April Fool’s Day Fun
Posted by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
April Fool's Day is one of our favorite holidays. Here are couple of contests to help you get in the spirit:
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April Fool’s Day Fun
Posted by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
April Fool's Day is one of our favorite holidays. Here are couple of contests to help you get in the spirit:
|
Related posts
Risks Of Increased Access To Over-The-Counter Medicines May Outweigh Benefits
Posted by Lockergnome
The risks of increasing people’s access to over-the-counter medicines may outweigh the benefits, warn experts in this week’s BMJ.
They suggest that the safety of over-the-counter medicines should be kept under close review and that patients should be urged to report any adverse reactions.
Medicines are currently divided into classes that do or do not require prescription, write Robin Ferner, Director at the West Midlands Centre for Adverse Drug Reactions and Keith Beard, Consultant Physician at the Victoria Infirmary Glasgow.
Prescription only medicines are subject to a range of controls that are relaxed when medicines are made more freely available over the counter.
When deciding if a medicine should be reclassified to make it available over the counter, regulatory authorities must balance the benefits of easier access against the potential harm from unsupervised or inappropriate use.
Once medicines have been reclassified, they remain subject to safety review.
Patients, doctors and pharmacists can all benefit if medicines are available over the counter. For example, patients can call at a pharmacy any time rather than waiting to see a doctor, general practitioners no longer need to write prescriptions for minor ailments, and pharmacists can make better use of their professional skills.
Drug companies and retail pharmacies can also expect to benefit commercially from reclassification of medicines as over the counter.
However, there are worries about over-the-counter medicines, say the authors. For instance, a patient who makes the wrong diagnosis and uses an inappropriate over-the-counter medicine may present late with a potentially serous but treatable condition. Prescribers also have no opportunity to reinforce instructions for safe use as they can with prescribed medicines.
Regulators can reduce the potential for harm of over-the-counter medicines by specifying the concentration, dose, or pack size that a pharmacist can supply without prescription. However some drugs, such as statins, are probably less effective in low doses than in the higher doses usually prescribed.
Internet shopping now also makes it straightforward, if risky, to order medicines without involving a doctor or pharmacist in the decision. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain estimates that two million Britons obtain their medicines that way.
So what needs to be done to increase the safety of over-the-counter medicines, ask the authors”
The safety of over-the-counter medicines has to be continually reviewed, even though this is difficult in practice, they say. Since healthcare professionals may not be involved, we have to rely on patients to report adverse effects. A new website allowing patients to report adverse drug reactions to the UK Yellow Card scheme could be helpful.
Regulators should also ask for clearer evidence of benefit at the over-the-counter dose if this is lower than the dose usually prescribed, they conclude.
[Rachael Davies @ BMJ-British Medical Journal]
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Can You Rescue A Rainforest? The Answer May Be Yes.
Posted by Lockergnome
Half a century after most of Costa Rica’s rainforests were cut down, researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute took on a project that many thought was impossible — restoring a tropical rainforest ecosystem.
When the researchers planted worn-out cattle fields in Costa Rica with a sampling of local trees, native species began to move in and flourish, raising the hope that destroyed rainforests can one day be replaced.
Carl Leopold and his partners in the Tropical Forestry Initiative began planting trees on worn-out pasture land in Costa Rica in 1992. For 50 years the soil was compacted under countless hooves, and its nutrients washed away. When it rained, Leopold says, red soil appeared to bleed from the hillsides.
The group chose local rainforest trees, collecting seeds from native trees in the community. “You can’t buy seeds,” Leopold says. “So we passed the word around among the neighbors.” When a farmer would notice a tree producing seeds, Leopold and his wife would ride out on horses to find the tree before hungry monkeys beat them to it.
The group planted mixtures of local species, trimming away the pasture grasses until the trees could take care of themselves. This was the opposite of what commercial companies have done for decades, planting entire fields of a single type of tree to harvest for wood or paper pulp.
The trees the group planted were fast-growing, sun-loving species. After just five years those first trees formed a canopy of leaves, shading out the grasses underneath.
“One of the really amazing things is that our fast-growing tree species are averaging two meters of growth per year,” Leopold says. How could soil so long removed from a fertile rainforest support that much growth?
Leopold says that may be because of mycorrhizae, microscopic fungi that form a symbiosis with tree roots. Research at Cornell and BTI shows that without them, many plants can’t grow as well. After 50 years, the fungi seem to still be alive in the soil, able to help new trees grow.
Another success came when Cornell student Jackeline Salazar did a survey of the plants that moved into the planted areas. She counted understory species, plants that took up residence in the shade of the new trees. Most plots had over a hundred of these species, and many of the new species are ones that also live in nearby remnants of the original forests.
Together, these results mean that mixed-species plantings can help to jump-start a rainforest. Local farmers who use the same approach will control erosion of their land while creating a forest that can be harvested sustainably, a few trees at a time.
“By restoring forests we’re helping to control erosion, restore quality forests that belong there, and help the quality of life of the local people,” says Leopold.
That quality-of-life issue is drinking water. It’s in scarce supply where forests have been destroyed, since without tree roots to act as a sort of sponge, rain water runs off the hillsides and drains away.
Erosion is also out of control. “You might drive on a dirt road one year, and then come back the next to find it’s a gully over six feet deep,” says Leopold. “It’s a very serious problem.”
Does the experiment’s success mean that rainforests will one day flourish again? Fully rescuing a rainforest may take hundreds of years, if it can be done at all.
“The potential for the forest being able to come back is debatable,” Leopold says, but the results are promising.
“I’m surprised,” he said. “We’re getting an impressive growth of new forest species.” After only ten years, plots that began with a few species are now lush forests of hundreds. Who knows what the next few decades — or centuries — might bring?
The findings were published in the March 2008 issue of Ecological Restoration.
[Joan Curtiss @ Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research]
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Current State Concept - Remote Energy Monitoring
Posted by admin
Another great concept from The Greener Grass. The “Current State” is a real time energy monitoring and control system that would all you to monitor and and control your homes energy use remotely. The Greener Grass explains that it will work like this:
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