ရန်ကုန်မြို့ ရွှေဂုံတိုင် အထူးကုဆေးခန်း (SSC) မှာ သေဆုံးခဲ့တဲ့ မခိုင်ရွှန်းလဲ့ရည်ကို ခွဲစိတ်ကုသပေးခဲ့တဲ့ ခွဲစိတ်အထူးကု ဆရာဝန်ကြီးကို ဒီနေ့ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၃ ရက်နေ့ကစပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆေးကောင်စီက ဆေးကုသခွင့် ၅ နှစ် ပိတ်ပင်လိုက်ပြီ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ဒီဖြစ်ရပ်အပေါ် သတင်းမီဒီယာတွေက လိုအပ်တာထက် ပိုပြီး ဖော်ပြကြတယ်လို့ ဝေဖန်သုံးသပ်ကြတာတွေ ရှိသလို တာဝန်ခံမှု မရှိခဲ့တဲ့ ဆရာဝန်ကြီးနဲ့ ဆေးခန်းတို့ကို ဝေဖန်ပြောဆိုတဲ့ မှတ်ချက်တွေကလည်း ရှိနေပါတယ်။ အကြောင်းစုံကို မသင်းသီရိက တင်ပြပေးထားပါတယ်။
ဒီနေ့ နေ့စွဲနဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆေးကောင်စီက ထုတ်ပြန်လိုက်တဲ့ စာထဲမှာ မခိုင်ရွှန်းလဲ့ရည် သေဆုံးခဲ့ရတဲ့ ကိစ္စနဲ့ ပတ်သက်လို့ ခွဲစိတ်ဆရာဝန်ကြီးမှာ လုပ်ကိုင်မှု မှားခြင်း၊ ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက် မှားခဲ့ခြင်းတွေနဲ့ အတူ မခွဲစိတ်မီနဲ့ ခွဲစိတ်အပြီးမှာ လုံလောက်တဲ့ စောင့်ရှောက် စစ်ဆေးမှုတွေ၊ တာဝန်ခံမှု အားနည်းတာတွေကို တွေ့ရတယ်လို့ ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။ ဒါကြောင့် အစာအိမ်နဲ့ အူလမ်းကြောင်းဆိုင်ရာ ခွဲစိတ်ဆရာဝန်ကြီး ဒေါက်တာကြည်စိုးကို ဆေးကုသခွင့် ၅ နှစ် ပိတ်ပင်လိုက်တယ်လို့လည်း ပြောပါတယ်။
ဒါ့အပြင် မေ့ဆေးဆရာဝန်၊ ပထမ ခွဲစိတ် လက်ထောက်ဆရာဝန်နဲ့ အတူ အထွေထွေ အထူးကု သမားတော်ကြီးကိုလည်း ပြင်းထန်စွာ သတိပေးသလို ထိရောက်မှုနဲ့ လုံခြုံမှုမရှိတဲ့ စနစ်တွေနဲ့ လုပ်ကိုင်နေတဲ့ ဆေးခန်းကိုလည်း နောက်နောင် ဒီလိုကိစ်စမျိုး မဖြစ်အောင် ပြင်းထန်စွာ သတိပေးတယ်လို့လည်း ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။
ဒီကိစ္စဟာ မခိုင်ရွှန်းလဲ့ရည် မကွယ်လွန်ခင် အချိန်ကတည်းက မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်းမှာ အတော်လေး ဟိုးလေးတကျော် ဖြစ်နေတဲ့ သတင်းတခုလည်း ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ပြည်တွင်း သတင်းမီဒီယာတွေမှာ လူနာရှင်ဘက်က ရင်ဆိုင်ခဲ့ရတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေကို ဖော်ပြ ရေးသားခဲ့ပေမဲ့ ဆရာဝန်ကြီးဘက်ကပဲ ဖြစ်ဖြစ်၊ ဆေးခန်းဘက်ကပဲ ဖြစ်ဖြစ် ပြန်လည် ဖြေရှင်းချက် တစုံတရာ အခုထိ ထွက်မလာပါဘူး။ ဒါဟာ ပိုပြီးတော့ အမှားကို အပြစ်ကြီးသွားစေတာမျိုး ဖြစ်သွားစေတယ်လို့ ရန်ကုန် ဝါရင့်ဆရာဝန်တဦးက အခုလို မှတ်ချက်ပေးပါတယ်။
“အမှားကြီးနဲ့ အမှားလေးပဲ ကွာတာပေါ့။ အခုဟာက ဂျာနယ်တွေမှာ ပါသလောက်ဆိုရင် အမှားကြီး ဖြစ်သွားတာပေါ့။ မှားတာထက် ပိုဆိုးတယ်လို့ ထင်တာပဲ။ မှားကြတာ မဆန်းဘူး ဆိုပါတော့။ ဒါပေမဲ့ အခုဟာကတော့ အမှားကြီး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်၊ အမှားလေး မဟုတ်ဘူး။ မှားသင့်မှားထိုက်တဲ့ အမှား မဟုတ်ဘူး။ မမှားသင့် မမှားထိုက်တဲ့ အမှား ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။ နောက်တခုက လူနာကို နှစ်သိမ့်မှု မပေးခြင်း၊ လူနာရှင်ကို မနှစ်သိမ့်ခြင်း၊ မီဒီယာကို ရှောင်ခြင်း၊ အဲဒါက ပိုဆိုးသွားတာပေါ့။ ပိုမှားတာပေါ့။
“အမှန်က မီဒီယာကို အသုံးမချလိုက်တာပေါ့။ တကယ်ဆို မီဒီယာနဲ့ တွေ့လိုက်ရင်၊ လူနာရှင်ကို တစုံတရာသော နှစ်သိမ့်မှု ပေးရင်၊ ဒီလောက်အထိ ဆိုးဆိုးရွားရွား မဖြစ်နိုင်ဘူး။ အမကတော့ အဲဒီလိုပဲ ထင်တာပဲ။ အခုဟာတော့ ဒီမိန်းကလေး ပုံကလည်း ဂျာနယ်တွေမှာ ပါတော့ ဝိုင်းပြီး ကရုဏာ သက်နေကြတာပေါ့။ လူတိုင်း စိတ်ဝင်စားတဲ့ သတင်းတခုတော့ ဖြစ်နေတာပေါ့။”
