and the left
Al Franken visited recently, but the real news is that he already has a home here.
WHLD-AM 1270 broadcasts Franken's liberal alternative to conservative talk radio. We have no problem with radio listeners who want to get a daily fix of Rush Limbaugh, or Sandy Beach, for that matter, via the region's juggernaut, WBEN. Their acerbic mix of myth, insult and assertion brings in listeners whom advertisers want to reach and the radio station that carries them makes money. It's a business, not a game.
But talk radio in this town was until recently a one-sided venture, as it is in too many markets nationwide. This, of course, is seen as fair justification by those who feel local and national media are too liberal. Wherever you sit politically, it is helpful to this region, as News reporter Anne Neville wrote recently, to have radio programs of differing viewpoints. This may include Air America or a local liberal talker, as well as the all-powerful Rush.
Even better, WHLD is on the air as a result of 12 local investors committed to diversifying local radio. WWKB is another AM station that offers talk, though most is syndicated, after a recent switch from oldies music. Its lineup is called progressive, featuring Jones Radio Network and a California-based Buffalo-only show.
In these days of limited corporate ownership of the local airwaves, WHLD's arrival is encouraging. Limbaugh is on WBEN, owned, like six other local stations including WWKB, by Entercom Communications, as well as many other Entercom stations.
Like newspapers and television, radio is struggling to adapt to challenges from the Internet and alternatives like pay-radio, such as XM and Sirius. Their listeners must pay, but can get a far wider variety of offerings, with next to no commercials and can listen sequestered from programming they don't want to hear. Beyond that, there are challenges like iPods wired into car stereos, multiple CD players and cell phones in the car.
It is a sign of health and sophistication that radio stations here are growing more diverse
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060611/2008749.asp
Net neutrality proponents vow to press fight in Senate
They also hope to mobilize Internet-savvy Americans
Todd Weiss Today’s Top Stories or Other Security Stories
" I read this news story and said "wow". The Veterans Affairs Department is not going to allow employee-owned computers..." Read more...
" Financial identity theft is bad enough. But lesser-known medical identity theft could be even worse. This eye-opening report..." Read more...
Read more Security posts or See all Blogs
June 09, 2006 (Computerworld) -- After the U.S. House of Representatives approved a controversial telecommunications bill last night and rejected an amendment that sought to keep large telephone or cable TV companies from controlling access to the Internet, supporters of that "Net neutrality" amendment vowed to fight on.
In a conference call today, leaders of nine businesses and public policy groups in the nascent It's Our Net Coalition said they weren't surprised by the House vote and will now concentrate on the Senate version of the bill.
The measure adopted by the House, known as the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, is a broad telecommunications bill covering broadband, cable franchising, voice over IP and other Internet technologies, as well as the rules that govern them.
The issue, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, is that since the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that broadband services don't fall under traditional communications regulatory policies, no one is looking out for businesses and consumers that use the Internet. Public Knowledge is a Washington-based public interest advocacy group that studies technology, copyright and broadband policy.
By ruling that broadband access shouldn't be regulated under existing laws, broadband providers have carte blanche to charge more for higher levels of service and block Web sites and content they want to block, she said.
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001090&taxonomyId=17
There was a spooky omen the day before triple 6
By LOREN STEFFY
MOVIE-GOERS and expectant mothers may have been spooked by last Tuesday's date, but for investors, Monday was scarier.
On that day, 6-5-06, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke left his mark on the markets by vowing a hard line on inflation. Investors took it as a sign that the Fed later this month will raise interest rates for the 17th consecutive time during the past two years.
Call it an omen of the end of easy money.
Things didn't get much better as the week went on. Bernanke's comments were echoed by central bankers around the globe who raised interest rates in tandem, something that hasn't happened in six years.
The result: falling markets worldwide. On Thursday, Asian stocks posted their biggest decline in two years and Europe's market hit a low for the year, according to Bloomberg News. Here in the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average fell almost 369 points, or 3.3 percent, over five days, its worst weekly performance in almost a year.
The market turmoil may continue, as the global economy shifts away from the readily available liquidity that has lured investors into dicey plays like commodities and emerging markets.
