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sirgabrial

Study doubts effectiveness of antidepressant drugs | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSN2527622020080226

shared by sirgabrial on 10 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Antidepressant medications appear to help only very severely depressed people and work no better than placebos in many patients, British researchers said.
  • Researchers led by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull reviewed a series of studies, both published and unpublished, on four antidepressants, examining the question of whether a person's response to these drugs hinged on how depressed they were before getting treatment.
  • Effexor
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Prozac
  • Paxil
  • They are all so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.
  • The researchers found that compared with placebo, these new-generation antidepressant medications did not yield clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially had moderate or even very severe depression. The study found that significant benefits occurred only in the most severely depressed patients.
  • "Drug-placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients.
  • The researchers obtained data on all the clinical trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the licensing of the four drugs.
  • Although patients get better when they take antidepressants, they also get better when they take a placebo, and the difference in improvement is not very great. This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments," Kirsch said in a statement.
sirgabrial

Drug regulators re-evaluating Botox's safety - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Drug regulators re-evaluating Botox's safety
  • U.S. drug regulators are re-evaluating the safety of Botox, best known as a wrinkle treatment, based on reports of serious ill effects, including several deaths among children taking Botox or a related drug.
  • In a public alert issued Friday, the Food and Drug Administration said Botox, along with a similar drug called Myobloc, has been linked to life-threatening symptoms such as strained breathing and severe difficulty in swallowing, which can lead to a form of pneumonia. The FDA is advising doctors to monitor patients for such reactions while it decides whether to strengthen warnings on the drugs' labels.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Many of the most serious reactions - deaths and hospitalizations - occurred among children treated for cerebral palsy-associated limb spasticity, the agency said. The drugs are not FDA-approved for that use in children or adults.
  • FDA-approved drugs often have off-label uses, where physicians take medications approved for one disease to treat another. This practice often benefits patients and drug manufacturers, but can increase risks.
  • estimates it will yield as much as $1.4 billion in 2008.
  • Botox and Myobloc are each forms of a toxin produced by bacteria that can paralyze muscles and lead to botulism, a fatal food poisoning.
  • But in small amounts, the injected toxins can calm muscle spasms. A third product, Botox Cosmetic, is FDA-approved to improve the appearance of wrinkles between the eyebrows.
  • The FDA said case reports under review suggest that the toxin may migrate from the point of injection more commonly than had been believed, and can cause symptoms of botulism.
  • Shares in Allergan dropped nearly 6 percent to close at $63.30 on Friday.
sirgabrial

Striking writers reach tentative deal with studios | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSN0851358020080209

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • threatening to spoil the Oscars
  • Golden Globes awards ceremony was canceled
  • The last major strike to hit Hollywood, a walkout by screenwriters in 1988, lasted 22 weeks and delayed the start of that year's fall television season.
sirgabrial

Airlines: Passenger Only Gets Half Her Seat On Delta Flight - 0 views

consumerist.com/...-half-her-seat-on-delta-flight

shared by sirgabrial on 05 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Passenger Only Gets Half Her Seat On Delta Flight
  • Julie found that only about half of her seat was available due to the size of the passenger next to her. The passenger was apologetic, but obviously couldn't magically shrink her body mass and make more room.
  • Julie asked if she could purchase a seat in first class but was told they were sold out, and there were no more seats available.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • When she emailed a complaint to Delta and asked for a refund, they thanked her for her feedback.
  • escalate it!
  • appealed this to someone higher up
  • When Julie took his advice, Delta apologized and gave her a $250 voucher.
  • Delta, and most of the other network airlines, tends to look the other way when someone unusually tall or wide boards their aircraft. At least one carrier, Southwest Airlines, doesn't. It requires that plus-sized passengers buy an extra seat (but they get their money back if there are empty seats).
sirgabrial

BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7222114.stm

shared by sirgabrial on 05 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo
  • Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.4bn) in cash and shares.
  • The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo's board, is 62% above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional $300m this year trying to revive the company.
  • lay off 1,000 staff
  • Yahoo shares have fallen 46% since reaching a year-high of $34.08 in October. On Friday they closed almost 48% higher.
  • Microsoft closed 6.6% lower while Google shares fell 8.6%.
  • "Ultimately this corporate marriage was forced by the rise of Google, which has grown into a serious competitor for both Microsoft as a software company and Yahoo as an internet portal," said Tim Weber, business editor of the BBC News website.
  • This consolidates the marketplace down to Google versus Microsoft.
sirgabrial