အခုလို ပြဿနာမျိုး မတိုင်ခင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ ဒီလို ဆေးပညာပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ လုပ်ငန်းတွေမှာ အမှားအယွင်း ဖြစ်ခဲ့ဖူးတာမျိုး၊ ဆေးကုသခွင့် ပိတ်ပင်ခဲ့တာမျိုး အပြင် အလုပ် ထုတ်ပစ်ခဲ့တာမျိုးတွေအထိ ရှိခဲ့ပေမဲ့ အခုသတင်းလောက် ကျယ်ကျယ်ပြန့်ပြန့် ဖြစ်ခဲ့တာ မရှိဘူးလို့ ဆိုပါတယ်။ ဒါကလည်း အခုအချိန်က သတင်းမီဒီယာခေတ် တွင်တွင်ကျယ်ကျယ် ဖြစ်နေတာကို ပြသတာဖြစ်တယ်လို့လည်း သူက ဆိုပါတယ်။
“ကြားဖူးတယ်၊ ကြားဖူးပေမဲ့ ဟိုတုန်းက ဂျာနယ်ခေတ် မဟုတ်ဘူးလေ။ ဂျာနယ်ခေတ် မဟုတ်တော့ ကောလာဟလလောက်နဲ့ ပြီးသွားတာတွေ ရှိတယ်။ ရှိတော့ ရှိဖူးပါတယ်။ အခုက မီဒီယာခေတ် ဖြစ်နေတော့ မီဒီယာကို သူတို့ မနိုင်တာ။ ကာယကံရှင်တွေကလည်း တော်ပါတယ်။ တချို့ဆို သည်းခံပေမဲ့ မပြောဘူး၊ ဘယ်သူမေးလို့မှ။ ဆုံးသွားတဲ့ မိန်းကလေး မိဘတွေကလည်း မီဒီယာတွေကို ရင်ဖွင့်တယ်ဆိုတာ တော်ပါတယ်။ ဒါ သူတို့ လုပ်သင့်တာကို လုပ်လိုက်တာပဲ။ နင့်မို့ဆို ဘယ်သိရမှာလဲ၊ ကောလာဟလလို ဘာလိုလိုနဲ့ လေထဲမှာပဲ ပျောက်သွားမှာပဲလေ။
“ဟိုတုန်းကတော့ အဲဒီလို ပျောက်ခဲ့တာပေါ့၊ ဂျာနယ်တွေ မရှိခင်တုန်းက။ ဂျာနယ်မှာတော့ အခု သူတို့ စစ်ဆေးပြီးရင် ဖြေရှင်းချက် ထုတ်မယ်လို့တော့ တချို့ဂျာနယ်တွေမှာ ရေးထားတာ တွေ့တယ်။ အဖြေကတော့ မှားသွားတာနဲ့ ဆေးရုံဘက်ကလည်း လုံးဝ တာဝန်မကျေဘူး။ အလွန် ဖုံးအုပ်တယ်။ ဒါပါပဲ အဓိကကတော့။ မှားတာထက် ကျန်ရစ်သူ မိသားစုအပေါ်မှာ တုံ့ပြန်ပုံကြီးက မကောင်းတာပေါ့။ နောက် မီဒီယာပေါ်မှာ တုံ့ပြန်မှု၊ အဲဒီ နှစ်ခုက မကောင်းတာပေါ့။”
ဝါရင့် ဆရာဝန်ကြီးတဦး ပြောပြခဲ့တာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
တချို့ ဆရာဝန်တွေကတော့ သတင်းမီဒီယာတွေက လိုအပ်တာထက် ပိုပြီး ရေးသားကြသလို ရေးသားပုံ ရေးသားဟန် မမှန်ခဲ့ဘူးလို့လည်း ပြစ်တင်ဝေဖန်ကြတာ ရှိပါတယ်။ ဒီအကြောင်း ရေးသားဖော်ပြကြတဲ့ ဂျာနယ်တွေကတော့ ကွယ်လွန်သွားတဲ့ လူနာရှင်တွေအပြင် ဆရာဝန်ကြီးနဲ့ ဆေးခန်းကိုပါ ဆက်သွယ်ပြီး ရေးသားဖော်ပြဖို့ ကြိုးစားပေမဲ့ ကာယကံရှင်ကရော ဆေးခန်းကပါ တွေ့ဆုံခွင့်ရဖို့ ငြင်းဆန်ခဲ့တယ်လို့ ဗွီအိုအေကို ပြောပါတယ်။
ဒီကိစ္စအတွက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆေးကောင်စီကို ဆက်သွယ်ခဲ့ပေမဲ့ တယ်လီဖုန်း ပြန်လည်ဖြေကြားမယ့်သူ မရှိသလို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆရာဝန်များ အသင်းချုပ်ကလည်း ဒီအကြောင်းကို ဖြေကြားဖို့ တာဝန်ခံ ဆရာဝန် မရှိဘူးလို့ပဲ ပြန်ပြောခဲ့ပါတယ်။
VOA News
Thursday, December 3, 2009
လူနာသေဆုံးမှု ဆရာဝန် ဆမ ၅ နှစ်သိမ်း
Surgeon Suspended after Rangoon Girl's Death
By THE IRRAWADDY Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Myanmar [Burma] Medical Council (MMC), a Burmese government body, has ordered a five-year suspension of the license of a surgeon who performed an operation on a 15-year-old girl who subsequently died, according to Rangoon sources.
A Rangoon journalist told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that an MMC statement accused the surgeon, Dr Kyi Soe, of making clinical mistakes, lacking preoperative and postoperative assessment, responsibility and accountability.
Dr Kyi Soe carried out an operation on Khine Shun Leh Yee, a ninth grade Rangoon student, at the Shwegondaing Specialist Center in Rangoon on Oct. 25. She died two days later.
The journalist said the MMC also ordered Dr Kyi Soe to apologize to the girl's family for her death. There was no mention of any compensation award.
