Saturday, April 6th, 2013
MICHAEL SMITH, North American Correspondent - MedPage Today
Stephan: If you have cardiovascular issues, this may be important to you.
Walking and running have about the same health benefits, researchers found – you just have to walk more to get them.
Spending the same amount of energy yielded similar reductions in the risks of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and coronary heart disease, according to Paul Williams, PhD, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and Paul Thompson, MD, of Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn.
But analysis of two large cohorts suggested that runners usually expend about twice as much energy as walkers and therefore reap greater health benefits, Williams and Thompson reported online in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
‘The more the runners ran and the walkers walked, the better off they were in health benefits,’ Williams said in a statement. ‘If the amount of energy expended was the same between the two groups, then the health benefits were comparable.’
‘Walking may be a more sustainable activity for some people when compared to running,’ he added. ‘However, those who choose running end up exercising twice as much as those who choose walking … probably because they can do twice as much in an hour.’
Walking and running, the researchers noted, involve the same muscle groups and the same motions, but are performed […]
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Saturday, April 6th, 2013
CONNOR GIBSON, - Firedoglake
Stephan: This is how the Theocratic Right, in the service of the uber rich, is trying to take over the United States. This story is too polemic, but its facts are straight.
Fresh today from the Center for Media and Democracy: A Reporters’ Guide to the State Policy Network.
Close up of George Washington on money
The State Policy Network is yet another tool for Koch-based corporate influence on American state politics.
What is the State Policy Network, aka SPN? According to CMD’s report on PR Watch:
SPN officially launched in 1992 with 12 members and money from South Carolina billionaire Thomas Roe to franchise, fund, and foster a growing number of in-state ‘mini Heritage Foundations
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Saturday, April 6th, 2013
Stephan: Think about what this report is really saying: Underneath whether nurse practitioners can provide high enough quality service there is a more fundamental issue: The American healthcare system doesn't have enough physicians. Year after year, decade after decade, we spend more than any other nation on earth on healthcare, more even than several countries combined. Yet we don't have enough primary care physicians to deliver healthcare. Norway can do it. Sweden can do it. France can do it. We can't. Using the system we have now, according to the WHO, we rank 38th in the world. It is shameful. We are having the nurse practitioner debate because of our failures, not our successes. It is plan B.
Let’s do the math: We have nearly 30 million uninsured people about to get medical coverage under the health care law come January. And we have a projected shortage of 45,000 primary care physicians by 2020. Add to that the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), with 43,000 members who say they can offer basic care if state laws would just let them set up an independent practice without doctor supervision.
And the answer is
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Saturday, April 6th, 2013
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: More on 3-D printing. This trend is developing with astonishing rapidity, particularly in the medical field.
WASHINGTON — British scientists have used a custom-made 3D printer to make living tissue-like material that could one day serve medical purposes, according to findings released Thursday.
The material is made up of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, that can carry out some of the functions of human cells.
These ‘droplet networks’ could be the building blocks of a new technology used to pass on drugs and, down the road, could even replace damaged tissue, said a statement from Oxford University, where the scientists are based. Their findings were published in Friday’s issue of the US journal Science.
Since the so-called droplet networks are completely synthetic, don’t have a genome and and don’t replicate, they lack the problems linked with other methods of creating artificial tissues — such as those using stem cells.
‘We aren’t trying to make materials that faithfully resemble tissues but rather structures that can carry out the functions of tissues,’ Hagan Bayley, a professor at Oxford’s Chemistry Department who headed the research, said in a statement.
‘The droplets can be printed with protein pores to form pathways through the network that mimic nerves and are able to transmit electrical signals from one side of a network to […]
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ABDULLAH SHIHRI, - The News Tribune/The Associated Press
Stephan: It is hard to credit that this story could be true, but sadly it is. This is what happens when a nation allows religion and the state to become intertwined, and religious beliefs determine social policy. We should take it as a cautionary tale of the American Theocratic Right
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA — A Saudi newspaper says the kingdom’s religious police are now allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles but only in restricted, recreational areas.
The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.
Saudi Arabia follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and bans women from driving. Women are also banned from riding motorcycles or bicycles in public places. The newspaper didn’t say what triggered the lifting of the ban.
The official says women may not use the bikes for transportation but ‘only for entertainment’ and that they should shun places where young men gather ‘to avoid harassment.’
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