A toxic chemical banned in Europe because it can cause burns, rashes and respiratory troubles has been found in imported children’s school shoes sold by major retailers. Tests undertaken three months ago by the Council of Textile and Fashion Industries revealed 25 per cent of the shoes it bought and tested contained the toxic chemical DMF (dimethyl fumarate).
The tests follow a report by the council two years ago, which showed batches of children’s school, sports and casual shoes contained numerous harmful chemicals, also banned in other countries.
Despite the results – and the same shoes being sent earlier this year to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which is responsible for product safety – no action has been taken.
”We have taken it to the product safety authority and tried to raise awareness over the past few years, but nothing has been done,” said the textile council’s senior adviser, Andreas Schimkus.
When a CT scan showed multiple tumors in Dawna Harwell’s pelvis, abdomen and spine in 2008, her doctors in Dallas told her she might have ovarian cancer, which can be especially deadly.
A biopsy came back with inconclusive results, and Ms. Harwell wasted no time in seeking a second opinion at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I went through every test in the book,” says Ms. Harwell. Still, doctors couldn’t be sure what she had. Finally, she underwent a surgical procedure to diagnose her case: It wasn’t ovarian cancer after all, but a rare form of lymphoma. The 47-year-old horse trainer in Collinsville, Texas, underwent a rigorous regimen of chemotherapy that ended last spring. At her first six-month checkup in October, she received a clean bill of health.
The US government has for the first time signed off on a large-scale experiment involving genetically modified crops, which will lead to biotech big shot Monsanto introducing an engineered corn seed across America from South Dakota to Texas.
The Monsanto Corporation has been given the go-ahead to test out a man-made corn variant that they claim can thrive in dry, unfavorable conditions. With much of the American south and southwest experiencing abnormally arid conditions, the freak-seed could revitalize a chunk of the nation’s agriculture.
More likely, however, is that a success will mean revitalization in terms of Monsanto’s profits and not much more.
In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we would win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.
Tracking users after they log out and violating US wiretapping laws – these are the allegations behind a 15-billion-dollar nationwide class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook in California.
The suit, combining 21 cases of alleged privacy violations by the social networking giant, was filed on Friday in the Federal Court in San Jose, Emil Protalinski writes on ZDNet.com. In their consolidated complaint, the plaintiffs claim that Facebook used cookies to track them across the Internet.
And yet, where does the staggering sum of the lawsuit come from? Violation of the Federal Wiretap Act provides suggests compensation of US $100 per day per user for every case of violation, up to a maximum of US $10,000 per user. The accusations also fall under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act, the Stored Communications Act, as well as various California Statutes and California common law.
Health and medical experts in New Zealand have called for a ban on soy-based infant formula after a recent mouse study suggested soy damages the reproductive tract and immune system.
WHEN did our neighbours become strangers? Why is it that knowing your neighbours has become an antiquated concept? While it’s true that this is not a universal problem – indeed, we are lucky to have great neighbours who we know fairly well – it seems we are in the minority among our friends and acquaintances.
One friend complained that the whine of a blower vac was more likely to announce that their neighbour had returned home from holidays than the neighbour was themselves. Are we so time poor that we just don’t make the time to interact with others? Or are we so consumed with our own lives that we just don’t care about others? Is this malaise terminal, or can we do something about it?
Originally posted 2011-03-06 08:19:54. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Ayurveda is a comprehensive natural healing system of medicine which was developed more than 5000 years ago in India. The term “Ayurveda” means the “science of daily living”, and it is based on a healthy lifestyle emphasized by balancing of doshas. This blog briefly looks at what doshas are, what their functions are, how disease is formed, and how doshas are balanced using the taste of food.
What are Doshas?
Ayurveda recognizes three primary life forces which are called doshas. The three doshas are vata, pitta and kapha and they correspond to the elements of air, fire and water. The function of the doshas is to create, maintain, and destruct all the psychological, biological and physiopathological processes of our body, mind and consciousness. When they are in balance they protect the body, and when out of balance they contribute to disease. They also maintain the emotions such as love, anger, fear, empathy, understanding, hate, greed etc.
Your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs are very unique. By understanding one’s dosha constitution, it is possible to select the most appropriate lifestyle in order to complement these unique needs. Cousens (2000), contains a thorough questionnaire to determine your dosha constitution. Here is a more basic questionnaire.
Six Stage Disease Process
According to Ayurveda, any disease follows these six stages:
Accumulation (sancaya) – when a dosha starts to increase at a local point due to a bad diet, wrong lifestyle, psychological imbalances, change of seasons.
Aggrevation (prokopa) – when a dosha continues to increase at a local point and creates local symptoms.
