FAILING ACID TEST - ‘Overuse of antacid linked to fractures’

New York: If you routinely pop antacid pills, now it is time to stop. US health regu l at o r s have cautioned doctors and patients of an increased risk of fractures of the hip, wrist, and spine from high doses or long-term use of a widely used class of drugs to control the amount of acid in the stomach. 

The class of heartburn drugs, called proton pump inhibitors, include prescription brands such as AstraZeneca Plc's Nexium and the company's Prilosec, an older generic treatment that is also available over the counter at a lower dosage strength. 

Proton pump inhibitors include the drugs esomeprazole, dexlansoprazole, omeprazole, lansoprazole, pantoprazole, and rabeprazole. The FDA said that studies suggest a possible increased risk of bone fractures with the use of proton pump inhibitors for one year or longer, or at high doses. AGENCIES

Publication: Times Of India Hyderabad;Date: May 28, 2010;Section: Main  Edition; Page: 18

UN event: Global Call to Action on Ending Distracted Driving

How the Recession Has Changed American Migration — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

How the Recession Has Changed American Migration — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

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Using Gadgets, Leading Active Life & Eating Well Help Increase Lifespan

WORDS OF WISDOM

Pop culture helps elders live long

Using Gadgets, Leading Active Life & Eating Well Help Increase Lifespan

New York: Staying in touch with pop culture, the latest trends such as iPods and text messaging, and a dinner date with actress Betty White are keys to living a long life, according to people who know — centenarians. 
    Being socially active, having a healthy diet, exercising and getting enough sleep also won’t hurt. “If I could leave any message, never stop learning. Period. That’s it,” said Maurice Eisman, a centenarian who lives in Maryland. 
    Eisman was one of 100 centenarians questioned in a poll about the secrets of longevity. Laughter and prayer were also important, along with staying connected to family and friends and keeping up with current events and gadgets. Eight per cent of centenarians said they had sent text or instant messages, compared to one percent last year. And 12% are using iPods, 4% more than three years ago, the GfK Roper survey for Evercare showed. 
    Nearly 100,000 centenarians are living in the United States, and the number is expected to climb to more than 601,000 by 2050, according to the US Census Bureau. 
    “I think everybody should have something to say in what’s going on in their life and not just take everything for granted,” said Marie Keeler, 101, from Minnesota. White, the octogenarian star of a popular Super Bowl commercial, was the top choice of a dinner date for most of the centenarians. 
    Many centenarians said they kept up with popular culture by listening to music or videos through computers, and 11% said they had watched a video on YouTube. Thirty per cent said the recent recession was more severe than the Great Depression, 40% walked or hiked every day and 1% used Nintendo’s Wii Fit. Three quarters ate a healthy diet daily and nearly a third opted for organic foods. REUTERS

Publication: Times Of India Hyderabad;Date: May 10, 2010;Section: Main  Edition; Page: 12

Missed Census? A call or email can ensure you are also counted

Missed Census? A call or email can ensure you are also counted

New Delhi: Have you been left out of the Census exercise? Then just call up or email the authorities to inform them about the ‘miss’ and they will soon dispatch officials to include your household in the count. 
    The office of the Census Commissioner of India has launched a toll-free call centre helpline number — 1800 110 111 — for citizens if they have been missed by the Census officials during the enumeration process. The call centre will then route the missing report to the official concerned, who will subsequently ask the enumerators in his jurisdiction to pay a visit to the citizen on a priority basis, a Census official said. 
    An individual can also send an e-mail to ‘rgoffice.rgi@nic.in’ informing the Census authorities that they have not been counted, the official said. 
    The helpline and email can be utilised both for the Census exercise and the enumeration under the National Population Register, the official added. 
    “All the states and Union Territories have earmarked the date for commencement of the exercise and if any citizen finds that his family has not been covered, he or she can inform us,” he said. 
    Apart from the online and telephone facilities, citizens can also inform the local tehsildar, ward officer of his area — who is the designated officer for Census — about the non-inclusion. The commissioner, collector, or district magistrate can also be contacted in such cases. 
    The Census would cover all 640 districts, 5,767 tehsils, 7,742 towns and more than six lakh villages in the country. More than 24 crore households will be visited and 1.20 billion people enumerated during this exercise. 
    To carry out this massive exercise, more than 2.5 million people will be engaged, including retired government employees. PTI

Publication: Times Of India Hyderabad;Date: May 10, 2010;Section: Main  Edition; Page: 8

We Can’t Reinvent the Automobile

We Can’t Reinvent the Automobile

Question: What is the major problem right now in transportation?

