Some statin drugs do seem to raise users' risk of diabetes, study suggests -

Some statin drugs do seem to raise users' risk of diabetes, study suggests - 



Some cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins appear to put users at an elevated risk of developing diabetes, a new study reports.

The work, by Toronto scientists, suggests that higher potency statins increase the diabetes risk, while for lower dose statin brands the elevated risk is not seen.

At the end of the day, the cholesterol-lowering benefits of the drugs may outweigh the diabetes risks in many cases, said senior author Dr. Muhammad Mamdani. But he suggested it makes sense to try to use a lower dose statin when possible.

"If a patient has a really high LDL" — the dangerous form of cholesterol — "then maybe you do need the high powered stuff like Lipitor and rosuvastatin or Crestor and you can actually go a bit higher on the dose," said Mamdani, director of the applied health research centre at the St. Michael's Hospital's Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.

"But for most of the patients you could probably get away with using something like pravastatin or even lovastatin.... I'd say for the vast majority of patients, those would be just fine."

Pravastatin, which is sold as Pravachol or Selektine, has actually been shown to be protective against diabetes in some studies. Lovastatin is sold under the brand name Mevacor.

Mamdani estimated the risk as follows: "For every 1,000 patients who takes one of the higher potency statins, you're going to see six to 10 additional patients being diagnosed with diabetes. ... Had you used pravastatin, you would have seen between six to 10 fewer patients with diabetes."

"So the risks aren't huge," he continued. "But there are a lot of people taking these high potency statins. In fact, atorvastatin is by far — by far — the most popular statin."

The possible link between taking some statins and diabetes has been seen in the past. In fact, Health Canada warned in January that statin users may have a small increased risk of developing the condition and changed the labelling on the drugs to reflect that fact.

But previous studies have found conflicting results, so Mamdani and some colleagues conducted another. They looked at the records of more than 470,000 people 66 and older in Ontario who did not have diabetes when they started taking a statin, and found three brands of the drugs seemed to increase their diabetes risk.

The three drugs were atorvastatin, rosuvastatin and simvastatin, which are sold as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor respectively.

The researchers said no increased risk was seen with fluvastatin (which is sold under the brand names Lescol, Canef and Vastin) or lovastatin.

Mamdani said there isn't an across-the-board answer here. "I don't think it should be . . . 'Everybody ditch the statin that you're on and take pravastatin.' It really should be left to the physician and the patient to see where the patient is at."

"(But) if you're one of the I think majority of patients who probably could do well on pravastatin, that's a conversation the patient may want to have with their physician."

The study was published in BMJ, a journal of the British Medication Association. The work was done by researchers at Toronto General Hospital, the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Studies, Sunnybrook Research Institute and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.

Read more: -

http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Some+statin+drugs+seem+raise+users+risk+diabetes+study+suggests/8427320/story.html

America’s Bubble Economy Is Going To Become An Economic Black Hole -

America’s Bubble Economy Is Going To Become An Economic Black Hole - 



What is going to happen when the greatest economic bubble in the history of the world pops?  The mainstream media never talks about that.  They are much too busy covering the latest dogfights in Washington and what Justin Bieber has been up to.  And most Americans seem to think that if the Dow keeps setting new all-time highs that everything must be okay.  Sadly, that is not the case at all.  Right now, the U.S. economy is exhibiting all of the classic symptoms of a bubble economy.  You can see this when you step back and take a longer-term view of things.  Over the past decade, we have added more than 10 trillion dollars to the national debt.  But most Americans have shown very little concern as the balance on our national credit card has soared from 6 trillion dollars to nearly 17 trillion dollars.  Meanwhile, Wall Street has been transformed into the biggest casino on the planet, and much of the new money that the Federal Reserve has been recklessly printing up has gone into stocks.  But the Dow does not keep setting new records because the underlying economic fundamentals are good.  Rather, the reckless euphoria that we are seeing in the financial markets right now reminds me very much of 1929.  Margin debt is absolutely soaring, and every time that happens a crash rapidly follows.  But this time when a crash happens it could very well be unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  The top 25 U.S. banks have more than 212 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives combined, and when that house of cards comes crashing down there is no way that anyone will be able to prop it back up.  After all, U.S. GDP for an entire year is only a bit more than 15 trillion dollars.