Overflow (prasara) – when a dosha overflows into other areas such as plasma, blood, and GI tract and organs of the body, causing various disorders and complications. The symptoms increase.
Relocation (Sthana samsraya) – when a dosha relocates themselves and cause specific diseases.
Manifestation (vyakti) – manifestation of symptom complexes are relocated sites. A fully developed disease is produced and is difficult to treat.
Diversification (bheda) – doshas manifest their characteristics and disease is identified according to these doshas.
The Six Basic Tastes
The food in our diets consist of six basic tastes, they are:
Sweet – wheat, rice, sugar, dates, peppermint
Sour – cheese, yogurt, lemon, rose hip
Saline (salty) – sea and rock salt, kelp
Pungent – onion, radish, chili, ginger, garlic
Bitter – dandelion root, yellow dock, rhubarb
Astringent – unripe banana, myrrh, goldenseal
Action of Tastes on Doshas
The actions of the above six tastes makes an impact on the doshas according to the following:
Sweet – decreases vata and pitta; increases katha; anabolic; increase wholesomeness and rasa, water and ojas; promotes strength; relieves thirst; creates a burning sensation; soothes the body and nourishes it; cold.
Sour – decreases vata and increase pitta and kapha; anabolic; makes food more delicious; stimulates appetite and makes you sharper; strengthens the sense organs; causes secretion and salvation; light hot and unctuous.
Saline (salty) – decreases vata: increases pitta and kapha; anabolic; assists in digestion; antispasmodic and laxative; promotes salvation, neutralizes the other tastes; retains water; heavy ; unctuous; hot.
Pungent – catabolic, decreases kapha: increases vata and pitta; assists in digestion and absorption ; keeps the mouth clean; purifies the blood; cleans the body and the skin; helps to eliminate blood clots; light, hot and unctuous.
Bitter – catabolic; decreases pitta and kapha; increase vata, antitoxic and germicidal; antidote for fainting, itching and burning sensations; promotes other tastes; is light and cold.
Astringent – catabolic; decreases pitta and kapha; increases vata; has a sedative action but is constipative, causes constriction of blood vessels, coagulation of blood; is dry, rough and cold.
Finally, understanding Ayurveda allows us to become more conscious of our food and lifestyle so that this scientific and philosophical knowledge can be used to maintain balance and harmony in our emotional, spiritual and physical areas of our lives.
References
Cousens, G. (2000). Conscious Eating. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
A judge ordered a mother and father take their newborn baby to hospital for urgent hepatitis B injections, despite the parents’ opposition to vaccinations.
Brisbane Supreme Court Justice Jean Dalton made the order last year – but only published her reasons on Friday – after doctors made an urgent application to give the child two preventative vaccines.
During the application the court heard the baby, which was just 40 hours old at the time, had a 20 per cent chance of being infected with the virus, of which the mother has a chronic form.
If the baby was infected, it was almost certain to develop a chronic infection and would be at risk of cancer and liver disease.
The parents opposed the application on the grounds they did not agree with vaccination because of religious beliefs.
The father also had philosophical concerns about the financial agendas of pharmaceutical companies in distributing these drugs, the court heard.
Broadcast (2010) Alice looks at our ancestors’ seemingly impossible journey to Australia. Miraculously preserved footprints and very old human fossils buried in the outback suggest a mystery: that humans reached Australia almost before anywhere else. How could they have travelled so far from Africa, crossing the open sea on the way, and do it thousands of years before they made it to Europe?
The risk of breast cancer dropped significantly in mice when their regular diet included a modest amount of walnut, Marshall University researchers report in the journal Nutrition and Cancer.
The study, led by Elaine Hardman, Ph.D., of Marshall’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, compared the effects of a typical diet and a diet containing walnuts across the lifespan: through the mother from conception through weaning, and then through eating the food directly. The amount of walnut in the test diet equates to about 2 ounces a day for humans.
Nature has a funny way of showing us not to disrupt the perfection of organic produce. Changing the chemical structure of many natural foods, such as exposing them to high heat can promote cancer. Acrylamide is a chemical that naturally forms in certain foods, particularly plant-based foods that are rich in carbohydrates and low in protein, during processing or cooking at high temperatures. We’re not only referring to foods like french fries or potato chips, but hundreds of conventional foods that are “ready to eat” in the grocery aisle including cookies, breakfast cereals, popcorn, pizza and even ground coffee.
It’s one of the reasons many raw food enthusiasts go raw in the first place. The move to such dietary lifestyles usually stems from the disease promoting chemicals attached to the processed food industry. Acrylamide is just one of many.