The girl's mother claimed she had paid more than US $1,000 for the operation at the private clinic. She accused Dr Kyi Soe of failing to carry out proper medical tests.
Shortly after the girl's death, an investigation was opened by the MMC, a Ministry of Health body responsible for monitoring the ethics and standards of Burma's medical profession.
Contacted by The Irrawaddy on Thursday, the clinic said it could not comment on the case.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Too Much Cola Can Cause Muscle Problems
By HealthDay - Wed May 27, 8:49 PM PDT
WEDNESDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking too much cola can increase the risk of a muscle problem called hypokalemia, experts warn.
In people with hypokalemia, a drop in blood potassium levels results in problems with vital muscle functions. Symptoms can range from mild weakness to serious paralysis, say Greek researchers who conducted a review of people who drank between two to nine liters of cola a day.
Two of the patients were pregnant women who were admitted to hospital with low potassium levels. One was a 21-year-old woman who drank up to three liters of cola a day and complained of fatigue, appetite loss and persistent vomiting. An electrocardiogram revealed she had a heart blockage, and blood tests showed she had low potassium levels, the researchers explained in a news release.
The second pregnant patient, who'd consumed up to seven liters of cola a day for 10 months, had low potassium levels and was suffering from increasing muscular weakness, the researchers noted.
Both patients made a rapid and full recovery after they stopped drinking cola and took oral or intravenous potassium. The case studies are described in the June issue of the International Journal of Clinical Practice.
"We are consuming more soft drinks than ever before, and a number of health issues have already been identified including tooth problems, bone demineralization and the development of metabolic syndrome and diabetes," and there's increasing evidence that excessive cola consumption leads to hypokalemia, Dr. Moses Elisaf, of the University of Ioannina, said in the news release.
Elisaf said the three most common ingredients in cola -- glucose, fructose and caffeine -- can contribute to hypokalemia.
"The individual role of each of these ingredients in the pathophysiology of cola-induced hypokalemia has not been determined and may vary in different patients," Elisaf said. "However, in most of the cases we looked at for our review, caffeine intoxication was thought to play the most important role. This has been borne out by case studies that focus on other products that contain high levels of caffeine but no glucose or fructose."
However, "caffeine-free cola products can also cause hypokalemia because the fructose they contain can cause diarrhea," Elisaf said.