"We are clearly in a transition point, and transition points can be scary," says Adam Newar, managing director for Houston-based Eden Capital Management.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/3956181.html
General Motors bails out Delphi in blue-collar payout
GM says the cost of the payout will be covered by a $US5.5 billion charge, reports Bernard Simon in Toronto
June 12, 2006
GENERAL Motors is again coming to the rescue of Delphi, its biggest parts supplier, by shouldering part of the cost of expanded retirement incentives and severance packages for Delphi's blue-collar workers.
Delphi and the United Auto Workers union said on Friday that they had agreed on payouts for all Delphi's UAW members of up to $US140,000 ($187,000) per worker, depending on length of service.
Friday's deal has defused tensions over Delphi's demands for deep wage and benefit cuts to improve the competitiveness of its US operations. The agreement is also likely to help UAW leaders deflect criticism from disgruntled members during the union's constitutional convention, which begins today in Las Vegas.
The parts maker, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, offered early retirement packages in March to UAW workers with more than 30 years' experience.
GM also offered to take back up to 5000 workers who were transferred to Delphi when it spun off the parts maker in 1999.
The UAW represents about 23,000 of Delphi's 34,000 blue-collar workers in the US.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19437451-36375,00.html
U.S. Dollar Mixed Against Other Currencies
06.09.2006, 04:59 PM
The dollar turned mixed Friday against other major currencies, rising against the euro, holding steady against the British pound and falling against the Japanese yen.
In late New York trading, the euro slipped slightly to $1.2644 from $1.2646 in New York on Thursday.
The British pound was lower at $1.8413 in late New York trading, while the dollar fell to 113.92 Japanese yen from 114.21; 1.2312 Swiss francs from 1.2323; and 1.1063 Canadian dollars from 1.1224.
The European Central Bank boosted its key lending rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.75 percent at a meeting Thursday in Madrid, Spain, but some had speculated it would raise rates even higher.
At a news conference following the interest rate announcement, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet provided little guidance for future euro-zone interest rate decisions, leaving market watchers uncertain about the central bank's direction.
Meanwhile, recent comments from U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have raised expectations for a rate hike at the Fed's policy meeting at the end of June.
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/06/09/ap2806172.html
U.S. to allow more foreign control of airlines
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) - 4:58 AM HAST Thursday
The United States is moving toward a new policy of allowing increased foreign investment in U.S. airlines, over the objections of Sen. Daniel Inouye.
Congressional conferees Wednesday rejected a motion by Hawaii's senior senator to delay implementation of the policy for four months for further study.
Republicans on the conference committee, according to the Thursday online edition of Aviation Now, said Inouye's amendment would be a setback for a deal that the Bush administration has reached with the European Union.
United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton has for years been giving speeches in favor of allowing foreign interests to invest in U.S. airlines, which he says will give U.S. airlines access to foreign capital.
Delta Air Lines CEO Gerald Grinstein, on Capitol Hill to lobby for pension plan flexibility Wednesday, said he supported liberalization of U.S. Department of Transportation regulations on foreign investment in American air carriers.
Continental Airlines, on the other hand, has opposed any change in the current rules, which effectively block foreign control of U.S. common carriers.
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2006/06/05/daily38.html
Spooks fund online snooping
By RACHEL WILLIAMS
11jun06
A US government spy agency is funding research into the "mass harvesting" of information that people post about themselves on popular social networking websites, it has been claimed.
The New Scientist reports the National Security Agency, under fire recently over reports it tracked millions of American citizens' phone calls, had backed a study on how advances in internet technology could make mining such "social networking" sites more useful.
The magazine said tens of millions of users of such web spaces could be vulnerable to online snooping.
Phone logs had limited scope as spy tools, because they could show only a basic picture of someone's contact network.
But by adding online social networking data, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels through shared activities, the New Scientist suggested.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,19431358%255E663,00.html
Tiny dinosaur species discovered in Germany
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-08 20:27:12
LONDON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- German researchers have discovered a new species of dinosaur that measures barely more than six meters, the British science magazine Nature reported on Thursday.