But most Americans are only focused on the short-term because the mainstream media is only focused on the short-term.  Things are good this week and things were good last week, so there is nothing to worry about, right?

Unfortunately, economic reality is not going to change even if all of us try to ignore it.  Those that are willing to take an honest look at what is coming down the road are very troubled.  For example, Bill Gross of PIMCO says that his firm sees "bubbles everywhere"...

We see bubbles everywhere, and that is not to be dramatic and not to suggest they will pop immediately. I just suggested in the bond market with a bubble in treasuries and bubble in narrow credit spreads and high-yield prices, that perhaps there is a significant distortion there. Having said that, it suggests that as long as the FED and Bank of Japan and other Central Banks keep writing checks and do not withdraw, then the bubble can be supported as in blowing bubbles. They are blowing bubbles. When that stops there will be repercussions.

And unfortunately, it is not just the United States that has a bubble economy.  In fact, the gigantic financial bubble over in Japan may burst before our own financial bubble does.  The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers...

First and foremost, Japan is the second largest bond market in the world. If Japan’s sovereign bonds continue to fall, pushing rates higher, then there has been a tectonic shift in the global financial system. Remember the impact that Greece had on asset prices? Greece’s bond market is less than 3% of Japan’s in size.

For multiple decades, Japanese bonds have been considered “risk free.” As a result of this, investors have been willing to lend money to Japan at extremely low rates. This has allowed Japan’s economy, the second largest in the world, to putter along marginally.

So if Japanese bonds begin to implode, this means that:

1)   The second largest bond market in the world is entering a bear market (along with commensurate liquidations and redemptions by institutional investors around the globe).

2)   The second largest economy in the world will collapse (along with the impact on global exports).

Both of these are truly epic problems for the financial system.

And of course the entire global financial system is a giant bundle of debt, risk and leverage at this point.  We have never seen anything like this in world history.  When you step back and take a good, hard look at the numbers, they truly are staggering.  The following statistics are from one of my previous articles entitled "Why Is The World Economy Doomed? The Global Financial Pyramid Scheme By The Numbers"...

-$70,000,000,000,000 - The approximate size of total world GDP.

-$190,000,000,000,000 - The approximate size of the total amount of debt in the entire world.  It has nearly doubled in size over the past decade.

-$212,525,587,000,000 - According to the U.S. government, this is the notional value of the derivatives that are being held by the top 25 banks in the United States.  But those banks only have total assets of about 8.9 trillion dollars combined.  In other words, the exposure of our largest banks to derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 24 to 1.

-$600,000,000,000,000 to $1,500,000,000,000,000 - The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives generally fall within this range.  At the high end of the range, the ratio of derivatives to global GDP is more than 21 to 1.

The financial meltdown that happened back in 2008 should have been a wake up call for the nations of the world.  They should have corrected the mistakes that happened so that nothing like that would ever happen again.  Unfortunately, nothing was fixed.  Instead, our politicians and the central bankers became obsessed with reinflating the system.  They piled up even more debt, recklessly printed tons of money and kicked the can down the road for a few years.  In the process, they made our long-term problems even worse.  The following is a recent quote from John Williams of shadowstats.com...

The economic and systemic solvency crises of the last eight years continue. There never was an actual recovery following the economic downturn that began in 2006 and collapsed into 2008 and 2009. What followed was a protracted period of business stagnation that began to turn down anew in second- and third-quarter 2012. The official recovery seen in GDP has been a statistical illusion generated by the use of understated inflation in calculating key economic series (see Public Comment on Inflation). Nonetheless, given the nature of official reporting, the renewed downturn likely will gain recognition as the second-dip in a double- or multiple-dip recession.