Monday, May 25, 2009
'Five Dimensional' Discs With A Storage Capacity 2,000 Times That Of Current DVDs
ScienceDaily (May 21, 2009) — Futuristic discs with a storage capacity 2,000 times that of current DVDs could be just around the corner, thanks to new research from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
For the first time researchers from the university’s Centre for Micro-Photonics have demonstrated how nanotechnology can enable the creation of ‘five dimensional’ discs with huge storage capacities.
The research, carried out by Mr Peter Zijlstra, Dr James Chon and Professor Min Gu was published today in the scientific journal Nature.
The Nature article describes how the researchers were able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.
“We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc,” Gu said.
Discs currently have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles the Swinburne researchers were able to introduce a spectral – or colour – dimension as well as a polarisation dimension.
“These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs,” Gu said.
To create the ‘colour dimension’ the researchers inserted gold nanorods onto a disc’s surface. Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the researchers to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location.
This is a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in a single colour wavelength using a laser.
The researchers were also able to introduce an extra dimension onto the disc using polarisation. When they projected light waves onto the disc, the direction of the electric field contained within them aligned with the gold nanorods. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.
“The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees,” Chon said. “So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other.”
Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, are yet to be resolved. However the researchers – who have already signed an agreement with Samsung – are confident the discs will be commercially available within 5 – 10 years.
The discs are likely to have immediate applications in a range of fields. They would be valuable for storing extremely large medical files such as MRIs and could also provide a boon in the financial, military and security arenas.
The researchers’ ground breaking achievements would not have been possible without the long-time support of the Australian Research Council.
Credit: Peter Zijlstra, James W. M. Chon, Min Gu (Nature Journal).
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Boom in tiny bedbugs is causing big trouble
By Barbara Barrett, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Fri May 15, 5:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON — The biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II has sent a collective shudder among apartment dwellers, college students and business travelers across the nation.
The bugs — reddish brown, flat and about the size of a grain of rice — suck human blood. They resist many pesticides and spread quickly in certain mattress-heavy buildings, such as hotels, dormitories and apartment complexes.
Two shelters have closed temporarily in Charlotte, N.C. , because of bedbugs, a Yahoo chat group dedicates itself to sufferers and countless bedbug blogs provide forums for news, tips and commiseration. State inspectors say that more emphasis may be needed to tackle the creatures.
Federal officials have taken notice of the resurgence. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency held its first-ever bedbug summit, and now a North Carolina congressman wants to take on the insect.
Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield just introduced legislation that would authorize $50 million that's already in the Department of Commerce budget to train health inspectors how to recognize signs of the insects.
The Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009 also would require public housing agencies to submit bedbug inspection plans to the federal government. It would add bedbugs to a rodent and cockroach program in the Department of Health and Human Services . It also would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research bedbugs' impact on public mental health.
Butterfield's letter to congressional colleagues about the legislation attracted lots of attention: It was topped with a full-color picture of the insect sitting on human skin.
"Unfortunately, in recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in bedbugs," the letter reads. "That's right — they're back in the sack — and biting."
Bedbugs have hit hotels and homes in every state. The creatures are amazing hitchhikers, experts say, and easily travel in suitcases, boxes or packages. They can live for up to a year without food.
Apparently no state has a central reporting system for bedbugs, according to Butterfield's office, and since the bug carries no known diseases, many health departments don't consider it a public health threat.
That leaves the critters falling through the cracks among regulators, said Michael Potter , an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and one of the country's bedbug experts.
"Most health departments say, 'Hey, we don't deal with bedbugs,' " Potter said.
Those who've suffered outbreaks say that the anxiety it induces can be debilitating. Potter said many sufferers tossed out furniture and could spend thousands of dollars on repeated treatments from pesticide companies. They call him about anxiety, insomnia, shame and the incessant annoyance of itchy red welts on their skin.
"They're, like, ready to blow their brains out," Potter said. "It's emotionally distressing. Anyone that has never had a bedbug problem is not one to judge whether we're dealing with a medical, emotional public health issue."
In Congress , Butterfield first introduced his bill a year ago after hearing from a constituent who'd brought bedbugs into her home from a hotel trip. The bill died in committee last year, but Butterfield aides say they hope that higher attention will help the measure this year.
The co-sponsors include Reps. Don Young , R- Alaska , Ben Chandler , D- Ky. , Bobby L. Rush , D- Ill. , Betty McCollum , D- Minn. , Corrine Brown , D- Fla. , Steve Cohen , D- Tenn. , Brad Miller , D- N.C. , and Eddie Bernice Johnson , D- Texas .
Butterfield also has received support from the National Pest Management Association , which says that bedbug calls to pest control companies are up 70 percent in the past five years.
Greg Baumann , a Raleigh, N.C. , pest control expert and the vice president of technical services for the National Pest Management Association , said that a decade ago few pest control companies dealt routinely with bedbugs.
"Now it's everyone today," he said.
Baumann said companies could use pesticides on the bugs but that they also tried such alternatives as extreme heat, freezing and isolating the insects through mattress covers.
