Just three weeks of a high-fibre, low-fat diet and moderate exercise could slow key changes in the body crucial to the development of diabetes, a new study suggests. The new study, along with previous work on the so-called Pritkin diet and exercise programme, found that just three weeks of the programme reversed the clinical diagnosis of type 2 diabetes – or its precursor, called metabolic syndrome. The programme worked in half of the overweight patients following it. The study shows, contrary to common belief, that type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome can be reversed solely through lifestyle changes, says Christian Roberts at the University of California, Los Angeles, US, who led the study. The prevailing view is that such an improvement could take place only in months or years rather than weeks, Roberts told New Scientist. The effect can be very dramatic given that, of the vast majority of people who go through the programme, at least 50% are no longer clinically defined as diabetic after three weeks, which suggests this disease is reversible. Many people have the impression that once they have this disease that there’s not really anything they can do barring using drugs […]
WICHITA, Kan. — Satellites have monitored crop conditions around the world for decades, helping traders predict futures prices in commodities markets and governments anticipate crop shortages. But those satellite images are now increasingly turning up in courtrooms across the nation as the Agriculture Department’s Risk Management Agency cracks down on farmers involved in crop insurance fraud. The Agriculture Department’s Farm Service Agency, which helps farmers get loans and payments from a number of its programs, also uses satellite imaging to monitor compliance. Across government and private industry alike, satellite imaging technology is being used in water rights litigation and in prosecution of environmental cases ranging from a hog confinement facility’s violations of waste discharge regulations to injury damage lawsuits stemming from herbicide applications. The technology is also used to monitor the forestry and mining industries. “A lot of farmers would be shocked at the detail you can tell. What it does is keep honest folks honest,” said G.A. “Art” Barnaby Jr., an agricultural economist at Kansas State University. Satellite technology, which takes images at roughly eight-day intervals, can be used to monitor when farmers plant their acreage, how they irrigate them and what crops they […]
Within a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity. The room is a “doomsday vault” designed to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world’s crops. It is being built to safeguard the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. “If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet,” says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organisation promoting the project. New Scientist has learned that the Norwegian government is planning to create the seed bank next year at the behest of crop scientists. The $3 million vault will be built deep inside a sandstone mountain lined with permafrost on the Norwegian Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The vault will have metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete and will be protected behind two airlocks and high-security blast-proof doors. It will not be permanently manned, but “the mountains are patrolled by polar bears”, says Fowler. The vault’s seed collection, made up […]
Europe and the United States ratcheted up the pressure over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, demanding UN Security Council action and saying two years of delicate negotiations had reached a dead end. Speaking after a crisis meeting in Berlin, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany called for an emergency meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog to refer the dossier to the world body’s executive. In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Tehran of a “deliberate escalation” of the dispute and said it was in “dangerous defiance of the entire international community.” She said the Security Council should “call for the Iranian regime to step away from its nuclear weapons ambitions.” The coordinated statements usher in a period of hectic diplomacy as Europe and the United States seek to build support for some kind of intervention by the Security Council, which alone can impose UN sanctions. UN chief Kofi Annan spoke with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, but he gave no details of what was said during the 40-minute telephone conversation. It follows a storm of international criticism after Iran broke the seals at three nuclear plants […]
ANKARA — One of two boys who tested positive for bird flu in Turkey has now begun showing symptoms, Turkish officials said on Thursday as experts cautioned the threat of a pandemic is steadily growing. The board of the World Bank endorsed $500 million in aid to help countries deal with H5N1 avian influenza, while U.S. health officials dispersed $100 million for state and local preparedness. The virus, while it is spreading and changing, still poses no immediate threat of a pandemic, but experts stress it could do so at any time. They say it is vital to prepare emergency response teams, stockpile what drugs there are and build up surveillance networks to detect new outbreaks. The H5N1 virus has been found in wild birds and poultry across large parts of Turkey, particularly in poor villages stretching from Istanbul, on the borders of Europe, to Van near the Iranian and Iraqi borders. It has killed three children in Turkey and the World Health Organization says a total of 18 people have been infected. All had close contact with sick chickens. Globally H5N1 has infected 147 people and killed 78 of them, according to the latest […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
