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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/quotations-day-070627283.html
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Source: Wikimedia Commons
The rate of deaths due to cancer in the United States is dropping. Americans today have a 20 percent less chance of dying from cancer than they did nearly 20 years ago.
The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer was released by the American Cancer Society on January 21. According to the report overall deaths due to cancer dropped from 215.1 deaths per 100,000 people in 1991 to 173.1 deaths per 100,000 in 2009 ? a 20 percent decrease. Men and women showed similar drops in risk between 2000 and 2009: risk of cancer among men decreased 1.8 percent per year, while risk for women dropped 1.4 percent per year. Children between 0 and 14 years of age were 1.8 percent less likely to die from cancer over the same time period.
For adults the drop in mortality is due in part to fewer new cases being diagnosed. Between 2000 and 2009 men and women showed an average decrease of 0.6 percent of new cases per year. Children, on the other hand, showed an average 0.6 percent increase in number of new cases. The faster decline in deaths, however, is attributed to better screening and treatment, and the decreasing number of Americans who choose to smoke.
Better screening is in part responsible for the drop in deaths due to cancer seen among both men and women between 2000 and 2009. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]
The report also showed that mortality due to the four most common types of cancer ? lung, colon, breast and prostate ? all declined by at least 30 percent. The decrease in deaths due to lung cancer among men, a trend that began in the 1990s, has continued through the past decade. Women have seen deaths due to lung cancer drop over the past three years. And while the rate of breast cancer cases has actually remained steady between 2000 and 2009, the number of deaths due to breast cancer has declined. These trends are thought to be due to declines in smoking.
The news isn?t good for all types of cancer, however. Among women, rates of new cases increased for melanoma, thyroid, kidney, pancreatic, liver and uterine cancers as well as leukemia. The report mentions that excess weight and a lack of physical activity is a risk for these cancers.
And while the 20 percent decrease in cancer-caused mortalities means 1.18 million cancer deaths were prevented, cancer still remains among the deadliest killers for Americans, second only to heart disease. In addition to those forms mentioned above, the incidence of colon and rectal cancers is also increased with obesity.
Which makes America?s expanding waistline all the more problematic. Right now two-thirds of American adults are obese and a third of American children. And projections indicate it?s going to get worse, with more than half of Americans becoming diabetic or pre-diabetic by 2020.
So while cancer mortality rates are decreasing, for the time being, let?s hope that the benefits of better screening and treatments tip the scale against the obesity epidemic that?s almost certain to worsen in the coming decade.
Source: http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/28/deaths-due-to-cancer-decreased-20-percent-in-last-20-years/
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Emily Yoffe Photograph by Teresa Castracane.
Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, is on Washingtonpost.com weekly to chat live with readers. An edited?transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up here?to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie?s?Slate columns?here. Send questions to Prudence at prudence@slate.com.)
Emily Yoffe: Good afternoon. I look forward to your questions.
Q. IVF Fundraising Party: I have a friend who is 26 and has been married for 23 months. She and her husband started trying to get pregnant right after they bought their house 20 months ago and did get pregnant but had an ectopic pregnancy and she lost the baby eight months ago. Now she has decided to take the step to do IVF because the stress of not getting pregnant is too much for her to stand. My issue is that she does not have the funds to pursue IVF, so she has fundraising parties. She sells home party items and all of the proceeds are going to her treatments. The first one she hosted herself and I went out of obligation. When you checked out and paid she gave you an item total then asked how much extra you would like to put directly toward her baby fund saying the standard was 20 percent of your item total. She then asked each person who would host a party for her fundraising efforts. When I informed her that I would not be hosting a party for her she got very upset and said I was not a good friend because I would not host and I only gave the minimum 20 percent additional to help her have a baby. Am I being selfish or is an IVF fundraising party as outrageous as it seems to me to be?
A: I wonder if at 26 she's explored all her medical alternatives for getting pregnant. But of course here we are speculating on your friend's medical decisions because she's made this profoundly personal question a matter of public obligation. I love her notion that the "standard" IVF tip for an item you didn't want in the first place is 20 percent. The woman's got chutzpah, I'll give her that. What she doesn't have, however, is the standing to insist that all her friends fund her fertility treatments. Wish her the best but continue to demur about hosting the Petri dish party. At the rate she's going, she should soon find herself fuming over all her selfish, former friends.
