Blendor
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Archive for Health
March 11, 2010 at 11:31 pm · Filed under Health, News, Science, TV
Science!
No no no no no. This guy is a crank. The first thing he does is claim that the swine flu isn’t “real medicine.” And this is Fox News, where no facts are checked, ever. He cites an “increase in the incidence in brain cancer” as proof! Well, there is also an increase in the incidence of obesity, so maybe cell phones cause you to gain weight, too. Microwaves/radio waves are too long in wavelength to affect DNA. Longer wavelengths = lower frequency (ie, lower intensity). See the graph on this page.
Look at the size of the antenna on your phone (if your phone is from 1999) or radio. That’s the size of the wave, maybe a little smaller, but still nowhere near the intensity to affect DNA. They’re longer in wavelength than VISIBLE light. that would mean that your lightbulb causes even more cancer than your phone! The worst thing microwaves could do to the human body is warm it up. That said, don’t put your cat in the microwave.
April 20, 2009 at 8:24 am · Filed under Health, Politics
BRITISH scientists have developed the world’s first stem cell therapy to cure the most common cause of blindness. Surgeons predict it will become a routine, one-hour procedure that will be generally available in six or seven years’ time.
The treatment involves replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells. It was pioneered by scientists and surgeons from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital.
via Blind to be cured with stem cells – Times Online (thanks, Nick!).
December 23, 2008 at 10:28 am · Filed under Gadgets, Health, Science
Inventor’s 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world’s poorest see better:
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
Such an amazing idea. With self-adjustable glasses cheap enough, and with the right distribution networks, sight could be restored to massive numbers of poor people in the world.
October 21, 2008 at 5:45 pm · Filed under Health, london
I managed to make it through the seminar I had to give today, and I think I did well. I still need to work on speaking slowly and clearly, but I think the content came across well enough anyway. Here’s a link to the slide show, if you’re interested in a bulleted version of my talk (apologies to Flickr randoms I borrowed, and Google Docs seems to have mangled my PowerPoint slightly).
The ride home today was serene. On the train in West London, passing through trees changing color and football pitches waiting for players, it seemed there was nothing better or more peaceful than a sunny, autumn afternoon, when the sunlight shines strong at low angles to the Earth, lighting everything with an ethereal glow, and there’s a chill in the air and Midlake in my headphones. The Midlake is key.
October 17, 2008 at 5:18 pm · Filed under Health
I’m sitting in a cafe near London Bridge, trying to prepare for a presentation I have to give on Tuesday. I’m speaking on the topic of pertussis (whooping cough), and how its resurgence in some parts of the US could display a lack of trust in the medical establishment. Finding good, recent articles on the subject is proving difficult. Perhaps my focus is too narrow. Any advice is appreciated.
What’s new with you?
September 13, 2008 at 3:43 am · Filed under Health, Politics
This essay is focused on political decision-making, specifically with regards to how the Obama campaign should frame McCain, but I find its arguments applicable in general:
But post-Palin, the Obama-Biden campaign seems to have become the Gore-Kerry-Hillary campaign. They are running on 18th Century theory of Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the facts, they will follow their self-interest and reason to the right conclusion. What contemporary cognitive scientists have discovered (See my new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain), and what Republican marketers have known for decades, is that the Enlightenment theory of reason doesn’t describe how people actually work. People think primarily in terms of cultural narratives, stereotypes, frames, and metaphors. That is real reason.
For me, these insights offer a potential way through stubborn beliefs many hold regarding health, medicine and science. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the political successes of Republicans in the last couple of decades – and especially in the last eight years.
There’s more good stuff here:
Taxation is not an affliction. Tax cuts will not create jobs. These are facts, but stating them as we just did just reinforces conservative frames. The right framing for the truth must be available and used for the truth be heard.
If the truth doesn’t fit the existing frame, the frame will stay in place and the truth will dissipate.
It takes time and a lot of repetition for frames to become entrenched in the very synapses of people’s brains. Moreover, they have to fit together in an overall coherent way for them to make sense.
Effective framing on a single issue must be both right and sensible. That is, it must fit into a system of frames (to be sensible) and must fit one’s moral worldview (to be right).
