WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday signed the sweeping health care reform legislation that was passed by the House of Representatives on Sunday night.
The legislation will massively revamp the nation’s health care delivery and financing system. By far, the biggest changes would be expanding Medicaid and establishing federal health insurance premium subsidies to the lower and middle-income uninsured. Congressional budget analysts estimate those changes could result in as many as 32 million uninsured gaining coverage.
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Eyes are most precious organ of our body. Eyes adds vision to our life. About 80 % of what we perceive comes through the eyes. Our memories are made 80 % by images. The eye comes with information about the depth, distance, shape, color and movement of the objects.
Today many people have blindly accepted many vision related myths without thinking much on it. Following article tries to debunk Top 15 most common vision or eyesight related myths which are still prevalent in our society.
“The vein of the iris can show a person’s health”. Similarly to the fingerprints, the veins of the iris are very personal and cannot display the health of the owner.
Eyes are most precious organ of our body. Eyes adds vision to our life. About 80 % of what we perceive comes through the eyes. Our memories are made 80 % by images. The eye comes with information about the depth, distance, shape, color and movement of the objects.
In our generation many people have blindly accepted many vision related myths without thinking much on it. Following article tries to debunk Top 20 most common vision or eyesight related myths which some people are still believe in.
- Contact lenses are better than Wearing Glasses. Wearing glasses is far safer option than using contact lenses. Glasses are not only cheaper but also easy to maintain than contact lenses. Glasses don’t stick on your eyes the way contact lenses do. Wearing and removing contact lenses is also a tedious and time consuming job.
- Reading in the dark is bad for your vision. Although reading in dim light can cause tiredness to your eyes, but no harm can be caused.
- Some exercises for eyes can improve your vision. Eye exercise do relax your eye but can’t improve vision. Any other efforts is a needless waste of time and does not bring any benefit. It is recommended to live a physically active life and have a balanced diet for keeping your eyes healthy.
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In Tokyo’s Waseda University created the world’s thinnest band-aid, a nanometers-thick adhesive bandage sheet designed for surgical use. With nano band-aid you can pull off a wound, even on internal organs. Scientists have successfully used it healing a wound in the lungs of a dog. One week after attaching the plaster, scientists found the dog’s wound had healed.
Named “Nano Bansoko” (nano band-aid), the new bandage is between from several tens of nanometers to 1,500 nanometers thick (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter). It is more than 1,000 times thinner than a plastic wrap. One side of nano band-aid is highly adhesive and can stick to tissues around wounds, while the other side shows very little tissue adhesion. The bandage, which breaks down naturally after healing, is made from chitosan (a substance derived from chitin found in crab shells) and alginate sodium (produced in kelp slime).
“We will now conduct a detailed safety evaluation in order to put the bandage into practical use in three years,” said professor Shinji Takeoka, who also announced plans to study the use of the bandage on other organs like intestines, as well as in scar prevention on sutured wounds after breast cancer surgery.
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People who repeatedly recover from ordinary seasonal flu or a few times vaccinated, perhaps, to some extent are protected from the swine flu A virus H1N1, researchers from the United States reported.
They found evidence that the human immune system can partially recognize A virus H1N1 virus, which is something still similar to seasonal influenza viruses.
“Swine influenza is a bit like an ordinary flu, which may suggest that humans already have a partial immunity against it. Perhaps this can make the disease less severe among the general population than previously estimated,” – said Alessandro Sette, Ph.D. Head and Member Center for Infectious Disease in California.
The study also may help explain why many older people are not so hard to carry the disease, said Ellison Dekhat Augustine from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We adults may be a partial immunity against A virus H1N1,” – she said.
Swine flu has swept through about 22 million Americans from April to October, killing an estimated 3,900 people, including 540 children.
“We’ve been tracking influenza for decades,” says Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “What we are seeing in 2009 is unprecedented.”
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Study Group of the Wake Forest University have successfully grown a rabbit’s penis, based on collagen and cells of rabbits. With artificial penis rabbits regained not only erectile function but also the reproduction ability, a medical conference in the U.S. has been told.
The research was led by the team of Dr. Anthony Atala, who said that the novel experiments raise hope that tissue engineering can one day be used to help men with severe impotence, or needing penile reconstruction, to regain their full sexual function.
The concept is that cells from a reduced organ are sprayed onto a collagen matrix, then bathed with compounds that stimulate cell growth and left in kept in an environment that duplicates the temperature and chemical makeup of living tissue.
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New research being presented at an obesity conference this week found that the cereals that are most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to American children as young as 2 were also the least healthy.
The study, reported in The Cereal Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score Report, was part funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was conducted by researchers from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. It is being presented at Obesity 2009, the 27th annual scientific meeting of The Obesity Society, in Washington on 27 October.
Researchers find that cereals for children have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium than cereals marketed to adults. In addition, companies are spending more than $156 million a year to market these cereals directly to kids.
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C-reactive protein (CRP) is a protein produced by the liver when there is inflammation somewhere in the body. People with high levels of CRP may be at higher risk for an acute coronary event (heart attack) and death but not stroke, according to a study published in the October 20, 2009, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
According to the scientists, testing for this protein – which is released into the bloodstream when the blood vessels leading to the heart are damaged – adds to the predictive value of screening blood samples for both total and HDL (good) cholesterol levels. Thus C-reactive protein testing may improve doctors’ ability to predict heart disease risk.
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What is influenza A virus H1N1 also known as swine flu?
Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (swine flu) is a new influenza virus causing illness in humans. This new virus was first reported in Southern California and near San Antonio, Texas in early April 2009. This virus is spreading from one person to another all over the world, just like the regular seasonal influenza viruses spread.
A (H1N1) has been called swine flu because it has two genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia, but the virus also has avian genes and human genes.
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Nanotechnology has reached critical mass. Nowhere is this more evident than in medicine. Rising medical costs, demands for less-invasive procedures and pressures for immediate feedback of medical conditions, all point to nanotechnology as offering a new approach in healthcare.
When a person suffers from eye ailments today, nine times out of ten, he will be prescribed eye drops to treat his illness or relieve his discomfort. However, 95 percent of the medication administered in this manner flows to where it is not needed. Most eye medications are delivered by drops. The drops usually mix with tears and drain into the nasal cavity, where they can flow through the blood stream to other organs and cause serious side effects. In addition, dosage through eye drops is inconsistent and difficult to regulate, as most of the drugs are released in an initial burst of concentration.
To counter these problems, researchers have been studying the use of contact lenses to deliver eye medication.
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Nanotechnology is the creation of functional materials, devices and systems. Nanotechnology makes use of minuscule objects – whose width can be 10,000 times narrower than a human hair – known as nanoparticles. A scientific and technical revolution has just begun based upon the ability to systematically organize and manipulate matter at nanoscale.
An atom has a diameter of about 0.1 nm. An atom’s nucleus is much smaller – about 0.00001 nm. Atoms are the building blocks for all matter in our universe. You and everything around you are made of atoms. Nature has perfected the science of manufacturing matter molecularly. For instance, our bodies are assembled in a specific manner from millions of living cells. Cells are nature’s nanomachines. At the atomic scale, elements are at their most basic level. On the nanoscale, we can potentially put these atoms together to make almost anything.
You might be surprised to find out how many products on the market are already benefiting from nanotechnology. Upwards of 600 products on store shelves today contain them, including transparent sunscreen, lipsticks, anti-aging creams etc.
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