TEXTO:

Study: Thirdhand Smoke Could Cause Harm

A new study reveals that the so-called “thirdhand
smoke,” or the residue from cigarette smoke that lands
on surfaces after a smoker lights up, could be hazardous
to passers-by even well after the smoker has left the
[5] scene.
New research from the University of California
Riverside shows that the so-called “thirdhand smoke”
exposure harms organs in mice and increases symptoms
of hyperactivity — which suggests humans too might
[10] suffer similar negative consequences.
The researchers exposed lab mice to levels of
thirdhand smoke meant to imitate the levels humans
come into contact with in a smoking environment. They
found that the mice exhibited higher levels of lipids and
[15] fatty liver disease, as well as inflammation in their lungs.
The mice also had trouble healing wounds. Both of these
findings are found among people exposed to secondhand
smoke. Smokers also tend to take longer to heal their
wounds after a surgery.
[20] The researchers also noted increased levels of
hyperactivity in the mice, which they compared to similar
symptoms reported in children exposed to second and
thirdhand smoke. “It follows that children in environments
where smoking is, or has been allowed, are at significant
[25] risk for suffering from multiple short-term and longer health
problems, many of which may not manifest fully until
later in life,” the researchers conclude in the study,
published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Reducing preventable harm in hospitals

Each year, in the United States, millions of patients are harmed while receiving care in hospitals.
They get infections, experience adverse reactions to drugs, develop dangerous bedsores or come
down with pneumonia from the very ventilators meant to help them breathe.
The estimates of the number of people who die each year as a result of hospital errors have ranged
[5] from as many as 98,000 in a landmark Institute of Medicine report from 1999 to as many as 440,000
in a 2013 study.
It’s believed that most of these deaths could be prevented if health care providers always adhered
to evidence-informed practices. In recent years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
have sought to drive improvements by linking payments to hospital performance, including patient
[10] safety.
Amid the complexity, the chaotic pace and the increasing need for coordination, how can hospitals
do better to improve patient safety? How can they ensure, for example, that every single time a
patient receives a medication, precautions are taken to reduce the risks of an adverse drug reaction?
The big challenge is not just designing systems with better defenses; it is gaining acceptance for
[15] them, and properly implementing them. Over the past decade, for example, many hospitals have
adopted a key feature of aviation safety − checklists − to improve safety in areas where standard
protocols can save many lives, such as inserting central line catheters, using ventilators and while
performing surgery and assisting childbirth.
When the checklists are well implemented, the results of their use have been stunning. However,
[20] as checklists have proliferated, the results have been inconsistent, often because front-line
practitioners rejected them or adopted them halfheartedly. The devotion to protocol that pilots
see as integral to their professionalism is derided by some doctors as “cookbook medicine”. Atul
Gawande, a surgeon and contributor to The New Yorker, has said that the high value that physicians
place on autonomy and independence makes them reluctant to submit to checklists.
[25] So the big question is: how can health systems be made safer when success means changing the
attitudes and habits of health care professionals at a time when many are overwhelmed and deeply
frustrated by all of the demands being made on them? What does it take to get them to embrace,
with urgency, new ways of working?

Texto - MED

Islamic State’s destruction of Palmyra temple confirmed by satellite photo

Satellite images have confirmed the destruction of a Roman-era temple in the Syrian city of Palmyra, a United Nations agency said, after the hardline Islamic State group claimed responsibility for blowing up the structure a week ago.

Islamic State detonated explosives in the ancient Baal Shamin temple on August 25, an act that cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime aimed at wiping out a symbol of Syria’s diverse cultural heritage.

The temple of Bel stood just outside the main area of the ancient city, whose column-lined principal street leads to its gate.

Its richly decorated central shrine area, or cella, was extremely well preserved.

An analysis of an image taken in June and others taken several days ago show the obliteration of the temple in the central desert city, the Geneva-based United Nations Institute for Training and Research said in a statement.

“We confirm the destruction of the main building, while surrounding columns seem to be less affected.”

Islamic State captured Palmyra, an oasis town and former trading centre in Syria’s central desert, from government forces in May.

Photographs published by IS last week showed a pile of rubble on the site of that temple.

Its destruction was condemned by UNESCO, which lists Palmyra as a World Heritage Site, as a war crime.

The head of the UN cultural agency, Irina Bokova said Palmyra’s art and architecture was “a symbol of the complexity and wealth of the Syrian identity and history.”

Two weeks ago Islamic State beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, who was the city’s chief archaeologist for decades, and hung his body from a lamp post.

Islamic State, which controls most of eastern Syria and the central desert, has previously destroyed ancient monuments as well as Christian and Muslim holy sites in neighbouring Iraq.

DPA, Reuters

Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?

The mosquito is the most dangerous animal in the world, carrying diseases that kill one million people a year. Now the Zika virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, has been linked with thousands of babies born with brain defects in South America. There are 3,500 known species of mosquitoes, but only the females from just 6% of species draw blood from humans - to help them develop their eggs. Of these, just half carry parasites that cause human diseases.

