and oral health for granted. Just because it doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean you are healthy. Just because your car runs doesn’t mean you don’t need maintenance. Just because you feel okay doesn’t mean you don’t have heart disease. Take your health seriously.

source:www.townonline.com

article; Spam and turkey tails have turned Micronesians into Macronesians. A case study of how fatty Western plenty is taking a disastrous toll on pe

n Kosrae, an island in Micronesia, new arrivals are a curiosity, and it seemed that half the island had come to greet me and Steven Auerbach, a Manhattan-based medical epidemiologist and an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service who had worked in Micronesia in the early 1990s, when we visited last year. Dazed from our 8,000-mile journey, we groped our way down the pockmarked coastal road, driving past groves of trees bent nearly double under loads of bananas, papayas, and breadfruit. We were on our way to a funeral feast.

We arrived to find the feast in full swing. Young men in lawn chairs played cards, while toddlers squatted, transfixed, around a television screen blaring taped cartoons. Hovering women filled plates and wiped faces. Perhaps a hundred people were there, and the dead man's wife looked bored. The deceased, buried four weeks earlier in a nearby crypt, seemed almost beside the point.

Kosraeans die young (the man in the crypt was fifty-six), but not for reasons commonly associated with the developing world. There is no famine here, and with the notable exception of upper-respiratory infections, little evidence of the diseases that cut life short in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. The big killer in Kosrae—what some epidemiologists call New World syndrome—is a constellation of maladies brought on not by microbes or parasites but by the assault of rapid Westernization on traditional cultures. Diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure—scourges of affluence that long ago eclipsed infectious diseases as killers in the West—have only recently appeared here.
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We sat with the dead man's brother-in-law, who told us that he expects to die soon too. His sister's husband died of heart disease; he himself will likely die of diabetes. "But I am fifty-seven, an old man, so this is of no matter," he said. He worried more about the young people. Nodding toward the cardplayers nearby, he said that it was not uncommon for them to gather to mourn a man or woman of thirty.

Kosrae was at one time a mighty kingdom, with Lelu its capital. Today Lelu is still the state's largest and most densely populated village, a jumble of tin-roofed huts connected to Kosrae proper by a causeway. We went to Lelu to see the ruins of the ancient city, built 600 years ago of immense basalt "logs." Exhausted by the heat, we ducked into a nearby general store to get a cold drink. Inside we found row after row of canned goods: Spam and corned beef and Vienna sausages in fancy tins. There were cake and muffin mixes from the United States, ramen-noodle soup from the Philippines, flats of soda and Budweiser beer, shelves of candy bars and potato chips. An entire freezer was reserved for turkey tails—a fatty, gristly hunk of the bird which is generally regarded as inedible in the United States. The freezer was empty. Turkey tails are so popular, we were told, that the month's shipment was long gone.

In the handful of other grocery stores scattered around the island we found plenty of salty, sweet, and fatty imports—but no fresh bananas, papayas, breadfruit, coconut, or mangoes. Apart from a fish shack or two and a few forlorn stands hawking bags of the island's famous—and costly—green tangerines, there was nowhere to buy local produce on the island. We were told that most Kosraeans once grew fruits and vegetables on family plots, and pulled tuna and reef fish from the sea. But the majority of modern Kosraeans don't have time or energy to farm or fish—they are too busy with their office jobs.

Kosrae is the smallest of four island states that make up the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the largest and most populous political entity to emerge from the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which placed the islands under U.S. administration after World War II. In 1986 Micronesia implemented a Compact of Free Association with the United States, which dissolved its trust status. In order to sustain a security partnership, the United States is still the FSM's chief benefactor, supplying the bulk of its revenue—about $100 million—in aid each year. The bureaucracy required to manage and distribute this windfall continues to be Kosrae's single largest employer. Few if any of its jobs demand the skill or physical effort required by the traditional work of fishing and farming. Physical exertion has been further discouraged by expansion of the coastal road and the steady importation of cars, some bought with the help of government money. To walk in Kosrae is to announce that one is too poor to ride, and Kosraeans offer a lift to every casual stroller.

