May 5, 2010 8:16 pm
YANGON, May 5 — Drinking water ponds in many villages in Myanmar have dried up due to excessively high weather temperature during the current summer season, according to local sources on Wednesday.
Because of lying near the sea, the villages normally get salt- water.
As an alternative, the villagers are digging up some tube-wells near the dry ponds, the sources said.
Meanwhile, thousands of fishes, bred in ponds in the country's southwestern Ayeyawaddy division, died of heat stress daily, according to local fish breeders.
The phenomena is the worst in the last two decades, they said.
There were even some cases that all 100,000 fishes died in a single day in Twantay township, Yangon division, fish breeders in the township said, fearing that such cases would continue as long as there is no rainfall.
The month of April falls within the summer which lasts from March to the end of May in Myanmar.
The day temperatures in central Myanmar this summer have reached a record high in over four decades, peaking at between 43 and 45 degree Celsius in such regions as Minbu, Magway, Mandalay, Monywa, Chauk and Mingyan as well as in Yangon over the past week, which are 5 to 6 degree Celsius above April average temperature.
April represents the hottest month of Myanmar and this year it is experiencing excessive heat.
(PNA/Xinhua)
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Many village water ponds in Myanmar dry up due to summer heat
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Lack of sleep linked to early death
Wed May 5, 9:44 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – People who get less than six hours sleep per night have an increased risk of dying prematurely, researchers said on Wednesday.
Those who slumbered for less than that amount of time were 12 percent more likely to die early, though researchers also found a link between sleeping more than nine hours and premature death.
"If you sleep little, you can develop diabetes, obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol," Francesco Cappuccio, who led research on the subject at Britain's University of Warwick, told AFP.
The study, conducted with the Federico II University in Naples, Italy, aggregated decade-long studies from around the world involving more than 1.3 million people and found "unequivocal evidence of the direct link" between lack of sleep and premature death.
"We think that the relation between little sleep and illness is due to a series of hormonal and metabolical mechanisms," Cappuccio said.
The findings of the study were published in the Sleep journal.
Cappuccio believes the duration of sleep is a public health issue and should be considered as a behavioural risk factor by doctors.
"Society pushes us to sleep less and less," Cappuccio said, adding that about 20 percent of the population in the United States and Britain sleeps less than five hours.
Sleeping less than six hours is "more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift work"
The study also found a link between sleeping more than nine hours per night and premature death, but Cappuccio said oversleeping is more likely to be an effect of illness, rather than a cause.
"Doctors never ask how much one sleeps, but that could be an indicator that something is wrong," said Cappuccio, who heads the Sleep, Health and Society Programme at the University of Warwick.
Research showed no adverse effects for those sleeping between six and eight hours per day.
AFP
Monday, February 1, 2010
Healthy adults need less sleep as they age
Mon Feb 1, 1:03 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Healthy older adults need less sleep than their younger counterparts and, even with less sleep under their nightcaps, are less likely to feel tired during the day, a study published Monday showed.
The time spent actually sleeping out of eight hours in bed declined progressively and significantly with age, the study published in SLEEP, the official journal of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society, said.
Older adults, aged 66-83, slept about 20 minutes less than middle-aged adults (40-55 years), who slept 23 minutes less than young adults aged 20-30, the study said.
The older adults woke up significantly more often and spent more time awake after initial sleep onset than younger adults.
Deep, or slow-wave sleep, thought to be the most restorative phase of sleep, decreased with age, the study said.
But although older adults slept less deeply and less overall, and their sleep was less continuous than their younger counterparts', they also showed less need for a quick kip during the day.
The study was conducted at the Clinical Research Centre of the University of Surrey in England and involved 110 healthy adults without sleep disorders or complaints.
Forty-four of the participants were young, 35 middle-aged and 31 older adults.
They slept normally one night, the baseline night, then had two nigths where their sleep was interrupted, followed by one recovery night.
During the baseline night, younger adults spent an average of 433.5 minutes asleep compared to around 410 minutes for middle aged adults and 390 for older adults.
On the same night, the younger adults had 118.4 minutes of deep sleep, compared to 85.3 minutes for middle-aged adults and 84.2 minutes for older adults.
But when asked to lie in a comfortable position on a bed during the day and try to fall asleep, young adults nodded off in an average of 8.7 minutes, compared with nearly 12 minutes for middle-aged adults and just over 14 minutes for older adults.
AFP
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Myanmar discovers over 100-ton jade stone in northern state
English.news.cn 2010-01-29 14:22:07
YANGON, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar has discovered a raw jade stone weighing 115 tons at Phakant mining area in the country's northernmost Kachin state, the local Newsweek journal reported Friday.
The jade stone, the second largest one to be mined in the past decade, was excavated by Max Myanmar company, the report said.
