Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
KELLEY JEANIE, - News in a Box
Stephan: This is one of the diseases that won't be caught in time in thousands of poor women because the Religious Right is killing Planned Parenthood. So it will continue to mutate and spread in this new form, until we have a major medical crisis. This is what happens when policy is made with no reference to actual facts.
Gonorrhea is a sexual disease that had a cure if the treatment was based on an antibiotic, but the scientists found that the disease had a dangerous mutation that is very resistant on the cure with antibiotics.
The disease that was one treated with a penicillin treatment is now resistant at this kind of medicine and the doctors are worried about the repercussions. The experts found a mutation of this disease that is not responding to any kind of antibiotic.
More, the scientist warns that the sexual transmission disease might become a global health problem, especially in this moment when in Japan there was discovered a case of gonorrhea, having the mutation H041, that is incurable. Gonorrhea disease evolved in the last years and all the treatment became one by one inefficient.
There is not very long time since the treatment was based only on the antibiotics, from the cephalosporin category, but for this new mutation, the treatment is not efficient.
The scientist that discovered the mutation, Magnus Unemo, from Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, said that from the beginning of this treatment and now, the germ that triggers the disease, Neisseria gonorrhea, has a remarkable resistance.
The scientists said that the phenomenon is […]
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Saturday, July 23rd, 2011
HENRY MCDONALD, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Imagine how bad it has to have gotten within the clerical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, with its distorted and increasingly grotesque sexual issues, to make an Irish Prime Minister, in what you used to be one of the most Catholic countries on Earth, speak out in this way.
DUBLIN –The archbishop of Dublin has said the Irish prime minister’s attack on the Catholic church following a report on child sex abuse in the country should be a wake-up call for clergymen.
Enda Kenny launched his unprecedented attack on the Vatican in the Irish parliament, accusing it of downplaying the rape and torture of Irish children by clerical sex abusers.
He said the recent Cloyne report had exposed an attempt by the holy see to frustrate the inquiry into child sex abuse just three years ago and illuminated the ‘dysfunction’ and the elitism still dominant in the Vatican.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin – close to tears in an interview on RTE Television – said the only way all allegations, abuse and cover-ups could be exposed was through invasive audits of each diocese. ‘I’m very disappointed, annoyed,’ he said.
‘What do you do when you’ve got groups, whether in the Vatican or in Ireland, who try to undermine what is being done or simply refuse to understand what has been done?’
The archbishop said the diocese of Cloyne had ignored Vatican policy issued in 2001 by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
‘What does that say? What sort of a cabal is this that is […]
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ERNESTO BENAVIDES, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: This is what happens when sanity returns to discussions of mind altering substances, and rational policies result. This is hard data; it should help penetrate the fact-free fantasy world in which this subject usually dwells. But there will continue to be great resistance. Significant parts of our economy depend on the drug war for the bulk of their budgets.
Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.
‘There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,’ said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.
The number of addicts considered ‘problematic’ — those who repeatedly use ‘hard’ drugs and intravenous users — had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.
Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.
‘This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies.’
Portugal’s holistic approach had also led to a ‘spectacular’ reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.
A law that became active on July 1, 2001 did not legalise drug use, but forced users caught with banned substances to appear in front of special addiction panels rather than in a criminal court.
The panels composed of psychologists, judges and social workers recommended action […]
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JULIA PYPER, - The New York Times
Stephan: A clear view of the coming water reality. Always remember water is destiny.
The Colorado River has a long journey. It flows from mountains, runs by cities, winds through remote, rust-colored canyons and touches seven states before entering Mexico. It’s a natural wonder, but also a life source of the more than 30 million people who rely on it.
But in recent years, the Colorado River has become less reliable. Since 1999, abnormally low precipitation totals and hot and dry conditions have brought reservoir water levels close to record lows. The multiyear drought, the most severe since documentation began more than 100 years ago, has put the water supply in the thirsty Southwest in jeopardy.
This year, heavy snowpack and spring precipitation have brought the region some relief by partially refilling the reservoirs. But while National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research shows that snowmelt runoff into the upper basin hasn’t been this high since 1986, the southern end of the Colorado River continues to stop shy of the Sea of Cortez, where it used to run until the late 1990s.
The paradox is that this season stands in such stark contrast to the past 11 years of drought, highlighting the types of variability that climate change can wreak on the hydrological cycle.
‘It’s not at all uncommon […]
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PETER PACHAL, - PCMag.com
Stephan: Little by little we are pulling back the veil.
No, it’s not the Higgs-boson-it’s not even a boson-but a new particle has joined the ranks of electrons, protons, and tau-neutrinos of physics. Scientists at Fermilab made the discovery, finding a new subatomic particle that’s similar to a neutron, but heavier. Although it’s been predicted to exist, this is the first time the particle has been seen in reality.
The particle doesn’t have a sexy name like the established ones, merely called the Xi-sub-b. It’s brought into existence in a manner similar to other exotic particles-by using intense magnetic fields to accelerate other particles to near the speed of light and smashing them into each other. The Xi-sub-b lasts only for a fraction of a fraction of a second before it decays into lighter particles.
The Xi-sub-b is a baryon, meaning it’s made up of quarks, one of the fundamental building blocks of matter. Its components are an up quark, a down quark, and a ‘strange’ quark, which is a heavier variant of the down quark. A normal neutron, which doesn’t typically disintegrate in an instant, is made up of two down quarks and an up quark.
In addition to the new particle, scientists at Fermilab say they may be on the verge […]
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