Monitoring the Planetary Emergencies

clipped from www.federationofscientists.org The identification of Planetary Emergencies and their categorisation into fifteen main groups To date the World Federation of Scientists has established the following Permanent Monitoring Panels and Working Groups: Biotechnology Brain and Behaviour Climatology Defence Against Cosmic Objects Desertification Energy: www.energypmp.org Floods and Extreme Weather Events Information Security: www.itis-ev.de/infosecur/ Limits of Development Missile Proliferation Mother & Child Pollution Motivations for Terrorism Mitigation of Terrorist Acts Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy Water

Social Networking: Common Mistakes Small Businesses Make

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Many businesses these days are venturing into the Wild West of social media, trying their hand at things like blogging and Twitter and creating profiles on social-networking sites. But along the way they’re making lots of mistakes. Sta.rtup.biz, a small-business social-networking site, recently had some thoughts on how small businesses are botching their forays into the social-media world. Here’s a look at some of the most common mistakes from them and other social-media experts: Bare Profile: Too Little Personality: Too Much Hype: Not Enough Fresh Content: What do you think of this advice? Anything else to add?

Is 'green' the new black?

clipped from www.synovate.com Assuming you're not a green activist, you could be forgiven for being a little – dare we say it – bored of climate change. That's not very PC, but over the past twelve months our over-heating earth has consistently hit front pages across the globe, a multitude of green products and marketing campaigns have debuted and governments have been elected or ejected on the back of their green credentials. The second annual Synovate and BBC World News climate change study showed that more and more people are concerned about climate change (72% across the globe and as high as 88% in Spain). But, even more importantly, more and more people are actually doing something about it. People are changing their behaviour in a dramatic fashion and the past year has taken all-things-green mainstream. Synovate spoke with over 18,000 people across 22 nations and found that climate change is a truly hot issue. Eco-worriers It's not easy being green America earns its green stripes Green for good in China?

Zookeeper feeds baby squirrel in Bulgaria

I know its off track but I couldn't' resist.

clipped from blogs.usatoday.com

Number of Insured Continues to Grow in Massachusetts

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The number of people with health insurance continues to grow in Massachusetts, home of a closely watched universal health insurance plan. Some 439,000 people have signed up for insurance since the plan went into effect in 2006, state officials said in a report released yesterday. (The figures exclude Medicare.) That’s more than two-thirds of the estimated 600,000 who were uninsured in the state two years ago, the Boston Globe reports. Indeed, so many people have signed up for insurance that the program is costing far more than expected, and there’s currently a fight in the state over how to pay for it. Still, there’s a financial upside. The number of people showing up at emergency rooms for routine care — an inefficient, high-cost way to get such care — has fallen 37% since the plan went into effect, the Globe says. That decline has saved the state an estimated $68 million. The report is online here; a Washington Post story on the report is here.

Better to Be Fat and Fit Than Skinny and Unfit

Since this describes me I thought I would post the article as a clip.
You can read the entire article by clicking the link in the clip. Following the links in the article provides lots of interesting information.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Increasingly, medical research is showing that it isn’t. Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided. Last week a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine compared weight and cardiovascular risk factors among a representative sample of more than 5,400 adults. The data suggest that half of overweight people and one-third of obese people are “metabolically healthy.” That means that despite their excess pounds, many overweight and obese adults have healthy levels of “good” cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and other risks for heart disease. The data follow a report last fall from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute showing that overweight people appear to have longer life expectancies than so-called normal weight adults.

God vs. doctor: 1 in 2 say prayer saves the dying

God vs. doctor: 1 in 2 say prayer saves the dying

When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.

An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

More than half of randomly surveyed adults — 57 percent — said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment.

When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.

"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.

Pat Loder, a Milford, Mich., woman whose two young children were killed in a 1991 car crash, said she clung to a belief that God would intervene when things looked hopeless.

"When you're a parent and you're standing over the body of your child who you think is dying ... you have to have that" belief, Loder said.

While doctors should be prepared to deal with those beliefs, they also shouldn't "sugarcoat" the truth about a patient's condition, Loder said.

Being honest in a sensitive way helps family members make excruciating decisions about whether to let dying patients linger, or allow doctors to turn off life-prolonging equipment so that organs can be donated, Loder said.

Loder was driving when a speeding motorcycle slammed into the family's car. Both children were rushed unconscious to hospitals, and Loder says she believes doctors did everything they could. They were not able to revive her 5-year-old son; soon after her 8-year-old daughter was declared brain dead.

She said her beliefs about divine intervention have changed.

"I have become more of a realist," she said. "I know that none of us are immune from anything."

Loder was not involved in the survey, which appears in Monday's Archives of Surgery.

It involved 1,000 U.S. adults randomly selected to answer questions by telephone about their views on end-of-life medical care. They were surveyed in 2005, along with 774 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who responded to mailed questions.