This newfound convenience comes at a high price, as a visit to Kosrae's state hospital revealed. A low-slung concrete structure with greasy windows and no air-conditioning, it is poorly equipped to handle anything but basic health needs. Patients with serious problems are airlifted to Guam or the Philippines. The hospital director, a former Vice President of Micronesia, confessed to us that he and his wife travel abroad for even routine checkups.

The hospital's inpatient ward has perhaps two dozen beds, and nineteen were occupied on the morning we visited. Thirteen people were there for complications of diet-related diabetes and two for heart conditions. Paul Skilling, a Kosraean family doctor, lamented that cases of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease are as common as coconuts on his island. Another doctor half joked that even health-care professionals are at risk. "Look at me," he said, pointing to his paunch. "I am myself obese. My body-mass index is thirty-two. How long before I have these diseases?"

The doctor was indeed obese, but his body-mass index was only slightly higher than average for a Kosraean adult. In 1993-1994 the Micronesian Department of Health, with funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, screened almost all the adults on the island and found that nearly 85 percent of those aged forty-five to sixty-four were obese. Non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, heart disease, and hypertension are closely linked to obesity, so it is perhaps not surprising that more than a quarter of Kosraeans in this age group were also diabetic, and more than a third suffered from high blood pressure. (Non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, or NIDDM, the kind that afflicts Micronesia, is also known as Type II or adult-onset diabetes; "diabetes" here refers to this type.) Vita Skilling, the island's chief of preventive health services, told us that efforts to reverse this trend have been disappointing. "Here you buy imported food in the store to show that you have money," she said. "Even if you don't have much money, you can buy turkey tails."

In Kosrae 90 percent of adult surgical admissions are linked to diabetes, and of these many are for amputations necessitated by vascular breakdown. There are more cases of renal failure than the hospital can handle, and cardiovascular disease is pervasive. And in Kosrae ill health hits early—frequently men and women have a first heart attack in their late twenties.

N ew World syndrome has taken hold throughout much of the South Pacific. The problem in Kosrae pales by comparison with that in the Republic of Nauru, a tiny, crowded island known as the Kuwait of the South Pacific. Nauru's citizens grew rich from the mining of phosphate deposits, which long ago eclipsed fishing as the state's major revenue source and are now nearly depleted. This rocky island's few patches of arable land were laid waste years ago by mining, so Nauruans subsist almost entirely on imports. Prosperity has brought them Japanese televisions, German luxury sedans, and Australian filet mignon. It has also brought them what Auerbach calls "the worst of 1950s American cuisine"—processed foods with plenty of fat, salt, sugar, and refined starches. As a result Nauruans have among the highest rates of obesity and diabetes on the planet, and a life expectancy of only fifty-five. In contrast, the region's poorest nation—Kiribati, thirty-three islands that straddle the Equator, with little money for imported food or anything else—has in its rural regions the lowest rates of noncommunicable disease in the South Pacific.

Scientists have studied the health status of native peoples in the South Pacific for decades, and have noted the explosion of diet-related disease in Nauru and Micronesia, among other islands. But the CDC-supported effort seven years ago was the first to offer systematic health screening of adults in the islands of the FSM. Auerbach was in charge of that screening. He told me that it had made possible the early identification and treatment of health problems, and had helped to alert the islanders to the perils and prevention of noncommunicable illnesses. Among the small victories were an early-morning walking program for adult women and the Micronesian One Diet Fits All Today campaign, through which Kosraeans are encouraged to avoid imported food in favor of locally grown fruits, vegetables, tubers, and fish. Vita Skilling said that although MODFAT had helped some patients to reduce their blood pressure and dependence on diabetes medication, she did not know whether the program had had a wide impact. She invited us to attend a party for a group of women who had recently "graduated" from the MODFAT program. We arrived in time for lunch and were offered fresh fish, breadfruit, fried chicken, orange soda, candy, and apple pie. Most of the graduates were hugely obese. Apparently the "healthy diet" message had gotten muddled. The walking program, although enthusiastically endorsed by the clinicians I spoke to, was in May still suspended "for the Christmas holiday."

