WASHINGTON — About half of all U.S. women and 40 percent of U.S. men are currently using or have recently used a prescription drug, according to government statistics published on Thursday. This “snapshot” of information was based on a survey that found that 54 percent of white non-Hispanic women and 43 percent of white non-Hispanic men had used a prescription drug in the past month, the National Center for Health Statistics said in a statement. Fewer blacks and Hispanics used prescription drugs, according to the survey, done between 1999 and 2002. Nearly 44 percent of black women and 35 percent of black men reported using prescription drugs and nearly 38 percent of Mexican-American women and nearly 26 percent of Mexican-American men, the survey found.
Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. underwent a second day of grilling before a Senate panel today, refusing to be drawn out on his views on abortion and defending himself from Democratic charges that he tends to favor institutions over individuals in deciding court cases. Alito, 55, a federal appeals court judge nominated by President Bush to the Supreme Court, declined to say whether he believes Roe v. Wade , the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, is “settled law,” instead describing it only as a “precedent” worthy of respect. His answers contrasted with those of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said before becoming a judge that Roe v. Wade was “the settled law of the land.” After questioning that lasted more than seven and a half hours and included testy exchanges between senators and a tearful exit at one point by Alito’s wife, the Senate Judiciary Committee adjourned the confirmation hearing until 9 a.m. tomorrow. As the third day of the hearings began — the first day was devoted to opening statements — Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats expressed unease with some of his answers so far, and members of the panel’s Republican majority […]
Scientists studying a fast-dwindling genus of colorful frogs in Central and South America say that recent global warming has combined with a spreading fungus to create a killing zone, driving many species restricted to misty mountainsides to extinction. The researchers said they had implicated widespread warming, as opposed to local variations in temperature or other conditions affecting the frogs, by finding that patterns of fungus outbreaks and species loss in widely dispersed patches of habitat were synchronized in a way that was statistically impossible to explain by chance. Climate scientists have already linked most of the recent rise in the earth’s average temperature to the buildup of greenhouse emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes. Thus the new findings, according to the researchers and some independent experts on amphibians, imply that warming driven by human activity may have already fostered outbreaks of disease and imperiled species with restricted habitats. The study, led by J. Alan Pounds, the resident biologist at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, is to be published on Thursday in the journal Nature. In an accompanying commentary, two scientists not involved in the research, Andy Dobson, a Princeton University ecologist, and Andrew R. […]
BAGHDAD – Many Iraqis see dismal days ahead in the face of rising violence and the decision by the US administration not to seek further funds for reconstruction. “It is obvious that the situation is much worse than it used to be,” retired Iraqi army General Ahmed Abdul Aziz said. “Can you walk free in the streets? Did you receive your food ration last month? It is essential for most Iraqis to receive the food ration just to feed their families. “When you go to the hospital, do you find medicines? The answer is no medicines, no services, no sheets or pillows, no beds, no nursing and no ambulances to carry you from your house.” Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank president and former US deputy defense secretary, had said Iraq could “really finance its own reconstruction”. But such words have fallen flat because the state of the infrastructure is clearly worse now than even during the harsh economic sanctions of the 1990s. As the third anniversary of the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq approaches, a study by Linda Bilmes at Harvard University and Dr Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University found that “the total economic costs of […]
In his office within the gleaming-stainless-steel and orange-brick jumble of MIT’s Stata Center, Internet elder statesman and onetime chief protocol architect David D. Clark prints out an old PowerPoint talk. Dated July 1992, it ranges over technical issues like domain naming and scalability. But in one slide, Clark points to the Internet’s dark side: its lack of built-in security. In others, he observes that sometimes the worst disasters are caused not by sudden events but by slow, incremental processes — and that humans are good at ignoring problems. “Things get worse slowly. People adjust,” Clark noted in his presentation. “The problem is assigning the correct degree of fear to distant elephants.” [Click here to view graphic representations of David D. Clark’s four goals for a new Internet architecture.] Today, Clark believes the elephants are upon us. Yes, the Internet has wrought wonders: e-commerce has flourished, and e-mail has become a ubiquitous means of communication. Almost one billion people now use the Internet, and critical industries like banking increasingly rely on it. At the same time, the Internet’s shortcomings have resulted in plunging security and a decreased ability to accommodate new technologies. “We are at an inflection […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