It was first confirmed that acrylamide caused cancer in 2002 by the Swedish National Food Authority, however many have long suspected that heating any foods to high temperatures can pose problems to long-term health. The study tested common foods like Folgers instant coffee, Cheerios, and even french fries. The results were so shocking that it sent a tidal wave of concern throughout the scientific community that engulfed the World Health Organization, consumer activists, food manufacturing plants, cancer specialists and nutritionists. Since then, independent studies in the United States, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, and England have confirmed the link between acrylamide consumption and risk of developing cancer.
Looking for ways to boost your intellect, stave off mental aging, and maybe even live a longer life? You might be surprised to learn that not only do such strategies exist, but many are easily attainable by making simple tweaks here and there to your daily routine. Embracing the strategies that follow may give a hearty boost to your brainpower, help you keep mentally healthy and ultimately even make yourself smarter.
Nine Tips for a Smarter You …
1. Exercise
Exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by causing nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage. During exercise nerve cells release proteins known as neurotrophic factors. One in particular, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health, and directly benefits cognitive functions, including learning. Further, exercise provides protective effects to your brain through:
The production of nerve-protecting compounds
Greater blood flow to your brain
Improved development and survival of neurons
Decreased risk of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke
A 2010 study on primates published in Neurosciencei also revealed that regular exercise not only improved blood flow to the brain, but also helped the monkeys learn new tasks twice as quickly as non-exercising monkeys, a benefit the researchers believe would hold true for people as well.
Still more research has shown that exercise boosts mitochondria, organelles that produce energy within every cell of your body, which suggests exercise may help your brain work faster and more efficiently.
To get the most out of your workouts, I recommend a comprehensive program that includes Peak Fitness high-intensity exercise, strength training, stretching, and core work.
STOCKHOLM, May 15, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A general practitioner has been censured by the Swedish health authorities after saying no to an abortion, The Local, an English language Swedish newspaper reports.
In 2010, a woman went to the doctor, who with her patient is not named in the papers, asking for an abortion at her local gynecology clinic. The doctor reportedly began to have second thoughts after the woman’s husband asked the day before the scheduled abortion if there were any alternatives. The doctor reportedly cancelled the abortion appointment, saying the woman “didn’t seem to be mentally balanced and in a condition to make well-reasoned decisions.”
The National Board of Health and Welfare told the physician that her only task is to carry out the wishes of the patient, regardless of her estimation of the patient’s mental state. She was also criticised for having breached patient confidentiality by discussing the case with the woman’s husband.
Ed Boyden shows how, by inserting genes for light-sensitive proteins into brain cells, he can selectively activate or de-activate specific neurons with fiber-optic implants. With this unprecedented level of control, he’s managed to cure mice of analogs of PTSD and certain forms of blindness. On the horizon: neural prosthetics. Session host Juan Enriquez leads a brief post-talk Q&A.
At the MIT Media Lab, Ed Boyden leads the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, which invents technologies to reveal how cognition and emotion arise from brain networks — and to enable systematic repair of disorders such as epilepsy and PTSD. Full bio »
A U.K. project that is examining the feasibility of geoengineering the Earth’s climate to reduce global warming will no longer involve an outdoor experiment that was scheduled to take place later this year. The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project was set to test the delivery of aerosols high into Earth’s atmosphere. Today, however, planners announced that they have cancelled the test because of concerns that researchers involved in the project could have a commercial interest in its success.
Funded by the U.K. government, SPICE was set up in 2010 by British research institutions to investigate whether aerosols, such as sulfate particles, could be injected into Earth’s stratosphere to scatter sunlight back into space, thereby stalling global warming. Aerosols are already known to reduce global warming: The vast clouds of sulfates thrown up in the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for example, reduced average global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius. Releasing aerosols on purpose is controversial, however, so scientists are keen to understand how such geoengineering might proceed before any policy decisions are made. They would like to understand what sort of aerosols could be used, how they would impact different aspects of climate, and how they would be delivered to the atmosphere.
WASHINGTON | Is it really more expensive to eat healthy?
An Agriculture Department study released Wednesday found that most fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods cost less than foods high in fat, sugar and salt.
That counters a common perception among some consumers that it’s cheaper to eat junk food than a nutritionally balanced meal.
The government says it all depends on how you measure the price. If you compare the price per calorie — as some previous researchers have done — then higher-calorie pastries and processed snacks might seem like a bargain compared with fruits and vegetables.
But comparing the cost of foods by weight or portion size shows that grains, vegetables, fruit and dairy foods are cheaper than most meats or foods high in saturated fat, added sugars or salt.
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