More than a million people, mostly from poorer nations, die each year from mosquito-borne diseases, including Malaria, Dengue Fever and Yellow Fever. Some mosquitoes also carry the Zika virus, which was first thought to cause only mild fever and rashes. However, scientists are now worried that it can damage babies in the womb. There’s a constant effort to educate people to use nets and other tactics to avoid being bitten. But would it just be simpler to make an entire species of disease-carrying mosquito extinct?

In Britain, scientists at Oxford University and the biotech firm Oxitec have genetically modified (GM) the males of Aedes aegypti - a mosquito species that carries both the Zika and Dengue viruses. These GM males carry a gene that stops their offspring from developing properly. This second generation of mosquitoes then die before they can reproduce and become carriers of disease themselves.

So are there any downsides to removing mosquitoes? Mosquitoes, which mostly feed on plant nectar, are important pollinators. They are also a food source for birds and bats while their young - as larvae - are consumed by fish and frogs. This could have an effect further ahead in the food chain. Mosquitoes also have limited the destructive impact of humanity on nature. Mosquitoes make tropical rainforests, for humans, virtually uninhabitable. Rainforests are home to a large share of our total plant and animal species, and nothing has done more to delay man-made destruction over the past 10,000 years than the mosquito.

Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35408835

Criados em 1950 por Charlie Schultz, a dupla Charlie Brown e Snoopy completou 65 anos em outubro de 2015. A turma dos Peanuts prepara-se para lançar Peanuts, o filme, em janeiro de 2016, pela Blue Sky, os mesmos criadores da Era do Gelo e Rio.

How Brazil Crowdsourced a Pioneering Law

The passage of the Marco Civil da Internet, an “Internet bill of rights” commonly referred to in English as the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, demonstrates how the Internet can be used to rejuvenate democratic governance in the digital age. The law is important not only for its content, but for the innovative and participatory way it was written, bypassing traditional modes of legislation-making to go directly to the country’s citizens. At a moment when governments of all kinds are viewed as increasingly distant from ordinary people, Brazil’s example makes an argument that democracy offers a way forward.

The pioneering law was signed in 2014 and has three components. First, it safeguards privacy by restricting the ability of private corporations and the government to store Internet users’ browsing histories. Second, it mandates a judicial review of requests to remove potentially offensive or illegal material, including content that infringes copyrights. And third, it prohibits Internet service providers from manipulating data transfer speeds for commercial purposes. The bill was acclaimed by activists as an example the rest of the world should follow.

What makes this law even more interesting is that it became one of the largest-ever experiments in crowdsourcing legislation. The law’s original text was written through a website that allowed individual citizens and organizations — including NGOs, businesses, and political parties — to interact with one another and publicly debate the law’s content. This process was markedly different from the traditional method of writing bills “behind closed doors” in the halls of Congress, a process that favored well-connected families and large corporations.

Policymakers in other countries have tried to capture citizen input using social media before, but never on this scale, in a country of roughly 200 million people. Whether it would succeed was far from certain. During the website’s public launch, in 2009, one of the government lawyers summed up the organizers’ high hopes: “This experience could transform the way we discuss not just legislation about theInternet, but also the way we discuss other bills in Brazil, and, in so doing, reconfigure our democracy.”

Adapted from http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/19/how-brazil-crowdsourced-a-landmark-law/

An accident took her sight 21 years ago; another just gave it back

After a car accident injured her spine in 1995, Mary Ann Franco lost her vision. But after being blind for 21 years, the Florida woman fell in her home and hurt her neck ... and woke up from the ensuing spinal surgery on April 6 with the ability to see. "Out the window, I could see the trees. I could see the houses and stuff," Franco tells WPBF. Oddly, Franco was colorblind before her car accident, and now she can also see colors. The neurosurgeon who operated on her says he has no scientific explanation for what happened— Dr. John Afshar tells ABC News it's a "true miracle"—but he has an idea. If an artery in Franco's spine was "kinked" in the car accident, restricting the flow of blood to the part of her brain that handles vision, he may have inadvertently "unkinked" the same artery during the recent surgery, he theorizes. "And when we gave that extra amount of blood flow by unkinking the vessel, it could have reestablished the blood flow," he tells WPBF, though he notes that none of this is certain. But an explanation doesn't matter much to Franco: "The sun is coming through the trees," she said on a recent morning. "Oh God, it’s so wonderful to see." Nature isn't the only sight for her to behold: Franco has seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren who WPBF notes she has hugged and kissed but never seen.

Erosion in America

Erosion of America\'s farmland by wind and water has been a problem since settlers first put the prairies and grasslands under the plow in the nineteenth century. By the 1930s, more than 282 million acres of farmland were damaged by erosion. After 40 years of conservation efforts, soil erosion has accelerated due to new demands placed on the land by heavy crop production. In the years ahead, soil erosion and the pollution problems causes are likely to replace petroleum scarcity as the nation\'s most critical natural resource problem.