What continues to unfold in the systemic and economic crises is just an ongoing part of the 2008 turmoil. All the extraordinary actions and interventions bought a little time, but they did not resolve the various crises. That the crises continue can be seen in deteriorating economic activity and in the panicked actions by the Federal Reserve, where it proactively is monetizing U.S. Treasury debt at a pace suggestive of a Treasury that is unable to borrow otherwise.

And there are already lots of signs that the next economic downturn is rapidly approaching.

For example, corporate revenues are falling at Wal-Mart, Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks, AT&T, Safeway, American Express and IBM.

Would revenues at Wal-Mart be falling if the economy was getting better?

U.S. jobless claims hit a six week high last week.  We aren't in the danger zone yet, but once they hit 400,000 that will be a major red flag.

And even though we are still in the "good times" relatively speaking, the federal government is already talking about tightening welfare programs.  In fact, there are proposals in Congress right now to make significant cuts to the food stamp program.

If food stamps and other welfare programs get cut, that is going to make a lot of people very, very angry.  And that anger and frustration will get even worse when the next economic downturn strikes and millions of people start losing their jobs and their homes.

What we are witnessing right now is the calm before the storm.  Let us hope that it lasts for as long as possible so that we can have more time to prepare.

Unfortunately, this bubble of false hope will not last forever.  At some point it will end, and then the pain will begin.

Read more -
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/americas-bubble-economy-is-going-to-become-an-economic-black-hole

NASA Mission To Lasso Asteroid Could Eventually Cost More Than $2.6 Billion -

NASA Mission To Lasso Asteroid Could Eventually Cost More Than $2.6 Billion - 



Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid and tow it closer to Earth for astronauts to explore.

Bolden checked on the progress Thursday a month after the Obama administration unveiled its 2014 budget that proposes $105 million to jumpstart the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6 billion.

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Glenn Research Center in Ohio are developing a thruster that relies on ion propulsion instead of conventional chemical fuel.

Once relegated to science fiction, ion propulsion — which fires beams of electrically charged atoms to propel a spacecraft — is preferred for deep space cruising because it’s more fuel-efficient. Engine testing is expected to ramp up next year.

During his visit to the JPL campus, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, Bolden viewed an engineering model of the engine and peered through a porthole of a vacuum chamber housing the prototype.

NASA is under White House orders to fly humans to an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars. Instead of sending astronauts to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, as originally planned, the space agency came up with a quicker, cheaper idea: Haul the asteroid close to the moon and visit it there.

Bolden said the original concept was impractical given the flat budget and praised the alternative as “ingenious.”

“If you can’t get to the asteroid, bring the asteroid to you,” Bolden said.

The space agency would launch an ion-powered unmanned spacecraft to snare a yet-to-be-selected small asteroid in 2019 and park it in the moon’s neighborhood. Then a spacewalking team would hop on an Orion space capsule that’s currently under development and explore the rock in 2021.

Besides preparing astronauts for an eventual trip to Mars, NASA said the asteroid-capture mission is designed to test technologies to deflect threatening space boulders on a collision course with Earth.

“Anytime that you can get up close to an asteroid and understand its composition and its characteristics … that’s getting to know the enemy,” said Don Yeomans, who heads NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at JPL.

Scientists have a dozen potential small asteroids in mind for the mission, but Yeomans said more observations are needed before settling on a target. Whatever asteroid NASA chooses to redirect, it won’t pose a threat to Earth because it would burn up if it inadvertently plunged through the atmosphere, scientists said.

Read more - 

http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2013/05/24/nasa-mission-to-lasso-asteroid-could-eventually-cost-more-than-2-6-billion/

Wireless bio-absorbable circuits could kill bacteria -

Wireless bio-absorbable circuits could kill bacteria - 




Remote-controlled, dissolvable electronic implants have been created that could help attack microbes, provide pain relief and stimulate bone growth.

The spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics – popularly called superbugs – is threatening to put the clock back 100 years to the time when routine, minor surgery was life-threatening. Some medical experts are warning that otherwise straightforward operations could soon become deadly unless new ways to fend off these infections are found.