Researchers of the University of Bonn unearthed the remains of at least 10 individual dinosaurs at a quarry near Hannover in northern Germany and found after examination that the new species, Europasaurus Holgeri, measured barely more than six meters from snout to tail, in comparison to its more famous relative Diplodocus measuring a mighty 27 meters.
When the researchers found the bones, they thought they were from juvenile dinosaurs, but examination revealed that the bones had a structure like those of adult dinosaurs, and that in the largest dinosaur, which measured 6.2 meters, the bones were fully developed.
The area where the bones were found would have been largely flooded when the dinosaurs lived there, around 150 million years ago, the researchers said, adding that food might have been scarce on the islands on which the dinosaurs lived, favoring the evolution of smaller reptiles.
"The little dinosaurs must have lived on one of the large islands around the Lower Saxony basin. This suggests that it is an island dwarf species that evolved through a decrease in growth rate from its larger ancestor," researcher Martin Sander who led the research was quoted as saying.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-06/08/content_4670258.htm
Football boots linked to toxic shock syndrome
9 Jun 2006
Nick Gibbens
Promising young footballers could be at risk of toxic shock syndrome (TSS), says a team of doctors writing in the British Medical Journal.
Experts from Birmingham's Children's Hospital describe two cases of TSS in children after playing football in new boots.
TSS is a type of blood poisoning that can make people feel severely ill.
The condition is a rare but potentially serious illness that can develop quickly in anyone - men, women and children.
TSS is caused by the common bacteria - Staphylococcus aureus - which normally live harmlessly on the skin and in the nose, armpit, groin or vagina of one in every three people.
n rare cases certain strains of these bacteria can produce toxins (poisons) that cause TSS.
In both cases cited by the Birmingham doctors, the children developed friction blisters over their Achilles tendons.
The blisters contained Staphylococcus aureus, which in one case was found to express the toxic shock syndrome gene (TSS1).
In the first case, a 13-year-old girl developed friction blisters over both heels after playing a competitive game of football in new boots.
She was admitted to her local hospital after developing a range of symptoms including fever, rash, abnormally low blood pressure (hypotension), vomiting and diarrhoea.
Mark Taylor, report author: "Toxic shock syndrome has become less common since the link with tampon use was recognised in the 1980s."
Further examination revealed a blister, 2cm in diameter, over each of her Achilles tendons containing the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus with the toxic shock syndrome gene (TSS1).
A diagnosis of toxic shock syndrome was made and she was treated with antibiotics.
In the second case, a healthy 11-year-old boy played football in a new pair of boots, causing a blister on his right heel. Over the next two days he developed fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, and a rash.
http://www.999today.com/health/news/story/3306.html
Measles outbreak shows a global threat
Worker from India tied to Hub cases
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | June 10, 2006
The virus landed in Boston on April 26, a Wednesday. It was brewing inside a young computer programmer who had flown in from India, brought over for his expertise by a financial services company headquartered in the city's tallest skyscraper.
AHe went to work on the 18th floor of the John Hancock Tower, and on May 5 the hallmark symptoms of measles began to appear: fever, cough, rash. Then, like a stone tossed into a lake, the disease rippled outward, with measles striking a half-dozen other workers at Investors Bank & Trust, five on the same floor.
By last week, four additional cases of the potentially lethal illness had been confirmed. Their link to the programmer is more tenuous, but city health authorities say they believe that all 11 cases in the state's first measles outbreak since 1999 can be traced to that single visitor.
The result: The state has distributed or ordered 23,000 doses of measles vaccine, at a cost of nearly $400,000. Hundreds of people at three workplaces have been ordered to stay home until they can prove they aren't susceptible or until they have passed the incubation period for the disease. And disease detectives have scoured medical records, examined office air-flow patterns, and conducted dozens of interviews in their quest to understand and stop the outbreak.
The arrival of measles in Boston, specialists said, illustrates the potential for dangerous germs to hitch a ride on a jetliner and travel from one corner of the world to another in a matter of hours.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/06/10/measles_outbreak_shows_a_global_threat/
Computers mimic human touch
LONDON, England (UPI) -- U.S. scientists reportedly have created a revolutionary sensor that can 'feel' the texture on objects with a sensitivity equal to that of a human fingertip.
