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According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Formaldehyde exposure more than fifteen minutes. After that, people exposed can begin experiencing symptoms. To date, approximately 17,000 people have experienced health complications allegedly due to Formaldehyde exposure from living in their FEMA trailer.

"We have such a good relationship with the Myanmar people, and we never empower ourselves," said Cathy Bradner, 52, preparing to take a shipment of water purification tablets and filtration equipment into Yangon, the country's largest city.

"We always empower them, and I think that's why they like us."

Visas have become a sought-after prize for Western aid workers, foreign disaster specialists and journalists waiting for permission to enter Myanmar following the May 3 cyclone that flooded a large swath of the low-lying Irrawaddy delta. More than 60,000 people were killed or are missing, and more than a million are homeless, according to the U.N.

Some aid has started trickling in, with the first U.S. shipment delivered Monday by a military cargo plane. But the authoritarian government has restricted most foreigners from leaving the airport after supplies are unloaded. Many agencies fear relief is not reaching those who desperately need it, as diarrhea spreads and a lack of food and clean water heightens fears that thousands more could die.

"It's killing (victims) that we're sitting here," said Rahul Singh, a paramedic with Toronto-based Global Medic, who was stuck in Bangkok waiting for the go-ahead to enter Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

"I was grinding my teeth so hard I snapped a tooth. That's how frustrated I am."

When Singh found out about the Bradners' access to the country, he asked them to carry in the aid group's supplies. On Sunday, Curt Bradner, 53, got in, followed a day later by colleague Bryan Berenguer of Virginia Beach, Va. They hauled in water filtration pumps that run on car batteries and more than a million purification tablets — enough to provide clean drinking water to about 20,000 people.

"We are giving it to local (aid agencies) who are distributing it out to needy areas," Berenguer said by telephone from Yangon. "We're basically trying to bring things in and coordinate with" Myanmar-run aid groups.

The military junta is extremely distrustful of the United States, which has been the loudest critic of its human rights record. But the Bradners, who spend nine months of the year in Myanmar working on their water project, Thirst-Aid, and the rest fundraising in the U.S., say their experience shows Americans can work with the regime.

"I really believe the world wants Burma to look like a horrible place, but it's not always evil," Cathy Bradner said.

While Myanmar's military regime encourages tourism, it limits most stays to two weeks, with longer ones granted to businessmen, especially those who fuel the economy, as well as U.N. and other aid groups. But long-term visas that allow travel in and out of the country, like those granted to the Bradners, are rare.

Cathy Bradner said she and the others at Thirst-Aid realize this rare opportunity allows them to ferry in much-needed aid.

"We're mules, we carry things in," she said. "Despite the disaster some really positive things are going on. The monks are helping distribute aid and they are setting up distribution centers."

Since the cyclone struck, even the United Nations has been having problems getting visas for its aid workers, especially Westerners. And for the few allowed in, most are confined to Yangon — hours away from the worst-hit delta areas where people are living without shelter and drinking water contaminated by dead bodies and animal carcasses.

The Bradners, who married 33 years ago, sold their house in Gunnison, Colo., along with their small engineering business and all of their possessions to go on a world tandem bicycling trek nearly a decade ago. They started working with Burmese orphans during that adventure and vowed to find a way to help people living in the impoverished country.

During the 2004 Asian tsunami, they used their mechanical engineering background to make ceramic water filters for victims in Thailand. They brought the technology to Myanmar in 2006 and say they started Thirst-Aid with the backing of UNICEF.

It is run by Burmese, who produce water filters at two factories. One was damaged by the cyclone, but Cathy Bradner said they are producing about 100 filters a day for victims desperate for clean water.

The filters, which resemble ceramic flower pots, are made out of clay with a rice-husk lining. They are porous so the water can filter through, trapping nearly all of the bacteria. A colloidal silver coating is added to kill any remaining bacteria.

The filters sell for about $3 each and will last as long as they're not broken. But the Bradners do not profit from them.

"We don't get a dime," Cathy Bradner said, adding that the plan was always to turn the project over to Burmese — a local potter who operates one factory in Twante and a Myanmar non-governmental group in charge of the other in Yangon. "We just come and help set them up and build capacity."

They fund the project, which runs on about $75,000 a year, through donations from Rotary and church groups, and by giving slide shows at sporting goods stores, private homes, coffee shops — "begging for dollars" from anyone willing to help, she said.

Daughters Bree Ervin, 29, of Eugene, Ore., and Willow Bradner, 31, of Denver, help with the fundraising, and run the group's Web site.

"I am so entangled in this country," Cathy Bradner said. "It's not about governments, it's about people and they need water."

Overall, nearly 4,900 families have filed claims with the U.S. Court of Claims alleging that vaccines caused autism and other neurological problems in their children. Lawyers for the families are presenting three different theories of how vaccines caused autism. The theory at issue Monday was whether vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal caused autism.

Lynn Ricciardella, a Justice Department lawyer, said that theory has not moved beyond the realm of speculation. She said that the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have rejected any link between thimerosal and autism.

"There is no scientific debate," Ricciardella said. "The debate is over."

Autism is a developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person's ability to communicate and interact with others. Medical experts don't have a comprehensive understanding of what causes autism, but they do know there is a strong hereditary component.

