Demand for the abortion pill in Britain has reached an all time high with 10,000 pregnant women undergoing the procedure last year, the latest figures have revealed. BPAS, formerly known as the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said the number of women, which it treated with early medical abortion (EMA), rose from 56 per cent to 65 per cent of its case loadlast year. Use of the drug, which can legally be prescribed only within nine weeks of conception, has taken off since BPAS began offering the abortion pill in 2003. That year, 3,500 women went to the organisation for the treatment. The following year the figure rose to 5,000 and that number doubled last year. Ann Furedi, the chief executive of BPAS, said: ‘Women’s demand for the early medical abortion service is at an all time high. We’re glad that it has been recognised that the best option for women needing abortion is earlier access. ‘With EMA it’s the woman having the abortion rather than the doctor doing it to them. This is what makes it attractive to women, as opposed to a surgical abortion involving a general anaesthetic.’ She described the trend as a success […]
Rivers of air that move both storms and airplanes around the planet have been creeping poleward over the past 26 years. The migration of these so-called ‘jet streams’ has widened the planet’s tropical belt and could expand dry regions around the world in coming decades, a new study reports. ‘If they move another 2 to 3 degrees poleward in this century, very dry areas such as the Sahara Desert could nudge farther towards the pole, perhaps by a few hundred miles,’ said study team member John Wallace from the University of Washington. The researchers used satellites to measure heat in the form of microwave radiation emitted by oxygen molecules in the atmosphere from 1979 to 2005. The troposphere at 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres - roughly the location of Austin, Texas, and Cordoba, Argentina - has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) during that time. The troposphere extends up to about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from Earth’s surface and is the part of the atmosphere in which most weather occurs. Anatomy of the air The warming of the atmosphere at these latitudes causes the troposphere to expand and bulge poleward. This […]
For a long time, the need for eating calcium to strengthen bones was almost unquestioned. But when results from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trial were released earlier this year, some people wondered whether trying to increase calcium consumption was worth the effort. A more detailed look at the results provides several take-home lessons. Giving up calcium is not one of them. In the WHI studies, more than 36,000 women aged 50 to 79 were randomly assigned to take either a supplement of 1,000 milligrams (mg) of calcium and 400 International Units (IU) of vitamin D or a placebo each day for about seven years. Although the hip bone density of the women who took supplements improved only slightly and their risk of fractures was the same, the data revealed important lessons. 1. More calcium helps only if you don’t get enough. Half of all older American women eat less than 650 mg of calcium from food each day, although 1,200 mg is recommended for all adults after age 50. At the beginning of this study, however, almost one-third of the women in both groups took calcium supplements of at least 500 mg daily. Researchers did […]
BALTIMORE — A Nasa satellite mission will be launched this year to study the highest and most mysterious clouds on Earth. Noctilucent, or ‘night-shining’, clouds appear as thin bands in twilight skies, some 80km (50miles) above the surface. Recent records suggest they have become brighter, more frequent and are being seen at lower latitudes than usual. Scientists cannot say for sure but they suspect human activity may be altering the conditions in the mesosphere that drive the clouds’ formation. ‘Noctilucent clouds were first seen in 1885 by a British amateur astronomer, Robert Leslie,’ explains James Russell from Hampton University, Virginia, US. The changes in frequency and brightness have been observed over the past 20 years Normally confined closer to the poles, they have been seen as low as 50 degree North ‘They’re very beautiful. They have distinctive features – bands, and ripples we call billows – and form right on the edge of space.’ Russell is the principal investigator on the AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) spacecraft, which will be lofted to 600km (370 miles) to make a detailed study of the clouds. The 195kg (430lb) satellite will be put […]
The number of Americans diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has now topped 19 million, and a new study says a third of adults with the disease don’t even know they have it. The researchers found that another 26 percent of adults had ‘impaired fasting glucose,’ a precursor to diabetes. ‘So, if you add that together with the 9.3 percent of people with diabetes, that means that fully one-third of the adult population — 73 million Americans — have diabetes or they may be on their way to getting it,’ said lead researcher Catherine Cowie, director of the diabetes epidemiology program at the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Her team’s report appears in the June issue of Diabetes Care. The researchers note that about 95 percent of all cases of diabetes in the United States fall under the category of type 2 disease — a gradual loss of insulin production and sensitivity that’s usually linked to overweight and obesity. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, survey data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 1988 to 1994 and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