Dear Prudence: Desperate Single
Q. Not So Much a Cat Lover: I did not grow up with pets, am not a pet person, and am not used to all that comes with being a pet owner. Moving in with my boyfriend and his 6-year-old cat has been a slight adjustment. But I feel that I have been a good sport this past year of living together. I pet and play with the cat, brush her, give her treats, help feed her. I just really dislike the litter box and don't want to have the responsibility of cleaning it out. I ask my boyfriend to take care of this task. However, he gets a little huffy about my refusal to take turns cleaning out the litter box and often brings it up when we are doing household chores. I explain that I really dislike it, and this is his cat that he adopted four years before even meeting me, so it shouldn't be that much to ask that he continue to clean the litter box on his own. But still, I can tell that it bothers him and he feels the cat responsibilities should be split more evenly between the two of us. He does maintain sole financial responsibility for her. Any advice? Am I in the wrong?
A: He may want to offload her loads on you, but sorry, litter-box scooping is the responsibility of the original owner, especially if the new girlfriend is repelled by these duties. You can laugh and say you sure understand why he must be tired of the daily treasure hunt, but while you've come to enjoy Fifi, this is where you're drawing a line in the sand. Then ignore his huffing. And if his cat lives as long as my last one, he only has 15 more years of scooping ahead of him.
Q. Pedophile Co-worker: I am a team leader in a medium-sized arts organization. I recently discovered via Google that someone I work with closely, though only occasionally (several days a month), appears to have been convicted in the past several years for possessing an extensive quantity of truly disturbing child pornography. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was placed on probation. He was hired at a time when the organization needed someone to fill his role (which is a part-time substitute position) very urgently, and I am not sure due diligence was done as it would have been in a more formal hiring process. In any case, his ability to do the job, which he does well, is not related to his criminal past. He has little to no contact with minors at work. However, as the parent of three young children, I am revolted by the idea of working closely with this man, who is pleasant and chatty. Adding to the complexity, while his fairly uncommon name, age, and locale match that of the person in the Google search, I am aware that I have no evidence this is the same man. What do I do? Acting coldly toward him is not only potentially unfair, but jeopardizes my team's ability to do our job well, and will raise questions among other team members. Treating him warmly (if he is the same person) repels me. Do I bring this up with my supervisor? HR? On what grounds? And if they are aware of his (possible) past and chose to hire him anyway, how do I manage my own behavior going forward?
A: I'm left wondering what you mean when you say he has "little to no" contact with minors at work. That indicates there is some contact, and your company needs to know if the terms of his probation, if he is still on it, covers being around minors. I also don't know if your organization's policies would prevent having someone on the payroll who was convicted of a felony. It's also true that you haven't been able to confirm your suspicions. All this is sufficient grounds to go to your supervisor and say you stumbled upon this information, it is not substantiated, but you felt the organization should at the least know what you discovered. If they were aware of his past, or if they look into it and conclude his occasional work should continue (taking into account this issue of minors in the workplace), you put aside your personal feelings and act professionally. It should help if you can accept that he was caught and the criminal justice system rendered its judgment.
Q. Bad Time for a Baby: My husband and I have known each other more than four years, and have been married for almost one year. We are going through a rough patch, and have sought the help of a marriage counselor in addition to his personal therapist for anger management issues. While the frequency of our fights has diminished, I don't think we're yet at a comfortable place in the marriage to think about having any children (I brought my 5-year-old daughter into the marriage, so I'm honestly in no hurry right now). My husband, on the other hand, is desperate for children in the immediate future, and thinks that our relationship issues have no impact, because he grew up in a household where fighting was the norm, and thinks that it wouldn't impact our children at all. How do I get through to him that children won't make anything better, and could in fact make things worse?
A: If your husband, who has back-to-back therapists, has concluded that since his parents were at each other's throats, and so are you two, and all that is hunky dory for childrearing, he needs a lot more therapy or maybe a new set of therapists. I know people can change and grow, but from what you're describing I can't understand why you married him. There's nothing you've written that give me any hope he has the slightest understanding of what it takes to raise a child in a healthy home?which has me concerned about his effect on your little girl. If you have a marriage counselor, yet you feel you have to write to me for advice on saying, "You're too emotionally out of control for me to consider having a child with you," then you need to take a hard look at your situation. It would also be a good idea to double up on the birth control.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=d0d993cf1bf7a1893fa58dea8453e863
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Jan. 28, 2013 ? A team of materials scientists at Harvard University and the University of Exeter, UK, have invented a new fiber that changes color when stretched. Inspired by nature, the researchers identified and replicated the unique structural elements that create the bright iridescent blue color of a tropical plant's fruit.
The multilayered fiber, described January 28 in the journal Advanced Materials, could lend itself to the creation of smart fabrics that visibly react to heat or pressure.
"Our new fiber is based on a structure we found in nature, and through clever engineering we've taken its capabilities a step further," says lead author Mathias Kolle, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). "The plant, of course, cannot change color. By combining its structure with an elastic material, however, we've created an artificial version that passes through a full rainbow of colors as it's stretched."