Bacteria often evolve clever ways of evading chemical assaults, but they will always struggle to resist the old-fashioned way of killing them: heating them up. It takes only a relatively mild warming to kill bugs without discomfort or harm to tissues. So imagine if little electric heaters could be implanted into wounds and powered wirelessly to fry bacteria during healing before dissolving harmlessly into body fluids once their job is done.

This is just one potential application of the bio-absorbable electronic circuits made by John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his co-workers. The idea itself is not new: Rogers and others have previously reported biodegradable flexible circuits and electronic devices that can be safely laid directly onto skin. But their success in making their circuits wireless could prove crucial to many potential applications, especially in medicine.

The hope is that radio waves can be used both for remote control of the circuits – to turn them on and off, say, and to provide the power to run them, so that there’s no need for implanted batteries. This kind of radio-frequency (RF) wireless technology is becoming ever more widespread, in food packaging, livestock labelling, tagging of goods in shops for security and in dustbins to monitor recycling, for example.

To make RF circuits, you need semiconductors and metals. Those don’t sound like the kinds of materials our bodies will dissolve, but Rogers and colleagues used layers of non-toxic substances so thin that they disintegrate in water or body fluids. For the metal parts, they used films of magnesium at least half as thin as the average human hair. Magnesium is not only harmless but in fact an essential nutrient: our bodies typically contain about 25g (0.9oz) of it already. For semiconductors, they used silicon membranes 300 nanometres (millionths of a millimetre) thick, which also dissolve in water. They used magnesium oxide as an insulating material when required.

Power scavenger

One of the simplest but most important components of an RF circuit is an antenna, which picks up the radio waves. Rogers and colleagues made these from long strips of magnesium foil deposited onto thin films of silk. Being non-toxic, biodegradable, strong and relatively cheap, silk makes the ideal base for such devices. These antennae, typically about four inches long, dissolve completely in water in about two hours. Although being buried beneath radio wave-absorbing body tissue would hamper performance, they should still receive enough signal for low power applications the researchers are considering.

The researchers have also made a variety of standard circuit components: capacitors, resistors, and crucially, diodes and transistors. Transistors are particularly complex structures, requiring delicately patterned films of a semiconductor like silicon doped with other elements and sandwiched with metal electrodes and insulating layers. Using silicon membranes, along with magnesium and its oxide, Rogers' team made versions that dissolve within hours.

One of the first full circuits that they have made is an RF “power scavenger”, which can convert up to 15% of the radio waves it absorbs at a particular frequency into electrical power. Their prototype, measuring about 10cm (4in) by 4cm (1.6 in), can pick up enough power to run a small commercial light-emitting diode. The team can control the rate at which these devices dissolve by fine-tuning the molecular structure of the silk sheets on which they are laid down or between which they are sandwiched. This way, they can make devices that last for a week or two – about the length of time needed to ward off bacteria from a healing wound.

As well as deterring bacteria, Rogers says that implantable, bio-absorbable RF electronics could be used to stimulate nerves for pain relief, and to stimulate bone re-growth, a process long proven to work when electrodes are placed on the skin or directly on the bone. Conceivably they could also be used to precisely control drug release from implanted reservoirs.

Read more - 

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130524-zapping-bacteria-the-wireless-way

Scores of TGI Fridays in New Jersey 'busted for selling caramel-colored rubbing alcohol as top-shelf scotch' -

Scores of TGI Fridays in New Jersey 'busted for selling caramel-colored rubbing alcohol as top-shelf scotch' - 



At one bar, a mixture that included rubbing alcohol and caramel coloring was sold as scotch. In another, premium liquor bottles were refilled with water - and apparently not even clean water at that.
State officials provided those new details Thursday on raids they conducted a day earlier as part of a yearlong investigation dubbed Operation Swill.
Twenty-nine New Jersey bars and restaurants, including 13 TGI Fridays, were accused of substituting cheap booze - or worse - for top-shelf brands while charging premium prices.

