ESA satellite guides polar explorers across disintegrating sea ice
...ion to try to avoid the rapidly disintegrating ice pack in the Robson Channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island in the extreme north of Canada, and help steer the expedition to safer ice conditions modifying their route to shore further to the east. "I noticed in satellite radar images that the Ar...Aluminum foil lamps outshine incandescent lights
...st Sung-Jin Park, lead author of the paper. We can pack an array of more than 250,000 lamps into a single panel. Completing the panel assembly is a glass window 500 microns (0.5 millimeters) thick. The windows inner surface is coated with a phosphor film 10 microns thick, bringing the overall thickness of...Did pack-size laws reduce paracetamol suicides or was fall just a coincidence?
...UK). In their view, "It seems most likely that the pack size regulations did change the pattern of paracetamol poisoning but that changes were far more modest than hoped." Like the authors of the research, they say it is important that, whenever public health legislation is introduced, the impact should b...US adults now discovering the secrets of probiotics
...five U.S. adults (39 percent) indicate they always pack over-the-counter medications, such as Imodium or P...; about half (51 percent) also indicate they would pack a probiotic to treat stomach/intestinal issues related to travel so they would not have to go out an...Drug may help women stop smoking
... The participants, on average, had smoked about a pack a day for 25 years and had already tried to stop multiple times. All volunteers received standard comprehensive smoking cessation treatment, including one-hour behavioral counseling sessions once a week, beginning two weeks before their quit date ...Hold the Hookah: Researcher warns against trendy tobacco use
...nhaling what is believed to be the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes in one typical 30-60 minute session with a waterpipe, because such a large quantity of pure, shredded tobacco is used," said Christopher Loffredo, Ph.D., Director of the Cancer Genetics and Epidemiology program at Georgetown University ...Arctic summer ice anomaly shocks scientists
...e British Isles in the Arctic's perennial sea ice pack north of Svalbard, and extending into the Russian ...ergen or Northern Siberia through what is normally pack ice to reach the North Pole without difficulty. "If this anomaly trend continues, the North-East P...UK recommendations on the availability of common painkillers are being contravened
In September 1998, UK legislation on pack sizes came into effect in a bid to curb the 200 od...of these patients had managed to buy more than one pack at a time. One person had bought more than 32 tablets from a pharmacy, and 15 others had bought mo...Choose your beach with Medspiration
Before you pack your swimsuit and head to the sea this summer, you may want to check out the water's temperature with ESA's Medspiration heat map of all 2 965 500 square kilometres of the Mediterranean. An updated map of the sea surface temperature (SST) of the wor...New MRI technique shows emphysema in asymptomatic smokers
...tory greater than 18 pack-years (equivalent to one pack of cigarettes per day for 18 years) showed significant abnormalities compared to nonsmokers. CT was performed after MRI, to allow comparison between the two modalities. Even though CT is the more established modality in the investigation of lung dise...Gender may impact lung function in patients with lung cancer
...include those with heavy smoking history (> 30 pack years), age greater than 50 years, presence of COPD, occupational exposure to asbestos, or history of exposure to radiation. Currently, most screening programs and clinical trials choose patients for lung cancer screening based on smoking history and...Male smokers 40 percent more likely to be impotent than non-smokers
Men who smoke a pack or more of cigarettes daily are 40 per cent more l...maintaining an erection. Those smoking more than a pack a day were 39 per cent more likely to report erectile difficulties. Unsurprisingly, older age and a ...Beta carotene slows decline in lung power associated with ageing
...ore than 52 ml a year were seen in those smoking a pack or more of cigarettes a day, and with low levels of vitamin E and beta carotene in their blood. The authors suggest that beta carotene compensates for some of the damage caused by oxygen free radicals, while both it and vitamin E may help to lessen ...Indoor pollution from cooking on wood stoves affects women in developing countries
...was 214 hour-years for the wood smoke group and 56 pack years for the tobacco smokers. "In our study, the degree of airflow limitation was worse in tobacco smokers than in subjects exposed to wood smoke," said Dr. Ramrez-Venegas. "Whether biomass exposure affects lung growth and, consequently, function in...Visual research seeks to cut through clutter
...ly uncluttered. For example, very few people would pack a gun in an empty suitcase. So the Rutgers-Camden researcher opted to test how human vision finds objects set in clutter. In one study, Bravo asked participants to find food amidst a clutter of objects. No specific type of food was identified, incre...Caloric restriction appears to prevent primary aging in the heart
...n does not mean eating half a hamburger and half a pack of French fries and drinking half of a sugary beverage," he says. "These people have very good nutrition. They eliminate calories by eating nutrient-dense foods." He says caloric restriction tends to resemble a traditional Mediterranean diet, which ...Smoking while pregnant causes finger, toe deformities
... In fact, the study found that smoking just half a pack per day increases the risk of having a child born with a toe or finger defect by 29 percent. "Reconstructive surgery to repair limb, toe and finger abnormalities in children represents a large portion of my practice it is the most common issue I tre...Smoking associated with severity of psoriasis
...es. "Specifically, patients who smoked more than a pack of cigarettes (more than 20 cigarettes) daily had twice the risk of more severe psoriasis compared with those who smoked ten cigarettes or less per day," the authors report. Cigarette-years, measured as the product of the intensity and duration of sm...Passive smoking almost doubles risk of degenerative eye disease
...ever smoked that was critical. Regularly smoking a pack or more a day for 40 years almost tripled the risk of age related macular degeneration compared with those who did not smoke, the research showed. Smoking increased the risk of both types of macular degeneration (geographic atrophy and choroidal neo......n others. Red Delicious, Northern Spy and Ida Red, pack a greater wallop of disease-fighting antioxidants than other apples studied, reports a Canadian study in the ACS Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry . Researcher: Rong Tsao, Ph.D., Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, (519) 780-8062, caor@a...