P aul Zimmet, an Australian physician and researcher who specializes in the study of noncommunicable diseases, wrote in 1996 that "the [non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus] global epidemic is just the tip of a massive social problem now facing developing countries." Zimmet implicated the "coca-colonization" that has devastated local customs and economies and led to ill health. Rates of obesity and diabetes have skyrocketed around the globe, but particularly among traditional peoples in transition—Polynesians, Native Americans, and aboriginal Australians; Asian Indian emigrants to Fiji, South Africa, and Britain; and Chinese emigrants to Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

Although the rapid introduction of processed foods and other conveniences is certainly the proximate force behind this trend, scientists are also looking at genetic components. Jeffrey Friedman, a professor and the head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University, in New York, is investigating why some Kosraeans manage to escape the hazards of coca-colonization while others succumb. To Friedman and his team, the interesting question is not why so many sedentary, office-bound, Spam-loving Kosraeans are obese but why not all of them are.

Kosraeans, like all natives of Micronesia, trace their ancestry back 2,000 years to a handful of Indo-Malayan mariners. Driven by fear, religious persecution, greed, or foolhardiness, this small band settled the Pacific. Those who landed on Kosrae developed a feudal society that went largely unnoticed by the West until 1824, when a French research vessel, the Coquille, dropped anchor nearby. Rene Primevere Lesson, the ship's doctor, described Kosraeans as "advanced people of a high civilization, to judge from the vestiges of customs, tradition such as the authority of the chiefs, classes of society, and the remnants of the arts which they still practice." The women, he wrote, had "black eyes full of fire and a mouth full of superb teeth … but a tendency to become fat." He also observed that considering the island's bounty, its population of about 3,000 was surprisingly small. (Easter Island, in Polynesia, was then supporting a population of at least 7,000 with roughly the same land mass and a less hospitable climate.) Studies later supported local lore that a much larger population had been diminished by starvation after typhoons devastated the island's food supply. The population continued to dwindle throughout the nineteenth century, as Kosrae became an increasingly popular base for pirates and New England whalers, who brought with them tobacco and whisky—and infectious diseases. By 1910 only 300 Kosraeans had survived the Western imports of smallpox, measles, influenza, and sexually transmitted diseases.

James Neel, a geneticist at the University of Michigan Medical School who died last year, hypothesized in a 1962 article on diabetes that under conditions of scarcity natural selection weeds out people unable to store food efficiently in their bodies, and that a "thrifty genotype" encourages the conversion of calories into body fat. He suggested that this mechanism was necessary for survival during periods of extreme stress and famine that would otherwise ravage a population. Most populations are assumed to have some variation on this genotype, but it is likely that peoples whose evolution was punctuated by a number of particularly harrowing events developed the most-effective versions. In Kosrae, where weather and disease wiped out 90 percent of the population, this effect must have been profound. The very genes presumed to have protected islanders from their history are now believed to be predisposing them to life-threatening illnesses.