Survey questions mostly dealt with untimely deaths from trauma such as accidents and violence. These deaths are often particularly tough on relatives because they are more unexpected than deaths from lingering illnesses such as cancer, and the patients tend to be younger.

Helping families come to terms
Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a University of Connecticut surgery professor and trauma chief at Hartford Hospital, was the lead author.

He said trauma treatment advances have allowed patients who previously would have died at the scene to survive longer. That shift means hospital trauma specialists "are much more heavily engaged in the death process," he said.

Jacobs said he frequently meets people who think God will save their dying loved one and who want medical procedures to continue.

"You can't say, 'That's nonsense.' You have to respect that" and try to show them X-rays, CAT scans and other medical evidence indicating death is imminent, he said.

Relatives need to know that "it's not that you don't want a miracle to happen, it's just that is not going to happen today with this patient," he said.

Families occasionally persist and hospitals have gone to court seeking to stop medical treatment doctors believe is futile, but such cases are quite rare.

Dr. Michael Sise, trauma medical director at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, called the study "a great contribution" to one of the most intense issues doctors face.

Sise, a Catholic doctor working in a Catholic hospital, said miracles don't happen when medical evidence shows death is near.

"That's just not a realistic situation," he said.

Looking for a miracle
Sise recalled a teenager severely injured in a gang beating who died soon afterward at his hospital.

The mother "absolutely did not want to withdraw" medical equipment despite the severity of her child's brain injuries, which ensured she would never wake up, Sise said. "The mom was playing religious tapes in the room, and obviously was very focused on looking for a miracle."

Claudia McCormick, a nurse and trauma program director at Duke University Hospital, said she also has never seen that kind of miracle. But her niece's recovery after being hit by a boat while inner-tubing earlier this year came close.

The boat backed into her and its propeller "caught her in the side of the head. She had no pulse when they pulled her out of the water," McCormick said.

Doctors at the hospital where she was airlifted said "it really doesn't look good." And while it never reached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed, McCormick recalled one of her doctors saying later: '"God has plans for this child. I never thought she'd be here.'"

Like many hospitals, Duke uses a team approach to help relatives deal with dying trauma victims, enlisting social workers, grief counselors and chaplains to work with doctors and nurses.

If the family still says, "We just can't shut that machine off, then, you know what, we can't shut that machine off," McCormick said.

"Sometimes," she said, "you might have a family that's having a hard time and it might take another day, and that's OK."
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26272687/

The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means

The Last Lecture

'beer goggles'

Maybe we can get these guys working on something really important next time. Hmm, let's see, how about proving scientifically that its easier to get lucky when the other person just finished their fourth "captain".

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com Strangers really do look sexier when you drink booze, science confirms For the first time, scientists have proven that "beer goggles" are real — other people really do look more attractive to us if we have been drinking. Surprisingly, the beer goggles effect was not limited to just the opposite sex among the ostensibly straight volunteers recruited for the study — they also rated people from their own sex as more attractive. After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, "a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness," said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England. "Everyone knows about beer goggles," Munafo said. "But some of our results suggest that there's more going on than we might have thought."   Poll: Have ‘beer goggles’ ever led you astray?

Solar Panels by the Square Mile in California

clipped from dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com Matthew Wald has just written a news article showing the power of a guaranteed market to bring about large-scale construction of energy technologies that currently cannot compete with the status quo. Two photovoltaic power plants, in essence, are going to be built in California, covering a total of 12.5 square miles and amounting to 800 megawatts of generating capacity (although remember that the peak is only hit for a small portion of the day). Two California companies said Thursday that they would each build solar power plants that were 10 times bigger than the largest now in service, creating the first true utility-scale use of a technology now mostly confined to rooftop supplements to conventional power supplies. Photovoltaics eventually would need to be as cheap as paint or roof shingles to begin to make a serious dent in coal burning, many experts say. solar thermal plants

Cancer Patient: Hit the Gym

Wendy Rahn, 46, an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, knows this well. After a double mastectomy, her shoulders hurt so much that she was often hunched in pain. Then, while researching her illness, she discovered a 2005 study on cancer and exercise.

“The effects — what we call effect sizes in statistical research — were enormous,” she said, “and I was like ‘How come no one is talking about this?’ ” She had given up exercise a decade earlier, but the study inspired her to go back to the gym.

“I started feeling so much better,” she said. “And it struck me that if I’m feeling this good, then every cancer survivor should.”

clipped from www.nytimes.com Sponsored by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, this class for cancer patients has been around for some time, mostly in a league by itself. in recent years, following studies that found exercise to be beneficial in combating the effects of cancer, the class has gained some company. Gyms and fitness centers have begun stepping in to meet a small but growing demand for programs designed to not only hasten recovery but to address the fatigue of chemotherapy, the swelling of lymphedema and the loss of muscle tone. A new program from the Y.M.C.A., in partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, offers cancer fitness classes “There used to be this understanding that if you’re getting treatment you’re supposed to be in your bed,” said Pam Whitehead, an architect and survivor of uterine cancer who started the Triumph Fitness Program at gyms in Modesto and West Sacramento, Calif.

