Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
CHRISTIAN NORDQVIST, - Medical News Today
Stephan: With so many people getting sick, I thought this information might be useful.
When a cough lasts more than a week most of us think we need an antibiotic. Experts from the University of Georgia explained that acute bronchitis (an acute illness with hacking cough) can last for weeks.
The authors explained in Annals of Family Medicine that an acute cough lasts for an average of 18 days. People’s concern that their cough has gone on for over a week is contributing to the over-prescription of antibiotics.
Dr. Mark Ebell and team set out to compare how long most coughs last and people’s expectations. They found that patients expect their cough to be resolved within one week to up to a maximum of nine days. In reality, a bronchial illness (which includes coughing) takes an average of 18 days to clear up.
The team gathered and examined data on 19 observational studies across Europe, the USA, Kenya and Russia. They found that by looking at the average time a cough took to run its course among those in the placebo groups (untreated control groups), a cough lasts for an average of 17.8 days.
They added targeted questions to the bi-annual Georgia Poll to determine how long patients usually expect their coughs to last. This poll is a […]
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Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is why repeated storms, or one super storm, by destroying wetlands and dune zones can leave populated coastal areas vulnerable. If there was another Sandy level storm on the East Coast in 2013 the effects would be even more devastating. The timeline of the whole climate change trend is collapsing.
Cities on the United States east coast are ‘sitting ducks
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Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
REBECCA LEBER, - Think Progress
Stephan: Readers may remember my essay last September, Climate Change and Willful Ignorance (see SR archives), in which I described the beginnings of the idiocy reported here, the attempt in the Virginia Legislature to censor how climate change could be described. Here is the follow up on that story. It is really quite amazing, given Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and the entire Eastern Shore of Virginia are already experiencing the effects of sea rise.
Having studied the climate change trend for almost two decades, and the power and commitment of the Right to delude itself on this issue, I now see it as becoming a part of the Great Schism trend. Blue value states are beginning to address what is coming -- Monday, the City of Seattle issued a detailed and fact-based assessment of sea rise from now to 2050, so all stakeholders in the city can begin planning. Red value states are not. North Carolina doesn't want scientists to use facts when planning for sea rise.
Earlier this year, Virginia’s legislature commissioned a study to determine the impacts of climate change on the state’s shores. After Tea Party complaints, lawmakers approved the report on condition it strike the words ‘climate change
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2013
IAN MILLHISER, - Think Progress
Stephan: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which many seem to think is a branch of the government is, in fact, a private organization, the creature of special interests, including foreign special interests. Its function is to lobby and obtain special interest breaks for the uber-rich, and the Virtual Corporate States.
They have buckets of money, and I think we can all assume that any attempt to regulate those who control Chamber of Commerce, will be met with a flood of money to buy the greedy corrupted cretins that make up such a big percentage of the Congress. Their moves to block a responsible program to address climate change I view as crimes against humanity.
Yesterday, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue delivered his ‘State of American Business
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2013
CHARLES CHOI, Contributing Writer - Live Science
Stephan: Here is one of those fascinating little stories that go by almost unremarked.
A full report on this research can be found online in the journal Science.
A clock based on just a single atom - the simplest clock yet - has now been devised, researchers say.
This new device to measure time could help lead to a radically new way to define mass as well, scientists added.
In addition, this achievement suggests that researchers might one day build even more exotic clocks - ones based on antimatter, or ones based on no particles at all.
Fundamentally, all clocks measure time by relying on parts that repeat behavior in regular patterns. For instance, a year is defined by how long it takes for Earth to complete an orbit around the sun.
The most accurate clocks that currently exist are atomic clocks. These depend on how atoms switch between two distinct energy levels. Essentially, these clocks rely on at least two particles - the nucleus of an atom, and an electron leaping back and forth between different levels of energy.
Defining time
However, could clocks get simpler still?
‘We were interested in what the simplest clocks are to explore the question of what time is,’ said researcher Holger Müller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. ‘If you say that, say, you can’t measure time with less than two particles, does that […]
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