As part of Operation Swill, investigators collected 1,000 open bottles of vodka, gin, rum, scotch, whiskey and tequila from the wells of the bars, state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa said.
‘This alleged scheme is a dishonest ruse to increase profits and is a slap in the face of the consumer,’ Chiesa said.
Within seven days, the establishments must turn over records to help state authorities determine how many patrons were overcharged and by how much. 
They also will have to inform the state which employees were at work the days samples were covertly taken earlier this year.

State officials would not say what establishment used the rubbing alcohol or which one used dirty water, or water not from a tap. They said no health issues were reported.
TGI Fridays Inc. said it was conducting its own investigation, working with the franchisee that owns the 13 restaurants cited, The Briad Group.

COMPLETE LIST OF NJ BARS BUSTED IN LIQUOR RAID: 
Applebee's, Kearny
Bell's Tavern, Lambertville
Blackthorn Restaurant, Parsippany
The Brick House, Wyckoff
Brunswick Grove, East Brunswick
Café 34, Matawan
Cucina Calandara, Fairfield
Graziano's Ristorante, Chesilhurst
Italian Affair, Glassboro
Murray's, Dover
Railroad Café, East Rutherford
Ruby Tuesday, Bridgewater
Sona Thirteen, Morristown
Sunset Tavern, Burlington
TGI Fridays in Clifton; East Hanover; East Windsor; Freehold; Hamilton; Hazlet; Linden; Marlboro; North Brunswick; Old Bridge; Piscataway; Springfield and West Orange
Villari's Lakeside, Gloucester Township
Yesterday's, Marmora


Briad, based in Livingston, said it ‘takes great pride in the quality of food and drink’ served at its TGI Fridays franchises and was troubled and surprised by the allegations. It said in an emailed statement it would take immediate steps to correct any problems it identified.
‘We want every assurance possible that our guests can continue to feel confident in the great food and drink they order at our T.G.I. Friday's restaurants,’ said Rick Barbrick, president of The Briad Restaurant Group.
Operation Swill started after the state began receiving more complaints than usual about possibly mislabeled drinks, said the director of the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Michael Halfacre.
An informant with knowledge of the industry contacted the agency in the fall to help in the investigation, he said.
In January and February, investigators went to 63 establishments they suspected were scamming liquor customers.
They ordered drinks neat - that is, without ice or mixers - and then covertly took samples for testing.


Read more: - 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330116/Scores-TGI-Fridays-New-Jersey-busted-selling-caramel-colored-rubbing-alcohol-shelf-scotch-statewide-crackdown-dubbed-Operation-Swill.html

Cockroaches evolve to avoid poison -- in just five years! -

Cockroaches evolve to avoid poison -- in just five years! - 



For decades, people have been getting rid of cockroaches by setting out bait mixed with poison. But in the late 1980s, in an apartment test kitchen in Florida, something went very wrong.

A killer product stopped working. Cockroach populations there kept rising. Mystified researchers tested and discarded theory after theory until they finally hit on the explanation: In a remarkably rapid display of evolution at work, many of the cockroaches had lost their sweet tooth, rejecting the corn syrup meant to attract them.

In as little as five years, the sugar-rejecting trait had become so widespread that the bait had been rendered useless.

"Cockroaches are highly adaptive, and they're doing pretty well in the arms race with us," said North Carolina State University entomologist Jules Silverman, discoverer of the glucose aversion in that Florida kitchen during a bait test.

The findings illustrate the evolutionary prowess that has helped make cockroaches so hard to stamp out that it is jokingly suggested they could survive nuclear war.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Silverman and other researchers explain the workings of the genetic mutation that gave some roaches a competitive advantage that enabled them to survive and multiply.

The key is certain neurons that signal the brain about foods.

