Babies given fish to eat within the first nine months of their lives are less likely to develop eczema, research reveals. Introducing fish into the diet cut the chance of a baby developing the skin condition by 24 per cent. Eczema affects one in five babies before they are a year old and its incidence has been rising across the Western world. The researchers from Sweden found that it did not matter whether babies ate lean and white fish or oily types, such as mackerel and fresh tuna, according to the study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood. Keeping pet birds in the home also reduced eczema by 65 per cent. Previous studies have suggested contact with feathers can prevent allergies, possibly by exposing infants to toxins. The study included almost 5,000 families who were interviewed after the birth of their child and when their offspring was a year old. The strongest factor affecting the incidence of eczema was family history. Children with a sibling or mother who suffered from eczema were twice as likely to suffer from the condition themselves. Breastfeeding, the age at which dairy products were introduced into the diet and keeping a […]
BARNWELL, S.C. — Tubes, capsules and pellets of used radioactive material are piling up in the basements and locked closets of hospitals and research installations around the country, stoking fears they could get lost or, worse, stolen by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs. For years, truckloads of low-level nuclear waste from most of the U.S. were taken to a rural South Carolina landfill. There, items such as the rice-size radioactive seeds for treating cancer and pencil-thin nuclear tubes used in industrial gauges were sealed in concrete and buried. But a South Carolina law that took effect July 1 ended nearly all disposal of radioactive material at the landfill, leaving 36 states with no place to throw out some of the stuff. So labs, universities, hospitals and manufacturers are storing more and more of it on their own property. ‘Instead of safely secured in one place, it’s stored in thousands of places in urban locations all over the United States,’ said Rick Jacobi, a nuclear waste consultant and former head of a Texas agency that unsuccessfully tried to create a disposal site for that state. State and federal authorities say the waste is being monitored, but […]
Chinese researchers claim they’ve confirmed the theory behind an ‘impossible’ space drive, and are proceeding to build a demonstration version. If they’re right, this might transform the economics of satellites, open up new possibilities for space exploration — and give the Chinese a decisive military advantage in space. To say that the ‘Emdrive’ (short for ‘electromagnetic drive’) concept is controversial would be an understatement. According to Roger Shawyer, the British scientist who developed the concept, the drive converts electrical energy into thrust via microwaves, without violating any laws of physics. Many researchers believe otherwise. An article about the Emdrive in New Scientist magazine drew a massive volley of criticism. Scientists not only argued that Shawyer’s work was blatantly impossible, and that his reasoning was flawed. They also said the article should never have been published. ‘It is well known that Roger Shawyer’s ‘electromagnetic relativity drive’ violates the law of conservation of momentum, making it simply the latest in a long line of ‘perpetuum mobiles’ that have been proposed and disproved for centuries,’ wrote John Costella, an Australian physicist. ‘His analysis is rubbish and his ‘drive’ impossible.’ Shawyer stands by his theoretical work. His company, Satellite Propulsion Research […]
American children are approximately three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication than children in Europe, according to a new study published Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. The study claims that the differences may be accounted for by regulatory practices and cultural beliefs about the role of medication in emotional and behavioral problems. Julie Zito led a team of researchers from the USA, Germany and the Netherlands who investigated prescription levels in the three countries. She said, ‘Antidepressant and stimulant prevalence were three or more times greater in the US than in the Netherlands and Germany, while antipsychotic prevalence was 1.5 to 2.2 times greater’. The use of antidepressants, like Prozac, and stimulants, like Ritalin, in children has been the subject of a great deal of controversy and this study quantifies the differences in practice between the US and Western Europe. The authors claim that the differences may be partly due to different diagnostic classification systems, ‘The US trend of increasing bipolar diagnosis in children and adolescents does not reflect European practice’. The authors also mention government cost restrictions in Europe, the larger number of child psychiatrists per capita in the US and the […]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed concern for the safety of the vote in the 2008 election. (Photo: wikimedia.org) Transcript from Ring of Fire on Air America Radio Bobby: ‘There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans but it was passed by a Republican congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their vote counted. ‘One of these requirements under HAVA is called ‘the perfect match’ and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this – just this one […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