The Anniston Star » Latest from AP - 0 views

hosted.ap.org/...ODD_GIRAFFES_JACKET

shared by sirgabrial on 05 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Giraffe's jacket a creature comfort
  • Like many a lady of a certain age, Tiki feels the cold these days.
  • So workers at the Oakland Zoo are having a custom-fit coat made to keep the giraffe cozy this winter.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • At age 18, venerable for giraffes, Tiki is subject to the vicissitudes of age. She already gets regular visits from a chiropractor, a masseuse and an acupuncturist.
  • Those are accepted treatments for horses, at least in the always edgy San Francisco Bay area, and provide a gentle way to treat animals without drugs, said zoo keeper Melissa McCartney. Massage helps get Tiki used to interacting with keepers. Acupuncture helps with her shoulder and withers.
  • At 13 feet tall, Tiki is too big to be herded into a stall, and regular horse blankets are too ill-fitting to be left on without supervision lest she get in a tangle.
  • The zoo staff got in touch with a horse-blanket designer who agreed to donate her services to tailor a coat for Tiki.
  • The jacket will be a tasteful forest green and feature a removable liner for those in-between days.
barnaby

Choosing radical cancer surgery - Washington Post- msnbc.com - 0 views

www.msnbc.msn.com/23005766

shared by barnaby on 16 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Rob Stein
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 16 Feb 08
       
      man
  • surgeon told her she could save her breast.
  • Lawrence decided to have it removed anyway. And then she decided to have the healthy one removed, too.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • "I just didn't want to have to worry about it. For me, it was a matter of peace of mind."
  • The proportion of breast cancer patients who are opting for double mastectomies when far less radical surgery would suffice has increased sharply,
  • rose from 1.8 percent to 4.5 percent between 1998 and 2003 -- a 150 percent increase.
  • "I think this is a very high price to be paying for a sense of peace of mind," said M. Carolina Hinestrosa
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 16 Feb 08
       
      unless they are planning on breastfeeding regardless of the fact that they are going through menapause, i don't any price is being paid other than that of the sergury.
  • rend that disturbs some experts
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 16 Feb 08
       
      breast experts/men
  • Todd M. Tuttle
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 16 Feb 08
       
      man
  • "Part of it may be that our plastic surgery options are better, so the thought of having a breast removed might for some women be somewhat less traumatic if they can have a reconstructed breast,"
  • surgery reduces the risk of getting a second cancer
  • That is because second breast cancers are usually caught early
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 16 Feb 08
       
      because of regular visits to a dr who mashes their breasts during a very uncomfortable mamogram
  • His study did not examine the reasons for the trend
  • but Tuttle suggested several explanations.
  • More aggressive screening with technologies such as MRI is also producing more false positives, and that can mean a biopsy.
    • barnaby
      barnaby on 16 Feb 08
       
      Questions: would consider removing your legs if paralized and they became useless? if already requiring sergury near your appendix would you opt to have it removed to prevent future problems?
sirgabrial

DNA Found to Have "Impossible" Telepathic Properties | The Daily Galaxy: News from Plan... - 0 views

www.dailygalaxy.com/...dna-found-to-ha.html

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • DNA Found to Have "Impossible" Telepathic Properties
  • DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to.
  • Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
  • In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment.
  • Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences.
  • This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.
sirgabrial

Tornado survivor downed shot, 'then I heard this noise' - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Tornado survivor downed shot, 'then I heard this noise'
  • James Kruger was watching election results Tuesday night in Lafayette, Tennessee, when a warning appeared on his TV screen: A tornado was headed straight toward his town. Then the lights went out.
  • He put on sweat pants, grabbed a flashlight, drank a shot of whiskey, "and then I heard this noise," Kruger said Thursday.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • He headed for a door, "and all of a sudden I heard the glass breaking and it was sucking," he said. "When I tried to shut the door, [it] seemed like the door was lifting up. So I just dove and I lay flat on the floor."
  • Lying there, everything in the house flew over him, scraping and banging his back, Kruger said. Then the chaos stopped. "I was laying in the dirt. There was no floor. No nothing."
  • The house was gone, but Kruger says he believes there's reason why he survived. "I think God was holding my leg, beating my ass, teaching me that I hadn't been doing everything he wanted me to do," he said.
  • Kruger, Whitaker and others across the region tried Thursday to put their lives back together in a swath of the South where tornadoes killed at least 56 people.
  • The trail of death stretched across four states, with four fatalities in Alabama, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and 32 in Tennessee.
  • Macon County, Tennessee, which includes Lafayette, was one of the worst-hit areas, with 14 deaths and overwhelming damage.
  • Elsewhere in the area, a mother was found dead in a creek bed about 50 yards from where her house stood. Her baby was discovered alive 250 yards away. The child was taken to a local hospital, Austin said.
sirgabrial