In normal cockroaches, glucose excites neurons that tell the brain "Sweet!" In the mutant insects, glucose activates neurons that say "Sweet!" and ones that say "Yuck!" The "Yuck!" neurons dampen the signal from the others, so the brain gets the message the taste is awful. This unusual nerve activity appeared in glucose-hating cockroaches collected from Puerto Rico as well as descendants of the Florida insects.

The research focused on the German cockroach, a small kind that can hitch a ride into your home in a grocery bag, not that big lunk known as the American cockroach. Such finicky eating habits have also been seen in these smaller roaches in Southern California, Cincinnati, Indiana, South Korea and Russia. Scientists are now looking to see if other kinds of cockroaches show aversion to glucose.

The new work is nifty science. But does it explain why you can't get rid of the little buggers in your kitchen?

Probably not, said Coby Schal, another study author at North Carolina State.

Tests show that the glucose-hating cockroaches are happy to eat most types of bait these days, suggesting that manufacturers have removed the glucose or masked it, he said. (Bait ingredients are a trade secret.) What's more, the researchers found glucose-hating cockroaches in only seven of 19 populations they sampled from various locations.

Frankly, if the bait you put out isn't working, it's probably because you're using it incorrectly, suggested Schal, who said he consults to the pesticide industry free of charge.

Still, he said, the new work has potential to help many consumers. By studying how cockroaches evolve to evade our poisons, scientists may find clues to designing bait that the pests cannot resist.

It's not clear when the Florida cockroaches first encountered bait with glucose or how quickly they ditched their taste for the sugar, he said. But he said it's reasonable to estimate that it took maybe only five years for that glucose aversion to spread to so many cockroaches that the bait was no longer effective. That's about 25 generations of German cockroaches, which can reproduce about one to three months after they're born, Schal said.

The glucose aversion may have arisen in an individual cockroach in response to bait. Or it may have already been present in just a few individuals when the arrival of the bait suddenly gave them an advantage for surviving and reproducing. Their offspring would inherit the trait and increasingly replace other cockroaches.

Michael Scharf, an entomologist at Purdue University who studies urban pests but wasn't involved in the new work, noted that since the 1950s, cockroaches have shown they can also evolve resistance to insecticides. He agreed the latest results should help scientists develop better products to control roaches.

Read more - 

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/cockroaches-quickly-lose-sweet-tooth-survive

911 Dispatcher Tells Woman About To Be Sexually Assaulted There Are No Cops To Help Her Due To Budget Cuts -

911 Dispatcher Tells Woman About To Be Sexually Assaulted There Are No Cops To Help Her Due To Budget Cuts - 



An Oregon woman was told by a 911 dispatcher that authorities wouldn’t be able be able to help her as her ex-boyfriend broke into her place because of budget cuts.

Oregon Public Radio reports that an unidentified woman called 911 during a weekend in August 2012 while Michael Bellah was breaking into her place. Her call was forwarded to Oregon State Police because of lay-offs at the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office only allows the department to be open Monday through Friday.

“Uh, I don’t have anybody to send out there,” the 911 dispatcher told the woman. “You know, obviously, if he comes inside the residence and assaults you, can you ask him to go away? Do you know if he’s intoxicated or anything?”

The woman told the dispatcher that Bellah previously attacked her and left her hospitalized a few weeks prior to the latest incident. The dispatcher stayed on the phone with the woman for more than 10 minutes before the sexual assault took place.

“Once again it’s unfortunate you guys don’t have any law enforcement out there,” the dispatcher said, according to Oregon Public Radio.

The woman responded: “Yeah, it doesn’t matter, if he gets in the house I’m done.”

Police say Bellah choked the woman and sexually assaulted her. He was arrested by Oregon State Police following the incident.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t have another victim,” Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilberson told Oregon Public Radio. “If you don’t pay the bill, you don’t get the service.”

The sheriff’s department had to cut 23 deputies and the entire major crimes unit after it lost a multi-million dollar federal subsidy, according to Oregon Public Radio. There are now only six deputies left.

The sheriff’s department even put out a press release warning domestic violence victims to “consider relocating to an area with adequate law enforcement services.”