Michael Schrage: The major problem with transportation technology and transportation policy is that you have a battle between utopians who believe that they can get whatever they want, faster, better, cheaper, and the pragmatist, the hard ball economic types who say, "No, no, no, let's ban the car from the city, let's create calming zones, zero-emission vehicles," etc., etc.  You have a real dialectic, a real tension, and my view is, when you have that kind of schizophrenia, when you have that kind of chasm, not just of technologies and expectations, but of values, I think you get into a lot of gridlock--pun intended.

Question: Are there any promising advancements that will take us into that next era of transportation?

Michael Schrage:  Oh, my gosh!  There's so many things going on that are so exciting that it's not clear to me what's the best bet.  We have smart vehicles, smart devices, smarter people, better sensors, more information, the ability to have the technology act in a more nimble way.  We have the ability to play with tax policy and congestion charges.  So to me, the question is going to be, there's a tension between disruptive innovation and rapid iderative incremental innovation.  But if you have enough incremental innovation in a short period of time, you got a revolution.  You know, the simple model for that is like a Mapquest, or putting an accelerometer in an iPhone.  The fact of the matter is, between mobile phones, between iPhones, between Rim's, between GPS, every car in the world, every bicycle in the world, can be made smarter.  Heck, we can make every street corner, every streetlamp smarter, more nimble, more agile.  The issue is, what's the organizing principal underlying that?  Haven't a clue. 

Question: Do you think we need to build on what we have, or revolutionize mobility?

Michael Schrage:  Being an MIT person, I'm very, very sympathetic to that view of, gee, let's just start from scratch, let's reinvent everything.  But basically, I think it's a bunch of crap.  You know, that's basically like saying, gee, we've sequenced the human genome, let's reengineer human beings so they'll make less, they'll take up less space, they'll do less waste, they'll be more energy efficient.  As I said earlier, there's always going to be a tension between the incremental and the revolutionary.  Folks at MIT tend to self-select towards the revolutionary side, but ordinary human beings, typical human beings, human beings who have, shall we say, real lives, not MIT lives, are more prepared to have a mix of the disruptive innovation and the incremental innovation.  And that's how I think that's going to play out, particularly in transportation policy.  I don't believe people are going to give up on the wheels of a car for the foreseeable future.

Question: Is there something we’ll have to give up in order to get there?

Michael Schrage:  Well, you know, frankly I don't care if there's an internal combustion engine in a car, a fuel cell in a car, a battery in a car—I don't care.  My friends who are incredibly green care a lot.  Now, do I think they've actually done the math and calculated the carbon footprint of fuel cells versus batteries versus internal combustion engines throughout the entire supply and value chain?  Heck, no.  And I think that's where we're going to see a lot of the policy battles because there are all manner of ways of allocating costs and responsibilities for the carbon footprint of an automobile, for the carbon footprint of a person.  Or should we say the carbon tire track?

Question: Will we ever not have a congestion problem?

Michael Schrage:  We will always have congestion problems.  The issue is what's tolerable.  If you had told me that I would be on a 40-minute commute, I would say you're crazy, but I've gotten adjusted to it.

By the way, let's deal with that as an example. 25 years ago, being stuck in traffic was a horrible, horrible waste of time.  If you got a mobile phone, if your kids are watching TV in the back seat, it's not so bad!  It's not so bad.  Now, what transportation planner anticipated the impact of mobile phones in the car and TV screens, LCD's in the back seat?  None of them!  None of them!  And heck, I've read a lot of science fiction; I didn't see those scenarios being played out by Isaac Asimov or Harlan Ellison either.

Recorded on January 22, 2010

Global warming: Future temperatures could exceed livable limits, researchers find

Summary
ScienceDaily (2010-05-05) -- Worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries. Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable "wet-bulb" temperature and found it could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios. A warming of 21 degrees Fahrenheit would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment.



For Full story - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100504155413.htm