Elaine's Place

Fat or Obese?

Elaine — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:31:33 +0000

What do you think about this? England’s public health minister is telling physicians and other health professionals to tell people they are fat rather than obese. Some believe the term obese is just another medical term and makes the condition a third party issue. Where using the term fat is brutally honest and encourages personal responsibility. I don’t know how this will go over in the UK but here in the states I would think many patients would be offended, then again has the medical community been tip toeing around the issue afraid to be brutally honest?

FYI: The term obesity comes from the Latin word obesus, which roughly translated means intensive eating.

Source

Oil Spill In Michigan

Elaine — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:35:45 +0000

Southern Michigan residents are learning that devastating oil spills aren’t limited to the Gulf Coast.

Crews were working Wednesday to contain and clean up an estimated 3,319,708 litres of oil that coated birds and fish as it poured into a creek and flowed into the Kalamazoo River, one of the state’s major waterways.

Continue reading:

Photos by Jonathon Gruenke – Associated Press

Ten States With Slowest Internet Speed

Elaine — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:25:39 +0000

Do you live in one of the bottom ten states? Each quarter, Akamai publishes a quarterly "State of the Internet" report. This report includes data gathered across Akamai’s global server network about attack traffic, average & maximum connection speeds, Internet penetration and broadband adoption, and mobile usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time. Listed below the bottom ten states with the slowest internet connections in the U.S.

10. Ohio

9. Texas

8. Iowa

7. Illinois

6. Missouri

5. Washington

4. Georgia

3. District of Columbia

2. New Jersey

1. Alaska

Source:

Some Staggering Statistics

Elaine — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:10:44 +0000

•    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
•    61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
•    66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
•    36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
•    A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
•    24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
•    Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
•    Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
•    For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
•    In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
•    As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
•    The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
•    Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
•    In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
•    The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
•    In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
•    More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
•    For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
•    This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
•    Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
•    Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
•    The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Source: Yahoo Finance

Caribbean Hit Hard by Dengue Fever

Elaine — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:54:41 +0000

Dozens of deaths have been reported as mosquito-borne dengue fever reaches epidemic levels in the Caribbean.

Warm weather and an unusually early rainy season that led to an explosion in mosquito populations are being blamed for the situation, which is straining the capacity of hospitals in some countries, the Associated Press reported.

There have been 27 deaths reported in the Dominican Republic and at least five have died and another 6,300 cases have been reported in Puerto Rico, which faces what may be its worst dengue outbreak in more than a decade, according to officials.

"We are having a really large epidemic," Kay Tomashek, epidemiology section chief of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s dengue branch in Puerto Rico, told the AP

Canada To Coordinate HIV Research

Elaine — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:25:41 +0000

The Canadian government announced the launch of a new initiative on Tuesday intended to spearhead the fight against AIDS and make Canada a leader in the development of a safe, effective, affordable and globally accessible HIV vaccine.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced that the Research and Development Alliance – a plan to harness the expertise of researchers, private industry, social scientists and international organizations – will become the revamped design of the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative.

The initiative is a $139-million joint venture between Canada and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Today’s Picture

Elaine — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:32:00 +0000

A “cute” primate so rare it was thought to be extinct has been caught on camera in the forests of Sri Lanka for the first time, scientists said Monday.

The Horton Plains slender loris is a small, nocturnal animal which can grow up to 17 centimetres (six inches) long with big, bulging eyes.

The Decline: The Geography of a Recession

Elaine — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:48:00 +0000

Updated 7/15/10

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly 31 million people currently unemployed — that’s including those involuntarily working part-time and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting.

"The Decline: The Geography of a Recession," as created by labor writer LaToya Egwuekwe, serves as a vivid representation of just how much. Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 — approximately one year before the start of the recession — to the most recent unemployment data available today.

If unable to view imbedded video – You Tube link.

Original link: http://latoyaegwuekwe.com/geographyofarecession.html.

Microneedles May Make Flu Shots Easier

Elaine — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:20:04 +0000

From the Associated Press

One day your annual flu shot could come in the mail.

At least that’s the hope of researchers developing a new method of vaccine delivery that people could even use at home: a patch with microneedles.

Microneedles?

That’s right, tiny little needles so small you don’t even feel them. Attached to a patch like a Band-Aid, the little needles barely penetrate the skin before they dissolve and release their vaccine.

Researchers led by Mark Prausnitz of Georgia Institute of Technology reported their research on microneedles in Sunday’s edition of Nature Medicine.

The business side of the patch feels like fine sandpaper, he said. In tests of microneedles without vaccine, people rated the discomfort at one-tenth to one-twentieth that of getting a standard injection, he said. Nearly everyone said it was painless.

Some medications are already delivered by patches, such as nicotine patches for people trying to quit smoking. That’s simply absorbed through the skin. But attempts to develop patches with the flu vaccine absorbed through the skin have not been successful so far.

In the Georgia Tech work, the vaccine is still injected. But the needles are so small that they don’t hurt and it doesn’t take any special training to use this kind of patch.

So two problems are solved right away – fear of needles, and disposal of leftover hypodermic needles.

“The goal has been a means to administer the vaccine that is patient friendly,” Mark R. Prausnitz of Georgia Tech said in a telephone interview.

That means “not only not hurting or looking scary, but that patients could self-administer,” he said, and people would be more likely to get the flu vaccine.

By developing needles that dissolve, there are no leftover sharp needles, especially important for people who might give themselves the vaccine at home, he said.

The patch, which has been tested on mice, was developed in collaboration by researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University, Prausnitz said. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers are now seeking funds to begin tests in people and, if all goes well, the patch could be in use in five years, he said.

Flu vaccination is recommended for nearly everyone, every year, and that’s a big burden on the public health network, Prausnitz noted. Many people don’t get the shot because it’s inconvenient, but if they could get in mail or at the pharmacy they might do so, he said.

The patch is placed on the skin and left for 5 minutes to 15 minutes, he said. It can remain longer without doing any damage, he said. In tests on mice, the miocroneedles delivered a correct dose of the flu vaccine.

The little needles are 650 microns (three-hundredths of an inch) in length and there are 100 on the patch used in the mouse study.

Asked if the term “microneedle” might still frighten some folks averse to shots, Prausnitz said he was confident that marketers would come up with a better term before any sales began.”

Online:

Nature Medicine: http://nature.com/naturemedicine

Georgia Tech lab: http://www.che.gatech.edu/drugdelivery/

Best Hospitals 2010-2011 Honor Roll

Elaine — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:25:29 +0000

The rankings are out again for the Best Hospitals. Out of the 5,000 that were considered only 152 made it to the list and of those only 14 to this years honor roll.

In brief, death rate, care-related factors, and patient safety added up to slightly more than two-thirds of each hospital’s score. The reputation portion of the score used responses from nearly 10,000 physicians, who were surveyed in 2008, 2009, and 2010 and asked to name five hospitals they consider among the best in their specialty for difficult cases, ignoring cost or location.

The Honor Roll requirements were so stiff that 99.7 percent of all centers in the nation were excluded. A hospital had to be ranked in at least six specialties, but ranking alone was insufficient for inclusion. It also had to have an extremely high score (in statisticians’ terms, at least 3 standard deviations above the mean). That earned 1 point per specialty. Reaching the top of the Honor Roll called for even higher scores (4 or more standard deviations above the mean), earning 2 points, in far more specialties. The highest-ranked hospitals on the Honor Roll, which is ordered by points, had high scores in 15 of the 16 specialty rankings. Johns Hopkins stands at No. 1—as it has for the last 20 years.

See America’s best hospitals or search for one near you.

Click picture to see full size.