Since the EPA restricted the use of several effective pesticides in the 1980s, bedbugs have built resistance to the chemicals that now are on the market, said Potter, the University of Kentucky entomologist. Public education is important, he said, but the industry also needs a good insecticide.
"Whether that bill is going to solve the problem — certainly it's a start," he said.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Scientists start to unlock secrets of bird flight
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
Thu Apr 9, 5:21 pm ET
WASHINGTON – For millennia, people have watched the birds and bees and wondered: "How do they do that?" Thanks to high-speed film and some persistent scientists, at least one of the secrets of flight is now revealed. When birds, bats or bugs make a turn, all they have to do is start flapping their wings normally again and they straighten right out.
That came as a surprise to researchers who thought turning and stopping took more steps.
Lead researcher Tyson L. Hedrick of the University of North Carolina compared it to sitting at a desk chair and turning left. It's a three-step process, launch the turn by pushing with one foot, turn, then stop by pushing with the other.
It's a simpler, one-step process for flying animals, he explained in a telephone interview, launch a turn and then simply flap normally to end it and fly away.
The findings are reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"We didn't expect things to fall out this neatly," he said, particularly since the process is the same for animals of all sizes from the fruit fly to the bat to the cockatoo.
"It's sort of unusual" to find a general rule to cover six orders of magnitude in size, he said.
The findings should help in the development of robotic flying machines, he said.
But, of course, this study focuses only on one type of maneuver, turning left or right, which is known as yaw in aviation.
There's still pitch — nose up or nose down — and roll, which is tilting left or right, to be dealt with.
"We picked basically the simplest turn you can imagine to make comparison," Hedrick said.
The situation does become more complicated with more complex maneuvers, "and that is clearly the next step," he said.
The report was welcomed by Bret W. Tobalske of the University of Montana, who said "the results will inform all future research into maneuvering flight in animals and biomimetic flying robots."
"Now that technology has developed to the point where detailed measurements of flapping maneuvers have become feasible, a world of comparative research is opening," Tobalske, who was not part of the research team, said in a commentary on the paper.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Monday, March 16, 2009
How to tell, what to do if computer is infected
Posted on Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:46PM EDT (AP)
Computer-virus infections don't cause your machine to crash anymore.
Nowadays, the criminals behind the infections usually want your computer operating in top form so you don't know something's wrong. That way, they can log your keystrokes and steal any passwords or credit-card numbers you enter at Web sites, or they can link your infected computer with others to send out spam.
Here are some signs your computer is infected, tapped to serve as part of "botnet" armies run by criminals:
• You experience new, prolonged slowdowns. This can be a sign that a malicious program is running in the background.
• You continually get pop-up ads that you can't make go away. This is a sure sign you have "adware," and possibly more, on your machine.
• You're being directed to sites you didn't intend to visit, or your search results are coming back funky. This is another sign that hackers have gotten to your machine.
So what do you do?
• Having anti-virus software here is hugely helpful. For one, it can identify known malicious programs and disable them. If the virus that has infected your machine isn't detected, many anti-virus vendors offer a service in which they can remotely take over your computer and delete the malware for a fee.
• Some anti-virus vendors also offer free, online virus-scanning services.
• You may have to reinstall your operating system if your computer is still experiencing problems. It's a good idea even if you believe you've cleaned up the mess because malware can still be hidden on your machine. You will need to back up your files before you do this.
How do I know what information has been taken?
• It's very hard to tell what's been taken. Not every infection steals your data. Some just serve unwanted ads. Others poison your search result or steer you to Web sites you don't want to see. Others log your every keystroke. The anti-virus vendors have extensive databases about what the known infections do and don't do. Comparing the results from your virus scans to those entries will give you a good idea about what criminals may have snatched up.
