Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
CHRIS KAISER, Cardiology Editor - MedPage Today
Stephan: Happiness is healthy, at every level from the individual, to the social, to the national. This is why national wellness ought to be our primary priority.
Hearts Respond Positively to Optimism
An optimistic outlook on life not only protects against cardiovascular disease, but also slows the progression of disease, according to Harvard University researchers.
A review of more than 200 studies found that positive psychological well-being — specifically, optimism and life satisfaction — reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, independent of other factors such as age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, or body weight, reported Julia K. Boehm, PhD, and Laura D. Kubzansky, PhD.
A positive attitude also appeared to be associated with overall better blood pressure control and heart rate variability, as well as reduced biomarkers for inflammation, according to the study published online April 17 in Psychological Bulletin.
The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive, researchers said. It may be better to bolster psychological strengths rather than simply mitigating psychological deficits to improve cardiovascular health, they concluded.
Metal Allergy No Hindrance to PCI
Metal allergies should not keep cardiac patients from receiving coronary stents composed of nickel or other metals to which they may be hypersensitive, a single-center study suggests.
A group of 29 patients with metal allergy had similar inhospital and 30-day deaths, myocardial infarctions, and deaths at 4 years compared with […]
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Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
Stephan: The other day I asked you to go to Facebook and 'like' SR. I must say I was surprised and more than a little disappointed that so few of you would do me this courtesy. So I am going ask again. I want to find out if you value SR.
-- Stephan
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Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
STEPHEN LACEY, - Think Progress
Stephan: The moral bankruptcy of this effort is a measure of where the Theocratic Right stands. Is ALEC's program the country that you want?
Two leading conservative political organizations say they are stepping up coordinated efforts to repeal state-level renewable energy targets.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – a ‘stealth business lobbyist
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Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
JULIA WHITTY, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Here is some very good news. I had not realized this, and perhaps you hadn't either. But this is something on the plus side.
Click through to see some very interesting charts.
In case it sometimes feels like we’ve never done anything good for the wild parts of our planet, take a look at these stats from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).
My piece, ‘Can One Incredibly Stubborn Person Save a Species?’ is about one conservation success story: Mexican biologist Enreiqueta Velarde, who has singlehandedly brought two bird species back from the brink of extinction on an Island off the coast of Mexico. Happily, Velarde’s story is part of a larger trend. Since 1872 we’ve taken a once radical idea-preserving nature-and scaled it up globally with amazing speed.
According to the WDPA:
As of 2008 there are >120,000 protected areas covering a total of about 8 million square miles (~21 million square kilometers) of land and sea
That’s an area more than twice the size of Canada
Terrestrial protected areas cover 12.2 percent of the Earth’s land area
Marine protected areas cover 5.9% of Earth’s territorial seas and 0.5% of extraterritorial seas
There’s still much variation from nation to nation:
Only 45 percent of 236 assessed countries and territories have >10 percent of […]
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Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
TARA BAHRAMPOUR, - The Washington Post
Stephan: A major trend, the inflow of Hispanics, has shifted. This report gives a good first assessment of what is likely to happen in the short term.
A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than the other way around, according to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center.
It looks to be the first reversal in the trend since the Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other factors may make it permanent.
‘I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I don’t think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and 2000s,
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