Mexican immigrants use a variety of medicinal plants, but also eat well.
Credit: 13Smile/Shutterstock
Supporters of Donald Trump’s wall might have us believe that Mexicans who enter the US illegally carry disease and take advantage of America’s healthcare system. But several large public health surveys suggest that most Mexican immigrants are healthier than the average American citizen. So what can Americans learn about health from their Mexican neighbours?
The “Hispanic health paradox” was first identified in 1980, in the Hispanic health and nutrition examination survey. Results of the survey were compared with a second part of the survey, which looks at all Americans. Of all Hispanic groups, people from Mexico have some of the best health compared with the rest of Americans. For example, Mexicans have lower rates of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and most cancers than the general US population.
But, by the second or third generation, people of Mexican descent do not seem to have any health advantage over other Americans. This suggests that […]
Credit: Thom Bridge/Independent Record
Our legislators, the folks we elected to represent us, are leaving Helena having missed a huge opportunity to create good jobs and advance the personal freedom of Montana families, small businesses and communities. Rather than seizing the opportunity presented by solar energy, the Legislature chose to hamstring a promising industry and limit energy freedom.
There seems to be a vision problem in Helena. The Legislature failed to recognize solar energy as a serious and growing player in energy markets and that Montanans stand to benefit handsomely if we embrace this new world. The solar industry created 51,000 jobs nationally in 2016. That amounts to one out of every 50 jobs added in the United States. Unfortunately, Montana misses out on this opportunity.
This session has shown, yet again, the outsized influence the utility has over state energy policy. Thousands of Montanans weighed in this session in support of the Solar Jobs and Energy Freedom Act, and then watched NorthWestern Energy kill this proactive legislation […]
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt speaks at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, February 25, 2017.
Credit: Gage Skidmore
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent out a notice on Wednesday announcing a series of upcoming public meetings in which it will consider gutting rules and regulations meant to protect the public from lead and hazardous chemicals, including training programs designed to prevent children from being exposed to lead paint.
The notice went out at 2:39 p.m., just as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was meeting with residents of a neighborhood in East Chicago, Indiana, that has been contaminated with lead for decades. Six weeks after beleaguered residents petitioned his agency to take emergency action to protect them from lead contamination in their drinking water, Scott Pruitt was visiting East Chicago as part of the kick-off tour for his term as administrator of the EPA.
“That timing is discouraging, obviously,” said Debbie Chizewer, an attorney at an environmental law clinic at […]
The U.K. had its first full day without burning coal to make electricity since the Industrial Revolution more than a century ago, according to grid operator National Grid Plc. (emphasis added)
“Friday 21st April 2017 was the first 24-hour period since the 1880s where Great Britain went without coal-fired power stations,” the National Grid control room said in a Twitter post confirming the achievement announced earlier.
The country is getting half of its electricity from gas power plants, 30 percent from renewables and interconnectors and the remainder from nuclear plants, according to Duncan Burt, head of operate the system at National Grid.
The U.K. was an early adopter of renewable energy and has more offshore wind turbines installed than any other country, as well as fields of solar panels with as much capacity at seven nuclear reactors. The government aims to switch off all coal plants by 2025.
“It’s really down to the growing levels of renewables,” Burt said by phone. “We have solar and wind displacing traditional fossil fuels. We’ll start seeing these […]
Credit: Shutterstock
You’ve probably heard the news that the celebrated post-WW II beating heart of America known as the middle class has gone from “burdened,” to “squeezed” to “dying.” But you might have heard less about what exactly is emerging in its place.
In a new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Peter Temin, professor emeritus of economics at MIT, draws a portrait of the new reality in a way that is frighteningly, indelibly clear: America is not one country anymore. It is becoming two, each with vastly different resources, expectations and fates.
Two roads diverged
In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology and electronics, the industries that largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