In 1994 Friedman and his team at Rockefeller cloned what is perhaps the ultimate thrifty gene—the obese gene, which in its normal form carries the chemical code for leptin. A hormone discovered by Friedman, leptin plays a critical role in the brain, regulating appetite and fat storage, among other things. Leptin is an extremely potent hormone. People who carry the abnormal form of the obese gene don't have the genetic makeup to produce leptin; they eat uncontrollably and are morbidly obese. Although very few people have this defect, all of us have variations along the leptin and perhaps other brain pathways that influence our eating habits and efficiency at turning calories into body fat. Friedman's group examined blood samples taken from 2,286 adult Kosraeans in the course of Auerbach's islandwide screening. Preliminary findings suggest that European genes inherited from New England whalers and other visitors protect Kosraeans to some degree against obesity and diabetes: the more "European" an islander, it appears, the less likely he or she is to be obese or diabetic. Zimmet says this finding is consistent with earlier findings linking Asian genes with those of populations from Native Americans to New Guinea highlanders. Scientists speculate that certain aspects of the Asian genotype, evolved in part to withstand long periods of scarcity, predispose hundreds of millions if not billions of people to obesity and diabetes.

Writing in Nature in 1992, Jared Diamond, a professor of physiology at the UCLA Medical School, suggested that the populations of Western industrial nations had already to some extent weeded out the thrifty genotype, keeping diabetes and obesity below the levels now common in Micronesia. "Before modern medicine made [diabetes] more manageable," he wrote, "genetically susceptible Europeans would have been gradually eliminated, bringing [diabetes] to its present [relatively] low frequency." Diamond and others have suggested that some human populations, notably those that evolved in regions of Europe, may have developed a relative resistance to certain noncommunicable diseases just as they did to some infectious diseases—through natural selection over centuries of relatively sustained plenty. Given the burgeoning rates of obesity and diabetes in the United States and other industrialized nations, this seems surprising, until one considers that rates among the most susceptible peoples—Pacific Islanders such as Native Hawaiians, Samoans, and Nauruans—are higher still. Indeed, all measures indicate that the greatest impact of obesity-related disorders will continue to be in newly industrialized and developing nations in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans which historically had an unstable food supply.

T he World Health Organization recently described overeating as the "fastest growing form of malnourishment" in the world. For the first time in history the number of people worldwide who are both overweight and malnourished, estimated at 1.1 billion, equals the number who are underweight and malnourished. Obesity rates in China have quadrupled in the past decade, and obesity in the urban middle class in India is epidemic. In Colombia 41 percent of adults are overweight. The global spread of diet-linked disease presents one of the greatest medical challenges of the twenty-first century.

But when I spoke with agricultural and business leaders in Micronesia, it was clear that a concerted government effort to fight noncommunicable disease was not likely on these islands. I heard repeatedly that health was a matter of willpower and individual effort, and that government could do nothing to curb the public taste for imports. The fact that many state legislators in Micronesia are also food importers was never mentioned—nor were the particulars of auto importation in a tiny country already overrun with cars.

Father Francis Hezel, a Jesuit priest from Buffalo, New York, who has spent more than three decades teaching and writing in Micronesia, said that even people in power are reluctant to speak out. "You can enter any clinic and smell the decaying limbs, rotted by diabetes," he told me. "But many people here are beholden to the government. They don't want to rock the boat." In Micronesia—as in much of the world, particularly the developing world—it is more profitable for authorities to encourage overconsumption than to discourage it. The Worldwatch Institute reported last year that approximately four of the five McDonald's restaurants that opened every day in 1997 were outside the United States. In its 1998 annual report the Coca-Cola Company described Africa as "a land of opportunity."

Obesity, diabetes, and other manifestations of New World syndrome can, like infectious diseases, be contained. In Singapore the nationwide Trim and Fit Scheme, which began in 1992, has cut childhood obesity by up to 50 percent. And in Hawaii, Terry Shintani and colleagues at the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center have shown long-term health benefits from a program emphasizing a return to traditional local foods.

We spotted a glimmer of progress in Micronesia, though not in the Western-style wellness programs. One of our hosts, a hospital administrator, told us that he neither farmed nor fished but did enjoy playing basketball, and that he would sometimes jog rather than drive to the high school gym to play. As a result of this regimen he had lost a significant amount of weight, and avoided some of the health problems suffered by his more sedentary compatriots. Basketball, he said, was catching on quickly in Kosrae, as was baseball. "Imports made us sick," he said. "Now maybe imports will help us get well."