Bellah pleaded guilty to kidnapping, sex abuse and assault.

Read more - 

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2013/05/23/911-dispatcher-tells-woman-about-to-be-sexually-assaulted-there-are-no-cops-to-help-her-due-to-budget-cuts/

Study: Women 40 Percent More Likely To Develop Mental Illness Than Men -

Study: Women 40 Percent More Likely To Develop Mental Illness Than Men - 



There is a gender gap for mental illness, with females being up to 40 percent more likely to develop some type of mental health condition than their male counterparts.

A new study to be published by Oxford University Press finds that women are nearly 75 percent more likely than men to have suffered from depression, and approximately 60 percent more likely to report an anxiety disorder.

The U.K. study was led by Dr. Daniel Freeman, who said his latest research set to appear in the book, “The Stressed Sex: Uncovering the Truth about Men, Women and Mental Health,” sets out to answer a simple but crucial question: are rates of psychological disorder different between men and women?

“This important issue has been largely ignored in all the debates raging about gender differences,” Dr. Freeman stated on his website.

Dr. Freeman said that because the conditions most affecting women were more common than those affecting men, overall mental health conditions were more common in women than in men, by a factor of 20 percent to 40 percent.

However, the study also found that men are more likely to report substance abuse disorders – around two and a half times more frequently than women. Conditions such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and schizophrenia did not have statistically significant differences between adult males and females.

“There is a pattern within – women tend to suffer more from what we call ‘internal’ problems like depression or sleep problems,” Dr. Freeman told The Guardian. “They take out problems on themselves, as it were, where men have externalising problems, where they take things out on their environment, such as alcohol and anger problems.”

In the U.S., it appears that mental health diagnoses have spread across the gender gap, even for children. A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that up to one in five American youngsters — about 7 million to 12 million, by one estimate — experience a mental health disorder each year.

Read more - 

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2013/05/23/study-women-40-percent-more-likely-to-develop-mental-illness-than-men/

Arctic bacteria discovered breeding at record –15 C - offer clues about possible life on Mars -

Arctic bacteria discovered breeding at record –15 C - offer clues about possible life on Mars - 



Bacteria that can live and multiply in High Arctic permafrost at temperatures well below the freezing point of water have been discovered by a Canadian-led team of researchers, offering clues about the types of organisms that might exist in similar extreme environments elsewhere in our solar system.

The OR1 strain of the microbe Planococcus halocryophilus is capable of reproducing at –15 C — a record among all known living organisms — and may possibly be able to multiply at temperatures even colder than that, says a study published Wednesday in the ISME Journal. The bacteria remain active at temperatures as low as –25 C.

"You look at permafrost, you think of this frozen dead world, but it's not," said Lyle Whyte, a McGill University microbiologist who co-led the study with post-doctoral researcher Nadia Mykytczuk.

Coming up: Nadia Mykytczuk talks to Quirks & Quarks Saturday, May 25 at noon on CBC Radio One
"The study that we show here indicates there are organisms that are … capable of surviving and reproducing in the conditions in which it came from, the permafrost."

The bacteria were among 200 or 300 strains collected in 2004 from a permafrost core drilled by NASA on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, as part of a project to develop robotic drilling techniques for use on Mars. The permafrost has been frozen for 5,000 to 6,000 years and the environment has an average temperature of about –16 C.

NASA collaboration
Whyte's team was asked to help NASA ensure the samples were not contaminated. Once the drilling was done, NASA had no further use for them and handed them over to Whyte, whose research group specializes in hunting for bacteria that can survive in extremely cold environments.

"For me, this stuff was gold," Whyte told CBCNews.ca in an interview, noting that drilling permafrost is very difficult to do.

Researchers in his lab spent years screening the many microbes in the samples and learning how to grow them at very cold temperatures — a challenge because the researchers have to keep the liquid environment they live in from freezing.

Once they succeeded, they found that the bacteria doubled in population about every 40 days at –15 C in a medium that contained 18 per cent salt, partly to keep it liquid. For comparison, seawater contains about 3.5 per cent salt.