The world's largest jade stone weighing about 3,000 tons was discovered in Phakant in 2000.
The giant jade stone, measuring 21 meters long, 4.8 meters wide and 10.5 meters high was found at a depth of 12 meters underground, an earlier report said.
The country also claimed that it possesses the world's largest ruby weighing 21,450 carats, the largest star sapphire weighing 63, 000 carats, the biggest peridot weighing 329 carats and the biggest pearl weighing 845 carats.
There are six mining areas in Myanmar under gem and jade exploration, namely, Mongshu and Namhyar in Shan state, Mogok in Mandalay division, Khamhti in Sagaing division, Moenyin and Phakant in Kachin state.
Myanmar, a well-known producer of gems in the world, boasts ruby, diamond, cat's eye, emerald, topaz, pearl, sapphire, coral and a variety of garnet tinged with yellow.
The government's Central Statistical Organization revealed that in the fiscal year 2008-09, Myanmar produced 32,921 tons of jade and 18,728 million carats of gems which include ruby, sapphire, spinel and peridot, as well as 201,081 mommis (754 kilograms) of pearl.
Editor: Anne Tang
Xin Hua
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Girls may learn math anxiety from female teachers
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer – Mon Jan 25, 7:44 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Little girls may learn to fear math from the women who are their earliest teachers. Despite gains in recent years, women still trail men in some areas of math achievement, and the question of why has provoked controversy. Now, a study of first- and second-graders suggests what may be part of the answer: Female elementary school teachers who are concerned about their own math skills could be passing that along to the little girls they teach.
Young students tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex, and having a female teacher who is anxious about math may reinforce the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls, explained Sian L. Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago.
Beilock and colleagues studied 52 boys and 65 girls in classes taught by 17 different teachers. Ninety percent of U.S. elementary school teachers are women, as were all of those in this study.
Student math ability was not related to teacher math anxiety at the start of the school year, the researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But by the end of the year, the more anxious teachers were about their own math skills, the more likely their female students — but not the boys — were to agree that "boys are good at math and girls are good at reading."
In addition, the girls who answered that way scored lower on math tests than either the classes' boys or the girls who had not developed a belief in the stereotype, the researchers found.
"It's actually surprising in a way, and not. People have had a hunch that teachers could impact the students in this way, but didn't know how it might do so in gender-specific fashion," Beilock said in a telephone interview.
Beilock, who studies how anxieties and stress can affect people's performance, noted that other research has indicated that elementary education majors at the college level have the highest levels of math anxiety of any college major.
"We wanted to see how that impacted their performance," she said.
After seeing the results, the researchers recommended that the math requirements for obtaining an elementary education teaching degree be rethought.
"If the next generation of teachers — especially elementary school teachers — is going to teach their students effectively, more care needs to be taken to develop both strong math skills and positive math attitudes in these educators," the researchers wrote.
Janet S. Hyde, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the study a "great paper, very clever research."
"It squares with an impression I've had for a long time," said Hyde, who was not part of the research team.
Hyde was lead author of a 2008 study showing women gaining on men in math skills but still lagging significantly in areas such as physics and engineering.
Girls who grow up believing females lack math skills wind up avoiding harder math classes, Hyde noted.
"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," she said.
Beilock did note that not all of the girls in classrooms with math-anxious teachers fell prey to the stereotype, but "teachers are one source," she said.
Teacher math anxiety was measured on a 25-question test about situations that made them anxious, such as reading a cash register receipt or studying for a math test. A separate test checked the math skills of the teachers, who worked in a large Midwestern urban school district.
Student math skills were tested in the first three months of the school year and again in the last two months of the year.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
AP
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Salt reduction could save 92,000 U.S. lives a year
By Gene Emery Gene Emery – Thu Jan 21, 1:49 am ET
BOSTON (Reuters Life!) – Shaving 3 grams off the daily salt intake of Americans could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths in the United States, while saving $24 billion in health costs per year, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The benefit to the U.S. population would be comparable to cutting smoking by 50 percent, significantly lowering obesity rates and giving cholesterol drugs to virtually everyone to prevent heart attacks, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues.
Such a goal, they said, is readily attainable.
Salt, which contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease, is widely overused in the United States, with 75 to 80 percent coming from processed food. Men typically consume 10.4 grams per day. For women, the average is 7.3 grams. Its use is rising.
A reduction of 1 gram would prevent 11,000 to 23,000 strokes, 18,000 to 35,000 heart attacks and 15,000 to 32,000 deaths from any cause, the researchers reported in New England Journal of Medicine.
Women would benefit the most.
"Even if the federal government were to bear the entire cost of a regulatory program designed to reduce salt consumption, the government would still be expected to realize cost savings for Medicare, saving $6 to $12 in health expenditures for each dollar spent on the regulatory program," the researchers wrote.