However nice the thought, increasing amounts of junk food are being shipped into Kosrae from the West, food importers say, and the island is about to import television programming. Kosraeans will be able to come home, open a few cans of Spam, switch on the tube, and kick back for the evening. It is then that they will truly be able to live—and die—in the manner of their Western benefactors.

source;www.theatlantic.com

atrticle; Health Chiefs

Health officials have banned swimming pools from handing out armbands to children - because they claim they are too dangerous.
They say blowing up the swimming aids by mouth could spread germs, while unseen punctures could lead to accidents.

The ban also covers rubber rings.

Leisure centres across Britain have been ordered to train staff how to "safely" give out armbands.

Bureaucrats insist that 275 staff would have to be retrained to follow safety rules - and so swimming pool bosses have decided it is easier to axe them.

source;news.sky.com

Leaflets highlight disease dangers

Leaflets highlight disease dangers

CATTLE and sheep diseases cost money to the whole food supply chain and one of HCC’s central industry development aims is to assist farmers in improving the health of their animals.

HCC has created a series of nine, up-to-date and informative leaflets highlighting herd and flock health planning.

They are published to coincide with the Royal Welsh Show, and all come with a simple sheet for farmers to record any of the health issues that have occurred on their farms, any action they plan in response to the diseases and any other decisions that need to be made to eradicate or improve the disease in the herd and flock.

The set of nine health leaflets put the spotlight on abortion, clostridial disease, IBR, joint Ill, lameness, leptospirosis, pneumonia, scouring and watery mouth and vaccination.

Most of these illnesses, diseases or conditions can be expensive and serious for the farmer – for instance, even a five per cent abortion rate can reduce potential gross margin by 10%. And in the case of pneumonia, even a 2% mortality rate can reduce potential gross margin by 10%.


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These are just two of the profit-damaging conditions that can erode prices – and the leaflets look at seven other hazards.

Leptospirosis, the main cause of disease in cattle in Wales, is an infectious and contagious bacterial disease; Clostridia is a group of spore-forming organisms found in the soil which can cause a series of serious and even fatal diseases.

Vaccination is important to successful flock management, but incorrect or careless injection techniques produce abscesses that have to be cut away in the slaughterhouse causing financial losses to the producer – losses that are hard to assess because most never see the carcass mutilation that is necessary to remove vaccination abscesses from high-priced areas.

A few countries are now close to eradication of infectious bovine rhinotracheitis and herds may soon have to prove that they are free from IBR in order to gain access to export markets.

If you would like find out more about this series, contact HCC on 01970 625050.

Gwyn Howells is chief executive of the Welsh meat promotion authority Hybu Cig Cymru

source:icwales.icnetwork.co.uk

Hand, Foot. Mouth Disease

Hand, Foot. Mouth Disease

Members of the public should maintain strict personal and environmental hygiene to prevent Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease following an outbreak of the disease in a kindergarten cum child care centre in Western District involving 29 children.

The affected children, aged from 2 to 6 years from four classes, developed mouth ulcers, vesicles on feet and fever starting from June 15.

Twenty-six of them consulted private doctors or general out-patient clinics. None required hospitalization and all are in stable condition.

A CHP spokesman said CHP has paid site visits to the school and provided health advice to the management. Laboratory tests on the stool samples collected from the affected children will be carried out.

He said HFMD is a viral infection. It is mainly transmitted by the faecal-oral route. Direct contact with open and weeping skin vesicles may also spread the virus.

"In most cases, the fever, rash and ulcers subside spontaneously in one week and full recovery is usual. Complications are uncommon. Rarely, this illness may be associated with viral meningitis.

Parents are, therefore, advised to seek prompt medical attention if their children develop a high fever, decrease in alertness or deterioration of general condition," the spokesman added.