The BBC reports that by replicating human touch, the device could pave the way for robotic hands. The device employs particles to emit light in response to changes in texture.
The research team said that in the future, the sensor could aid minimally invasive surgeries by giving the surgeon a 'touch-sensation.'
The research, reported in the journal Science, was co-authored by Professor Ravi Saraf, an engineer at the University of Nebraska.
'If you look at the current status of these tactile sensors, the frustration has been that the resolution of all these devices is in the range of millimeters,' he said, 'whereas the resolution of a human fingertip is about 40 microns, about half the diameter of a human hair, and this has affected the performance of these devices.'
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/article_1171579.php/Scientific_device_mimics_human_touch
Kids Behaving Better
What new government statistics tell us about risky teen activities like sex, drugs and drinking.
Thad Allender / AP
Web Exclusive
By Karen Springen
Newsweek
Updated: 8:32 p.m. ET June 9, 2006
June 9, 2006 - Is the United States truly a teenage wasteland? Some of the most recent statistics are not encouraging. But the 2005 results from the biannual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, released Thursday, do offer some good news. Since 1991, when the CDC first start taking the survey, the percentage of students who rarely or never wear seatbelts has dropped from 26 to 10 percent, and the percentage with four or more sex partners during their lives has dropped from nearly 20 percent to less than 15 percent. Still, parents may find it alarming that 18.5 percent of high school students admitted that they had carried weapons like guns or knives in the month before the survey, 43.3 percent had drunk alcohol, 23 percent had smoked cigarettes and about 20 percent had used marijuana. NEWSWEEK's Karen Springen spoke with Howell Wechsler, director of the CDC's division of adolescent and school health, about trends in risky behavior and the government's role in reducing it. Excerpts:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13233102/site/newsweek/
WED JUNE 14 is national FLAG DAY, as well as the birthday of the US ARMY.
Al Franken visited recently, but the real news is that he already has a home here.
WHLD-AM 1270 broadcasts Franken's liberal alternative to conservative talk radio. We have no problem with radio listeners who want to get a daily fix of Rush Limbaugh, or Sandy Beach, for that matter, via the region's juggernaut, WBEN. Their acerbic mix of myth, insult and assertion brings in listeners whom advertisers want to reach and the radio station that carries them makes money. It's a business, not a game.
But talk radio in this town was until recently a one-sided venture, as it is in too many markets nationwide. This, of course, is seen as fair justification by those who feel local and national media are too liberal. Wherever you sit politically, it is helpful to this region, as News reporter Anne Neville wrote recently, to have radio programs of differing viewpoints. This may include Air America or a local liberal talker, as well as the all-powerful Rush.
Even better, WHLD is on the air as a result of 12 local investors committed to diversifying local radio. WWKB is another AM station that offers talk, though most is syndicated, after a recent switch from oldies music. Its lineup is called progressive, featuring Jones Radio Network and a California-based Buffalo-only show.
In these days of limited corporate ownership of the local airwaves, WHLD's arrival is encouraging. Limbaugh is on WBEN, owned, like six other local stations including WWKB, by Entercom Communications, as well as many other Entercom stations.
Like newspapers and television, radio is struggling to adapt to challenges from the Internet and alternatives like pay-radio, such as XM and Sirius. Their listeners must pay, but can get a far wider variety of offerings, with next to no commercials and can listen sequestered from programming they don't want to hear. Beyond that, there are challenges like iPods wired into car stereos, multiple CD players and cell phones in the car.
It is a sign of health and sophistication that radio stations here are growing more diverse
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060611/2008749.asp
Net neutrality proponents vow to press fight in Senate
They also hope to mobilize Internet-savvy Americans
Todd Weiss Today’s Top Stories or Other Security Stories
" I read this news story and said "wow". The Veterans Affairs Department is not going to allow employee-owned computers..." Read more...
" Financial identity theft is bad enough. But lesser-known medical identity theft could be even worse. This eye-opening report..." Read more...