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indian organ scam doctor deported - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7236617.stm

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Indian organ scam doctor deported
  • A doctor accused of organising illegal organ transplants in India has been deported following his arrest in Nepal.
  • Amit Kumar was detained late on Thursday, accused of heading an illegal kidney transplant ring in Gurgaon, a wealthy suburb of New Delhi.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Police said they were investigating whether Mr Kumar was involved in illegal transplants in Nepal, and that he had been trying to flee to Canada.
  • Mr Kumar has denied the accusations of illegal practices.
  • "I have not committed any crime," he said at a news conference in Kathmandu on Friday.
  • India bans trade in live kidneys unless the organ is donated by a blood relative or a spouse, or if two families agree a swap.
  • But many continue to sell their kidneys to satisfy demand from rich clients, including Westerners, waiting for transplants.
  • In January, police raided an illegal clinic in Gurgaon after being tipped-off by a victim. Four people were arrested. The donors were allegedly paid up to $2,500 (£1250).
  • $200,000 and had been seized from Mr Kumar on his arrest.
sirgabrial

BBC NEWS | Business | G7 issues global economy warning - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7236123.stm

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • G7 issues global economy warning
  • The global economy could deteriorate further in the wake of the global credit crunch, a meeting of the G7 group of wealthy nations has warned.
  • But the group pledged to act individually and together to promote stability and growth.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • It also urged banks to disclose all their losses and bolster their balance sheets to help stabilise markets.
  • The group's statement came after a day-long meeting of ministers and central bank governors in Tokyo.
  • "In all our economies, to varying degrees, growth is expected to slow somewhat in the short term," it said.
  • The G7 nations said that continuing risks included further problems for the US housing market, tighter credit, high commodity prices and rising inflation.
  • They also called on oil producers to increase output and on China to let its currency appreciate faster.
  • China, India and other East and South East Asian economies have experienced break-neck growth over the past few years
  • But as the global credit crisis and US housing slump has brought the world's largest economy to its knees, concerns have persisted that these problems would spread to Asia, which is heavily reliant on US imports of its products and foreign investment for growth.
sirgabrial

Striking writers reach tentative deal with studios | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...idUSN0851358020080209

shared by sirgabrial on 14 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Striking writers reach tentative deal with studios
  • The union representing Hollywood's striking writers said it reached a "tentative deal" with studios and will meet members later on Saturday to discuss ending a three-month walkout that has crippled television production and overshadowed the awards season.
  • The breakthrough was announced via e-mail to the 10,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who went on strike for the first time in almost 20 years on November 5 in a dispute centering on compensation for work distributed over the Internet.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "While this agreement is neither perfect nor perhaps all that we deserve for the countless hours of hard work and sacrifice, our strike has been a success," WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA East president Michael Winship said in the memo.
  • Members will meet in New York at 2 p.m. EST and in Los Angeles at 10 p.m. EST to discuss specific terms, the ratification process and ending the strike, the union added.
  • The WGA memo said the tentative deal "creates formulas for revenue-based residuals in new media, provides access to deals and financial data to help us evaluate and enforce those formulas, and establishes the principle that, 'When they get paid, we get paid.'"
  • The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. has estimated the strike has cost the region's film and TV industry at least $650 million in wages, with over $1 billion more in lost earnings attributed to the ripple effect on the local economy.
sirgabrial

Teens losing touch with historical references - USATODAY.com - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...2008-02-26-teens-history_N.htm

shared by sirgabrial on 10 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Teens losing touch with historical references
  • Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job. Don't count on your typical teenager to nod knowingly the next time you drop a reference to any of these. A study out today finds that about half of 17-year-olds can't identify the books or historical events associated with them.
  • Among 1,200 students surveyed: •43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900. •52% could identify the theme of 1984. •51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Twenty-five years after the federal report A Nation at Risk challenged U.S. public schools to raise the quality of education, the study finds high schoolers still lack important historical and cultural underpinnings of "a complete education." And, its authors fear, the nation's current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities — even if children can read and do math.
  • n all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the "I Have a Dream" speech.
  • Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom's Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.
  • "School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it,"
  • The findings probably won't sit well with educators, who say record numbers of students are taking college-level Advanced Placement history, literature and other courses in high school.
sirgabrial