Whyte, who holds a Canada Research Chair in environmental microbiology, estimates that the microbes would probably reproduce 100 to 1,000 times more slowly in their natural environment.

In the permafrost itself, the bacteria live in little veins of brine, he added. These tiny channels of extremely salty water form when water freezes and in the process expels impurities such as salt.

Whyte's team analyzed the genes of the bacteria and discovered that many of their enzymes and other proteins are highly adapted to working at cold temperatures. In addition, they are genetically programmed to produce high concentrations of osmolytes — small molecules that help retain water inside the cell so it can survive in very salty environments without getting the water sucked out of it via osmosis. The osmolytes also act as an antifreeze.

Similar environments on Mars, Europa
The team is interested in studying bacteria like these in order to understand how microbes live at subzero temperatures, Whyte said, and to use that knowledge to hunt for microbial life on places like Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus.

"On Mars, we know there are permafrost environments, and we're pretty sure now that there are very cold salty environments as well," Whyte said, "which make them ideal targets for looking for similar types of life."

Europa and Enceladus are also thought to have cold salty water below their icy surfaces.

Whyte and his team are currently hunting for bacteria like P. halocryophilus that can survive in very cold environments, but unlike P. halocryophilus, don't need to breathe oxygen or eat organic carbon.

Closer to home, scientists are interested in learning more about how bacteria in permafrost might affect the release of greenhouse gases as the Arctic climate warms and the permafrost melts, Whyte said. The bacteria are also a potential source of biotechnology, such as cold-active enzymes that could have applications in products such as laundry detergents.

The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada CREATE Canadian Astrobiology Training Program, the Canadian Space Agency, the Polar Continental Shelf Program, Canada Research Chairs Program, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Read more - 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/05/22/science-permafrost-bacteria-white.html

FEMA uses 'Waffle House index' to take stock of Oklahoma tornado disaster -

FEMA uses 'Waffle House index' to take stock of Oklahoma tornado disaster - 


When the main US federal emergency agency arrives at the scene of a disaster-hit area, one of the first places it turns to is the local Waffle House – and not just for its officials to grab a quick bite.

Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, came up with the idea of the "Waffle House index" as an informal way of measuring the impact of a disaster. The chain, which has a large number of branches in tornado-prone areas, has a robust emergency management plan.

The index has three levels. If the local Waffle House is up and running, serving a full menu, a disaster is classed as green. If it is running with an emergency generator and serving only a limited menu, it is a yellow. If it is closed, badly damaged or totally destroyed, as during hurricane Katrina, it is a red.

There is only one Waffle House in Moore, the suburb worst hit by the tornadoes. The restaurant, located at 316 SW 19th Street and which normally offers a southern-tinged menu that includes grits, hash browns, and sausage and egg biscuits as well as hamburgers, was closed on Tuesday.

But the Moore tornado was classed as a yellow on the Waffle House index because managers were hoping to get it up and running soon. "It is a yellow because we are hoping to get a generator," said Kelly Thrasher, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based restaurant chain. "Once we have the generator, we will be able to serve a limited menu, maybe a full one."

She said the branch had survived the storm intact. "There is no damage to the building. Power is out and there is no gas or water but we do not have any physical damage. We are trying to get it open so we can serve first responders and the community," she said.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday issued a disaster declaration for Oklahoma and promised to provide the state with all the federal support it needs. Fugate has been despatched to the state.

Fema was heavily criticised for its slowness to respond to Katrina in 2005, a disaster that damaged the reputation of George W Bush as much as the 2003 Iraq invasion. But it received praise for the help it provided last year after hurricane Sandy. It has been the target of criticism by conservatives across the US as an example of an unnecessary federal agency, with calls for its abolition, though such carping is often dropped when the critics' home states are victims of catastrophe.

Read more - 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/21/fema-waffle-house-index-oklahoma?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-5%20Eds%20picks%202:Network%20front%20-%20all-purpose%20editable%20trailblock:Position2