Since the evolution of the first eye on Earth more than 500 million years ago, the success of many organisms has relied upon the way they interact with light and color, making them useful models for the creation of new materials. For seeds and fruit in particular, bright color is thought to have evolved to attract the agents of seed dispersal, especially birds.
The fruit of the South American tropical plant, Margaritaria nobilis, commonly called "bastard hogberry," is an intriguing example of this adaptation. The ultra-bright blue fruit, which is low in nutritious content, mimics a more fleshy and nutritious competitor. Deceived birds eat the fruit and ultimately release its seeds over a wide geographic area.
"The fruit of this bastard hogberry plant was scientifically delightful to pick," says principal investigator Peter Vukusic, Associate Professor in Natural Photonics at the University of Exeter. "The light-manipulating architecture its surface layer presents, which has evolved to serve a specific biological function, has inspired an extremely useful and interesting technological design."
Vukusic and his collaborators at Harvard studied the structural origin of the seed's vibrant color. They discovered that the upper cells in the seed's skin contain a curved, repeating pattern, which creates color through the interference of light waves. (A similar mechanism is responsible for the bright colors of soap bubbles.) The team's analysis revealed that multiple layers of cells in the seed coat are each made up of a cylindrically layered architecture with high regularity on the nano- scale.
The team replicated the key structural elements of the fruit to create flexible, stretchable and color-changing photonic fibers using an innovative roll-up mechanism perfected in the Harvard laboratories.
"For our artificial structure, we cut down the complexity of the fruit to just its key elements," explains Kolle. "We use very thin fibers and wrap a polymer bilayer around them. That gives us the refractive index contrast, the right number of layers, and the curved, cylindrical cross-section that we need to produce these vivid colors."
The researchers say that the process could be scaled up and developed to suit industrial production.
"Our fiber-rolling technique allows the use of a wide range of materials, especially elastic ones, with the color-tuning range exceeding by an order of magnitude anything that has been reported for thermally drawn fibers," says coauthor Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard SEAS, and Kolle's adviser. Aizenberg is also Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
The fibers' superior mechanical properties, combined with their demonstrated color brilliance and tunability, make them very versatile. For instance, the fibers can be wound to coat complex shapes. Because the fibers change color under strain, the technology could lend itself to smart sports textiles that change color in areas of muscle tension, or that sense when an object is placed under strain as a result of heat.
Additional coauthors included Alfred Lethbridge at the University of Exeter, Moritz Kreysing at Ludwig Maximilians University (Germany), and Jeremy B. Baumberg, Professor of Nanophotonics at the University of Cambridge (UK).
This research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and through a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The researchers also benefited from facilities at the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems, which is part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard also contributed to this research.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/F55whN1jT3w/130128151938.htm
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A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/50606210#50606210
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PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) ? Flames raced through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing more than 230 people as panicked partygoers gasped for breath in the smoke-filled air, stampeding toward a single exit partially blocked by those already dead. It appeared to be the world's deadliest nightclub fire in more than a decade.
Witnesses said a flare or firework lit by band members started the blaze in Santa Maria, a university city of about 225,000 people, though officials said the cause was still under investigation.
Television images showed smoke pouring out of the Kiss nightclub as shirtless young men who had attended a university party joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at windows and walls to free those trapped inside.
Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city's fire department, told the O Globo newspaper that firefighters had a hard time getting inside the club because "there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance."
Teenagers sprinted from the scene desperately seeking help. Others carried injured and burned friends away in their arms.
"There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead," survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.
The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, Silva said.
Another survivor, Michele Pereira, told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit flares that started the conflagration.
"The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward," she said. "At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread."
Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. "and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning"
"It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It's harmless, we never had any trouble with it.
"When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn't working"
He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.
Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim ? he said earlier that the death toll was likely made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could exit.
Officials counted 232 bodies that had been brought for identification to a gymnasium in Santa Maria, which is located at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.
Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.
Brazil President Dilma Rousseff arrived to visit the injured after cutting short her trip to a Latin American-European summit in Chile.
"It is a tragedy for all of us," Rousseff said.
Most of the dead apparently were asphyxiated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city's Caridade Hospital to help victims.
Beltrame said he was told the club had been filled far beyond its capacity during a party for students at the university's agronomy department.
Survivors, police and firefighters gave the same account of a band member setting the ceiling's soundproofing ablaze, he said.
"Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least 90 percent of the victims died of asphyxiation," Beltrame told The Associated Press by telephone.
"The toxic smoke made people lose their sense of direction so they were unable to find their way to the exit. At least 50 bodies were found inside a bathroom. Apparently they confused the bathroom door with the exit door."