BBC NEWS | Americas | Jamaica puzzled by theft of beach - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7678379.stm

binaryopposition

shared by sirgabrial on 08 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Jamaica puzzled by theft of beach
  • Police in Jamaica are investigating the suspected theft of hundreds of tons of sand from a beach on the island's north coast.
  • It was discovered in July that 500 truck-loads had been removed outside a planned resort at Coral Spring beach.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Detectives say people in the tourism sector could be suspects, because a good beach is seen as a valuable asset to hotels on the Caribbean island.
  • The disappearance was deemed so important that the Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, also took an interest in the theft and ordered a report into how 500 truckloads of sand was stolen, transported and presumably sold.
  • no arrests
sirgabrial

Phoenix Lander: Good Night, Sweet Phoenix - 0 views

io9.com/...good-night-sweet-phoenix

binaryopposition followup

shared by sirgabrial on 15 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Five months ago, it landed on the Martian surface — and into our hearts. It gave us soil analysis data, photos of the sky from the red planet, and even hope of extraterrestrial life. Now, with its power deteriorating, its sunlight exposure shrinking, and Martian temperatures dropping to almost -100°C, the Phoenix lander's time may be up. Project manager Barry Goldstein admitted "we're towards the end," and Phoenix even bid us a fond goodbye on its Twitter page. But that's the charm of robots; they never truly die.
sirgabrial

Fresh Genes Needed to Save Chicken Industry | Wired Science from Wired.com - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...fresh-genes-nee.html

binaryopposition

shared by sirgabrial on 15 Nov 08 - Cached
  • Fresh Genes Needed to Save Chicken Industry
  • The first analysis of genetic diversity in a modern agricultural commodity has returned some disturbing news: Market-driven chicken farming has produced a race of genetically homogeneous fowl in dire need of new blood.
  • Industrial chickens, bred to grow big and fast, have lost about half of the genetic variation found in their wild counterparts. The precise role of each lost variant isn't known, but many likely affect resistance to disease.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • "New diseases, or mutations of old ones, occur all the time. Nature overcomes those new challenges by creating new defenses from existing genetic variability," said Purdue University animal geneticist Bill Muir
  • three breeds
  • the White Leghorn, Rhode Island Red and Indian Game.
  • breeding populations are kept small
  • isolated
  • one million birds an hour
  • $26-billion industry
  • 75 billion eggs each year in the United States alone
sirgabrial

More Children on Drugs Than Ever: Chronic Prescriptions Increase Dramatically - 0 views

www.naturalnews.com/024731.html

binaryopposition

shared by sirgabrial on 15 Nov 08 - Cached
  • More Children on Drugs Than Ever: Chronic Prescriptions Increase Dramatically
  • he number of type 2 diabetes medications prescribed for kids and adolescents more than doubled from 2002 to 2005
  • asthma medication prescriptions for children increased 46.5%
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • ADHD medication prescriptions were up over 40%
  • girls
  • mixed messages
  • Today`s kids are already carrying a heavy body burden from pollutants in the air, water, household products and food additives.
  • The data used for the study came from prescription claims from over three and a half million children aged 5 to 19, and did not try to link obesity and chronic medication use.
  • greater awareness of health issues
  • more screening of children,
  • children`s food choices
  • poor nutrition
  • sedentary lifestyle
sirgabrial

AP Wire News - nvdaily.com - 0 views

hosted.ap.org/...POLLS_OBAMA_RACE

binaryopposition

shared by sirgabrial on 15 Nov 08 - Cached
  • No hidden white bias seen in presidential race
  • no evidence of the so-called Bradley effect
  • oppose a black politician mislead pollsters about whom they will vote for.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • national and state pre-election polls were generally accurate in reflecting voters' preferences in the presidential contest.
  • Whites nationally preferred McCain by 12 percentage points, while 95 percent of blacks backed Obama, according to exit polls.
  • black candidates facing white opponents had comfortable leads in polls, only to lose or narrowly win the elections.
  • The phenomenon is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who in 1982 lost the race for California governor after leading in the polls.
  • Seven percent of whites said race was important in choosing a candidate, and they backed the Republican 2-1.
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