Read more Security posts or See all Blogs
June 09, 2006 (Computerworld) -- After the U.S. House of Representatives approved a controversial telecommunications bill last night and rejected an amendment that sought to keep large telephone or cable TV companies from controlling access to the Internet, supporters of that "Net neutrality" amendment vowed to fight on.
In a conference call today, leaders of nine businesses and public policy groups in the nascent It's Our Net Coalition said they weren't surprised by the House vote and will now concentrate on the Senate version of the bill.
The measure adopted by the House, known as the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, is a broad telecommunications bill covering broadband, cable franchising, voice over IP and other Internet technologies, as well as the rules that govern them.
The issue, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, is that since the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that broadband services don't fall under traditional communications regulatory policies, no one is looking out for businesses and consumers that use the Internet. Public Knowledge is a Washington-based public interest advocacy group that studies technology, copyright and broadband policy.
By ruling that broadband access shouldn't be regulated under existing laws, broadband providers have carte blanche to charge more for higher levels of service and block Web sites and content they want to block, she said.
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001090&taxonomyId=17
There was a spooky omen the day before triple 6
By LOREN STEFFY
MOVIE-GOERS and expectant mothers may have been spooked by last Tuesday's date, but for investors, Monday was scarier.
On that day, 6-5-06, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke left his mark on the markets by vowing a hard line on inflation. Investors took it as a sign that the Fed later this month will raise interest rates for the 17th consecutive time during the past two years.
Call it an omen of the end of easy money.
Things didn't get much better as the week went on. Bernanke's comments were echoed by central bankers around the globe who raised interest rates in tandem, something that hasn't happened in six years.
The result: falling markets worldwide. On Thursday, Asian stocks posted their biggest decline in two years and Europe's market hit a low for the year, according to Bloomberg News. Here in the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average fell almost 369 points, or 3.3 percent, over five days, its worst weekly performance in almost a year.
The market turmoil may continue, as the global economy shifts away from the readily available liquidity that has lured investors into dicey plays like commodities and emerging markets.
"We are clearly in a transition point, and transition points can be scary," says Adam Newar, managing director for Houston-based Eden Capital Management.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/3956181.html
General Motors bails out Delphi in blue-collar payout
GM says the cost of the payout will be covered by a $US5.5 billion charge, reports Bernard Simon in Toronto
June 12, 2006
GENERAL Motors is again coming to the rescue of Delphi, its biggest parts supplier, by shouldering part of the cost of expanded retirement incentives and severance packages for Delphi's blue-collar workers.
Delphi and the United Auto Workers union said on Friday that they had agreed on payouts for all Delphi's UAW members of up to $US140,000 ($187,000) per worker, depending on length of service.
Friday's deal has defused tensions over Delphi's demands for deep wage and benefit cuts to improve the competitiveness of its US operations. The agreement is also likely to help UAW leaders deflect criticism from disgruntled members during the union's constitutional convention, which begins today in Las Vegas.
The parts maker, which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, offered early retirement packages in March to UAW workers with more than 30 years' experience.
GM also offered to take back up to 5000 workers who were transferred to Delphi when it spun off the parts maker in 1999.
The UAW represents about 23,000 of Delphi's 34,000 blue-collar workers in the US.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19437451-36375,00.html
U.S. Dollar Mixed Against Other Currencies
06.09.2006, 04:59 PM
The dollar turned mixed Friday against other major currencies, rising against the euro, holding steady against the British pound and falling against the Japanese yen.
In late New York trading, the euro slipped slightly to $1.2644 from $1.2646 in New York on Thursday.
The British pound was lower at $1.8413 in late New York trading, while the dollar fell to 113.92 Japanese yen from 114.21; 1.2312 Swiss francs from 1.2323; and 1.1063 Canadian dollars from 1.1224.
The European Central Bank boosted its key lending rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.75 percent at a meeting Thursday in Madrid, Spain, but some had speculated it would raise rates even higher.
At a news conference following the interest rate announcement, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet provided little guidance for future euro-zone interest rate decisions, leaving market watchers uncertain about the central bank's direction.