In the hospital, the doctor "saw desperate friends and relatives walking and running down the corridors looking for information," he said, calling it "one of the saddest scenes I have ever witnessed."
Rodrigo Moura, identified by the newspaper Diario de Santa Maria as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.
Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-day mourning period, and Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, said officials were investigating the cause of the disaster.
The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.
Sunday's fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.
In 2004, at least 194 people died in a fire at an overcrowded nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Seven members of a band were sentenced to prison for starting the flames.
Several years later, in December 2009, a blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, killed 152 people after an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches.
Similar circumstances led to a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 people in the United States. Pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling of a Rhode Island music venue.
The band performing in Santa Maria, Gurizada Fandangueira, plays a driving mixture of local Brazilian country music styles. Guitarist Martin told Radio Gaucha the musicians are already seeing hostile messages.
"People on the social networks are saying we have to pay for what happened," he said. "I'm afraid there could be retaliation".
___
Sibaja reported from Brasilia. Associated Press Writer Stan Lehman and Bradley Brooks contributed to this report from Sao Paulo.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/deadly-smoke-lone-blocked-exit-230-die-brazil-201703681.html
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Jan. 27, 2013 ? Even if you live more than 1,000 miles from the nearest large city, it could be affecting your weather.
In a new study that shows the extent to which human activities are influencing the atmosphere, scientists have concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems. This affects temperatures across thousands of miles, significantly warming some areas and cooling others, according to the study this week in Nature Climate Change.
The extra "waste heat" generated from buildings, cars, and other sources in major Northern Hemisphere urban areas causes winter warming across large areas of northern North America and northern Asia. Temperatures in some remote areas increase by as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the research by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; University of California, San Diego; Florida State University; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
At the same time, the changes to atmospheric circulation caused by the waste heat cool areas of Europe by as much as 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F), with much of the temperature decrease occurring in the fall.
The net effect on global mean temperatures is nearly negligible -- an average increase worldwide of just 0.01 degrees C (about 0.02 degrees F). This is because the total human-produced waste heat is only about 0.3 percent of the heat transported across higher latitudes by atmospheric and oceanic circulations.
However, the noticeable impact on regional temperatures may explain why some regions are experiencing more winter warming than projected by climate computer models, the researchers conclude. They suggest that models be adjusted to take the influence of waste heat into account.
"The burning of fossil fuel not only emits greenhouse gases but also directly affects temperatures because of heat that escapes from sources like buildings and cars," says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, a co-author of the study. "Although much of this waste heat is concentrated in large cities, it can change atmospheric patterns in a way that raises or lowers temperatures across considerable distances."
Distinct from urban heat island effect
The researchers stressed that the effect of waste heat is distinct from the so-called urban heat island effect. Such islands are mainly a function of the heat collected and re-radiated by pavement, buildings, and other urban features, whereas the new study examines the heat produced directly through transportation, heating and cooling units, and other activities.
The study, "Energy consumption and the unexplained winter warming over northern Asia and North America," appeared online January 27. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor, as well as the Department of Energy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hu, along with lead author Guang Zhang of Scripps and Ming Cai of Florida State University, analyzed the energy consumption -- from heating buildings to powering vehicles -- that generates waste heat release. The world's total energy consumption in 2006 was equivalent to a constant-use rate of 16 terawatts (1 terawatt, or TW, equals 1 trillion watts). Of that, an average rate of 6.7 TW was consumed in 86 metropolitan areas in the Northern Hemisphere.
Using a computer model of the atmosphere, the authors found that the influence of this waste heat can widen the jet stream.
"What we found is that energy use from multiple urban areas collectively can warm the atmosphere remotely, thousands of miles away from the energy consumption regions," Zhang says. "This is accomplished through atmospheric circulation change."
The release of waste heat is different from energy that is naturally distributed in the atmosphere, the researchers noted. The largest source of heat, solar energy, warms Earth's surface and atmospheric circulations redistribute that energy from one region to another. Human energy consumption distributes energy that had lain dormant and sequestered for millions of years, mostly in the form of oil or coal.
Though the amount of human-generated energy is a small portion of that transported by nature, it is highly concentrated in urban areas. In the Northern Hemisphere, many of those urban areas lie directly under major atmospheric troughs and jet streams.
"The world's most populated and energy-intensive metropolitan areas are along the east and west coasts of the North American and Eurasian continents, underneath the most prominent atmospheric circulation troughs and ridges," Cai says. "The release of this concentrated waste energy causes the noticeable interruption to the normal atmospheric circulation systems above, leading to remote surface temperature changes far away from the regions where waste heat is generated."
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/18ztHxt5eMM/130127134210.htm
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