(AP)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Energy vampires: Fact versus fiction
By Lori Bongiorno Which electronic devices waste the most energy when they are turned off but still plugged in? Set-top cable boxes and digital video recorders are some of the biggest energy hogs. Unfortunately, there's little consumers can do since television shows can't be taped if boxes are unplugged. It also typically takes a long time to reboot boxes. However, some of the other major consumers of standby power are more easily dealt with: computers, multifunction printers, flat-screen TVs, DVDs, VCRs, CD players, power tools, and hand-held vacuums. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) measured standby power for a long list of products. While it's true each individual product draws relatively little standby power, the LBNL says that when added together, standby power can amount to 10% of residential energy use. Why do electronic devices use energy when they are switched off? Electronics consume standby power for one of two reasons, says Chris Kielich of the Department of Energy. They either have an adapter that will continue to draw electricity, or they have devices (such as clocks and touchpads) that draw power. Anything with a remote control will also draw standby power, she says, since the device needs to be able to detect the remote when it's pushed. Does everything suck energy when it's plugged in and turned off? No. If your coffeemaker or toaster doesn't have a clock, then it's probably not using standby power, says Kielich. Chances are your hair dryer and lamps (although they may have a power adapter for the dimmer) are not drawing standby power either, she says. Devices with a switch that physically breaks the circuit don't consume standby power. Will switching things on and off shorten their life? Probably not, says Kielich. You'd have to turn devices on and off thousands of times to shorten their lives. The real downside, she says, to unplugging electronics is that clocks and remotes will not work, and you do have to reset everything. Can you ruin batteries by unplugging battery chargers and causing batteries to completely discharge? It could be a possibility, says Kielich. Her advice: Don't let batteries get completely drained. But you don't need to have things like hand-held power vacuums and drills plugged into the charger when it's 100% charged, or even 50% charged. Power Strip FAQs Plugging electronics into a power strip and turning it off when you're not using it is a widely prescribed solution for curbing vampire power. Here are answers to common questions:
Posted Thu Feb 26, 2009 2:52pm PST
It's well-known that most electronic devices in our homes are sucking up energy even while they are turned off. But for all the information out there, many questions remain. I got hundreds of reader questions after writing the post What's wasting energy in your home right now. Below are answers to the five most common inquiries:
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Why Hair Goes Gray
Study Blames a Chain Reaction That Makes Hair Bleach Itself From the Inside Out
By Miranda Hitti
Feb. 25, 2009 -- Scientists may have figured out why hair turns gray, and their finding may open the door to new anti-graying strategies.
New research shows that hair turns gray as a result of a chemical chain reaction that causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.
The process starts when there is a dip in levels of an enzyme called catalase. That catalase shortfall means that the hydrogen peroxide that naturally occurs in hair can't be broken down. So hydrogen peroxide builds up in the hair, and because other enzymes that would repair hydrogen peroxide's damage are also in short supply, the hair goes gray.
Putting the brakes on that chemical chain reaction "could have great implications in the hair graying scenario in humans," write the researchers, who included Karin Schallreuter, a professor clinical and experimental dermatology at England's University of Bradford.
The study appears online in The FASEB Journal; the FASEB is the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
WebMD Health News
SOURCES:
Wood, J. The FASEB Journal, Feb. 23, 2009; online edition.
News release, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
ငါအိုသွားသောအခါ
ငါအိုသွားသောအခါ ငါဟာ အရင်က ငါမဟုတ်တော့ဘူး။ ငါ့ကို နားလည်ပေးပါ၊ စိတ်ရှည်ရှည်ထား ဆက်ဆံပေးပါ။
ချည့်နဲ့နဲ့ လက်တွေနဲ့ ထမင်းဟင်းတွေ အင်္ကျီပေါ်ဖိတ်စင်သွားတဲ့အခါ အင်္ကျီ၊ လုံချည်၊ ဖိုသီဖတ်သီဖြစ်နေတဲ့အခါ ငါ့ကိုမရွံပါနဲ့၊ ငယ်ငယ်တုန်းက ငါသုတ်သင်ပေးခဲ့တာတွေကို ကျေးဇူးပြုပြီး သတိရပေးပါ။
အပ်ကြောင်းထပ်မက ပြောဖူးတဲ့စကားတွေ ပြန်ပြောမိတဲ့အခါ စကားမဖြတ်ဘဲ ကျေးဇူးပြုပြီးနားထောင်ပေးပါ။ ငယ်ငယ်တုန်းက အိပ်ရာဝင်တိုင်း တစ်ထောင့်တစ်ညပုံပြင်တွေ၊ ငါးရာငါးဆယ်နိပါတ်တော်တွေ၊ ဇာတ်ကြီးဆယ်ဘွဲ့တွေ စတဲ့ ပုံပြင်တွေကို မရိုးအောင်ပြောရင်း ငါချော့သိပ်ခဲ့တာတွေကို သတိရပေးပါ။
မလှုပ်ရှားနိုင်လို့ ရေချိုးဖို့ အကူအညီလိုတဲ့အခါ ငါ့ကို မငြိုငြင်ပါနဲ့။ ငယ်ငယ်တုန်းက ချော့တစ်လှည့်၊ ခြောက်တစ်လှည့် ရေချိုးပေးခဲ့ဖူးတဲ့ ပုံရိပ်လေးကို မြင်ယောင်ပေးပါ။
ခေတ်သစ် နည်းပညာသစ်တွေကို မသိနားမလည်ခဲ့ရင် မလှောင်ပါနဲ့။ ငယ်ငယ်တုန်းက "ဘာကြောင့်ဆိုတဲ့" မေးခွန်းတိုင်းကို စိတ်ရှည်စွာ ငါပြန်ဖြေခဲ့တာကို သတိရပေးပါ။
စိတ်သွားတိုင်းကိုယ်မပါ နွမ်လျပြီး လမ်းမလျှောက်နိုင်တဲ့အခါ ခွန်အားပါတဲ့ လက်တစ်စုံနဲ့ ငါ့ကိုကူတွဲပေးကြပါ။ လမ်းလျှောက်သင်စ အရွယ်တုန်းက တစ်လှမ်းချင်း လှမ်းလျှောက်လေ့ကျင့်ပေးခဲ့တာတွေကို သတိရပေးပါ။
တစ်နေ့ထက်တစ်နေ့ အိုစာသွားတဲ့ ငါ့ကို ကြည့်ပြီး ဝမ်းမနည်းပါနှင့် နားလည်ပေးပါ အားပေးပါ အရင်တုန်းက လူ့ဘဝတက်လမ်းအတွက် ငါလမ်းညွှန်ခဲ့သလို အခုချိန်မှာ ငါ့ဘဝနောက်ဆုံး အချိန်အတွက် အဖော်ပြုပေးပါ။ ချစ်ခြင်းမေတ္တာနဲ့ အေးမြမှုကို ငါပြုံးပြုံးလေး လက်ခံမှာပါ။ အဲ့ဒီ အပြုံးတွေထဲမှာ မဆုံးတဲ့ မေတ္တာတွေ တွေ့ရမှာပါ။
သားတို့သမီးတို့ရေ ------ ထာဝရပျော်ရွင်ချမ်းမြေ့ကြပါစေကွယ်------။
ရေးသူမသိပါ။ လက်ကမ်းစာစောင်တစ်စောင်မှ
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Are You Wasting Money on Multivitamins?
