Last month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing – whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government – certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable. Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception. Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, […]
The fault that has shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be hugely disappointing for scientists and engineers following the successful ‘start-up’ of the experiment. It is now over a week since the first beams were fired around the accelerator’s 27km (16.7 miles) underground ring. The crucial next step is to collide those beams head on. But hopes that the first trial collisions would be carried out before the machine’s official inauguration on 21 October now seem to have been dashed. It even looks uncertain whether this can be achieved before 2009. The failure on 19 September – described as a ‘massive’ magnet quench – certainly seems dramatic: it caused the temperatures in about 100 of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets to soar by as much as 100C. The fire brigade had to be called after a tonne of liquid helium leaked out into the LHC tunnel. If you keep an eye on the big picture, we’ve been building the machine for 20 years James Gillies Cern’s director of communications One of the LHC’s eight sectors will now have to be warmed up to well above its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) […]
Boys are as likely as girls to be socially aggressive by doing things such as spreading rumors, gossiping and intentionally excluding others, says a U.S. researcher. ‘These conclusions challenge the popular misconception that indirect aggression is a female form of aggression,’ review lead author Noel A. Card, an assistant professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, said in a Society for Research in Child Development news release. Card and his colleagues analyzed 148 studies that included almost 74,000 children and teens. The researchers said the belief that girls are more likely to be socially aggressive than boys persists among teachers, parents and others because of social expectations that develop early in life, which are fueled by movies and books that depict girls being mean and socially aggressive toward each other. The studies included in the review were conducted mostly in high schools and looked at both physical and social aggression, which is meant to damage a person’s social standing in his or her peer group. The analysis of the studies also revealed that children who carry out one of the two types of aggression may be more likely to carry out […]
High blood pressure (hypertension) is one of the most prevalent diseases in the United States. The American Heart Association estimates that high blood pressure affects approximately one in three adults in the US. Genetics and a diet of foods high in fat and saturated with salt underlie the resulting 73 million people suffering from hypertension in the US. As a result, they have a greatly increased risk of heart disease, kidney disease, atherosclerosis, eye damage and stroke. These complications can result in permanent organ damage and death. Blood pressure is intricately linked to salt and water balance in the body, which is controlled by the kidneys. More salt equals more water and fluid in the kidneys and therefore in the arteries. This causes an increase in overall blood pressure due to increased fluid mass. Furthermore, certain salt ions are linked in cells. Sodium and potassium are commonly linked ions which travel in and out of cells conducted by specific ion channels. The ion charges inside or outside of the cell create a electrical charge which then control physiological outcomes including neuronal impulses and hormonal and muscle controlling cells. The most recent breakthrough in studying hypertension has come from […]
I have been a longtime admirer of John McCain. During the 2000 Republican presidential primaries I publicly defended McCain against the pro-Bush Republicans’ whisper campaign that he was too unstable to be president (aware though I was that he had a temper). Two years later I published a positive book about him, ‘Citizen McCain.’ I admired John McCain as a man of principle and honor. He had become emblematic of someone who spoke his mind, voted his conscience, and demonstrated courage in bucking his own party and fighting for what he believed in. He gained a well-deserved reputation as a maverick. He was seen as taking principled positions on such issues as tax equity (opposing the newly elected Bush’s tax cut), fighting political corruption, and, later, taking on the Bush administration on torture. He came off as a man of decency. He took political risks. Having emerged, ironically, from his bitter 2000 primary fight against Bush as an immensely popular figure, he set out to be a new force in American politics. He decided to form and lead a centrist movement, believing that that was where the country was and needed leadership. He went against the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
