UC San Diego Helps Soaring Number of Community Members Suffering from Hunger
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As a result of the difficult economic climate, hunger is at an all time high in San Diego. At the University of California, San Diego, students, staff and faculty are doing their part to help feed the community by participating in the Colleges Rock Hunger contest Oct. 6 – 22, hosted by the San Diego Food Bank. The nonprofit agency handed out 15.3 million pounds of food this past fiscal year, a 56 percent increase from the 9.1 million pounds two years earlier. According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty, today over five million Californians are hungry or live in fear of hunger.
Approximately 74,000 college students from UC San Diego, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), San Diego State University (SDSU) and the University of San Diego (USD) are competing in the contest to meet the huge increase in demand for food from community members affected by layoffs, bankruptcies and other economic woes. Their combined donations will be the first official contribution to the 2010 San Diego Food Bank Holiday Food Drive. This is the third year that the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego has sponsored the drive.
This is a great opportunity for UC San Diego to showcase our dedication to service,” said Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. “Washington Monthly ranks UC San Diego the number one university in the nation based on UC San Diego’s positive impact on our country.
400 Nigerian children dead from lead poisoning-MSF
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Some 400 children in northern Nigeria have died since March from lead poisoning linked to illegal mining by residents for gold, and thousands more remain at risk, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The Dutch arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) reported the new toll, up from 160 deaths last June, and is treating a further 500 children in its four clinics, a U.N. spokeswoman said. Most victims are under age five.
“The lead pollution and intoxication crisis in Zamfara state is far from over,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Gorging study shows with fat, location matters
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Researchers who persuaded slender volunteers to gorge themselves on sweets to gain weight said on Monday they have overturned the common wisdom that adults cannot grow new fat cells.
As they gained weight, the volunteers added new fat cells on their thighs, while fat cells on their bellies expanded, Michael Jensen of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and colleagues found.
“It sort of inverts the old dogma that we don’t make new fat cells when we are adults,” Jensen said in a telephone interview.
Games-First case of dengue reported in athletes village
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The first case of dengue fever in the athletes village has added to the woes of Delhi officials already facing criticism for shoddy preparations ahead of the biggest ever Commonwealth Games.
Ruptu Gogoi, a member of the Indian lawn bowling team contracted the mosquito-borne viral disease and has been admitted to hospital.
More than a 1,000 cases, including three deaths, have been reported in the city since June and organisers have tried a number of methods, including ‘mosquito fish’, to stop the spread of the disease before the Games open later on Sunday.
US CEOs wary of health costs, end of Bush tax cuts
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U.S. chief executives are becoming more confident about the economy, though many worry high employee health care costs and the possible end of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans could hurt businesses.
Vistage International, an organization for chief executives, said on Monday its confidence index edged up to 95.1 in the third quarter from 94.4 in the prior three months. The index is 12 percent above its year-earlier level of 84.9.
The survey, which was conducted between Sept. 14-24 and covered about 1,800 CEOs of small-to-medium sized companies, found that 92 percent of the respondents expected health costs to rise as companies implement the healthcare reform plan, designed to provide insurance to 32 million Americans who don’t have coverage.
Oklahoma investigates salmonella outbreak
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Oklahoma health officials are investigating an outbreak of salmonella in several schoolchildren and some adults and say it may be connected to similar outbreaks in Iowa and Nebraska.
A total of 16 cases in three counties have been identified involving at least four elementary schools, according to Leslea Bennett-Webb, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Health.
No one has died, although one adult has been hospitalized due to the strain of Salmonella “Java” that can cause bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever and vomiting.
Black mothers cite lack of desire as top reasons for not breastfeeding
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While more American mothers are breastfeeding today, non-Hispanic Black/African American women are less likely to initiate and continue breastfeeding, primarily due to a lack of desire and lack of self-efficacy, according to research presented Monday, Oct. 4, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco.
Fifty-four percent of black women initiate breastfeeding, compared to the 73 percent national average. In the study, “Barriers to Breastfeeding Reported by Exclusively Formula Feeding Mothers,” urban mothers who were exclusively formula feeding were interviewed about their breastfeeding perceptions and decision not to breastfeed.
More blacks than non-blacks reported “lacking a desire to breastfeed” (55 percent versus 27 percent). Black mothers were less likely to report other obstacles that are more easy to overcome, such as misinformation about breastfeeding and whether a contraindication truly exists.
McDonald’s, US say health insurance report false
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McDonald’s Corp and federal health officials denied on Thursday a newspaper report that the fast-food chain may drop health insurance for nearly 30,000 of its hourly workers.
The Wall Street Journal, citing a company memo, reported that McDonald’s might cut the insurance unless U.S. regulators waived a requirement of new U.S. healthcare laws.
McDonald’s officials called the report “completely false.”
Judge dismisses 2 charges in Anna Nicole drug trial
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A judge on Wednesday dismissed two charges against Howard K. Stern, the former lawyer and boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith, in a trial over whether he and two doctors wrongly supplied prescription drugs to the model and TV actress.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry threw out a charge against Stern of obtaining drugs for Smith by fraud and deceit, and he dismissed part of one conspiracy claim against Stern and Smith’s doctor, Sandeep Kapoor, saying there was not enough proof the two men had worked together to obtain drugs.