To prevent HFMD, members of the public, including management of institutions, should adopt the following measures:

- Maintain good air circulation.

- Wash hands before meals and after going to toilet, handling diapers or other stool soiled materials.

- Keep hands clean and wash hands properly, especially when they are dirtied by respiratory secretions, e.g. after sneezing.

- Cover nose and mouth while sneezing or coughing and dispose of nasal and mouth discharge properly.

- Clean children's toys and other objects thoroughly and frequently with 1:99 diluted household bleach, followed by rinsing/wiping with clean water.

- Children who are ill should be kept out of school until their fever and rash have subsided and all the vesicles have dried and crusted.

source:www.emaxhealth.co

Customized New Dental Product Makes Any Mouth Smile

-Principal Financial Group®, the nation's premier provider of employee and voluntary benefits, launches the most flexible dental product to date - Principal® Dental Series II. New consumer driven features enable employers to stretch their benefit dollars while employees get personalized coverage.

“With the added flexibility behind Principal Dental Series II, our customers have virtually unlimited options for structuring their dental benefit designs,” said Theresa McConeghey, dental product director for The Principal®. “We developed our latest product by asking our current customers what they liked best about our dental products. The feedback boiled down to one word, flexibility, so we took that information and ran with it.”

Building on the success of the original dental series, Principal Dental Series II boasts new features offering employees greater choice when it comes to how they use their benefit dollars. The maximum accumulation benefit allows dental plan members to roll over a portion of their unused annual maximum into the following year, much like rollover minutes on a cell phone plan. A new lifetime deductible feature means claimants only meet one deductible amount throughout their lifetime coverage with The Principal. For employers who want to encourage use of in-network providers, the split maximum provides a cost-effective alternative.

In addition to new features, added benefit riders allow for coverage of services not always included in a traditional dental benefit design including: dental implants, temporomandibular joint (TMJ) treatment, cosmetic services, dental accidents and orthodontia coverage.

“One of the most important factors in driving down costs is preventive care, so this is woven throughout all of our dental benefit designs. Employees who seek preventive care will reap the rewards with greater cost savings,” said McConeghey. “By pulling together consumer driven healthcare features and new benefit riders, we’re building one of the most comprehensive, yet adaptable dental benefit designs in the market.”

The Principal provides a number of interactive tools to help members get the most out of their dental benefits through the Principal Dental Health EdgeSM located on www.principal.com. Members can access information on procedures, treatment plans, network providers and oral health information. The site includes a cost estimator, which calculates dental costs in a given ZIP code and a database of network providers who offer discounted charges and fees.

Principal Dental Series II is currently offered as employer-sponsored or voluntary in select states, with an effective starting date of Oct. 1, 2007. To learn more about dental solutions offered by The Principal, brokers should contact their Principal Financial Group representative or visit

source:home.businesswire.com

In Prince George's, an impasse over health care risks the health of tens of thousands.

THE WRESTLING match for control of Prince George's County's main health-care network is perilously close to a point of no return.

County officials, intent on taking effective control of Dimensions Healthcare System, which runs Prince George's Hospital Center and a number of smaller facilities, are withholding millions of dollars in subsidies. Dimensions, which has lived hand-to-mouth on those subsidies to supplement its own anemic revenue stream, is suing for the money. There is a danger, within the coming weeks or very few months, that Dimensions, starved of cash, will be forced to close a network that serves 180,000 patients a year.
So frequent are the standoffs, warnings of impending doom and countdowns to disaster that the crisis has taken on the aspect of a daytime soap opera, the critical difference being that the health and welfare of thousands of real people are on the line. As they bicker and snipe at one another, the principals in this real-life drama run the risk that a benumbed public will simply stop caring -- until it's too late. And as they struggle over power, personnel and money, officials from both the county and Dimensions have lost sight of the only meaningful goal, which is to devise a workable plan to ensure the long-term stabilization and vigor of the health-care system.