American Driving Reaches Eighth Month of Steady Decline topping the 1970s total decline

This is a good example of simple supply/demand economics. Demand drops prices drop.

clipped from www.fhwa.dot.gov New data released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that, since last November, Americans have driven 53.2 billion miles less than they did over the same period a year earlier – topping the 1970s' total decline of 49.3 billion miles. Americans drove 4.7 percent less, or 12.2 billion miles fewer, in June 2008 than June 2007. To review the FHWA's "Traffic Volume Trends" reports, including that of June 2008, visit http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/tvtpage.htm.

'The Road' is fiction, but the bleak scenery is real

The film, which stars Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron and 11-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee, also was shot in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and on Mount St. Helens in Washington state for scenes of devastation.

clipped from www.usatoday.com Imagining the end of the world is not easy, especially if you're not going to create one with a computer. But director John Hillcoat and filmmakers of The Road believe they discovered it in Pittsburgh. Bleak landscape: Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee are a father and son who make their way through post-apocalyptic America. "It's a beautiful place in fall with the colors changing," Hillcoat says. "But in winter, it can be very bleak. There are city blocks that are abandoned. The woods can be brutal. We didn't want to go the CGI world." PHOTOS: Get a feel for the bleak, beautiful world of 'The Road' That book is Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winner of the same name. It's about a father and son who navigate a countryside devastated by an unnamed catastrophe.

Which Drugmaker Will Be Biggest in 2014? Hint: Not Pfizer

File this under food for thought. I hope this helps stimulate some good investment ideas.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The drug industry’s about to plunge off a patent cliff, as blockbuster after blockbuster faces generic competition. But some companies are facing a steeper cliff than others. Evaluate Pharma, a data crunching outfit based in London, pooled consensus forecasts to estimate how things will look in 2014. Here’s a list of the top six, based on projected worldwide sales of prescription and over-the-counter drugs in 2014: 2014 RANK COMPANY 2007 RANK 2014 DRUG SALES (EST., $m) 1 Roche 5 49,500 2 Sanofi-Aventis 3 48,011 3 GlaxoSmithKline 2 43,300 4 Novartis 4 42,875 5 Johnson & Johnson 7 32,547 6 Pfizer 1 29,287

An Olympic Stadium Worth Remembering

More than 90,000 spectators will stream through its gates on Friday for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games; billions are expected to watch the fireworks on television. At the center of it all is this dazzling stadium, which is said to embody everything from China’s muscle-flexing nationalism to a newfound cultural sophistication.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Take it from the top in the 'bird's nest'

clipped from latimesblogs.latimes.com Beijing Games organizers staged a dress rehearsal on Saturday night for the Aug. 8 Opening Ceremony. Associated Press reports that more than 10,000 performers, along with high-tech wizardry, are to be showcased. Fireworks illuminated the skyline during the run-through, giving Beijing residents and visitors a pyrotechnic preview of the 3-1/2-hour extravaganza. The 90,000-seat "bird's nest" was filled with family members and friends of performers. Some journalists were invited on the condition that they not reveal anything about the ceremony.

OLYMPICS REHEARSAL

Follow the links for more.

clipped from www.abcnews.go.com 1 of 16 Olympics Rehearsal A student from the Tagou martial arts school from Henan province practices in front of the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, at the Olympic Green in Beijing, July 16, 2008. More then 2,000 students from Tagou martial arts school will perform during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and have been training on the outskirts of Beijing for a year, local media reported. Picture taken July 16, 2008. (Donald Chan/Reuters )

Bike Commuting By the Numbers

This article caught my attention. Why? I am starting to see women riding bikes with baskets on the front to the grocery store. I talked to one of them and she had a basket that you could take off the bike and use it to shop in the store and then reattach for the ride back home.

Obviously, this kind of activity could dramatically effect the number of miles Americans drive each year. It could also lead to a lower trade inbalance and people getting in great shape.

I also suspect these riders would be more open to communication. If this is the case, expect to see guys riding bikes to the store in the years ahead. Move over Match.com.

clipped from health.usnews.com 1 percent of trips in the United States are made on a bicycle. That's 10 percent in Germany, 18 percent in Denmark, and 27 percent in the Netherlands. In Portland, Ore., 3.5 percent of trips to work are made by bike, the highest share among the 50 largest American cities. The lowest: Kansas City, Mo., at a paltry 0.02 percent.

Special Reminder: PBS Presents The Future of Alzheimer's

PBS will present a special evening of programming focused on Alzheimer's disease on Sunday, August 3 starting at 9 p.m.

The programming starts with a national encore broadcast of the Emmy-Award-winning THE FORGETTING: A Portrait of Alzheimer's, followed by a new half-hour discussion, The Future of Alzheimer's, moderated by actor and Alzheimer's champion David Hyde Pierce.