But the remainder of the 11 complaints against Stern, Kapoor and a second doctor, Khristine Eroschevich, will stand.
McDonald’s may drop health insurance
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McDonald’s Corp may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers unless U.S. regulators waive a requirement of new health care legislation championed by President Barack Obama, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The restaurant chain is at odds over the new law’s stipulation that so-called “mini-med” insurance plans spend at least 80 percent of premium revenue on medical care, the newspaper said on its website on Wednesday.
McDonald’s told federal regulators it would be “economically prohibitive” for its insurance carrier to continue to cover hourly workers unless it receives a waiver to the 80 percent minimum requirement, the Journal reported, citing a company memo. Federal officials say there is no guarantee a waiver will be granted, it said.
Major disease-vector mosquito reveals the secrets of its immune system
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The Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito poses a significant threat to human health as a blood-sucking transmitter of elephantiasis-causing worms and encephalitis-inducing viruses. An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Geneva and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics sequenced its genome and studied its responses to pathogen infections. Two articles published in today’s issue of Science, describe results from comparing the Culex mosquito with the malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, and the dengue mosquito, Aedes aegypti, which offer new insights into the elimination of insect-transmitted diseases that seriously impact on global public health.
Mosquitoes are the most important disease-vectors. Species of Culex, Aedes, and Anopheles mosquitoes are responsible for the transmission of many human pathogens including parasites that cause malaria, viruses that trigger dengue and yellow fever, and West Nile encephalitis, as well as worms that cause lymphatic filariasis (also called elephantiasis). The capacity of different mosquito species to transmit these and other pathogens varies greatly, and much of this variation can be attributed to the mosquito immune system’s ability to recognise and eliminate the pathogen. Applying their expertise in comparative evolutionary genomic analyses and insect immunity, Professor Evgeny Zdobnov and Dr Robert Waterhouse, from the University of Geneva Medical School and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, joined forces with scientists from around the world to examine the Culex genome and its encoded genes.
Sequencing of the Culex genome, directed by Peter Atkinson and Peter Arensburger from the University of California Riverside, allowed researchers to perform a thorough comparison among the three disease-vector mosquito species.
Genetically altered trees, plants could help counter global warming
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Forests of genetically altered trees and other plants could sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and so help ameliorate global warming, according to estimates published in the October issue of BioScience.
The study, by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, outlines a variety of strategies for augmenting the processes that plants use to sequester carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into long-lived forms of carbon, first in vegetation and ultimately in soil.
Besides increasing the efficiency of plants’ absorption of light, researchers might be able to genetically alter plants so they send more carbon into their roots—where some may be converted into soil carbon and remain out of circulation for centuries. Other possibilities include altering plants so that they can better withstand the stresses of growing on marginal land, and so that they yield improved bioenergy and food crops. Such innovations might, in combination, boost substantially the amount of carbon that vegetation naturally extracts from air, according to the authors’ estimates.
What next for the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic?
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Now that the H1N1 influenza pandemic is officially over, what will happen to the virus? In a perspective article published today in the online open-access journal mBio®, scientists from the National Institutes of Health delve into history and explore the fates of other pandemic influenza viruses in order to speculate on the future of the most recent pandemic virus.
“While human influenza viruses have often surprised us, available evidence leads to the hope that the current pandemic virus will continue to cause low or moderate mortality rates if it does not become extinct,” write Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and his NIAID coauthors, Jeffery Taubenberger and David Morens.
The impact of the virus in the upcoming influenza season will depend directly on the degree of existing immunity in the population, provided the virus does not undergo any changes. The authors currently estimate that approximately 59% of the United States population has some level of immunity due to either exposure to the pandemic H1N1 (pH1N1) virus, vaccination or exposure to a closely related influenza virus. That number will continue to increase through immunization with the 2010-2011 seasonal influenza vaccines, which will contain the pH1N1 strain.
China offers hope of easing one-child policy
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China marked the 30th anniversary of its controversial one-child policy with talk of relaxing rules, at least in some provinces, that have reined in population growth but caused heartache for millions of couples.
With a population expected to peak at 1.65 billion in 2033, China has been cautious about dropping an unpopular policy that was originally supposed to last one generation.
Central planners say the one-child policy has spared China from the pressures of hundreds of millions of additional people that would have strained scarce water and food resources as well as the nation’s ability to educate and employ them.
Magnetic pulses can sway the hand you use, briefly
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Whether your left or right hand reaches for the phone, elevator button or cup of coffee is typically decided unconsciously. Now, a new study suggests that magnetic pulses sent into your brain could alter that choice.
The finding is preliminary, but it brings to mind past efforts to “correct” the handedness of lefty children. In Germany, for example, such “conversions” were standard practice until the 1970s, according to Dr. Stefan Kloppel of the University of Freiburg.
Kloppel, who has studied how the brain makes these decisions, was not involved in the current study and noted that such conversion is no longer recommended.