Meanwhile, valuable paying patients as well as doctors may lose trust in Prince George's Hospital and abandon it for other facilities. Dimensions' bond owners, who hold tens of millions of dollars in long-term debt, may demand to be repaid on an accelerated schedule. Either scenario could doom the hospital, and the county's entire health-care system, in short order.

Officials at Dimensions as well as in the county may believe that state officials will ride to the rescue. It's a risky gamble. The state did set aside $20 million for the health network in April, but that money came with strings attached; it was to be used either to help fashion a long-term restructuring for Dimensions or to finance its orderly shutdown. It was not for bridge loans or other quickie fixes. And it is worth bearing in mind that the state, facing a $1.5 billion shortfall in next year's budget, has its own financial problems.

Jack B. Johnson (D), the Prince George's county executive, is behaving as a fine political tactician but a poor long-term strategist. By withholding $2 million in subsidies due last month to Dimensions, plus another $12 million due in the fiscal year that began this month, he hopes to force the network to bend to his will -- specifically, to pack the Dimensions board with four new Johnson loyalists. But in focusing his energies on that battle he has lost sight of the wider struggle to reform the county's main hospital system -- a job best done under state, not county, auspices. Mr. Johnson should step back from the precipice and focus on the larger stakes.

source:www.washingtonpost.com

Health briefs

Mouthwash adds moisture

A new product worth noting:

Oasis Moisturizing Mouthwash for Dry Mouth

What it is: A mild, mint-flavored, alcohol-free mouthwash that lightly coats the inside of your mouth to lock in moisture.

What it does: Leaves your mouth feeling moist and smooth and your breath fresh for up to two hours after rinsing.

Secret ingredient: Hydrogenated castor oil. (Don't worry, it doesn't taste like castor oil.)

Who it's for: Anyone suffering from dry mouth because of medications; cancer patients undergoing radiation; smokers; and athletes who work out in the heat.

This is no substitute for adequate hydration, but some triathletes have volunteered testimonials for Oasis mouthwash and spray, says Lori Lukus of GlaxoSmithKline.

How to use it: Rinse for 30 seconds with one ounce of mouthwash in the morning and again before going to bed. Carry the spray and use as needed. Do not swallow or refrigerate it.

Where to get it: Most groceries and drugstores for about $6 for either the rinse or the spray.

source:www.rockymountainnews.com

Health: Mouth Guards

PHILADELPHIA Parents with children on sports teams know how expensive all that protective gear can be. But one item is often overlooked and one bad play could mean a dental disaster that could cost thousands. Medical reporter Stephanie Stahl has the details.

The local baseball diamond is where young athletes fall in love with America's favorite pastime. But it's also where kids can do some serious damage to their smiles.

"Baseball to the mouth, got the one tooth clean. Broke it off," Dentist Jeffrey Tocci said.

Dr. Tocci said a baseball to the mouth can break off teeth. He sees injuries like that all of the time. And in many cases, a mouth guard could have saved the tooth.

"30 to 50 percent of the injuries are preventable," Dr. Tocci said.

Most baseball leagues encourage kids to wear mouth guards, but they don't require it. And when given a choice, most kids pass.

"They are not really comfortable. They're not fun to wear," one baseball player said.

"I just don't like them," another baseball player said.

"That's like my biggest fear, getting hit in the face," a third player said.

Fixing an injury like this is not only traumatic for the child. It can also be expensive. Most dental insurance won't cover the entire cost of these kinds of major repairs.

"It can easily get up into the level of 10 to 20 thousand dollars," Dr. Tocci said.

Many times the mouth injuries that children suffer come from non-contact sports.

"You wear helmets and knee pads and elbow pads when you roller blade and bicycle. We recommend mouthguards for the same reason," Dr. Tocci said.

You can get inexpensive mouth guards at a sporting good store for less than $20. But dentists say custom made mouth guards work best. They cost about $200.


source:cbs3.com