Genistein, a major component of soy, was found to disrupt the development of the ovaries in newborn female mice that were given the product. This study adds to a growing body of literature demonstrating the potentially adverse consequences of genistein on the reproductive system. Although we are not entirely certain about how these animal studies on genistein translate to the human population, there is some reason to be cautious, said Dr. David A. Schwartz, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). More clinical studies are needed to determine how exposure during critical windows of development can impact human health. Genistein is the primary naturally occurring estrogen in plants (called phytoestrogens) and can mimic the effects of estrogen in the body. Genistein can be found in foods containing soy such as soy-based infant formulas as well as over-the-counter dietary supplements. The results of this study conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with an investigator at Syracuse University, are published in the January issue of Biology of Reproduction. The NIEHS researchers previously showed that mice given genistein immediately after birth […]
Science, being a human activity, is not immune to fashion. For example, one of the first mathematicians to study the subject of probability theory was an English clergyman called Thomas Bayes, who was born in 1702 and died in 1761. His ideas about the prediction of future events from one or two examples were popular for a while, and have never been fundamentally challenged. But they were eventually overwhelmed by those of the frequentist school, which developed the methods based on sampling from a large population that now dominate the field and are used to predict things as diverse as the outcomes of elections and preferences for chocolate bars. Recently, however, Bayes’s ideas have made a comeback among computer scientists trying to design software with human-like intelligence. Bayesian reasoning now lies at the heart of leading internet search engines and automated help wizards. That has prompted some psychologists to ask if the human brain itself might be a Bayesian-reasoning machine. They suggest that the Bayesian capacity to draw strong inferences from sparse data could be crucial to the way the mind perceives the world, plans actions, comprehends and learns language, reasons from correlation to causation, and even understands the […]
WASHINGTON — The nation’s emergency care system itself is ailing, warns a new health care analysis. “The emergency health care system’s in serious condition. We have a safety net for health care that is frayed,” said Dr. Stephen Epstein, an emergency care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Epstein was a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians task force that studied the nation’s emergency care. Their report was released Tuesday. The panel found a system that is overcrowded, with access to emergency care declining and with poor capacity to deal with public health or terrorist disasters. “Americans assume they will receive lifesaving emergency care when and where they need it, but increasingly that isn’t the case,” said Dr. Frederick C. Blum, president of the physicians group. Overall, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and the District of Columbia were rated best in emergency care, while the lowest grades went to Utah, Idaho and Arkansas. The number of emergency departments has declined by 14 percent since 1993 despite an increasing number of people coming to them for treatment, the report said. Hurricane Katrina showed the critical need for surge capacity in emergency […]
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans consider the congressional influence-peddling inquiry surrounding former lobbyist Jack Abramoff a major scandal, and they registered an anti-incumbent note in a poll released Monday. The issue of corruption ranked high on Americans’ list of concerns in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey, taken Friday through Sunday. But with the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate up for grabs in November, most of the 1,003 adults polled said they don’t think their own lawmakers are corrupt. President Bush’s job approval rating remained steady at 43 percent in Monday’s poll, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. His disapproval rating was 54 percent. Corruption ranked among the concerns most often cited by those polled, with 43 percent telling pollsters it would be an “extremely important” issue in 2006. By comparison, the war in Iraq and terrorism were tied for first at 45 percent, and health care followed, matching corruption with 43 percent. Only 42 percent of those polled said most members of Congress deserve re-election — the lowest response to that question since 1994, when Republicans took over the House and Senate. […]
NEW DELHI — Experts urged the Indian government to enforce laws against prenatal gender checks and to work to change attitudes after a study showed up to 10 million female fetuses may have been selectively aborted in India over the past two decades. Researchers found that second children were less likely to be girls if the firstborn was a girl, according to the study published Monday in the Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal. It also said the deficit in the number of girls born as a second child was more than twice as great among educated mothers than among illiterate ones. Daughters traditionally belong to future husbands’ families in India, which maintains the custom of dowry, and therefore are considered by many as a liability. Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist, blamed the failure on the government’s inability to implement laws against fetal sex determination and medical termination of pregnancy on the basis of gender. “Everybody knows there are clinics where these tests are carried out. It’s tantamount to murder. The guilty should be tried for that. The government has to be proactive to change people’s attitude,” he said. Zoya Hasan, a professor of political science […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