By Simeon Margolis, M.D., Ph.D. - Posted on Wed, Feb 11, 2009, 3:28 pm PST
Advertisements with tantalizing promises of improved health, prevention of cancer and heart disease, and greater energy have lured millions of Americans to spend billions of dollars on the purchase of multivitamins.
An article in the February 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine reported that multivitamin use did not protect the 161,808 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative Study from common forms of cancer, heart attacks, or strokes. And the numbers of deaths during the 8 years of the study were the same in vitamin users as in non-users. Still, it is important to recognize that this was an observational study, not a more meaningful clinical trial. Although these findings apply only to women, other studies have failed to show benefits of multivitamins in older men.
These results are not at all surprising for several reasons. No large study has shown that multivitamins significantly benefit healthy men and women. In addition, for some years physicians prescribed folic acid and vitamins B12 and B6 in the hopes of preventing heart attacks and strokes by lowering blood levels of homocysteine. (High blood levels of homocysteine are associated with an increased risk of coronary and other vascular diseases.) A number of recent studies, however, have shown that, while these vitamins do lower homocysteine levels, they do not prevent heart attacks or strokes.
Many doctors have also prescribed the antioxidants vitamin E and beta-carotene to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Alas, studies have now proven that these supplements are not protective--and may even be harmful.
No one denies that an adequate intake of vitamins is essential; however, vitamins can and should be obtained from eating enough healthy foods rather than from swallowing vitamin supplements.
Then what about vitamins being a great source of energy? Some multivitamin ads do indeed claim that their supplements boost energy; and some professional athletes gobble handfuls of vitamin pills to increase their energy and strength. But researchers proved long ago that energy comes from calories, not vitamins. The highly touted cholesterol-lowering effects of substances added to some multivitamin supplements? Still unproven.
All this is not to say that specific vitamins supplements are never desirable. Vitamins can be valuable in certain situations:
- Folic acid supplements in women who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant can help to prevent serious neural-tube defects that affect the baby's brain and spine.
- Supplements that contain more vitamin D and calcium than is present in regular multivitamin pills can help older men, and especially women, avoid osteoporosis and bone fractures.
- Supplements of vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, zinc, and copper may slow the progression of vision loss in people with early macular degeneration.
And multivitamins are beneficial for some entire groups of people:
- those on a very-low-calorie weight-loss diet
- strict vegetarians
- heavy alcohol drinkers
- individuals who are not getting an adequate diet because they are too sick or too poor--or live by themselves and are unable to prepare proper meals for themselves
I also agree with a comment made by one of the coauthors of the Archives of Internal Medicine article about postmenopausal women mentioned above. An 8-year follow-up period may not be long enough to show that multivitamins protect against cancers that take many years to develop.
All the same, the results of the studies on vitamins so far point to one conclusion: Healthy people who eat enough calories from a varied diet do not benefit from multivitamin supplements.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Solar storms could lead to IT blackouts
Wednesday, January 14 02:30 am
By Iain Thomson in San Francisco
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has been consulting with experts on the likely damage to the worlds internet infrastructure in 2012, when the solar storms are expected to peak.
Solar storms pump vast amounts of electromagnetic radiation into the solar system. Storms in 1859 burnt out telegraph wires while similar storms in 1989 took down part of the Canadian energy grid. In 2005 US systems also suffered solar damage.
The world could look forward to "disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration," according to the report.
The report estimates damages of "$1 trillion to $2 trillion during the first year alone ... for the societal and economic costs of a 'severe geomagnetic storm scenario' with recovery times of four to 10 years."
A report by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich estimated that if the countrys internet infrastructure went down it would harm the economy by 1.2 per cent of GDP a week.
