, - The Raw Story/Agence France-Presse
Stephan:
WASHINGTON — Raising the blood levels of good cholesterol does nothing to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients already taking statins to lower their bad cholesterol, a federally-funded study has determined.
Scientists at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which led the study of some 3,400 Canadians and Americans, said Thursday they had prematurely terminated the trials after the results became clear.
During the 32-month study, half the patients took extra doses of niacin, also known as vitamin B3, to raise their levels of good cholesterol, as well as a statin to lower their levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides.
The other half took a placebo instead of the niacin, while continuing with the statin treatment.
While it is well known that lowering the level of bad cholesterol with statins like Lipitor or Zocor reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, researchers were surprised to find that when patients also took high dose, extended-release niacin, there was no additional drop in heart disease or stroke.
‘Although we did not see the expected clinical benefit, we have answered an important scientific question about treatment for cardiovascular disease,’ said Susan Shurin, the NHLBI’s acting director.
‘Seeking new and improved ways to manage cholesterol levels is […]
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Stephan: The Germans see what we refuse to see: nuclear power is a dead-end technology.
Germany’s ruling coalition has agreed to shut down all of the nation’s nuclear power plants by 2022.
Minister of Ecology Norbert Roettgen of the Christian Democratic Union party made the announcement early Monday after negotiations with coalition partner, the Liberal Party, which had been opposed to setting a date for decommissioning the nuclear facilities.
Opposition parties have long supported shuttering nuclear energy in Germany
‘The decision looks like this,’ Roettgen said. ‘Seven older nuclear power plants … and the nuclear plant Kruemmel will not go back online … a second group of six nuclear reactors will go offline at the end of 2021 at the latest, and … the three most modern, newest nuclear plants will go offline in 2022 at the latest.’
To make up for the loss of nuclear energy, the German government will begin to switch to renewable energy and increase investments in energy research, the government website says.
‘But we will not be able to do without conventional power plants, above all cutting-edge gas power plants for a long time,’ said a statement published last week. ‘New fruits of new research should contribute to making the energy transition more efficient and easier on the ecology.’
In March, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced […]
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Stephan: This is one of the many reasons why the Right's attempts to retard stem cell research is proving to be such a very bad idea. In the longer term this 'red' trade will disappear as growing organs becomes a realistic possibility. But in the short term this is what we will live with.
During the mid-2000s, Scott Carney was living in southern India and teaching American anthropology students on their semester abroad when one of his charges died, apparently a suicide. For two days, he watched over her body while the provincial police investigated her death, reporters bribed their way into the morgue to photograph the newsworthy corpse, local doctors performed an autopsy, and ice had to be rounded up to retard decomposition. Finally, his boss asked Carney to take pictures of the girl’s mangled remains for analysis by forensic experts back in the States.
This unsettling experience gave Carney his first inkling of how a human being becomes a thing. When he abandoned academia for investigative journalism (he writes for Wired, Mother Jones and other publications), his South Asian surroundings offered him many examples of the ways human bodies — in part or in whole — are transformed into commodities. He calls this the ‘red market,’ a term that encompasses the trade (legal and illegal) in human bones, blood, organs, embryos, surrogate pregnancy and living children.
‘The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers’ is the alarming product of Carney’s research. It includes vivid, […]
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KATHERINE CURTIS, - University of Wisconsin-Madison
Stephan: You can't say we weren't warned.
MADISON – Identifying the human impact of rising sea levels is far more complex than just looking at coastal cities on a map.
Rather, estimates that are based on current, static population data can greatly misrepresent the true extent – and the pronounced variability – of the human toll of climate change, say University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
‘Not all places and not all people in those places will be impacted equally,’ says Katherine Curtis, an assistant professor of community and environmental sociology at UW-Madison.
In a new online report, which will publish in an upcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal Population and Environment, Curtis and her colleague Annemarie Schneider examine the impacts of rising oceans as one element of how a changing climate will affect humans. ‘We’re linking economic and social vulnerability with environmental vulnerability to better understand which areas and their populations are most vulnerable,’ Curtis says.
They used existing climate projections and maps to identify areas at risk of inundation from rising sea levels and storm surges, such as the one that breached New Orleans levees after Hurricane Katrina, then coupled those vulnerability assessments with projections for future populations.
It’s a deceptively challenging process, the authors say. ‘Time scales for climate models and […]
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Stephan: I think this is a pretty good projection of the short term, absent some transforming event.
WASHINGTON — Here’s a recipe that does not a strong recovery make: wages are stagnant, Americans are spending more of their hard-earning money on basics like food and fuel and housing can’t seem to rev up.
Consumers spent more in April, the Commerce Department said on Friday, but after discounting for higher food and fuel prices, spending barely budged and after-tax incomes were flat for a second straight month.
Meanwhile, pending sales of homes tumbled far more than expected in April to a seven-month low. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index dropped 11.6 percent to 81.9 in April, the lowest since September. Pending home sales lead existing home sales by a month or two. Economists polled by Reuters had expected pending home sales to fall 1.0 percent.
Consumer spending rose 0.4 percent, reflecting a surge in the category that covers food and gasoline, areas which showed big price gains last month. Excluding price changes, spending rose a much smaller 0.1 percent. Incomes rose 0.4 percent but after-tax incomes adjusted for inflation were flat for a second straight month.
Analysts are worried that weak income growth and big gains in gasoline and food prices are leaving consumers with little left to spend […]
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