Drinking as little as two soft drinks a week appears to nearly double the risk of getting pancreatic cancer, according to a new study. ”People who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87% increased risk — or nearly twice the risk — of pancreatic cancer compared to individuals consuming no soft drinks,’ says study lead author Noel T. Mueller, MPH, a research associate at the Cancer Control Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The beverage industry took strong exception to the study, calling it flawed and pointing to other research that has found no association between soda consumption and pancreatic cancer. Cancer of the pancreas was diagnosed in about 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2009, according to American Cancer Society estimates, and about 35,240 deaths from the disease were expected. The pancreas lies behind the stomach. It makes hormones such as insulin to balance sugar in the blood and produces juices with enzymes to help break down fats and protein in foods. Sodas and Pancreatic Cancer Risk: Study Details Previous […]
We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic. What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland. A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting ‘I do not allow! This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century. Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison. Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It’s an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson’s qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican […]
Independent voters, the key to President Barack Obama’s election, now think that the influence of special interests in Washington has increased under Obama, according to a new poll by Democrat pollster Stan Greenberg. Chuck Raasch, our colleague in Gannett’s Washington bureau, offers this report on the survey: ‘There is a sense that special interests have gained power as the change process has moved forward in Washington,’ Greenberg said. The Feb. 2-4 survey of 805 likely voters, which Greenberg did for a coalition of progressive groups in favor of a congressional bill limiting donations, showed that all voters favored such a move, 62-31 percent. However, the Fair Elections Now Act faces an uphill battle in Congress. It would provide federal matches for candidates who agree to limit donations to $100. According to Greenberg and Republican strategist Mark McKinnon, 28 percent of voters say they are more likely to support a member of Congress who supports the Fair Elections bill, while 13 percent said they were less likely. Obama had campaigned against special interests in 2008. McKinnon noted that it was a winning issue even among Republicans. The Supreme Court recently overturned decades of election law by […]
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that treating the immune system of patients with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CPRS) leads to a significant reduction in pain. CRPS is an unexplained chronic pain condition that usually develops after an injury or trauma to a limb, and continues after the injury has healed. CPRS I — formerly called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy — can arise after any type of injury. CRPS II, previously called causalgia (a term coined in the American Civil War when it was first diagnosed), follows partial damage to a nerve. In some cases the pain can be so severe that patients request amputation, only to find that the pain returns in the stump. CRPS pain can improve within one year after the injury, but if it is still unchanged after 12 months (longstanding CRPS), then it will often not improve at all. Longstanding CRPS affects about 1 in 5,000 people in the UK. The team at the Pain Research Institute discovered that a single, low dose infusion of intravenous immunoglobin (IVIG) significantly reduced pain in just under 50 per cent of patients treated, with few adverse effects. The pain relief lasted on average 5 […]
Magazines’ newsstand sales plummeted in the last six months of 2009, and subscriptions dropped as well. Newsstand sales for the 472 consumer titles in the United States measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulations declined 9.1 percent, to 39.3 million, in the last half of 2009 versus the same period a year earlier, the organization reported this morning. That follows an 11.12 percent decline from July through December 2007 compared to July through December 2008. Some of the well-known titles with dramatic single-copy declines included W, down 41.7 percent to about 25,000 for an average issue; Newsweek, down 41.3 percent to about 62,000 (Newsweek had decreased the number of copies on sale, noted a spokesman); SmartMoney, down 37 percent to about 26,000; Time, down 34.9 percent to about 90,000; Good Housekeeping, down 30.7 percent to 395,000; and Redbook, down 30.1 percent to 126,000. Newsstand sales tend to be driven by the economy and are a more timely indicator of a magazine’s vitality than subscriptions, which tend to lag and which can be driven by heavy discounting. While newsstand sales are a small percentage of most magazines’ circulation, they are a profitable part of it – publishers typically […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