Meanwhile, recent comments from U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have raised expectations for a rate hike at the Fed's policy meeting at the end of June.
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/06/09/ap2806172.html
U.S. to allow more foreign control of airlines
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) - 4:58 AM HAST Thursday
The United States is moving toward a new policy of allowing increased foreign investment in U.S. airlines, over the objections of Sen. Daniel Inouye.
Congressional conferees Wednesday rejected a motion by Hawaii's senior senator to delay implementation of the policy for four months for further study.
Republicans on the conference committee, according to the Thursday online edition of Aviation Now, said Inouye's amendment would be a setback for a deal that the Bush administration has reached with the European Union.
United Airlines CEO Glenn Tilton has for years been giving speeches in favor of allowing foreign interests to invest in U.S. airlines, which he says will give U.S. airlines access to foreign capital.
Delta Air Lines CEO Gerald Grinstein, on Capitol Hill to lobby for pension plan flexibility Wednesday, said he supported liberalization of U.S. Department of Transportation regulations on foreign investment in American air carriers.
Continental Airlines, on the other hand, has opposed any change in the current rules, which effectively block foreign control of U.S. common carriers.
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2006/06/05/daily38.html
Spooks fund online snooping
By RACHEL WILLIAMS
11jun06
A US government spy agency is funding research into the "mass harvesting" of information that people post about themselves on popular social networking websites, it has been claimed.
The New Scientist reports the National Security Agency, under fire recently over reports it tracked millions of American citizens' phone calls, had backed a study on how advances in internet technology could make mining such "social networking" sites more useful.
The magazine said tens of millions of users of such web spaces could be vulnerable to online snooping.
Phone logs had limited scope as spy tools, because they could show only a basic picture of someone's contact network.
But by adding online social networking data, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels through shared activities, the New Scientist suggested.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,19431358%255E663,00.html
Tiny dinosaur species discovered in Germany
www.chinaview.cn 2006-06-08 20:27:12
LONDON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- German researchers have discovered a new species of dinosaur that measures barely more than six meters, the British science magazine Nature reported on Thursday.
Researchers of the University of Bonn unearthed the remains of at least 10 individual dinosaurs at a quarry near Hannover in northern Germany and found after examination that the new species, Europasaurus Holgeri, measured barely more than six meters from snout to tail, in comparison to its more famous relative Diplodocus measuring a mighty 27 meters.
When the researchers found the bones, they thought they were from juvenile dinosaurs, but examination revealed that the bones had a structure like those of adult dinosaurs, and that in the largest dinosaur, which measured 6.2 meters, the bones were fully developed.
The area where the bones were found would have been largely flooded when the dinosaurs lived there, around 150 million years ago, the researchers said, adding that food might have been scarce on the islands on which the dinosaurs lived, favoring the evolution of smaller reptiles.
"The little dinosaurs must have lived on one of the large islands around the Lower Saxony basin. This suggests that it is an island dwarf species that evolved through a decrease in growth rate from its larger ancestor," researcher Martin Sander who led the research was quoted as saying.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-06/08/content_4670258.htm
Football boots linked to toxic shock syndrome
9 Jun 2006
Nick Gibbens
Promising young footballers could be at risk of toxic shock syndrome (TSS), says a team of doctors writing in the British Medical Journal.
Experts from Birmingham's Children's Hospital describe two cases of TSS in children after playing football in new boots.
TSS is a type of blood poisoning that can make people feel severely ill.
The condition is a rare but potentially serious illness that can develop quickly in anyone - men, women and children.
TSS is caused by the common bacteria - Staphylococcus aureus - which normally live harmlessly on the skin and in the nose, armpit, groin or vagina of one in every three people.
n rare cases certain strains of these bacteria can produce toxins (poisons) that cause TSS.
In both cases cited by the Birmingham doctors, the children developed friction blisters over their Achilles tendons.
The blisters contained Staphylococcus aureus, which in one case was found to express the toxic shock syndrome gene (TSS1).
In the first case, a 13-year-old girl developed friction blisters over both heels after playing a competitive game of football in new boots.