In a commentary, Dr. Lawrence Appel and Cheryl Anderson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said the new study may be underestimating the benefits.
They said it did not take into account how it would help children or the fact that lower salt intake may reduce the risk of stomach cancer, kidney disease, congestive heart failure and osteoporosis.
(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Reuters
Monday, January 18, 2010
Chemicals coat apples decades after Alar scare
By SHANNON DININNY, Associated Press Writer, – Mon Jan 18, 5:06 am ET
YAKIMA, Wash. – More than two decades after parents dumped apples from children's lunch boxes because of concerns about a chemical applied to the fruit, most researchers agree the crop is safer although most of it still carries pesticide residue.
Growers saw prices plunge after a 1989 television report led to widespread fears apples were coated in a cancer-causing chemical called Alar, used to enhance crunch and color. The public outcry led the government to ban some chemicals and increase oversight, while growers adopted new approaches to spraying apples and reduced the use of harsh chemicals.
But in 2005, the last year results were available, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found pesticide residues on 98 percent of the apples it tested. All the residue was at levels within federal guidelines.
Such statistics leave consumer groups and health experts conflicted.
"The mix of pesticides today is less toxic than it was 20 years ago," said Richard Wiles, senior vice president for policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group. "But we still have a lot of pesticides left over. I think we're due for another look at whether we're doing the best we can to protect the public from pesticides in food."
Few apple growers will forget the February 1989 "60 Minutes" episode that opened with a story about Alar, featuring an apple marked with a skull and crossbones. The report stemmed from a Natural Resources Defense Council study that concluded Alar posed a cancer danger, particularly to children.
Public outcry was immediate and some parents panicked — reports circulated about apple juice being poured down the drain and a mother sending police to stop her child's school bus to retrieve her lunch. Actress Meryl Streep took up the cause, demanding Alar be banned.
Some still question the science behind the report, arguing that consumers would have to eat many more apples than normal to get sick.
Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician who was one of the scientific reviewers for the 1989 study, declined to sign off on it, fearing in part that consumers could confuse long-term effects with immediate danger.
"I actually agreed with them that the Alar was probably breaking down into a carcinogen," said Goldman, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency's toxics program under the Clinton administration and is now a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"I didn't agree with the way they were communicating the risk," she said, "and I was worried that what they were doing was more alarmist than it needed to be."
Another reviewer, Frederica Perera, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, signed off on the findings.
"I think the report was a reasonable report," she said.
The EPA had already labeled Alar a probable carcinogen and its maker, Uniroyal Chemical Co., voluntarily withdrew it for use on U.S. food crops. EPA studies later showed Alar, while still a carcinogen, was only one-twentieth as potent as estimates in the report.
Today, Alar is applied only to nonedible, ornamental plants such as flowers in the U.S., but it is still approved for food crops in some countries.
Wendy Gordon, who co-chaired NRDC's Mothers and Others group with Streep, said the report's breakthrough was in improving pesticide standards for young children.
"The original standard was based on a healthy young adult male. Many years later, the regulation was changed, and the standard was changed to account for these more vulnerable populations," she said.
At the time of the report, red delicious and McIntosh apples were the most common varieties in the U.S., and growers applied Alar to both. The going price for a 42-pound box of red delicious applies fell from $15.46 in February 1989 to $8.29 by June that year.
Apple growers were shocked by the 1989 report, and for many, the Alar dispute still burns, said George Allan of Allan Bros. apple growers in Naches, Wash. Some growers still won't watch a Meryl Streep movie, he said, although he acknowledged enjoying her recent hit "Julie and Julia."
But growers learned from the experience, he said: "In the past 20 years, we've basically reinvented ourselves."
They worked with scientists to better understand pests and develop alternatives for controlling them. Federal regulations now require farm workers to wait longer before re-entering orchards where chemicals have been applied. The federal government also banned many harsh chemicals and limited the application of others before harvest.
"I don't know whether there are more or fewer pesticides in use today than there were 20 years ago," said Bill Jordan, the EPA's senior policy adviser for the Office of Pesticide Programs. "But the pesticide residues that are on apples today are safer."
Many growers also have planted new apple varieties that require less harsh chemicals to control pests or improve the fruit's quality. Red delicious apples, which required heavy treatment, now make up 30 percent of the crop, down from 70 percent in 1989.
Elisa Odabashian, West Coast director of Consumers Union, eats an apple a day. She grew up in Cashmere, a small river town surrounded by apple orchards near Wenatchee, a central Washington city billed as the Apple Capital of the World. She hesitates to criticize an industry that has supported family and friends, remarking on the strides made to improve safety.
"Is an apple with pesticide residue an unsafe product? I wouldn't call it that," she said. "We have advised that on products like apples, where you tend to eat the skin, that's a good candidate for buying organic."
Associated Press