While much has been done to strengthen parts of the national IT backbone and shield it from effects individual companies are vulnerable, particularly those with extended networking to data centres.
Systems based around GPS will also be vulnerable the report found. If signals are lost from the GPS satellites around the world businesses which rely on them for tracking inventory and staff will face severe difficulties.
vnunet.com
More: Space weather
China economy grew to world's 3rd largest in 2007
By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer – Wed Jan 14, 4:19 pm ET
BEIJING – China's economy grew to the world's third-largest in 2007, new data showed Wednesday, another milestone in the country's stunning ascent in the global pecking order that puts it behind only Japan and the United States.
China has grown tenfold in the past 30 years, and the revised data leapfrogged it ahead of Germany. But overtaking the United States is another matter.
"I think it will take only three to four years for China to overtake Japan as the second-largest economy in the world," said Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu. Catching up with the United States could take decades, he added.
The status is symbolic — China's 1.3 billion people are, on average, among the world's poorest. But it reflects the country's explosive growth as it transformed from a long-isolated nation to the world's factory.
The government revised its estimate of 2007 growth from an already high 11.9 percent to 13 percent, the fastest rate since 1994. The national statistics bureau did not explain the factors behind the revision.
The new estimate raised gross domestic product to 25.7 trillion yuan, or $3.5 trillion at 2007 exchange rates, the statistics bureau said. That would be ahead of Germany's 2007 GDP of 2.4 trillion euros, or $3.3 trillion at an exchange rate produced by averaging rates on the 15th of each month during that year.
The revision comes as China's export-driven economy struggles to reverse a slump caused by global turmoil and prevent already simmering social unrest over lost export-related jobs.
The government is launching a $586 billion stimulus package and is promising to help struggling exporters. China's exports fell at their fastest rate in a decade last month. On Wednesday, the Cabinet cut fuel prices and a tax on auto sales.
The change in economic ranking won't help China out of its slump, said Moody's Economy.com analyst Sherman Chan.
"The only effect is perhaps negative, as a stronger 2007 would make the 2008 slowdown more upsetting," Chan said in a report.
The United States is the world's biggest economy at $13.8 trillion in 2007, followed by Japan at $4.4 trillion.
Germany's 85 million people were still far ahead of China in GDP per person in 2007 at $38,800.
China's per capita GDP was $2,800 in 2007, but the country has wide disparities of wealth and poverty, and many live on far less than that. Chinese officials say more than 100 other countries have a higher income per person.
Then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping set China on the road from communist central planning to a market-style economy in 1979. That year's GDP was just $300 billion — one-tenth of the 2007 level — according to the International Monetary Fund.
Over three decades, hundreds of millions of people have lifted themselves out of poverty and major cities have been transformed into forests of skyscrapers and modern apartment blocks, with streets jammed with private cars.
Independent economists estimate China's economy grew by another 9 percent in 2008 despite the global downturn. Figures for 2008 are expected to be released this month.
But economists have slashed 2009 forecasts to as low as 6 percent. That would be the highest for any major economy but is worrisome for communist leaders who need to satisfy a public that expects steadily rising incomes and is already restive over thousands of recent manufacturing layoffs.
Lu said it will be decades before China can match U.S. output, if it ever can.
"Even if growth in the U.S. is zero, China still would have to double and double again to overtake the U.S.," he said. "It would be more than 20 years, and that is so far out, it is very hard to forecast what will happen."
National Bureau of Statistics (in Chinese): http://www.stats.gov.cn
Associated Press
Saturday, January 10, 2009
NYC eatery grants freedom to lobster centenarian
By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer, – Sat Jan 10, 2:05 am ET
In this photo released by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 'George,' a live 20 pound lobster rests on a plate at City Crab and Seafood in New York, Friday, Jan. 9, 2009. City Crab and Seafood has spared the lobster, which is expected to be released Saturday, Jan. 10, near Kennebunkport, Maine, in an area where lobster trapping is forbidden. PETA and the restaurant gauged George's age at about 140, using a rule of thumb based on the creature's weight.
(AP Photo/P.E.T.A.)
NEW YORK – A 140-year-old lobster once destined for a dinner plate received the gift of life Friday from a Park Avenue seafood restaurant.
George, the 20-pound supercentenarian crustacean, was freed by City Crab and Seafood in New York City.
"We applaud the folks at City Crab and Seafood for their compassionate decision to allow this noble old-timer to live out his days in freedom and peace," said Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said the group asked City Crab to return George to the Atlantic Ocean after a diner saw him at the restaurant, where steamed Maine lobster sells for $27 per pound. George had been caught off Newfoundland, Canada and lived in the tank for about 10 days before his release.
Some scientists estimate lobsters can live to be more than 100 years old. PETA and the restaurant guessed George's age at about 140, using a rule of thumb based on the creature's weight.
He was to be released Saturday near Kennebunkport, Maine, in an area where lobster trapping is forbidden.
Associated Press