She was admitted to her local hospital after developing a range of symptoms including fever, rash, abnormally low blood pressure (hypotension), vomiting and diarrhoea.
Mark Taylor, report author: "Toxic shock syndrome has become less common since the link with tampon use was recognised in the 1980s."
Further examination revealed a blister, 2cm in diameter, over each of her Achilles tendons containing the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus with the toxic shock syndrome gene (TSS1).
A diagnosis of toxic shock syndrome was made and she was treated with antibiotics.
In the second case, a healthy 11-year-old boy played football in a new pair of boots, causing a blister on his right heel. Over the next two days he developed fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, and a rash.
http://www.999today.com/health/news/story/3306.html
Measles outbreak shows a global threat
Worker from India tied to Hub cases
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | June 10, 2006
The virus landed in Boston on April 26, a Wednesday. It was brewing inside a young computer programmer who had flown in from India, brought over for his expertise by a financial services company headquartered in the city's tallest skyscraper.
AHe went to work on the 18th floor of the John Hancock Tower, and on May 5 the hallmark symptoms of measles began to appear: fever, cough, rash. Then, like a stone tossed into a lake, the disease rippled outward, with measles striking a half-dozen other workers at Investors Bank & Trust, five on the same floor.
By last week, four additional cases of the potentially lethal illness had been confirmed. Their link to the programmer is more tenuous, but city health authorities say they believe that all 11 cases in the state's first measles outbreak since 1999 can be traced to that single visitor.
The result: The state has distributed or ordered 23,000 doses of measles vaccine, at a cost of nearly $400,000. Hundreds of people at three workplaces have been ordered to stay home until they can prove they aren't susceptible or until they have passed the incubation period for the disease. And disease detectives have scoured medical records, examined office air-flow patterns, and conducted dozens of interviews in their quest to understand and stop the outbreak.
The arrival of measles in Boston, specialists said, illustrates the potential for dangerous germs to hitch a ride on a jetliner and travel from one corner of the world to another in a matter of hours.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/06/10/measles_outbreak_shows_a_global_threat/
Computers mimic human touch
LONDON, England (UPI) -- U.S. scientists reportedly have created a revolutionary sensor that can 'feel' the texture on objects with a sensitivity equal to that of a human fingertip.
The BBC reports that by replicating human touch, the device could pave the way for robotic hands. The device employs particles to emit light in response to changes in texture.
The research team said that in the future, the sensor could aid minimally invasive surgeries by giving the surgeon a 'touch-sensation.'
The research, reported in the journal Science, was co-authored by Professor Ravi Saraf, an engineer at the University of Nebraska.
'If you look at the current status of these tactile sensors, the frustration has been that the resolution of all these devices is in the range of millimeters,' he said, 'whereas the resolution of a human fingertip is about 40 microns, about half the diameter of a human hair, and this has affected the performance of these devices.'
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/health/article_1171579.php/Scientific_device_mimics_human_touch
Kids Behaving Better
What new government statistics tell us about risky teen activities like sex, drugs and drinking.
Thad Allender / AP
Web Exclusive
By Karen Springen
Newsweek
Updated: 8:32 p.m. ET June 9, 2006
June 9, 2006 - Is the United States truly a teenage wasteland? Some of the most recent statistics are not encouraging. But the 2005 results from the biannual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, released Thursday, do offer some good news. Since 1991, when the CDC first start taking the survey, the percentage of students who rarely or never wear seatbelts has dropped from 26 to 10 percent, and the percentage with four or more sex partners during their lives has dropped from nearly 20 percent to less than 15 percent. Still, parents may find it alarming that 18.5 percent of high school students admitted that they had carried weapons like guns or knives in the month before the survey, 43.3 percent had drunk alcohol, 23 percent had smoked cigarettes and about 20 percent had used marijuana. NEWSWEEK's Karen Springen spoke with Howell Wechsler, director of the CDC's division of adolescent and school health, about trends in risky behavior and the government's role in reducing it. Excerpts:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13233102/site/newsweek/
WED JUNE 14 is national FLAG DAY, as well as the birthday of the US ARMY.
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