(Thanks to homunculus.)
June 23, 2008 at 2:14 pm · Filed under Health, Politics
In the UK, Prime Minister Brown has pledged £200 grants in exchange for participating in health and social programs:
Ten pilot projects in low-income neighbourhoods will trial the one-off grants as part of a £125 million three-year drive announced in the Budget to find innovative solutions to child poverty.
Based on schemes in the US, where parents are rewarded for things like making sure their children attend health check-ups and receive immunisation jabs, the grants are targeted at the most hard-to-reach parents who currently do not take up services offered by children’s centres.
The pilots will test whether offering cash incentives can encourage socially-excluded parents to participate in agreed programmes of action to improve their children’s well-being.
I’m actually not aware of programs like that here in the US, but I think they’re a great idea. It’s a small price to pay for healthy kids and a little boost to social mobility.
May 29, 2008 at 8:46 am · Filed under Health
I’ve been pondering a new workout regimen (i.e., one at all), and I thought I’d just start up with the usual – running early in the morning. The problem with that is waking up and dragging myself out of bed early enough to give me time to run, shower, and get to work. It hasn’t gone well this week. So instead, I’m considering biking to work every day, since home is only about 3.5-4 miles from the office. But I wanted to be sure I was getting the same amount of exercise, so I did some Googling.
Running vs. Cycling Which burns more calories?
Dr. Edward Coyle of the University of Texas determined average values of oxygen consumption by cyclists to develop a table to estimate the approximate caloric equivalence between running and cycling.
He found that if you ride 20 miles at 15 mph, you burn 620 calories 20 miles X 31 calories per mile = 620 calories. Take the 620 calories and divide them by 110 calories per mile for running and you get 5.63 miles to burn the same number of calories. So riding a bicycle 20 miles at 15 miles per hour is equal to running 5.6 miles at any speed.
Dr. Coyle made the calculations easy by providing conversion factors for different riding speeds: 10MPH=4.2, 15MPH=3.5, 20MPH=2.9, 25MPH=2.3, and 30MPH=1.9. Divide the number of miles ridden by the conversion factor for your riding speed to tell you the equivalent miles of running at any speed.
I’ve made the trek before, and it usually takes me a little more than 15 minutes, so I’m going to assume an average riding speed of 15mph. If my math is correct, I’ll probably do the equivalent of about 2 miles of running per day if I consider my round trip. That’s probably more than I’d get if I forced myself to try to run every day, it saves gas, it’s zero-emissions, plus it’s easier on the joints and more time-efficient for me. I’m just going to have to be a little sweaty at work, I guess.
May 1, 2008 at 9:48 am · Filed under Health, energy
Nairobi businessman bringing sustainable energy to unpowered villages – Boing Boing Gadgets
Solar is, in Africa as in the west, mostly impractical. But wind, like sunlight, is “everywhere,” providing a natural, inexhaustible supply of energy. Among the most interesting of CraftSkills’ installations is the one at Chifiri, which uses a turbine’s power to run a pump, which filters 422 liters of water an hour from a brackish pond that is the only source of water for 500 villagers.
This is just the kind of business growth that needs to be encouraged in developing areas. It’s exciting to think of the possibilities – the clean drinking water alone will do a great deal to improve health conditions and increase a village’s abillity to move from survival mode to production and growth – not to mention that electricity could be made available. When wealthier nations decide to support developing ones, these are the kinds of projects to support. Is there a foundation for supporting sustainable energy projects out there? It would be cool if there is.
April 28, 2008 at 12:05 pm · Filed under Design, Health
French researchers have developed a potentially very useful set of graphical icons to depict disease and drug information:
Like road signs, the VCM graphical language uses a small set of graphical signs. The current dictionary contains about 130 pictograms displayed in 5 colors. For example, current conditions of a patient are shown as red icons while risks of future conditions are orange. The physicians who tested the system learned it in a couple of hours and think this system will reduce the number of errors in drug prescriptions.
I think a universal, simplified set of icons is a great idea. Of course they wouldn’t be a replacement for drug information sheets, etc., but they could allow doctors and pharmacist to quickly identify a substance and work more safely and efficiently.
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