Thimerosal has been removed in recent years from standard childhood vaccines, except flu vaccines that are not packaged in single doses. The CDC says single-dose flu shots currently are available only in limited quantities.

Under a two-decades-old program, individuals claiming injury from a vaccine must file a petition for "no-fault" compensation with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The secretary of Health and Human Services replaces the vaccine manufacturer or vaccine administrator to defend the claim.

Two 10-year-old boys from Portland, Ore., will serve as test cases to determine whether thousands of families can be compensated. Attorneys for the boys will try to show they were happy, healthy and developing normally — but, after being exposed to vaccines with thimerosal, they began to regress.

To win, the attorneys for the two boys, William Mead and Jordan King, will have to show that it's more likely than not that the vaccine actually caused the injury, which they described as regressive autism.

Tom Powers, one of the boys' attorneys, acknowledged that the evidence showing thimerosal led to regressive autism was indirect and circumstantial. Still, it's clear in the case of the two boys that they did not show any symptoms of autism until after they had received all their immunizations.

"Each of them had developed normally and typically well after their first year in life," Powers said.

The attorneys for the two boys said that a study in monkeys showed that mercury could ignite "neuroinflammation" in the brain, and such inflammation is the hallmark of somebody with autism. They also noted that previous studies of thimerosal were focused on autism, rather than on a more rare, specific form of the disorder that they described as regressive autism.

The first witness for the families, Sander Greenland, a professor at the UCLA School of Public Health, said published studies he reviewed failed to separate regressive autism from other types of autism when looking at thimerosal, thus they allow for a substantial association of the vaccines with clearly regressive autism.

Under the vaccine compensation program, officials titled special masters serve as the trial judges. The hearing that began Monday involved three special masters who will hear the evidence and determine whether thimerosal belongs on the list of causes for regressive autism. The rulings are appealable to the Court of Federal Claims.

If the families are successful, they could be entitled to damages that cover lost income after one turns 18 and up to $250,000 for pain and suffering.

Many members of the medical community are skeptical of the families' claims. They worry that the claims about the dangers of vaccines could cause some people to forgo vaccines that prevent illness.

Ricciardella argued that a marketing consultant fanned publicity about the supposed link between thimerosal and autism in a journal called Medical Hypothesis. She described the journal as willing to publish radical ideas, so long as they are coherent. She also said the authors pay to have the article published.

But Powers said those questioning conventional wisdom in the case cannot be easily dismissed.

"These are doctors who are willing to challenge the establishment on behalf of their patients," Powers said.

The court Web site says more than 12,500 claims have been filed since creation of the program in 1987, including more than 5,300 autism cases, and more than $1.7 billion has been paid in claims. It says there is now more than $2.7 billion in a trust fund supported by an excise tax on each dose of vaccine covered by the program.

Silver’s antibacterial properties have been known for thousands of years, and silver nanoparticles offer superior antibacterial activity while being non-toxic.  However, coatings containing antimicrobial agents have failed commercially in the past due to their complex, multi-step preparation methods and high cost of production.

The CCNY/Rice team developed a “green chemistry” approach to synthesize metal nanoparticles in common household paints in situ without using hazardous reagents and solvents.  “We extensively worked on poly-unsaturated hydrocarbon chain containing polymers/oils to devise a novel approach to nanoparticle formation” said Dr. George John, Professor of Chemistry at CCNY and lead author of the article.

Polyunsaturated hydrocarbons undergo auto-oxidation-induced cross-linking, which is similar to lipid peroxidation, the process by which fatty acids are oxidized in biological systems.  During this process a variety of chemically active species called ‘free radicals’ are generated.  These were used by the group as a tool to prepare metal nano-particles in situ in the oil medium.

“The simplicity of the process and economics should allow us to commercialize these paints as a versatile coating material for health and environmental applications” says Dr. Pulickel M. Ajayan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Houston-based Rice University, and co-author.

“Using the same approach we should be able to produce a large variety of nano-particle dispersions useful in applications ranging from healthcare to catalysis,” added co-investigator Dr. Ashavani Kumar, a postdoctoral research associate at Rice.

The nanoparticle embedded coating can be applied like traditional paints to such surfaces as metal, wood, polymers, glass, and ceramics.  The metal nanoparticles show characteristic color but avoid the use of short shelf-life organic pigment paints.

In addition, these coatings exhibited efficient antibacterial activity toward Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).  The antibacterial property is important for hospitals and other public buildings that are prone to bacterial growth, a main cause of infection and disease.

“We have been working on developing various in situ methods for organic soft matter-mediated metal nanoparticle synthesis,” noted Dr. Praveen Kumar Vemula, one of the investigators.  “However, to date, the present approach is the smartest as it is devised based on utilization of naturally occurring process.”

By Anna Boyd

Thursday was not the perfect day for swimming for Debbie Shoemaker of Toledo, Ohio. As she was enjoying a bath in Treasure Island waters, near the city of St. Petersburg she had the unpleasant surprise to have a pelican crashing into her cheek. The bird was apparently diving for fish.
 

by Ron Paul 

The House passed two bills attempting to rehabilitate the housing and mortgage market this week.  There doesn't seem to be any shortage of criticism and blame for the bad decisions, and rightly so.  Lenders and banks do share much of the blame for the overheated market.  Lending standards were relaxed, or even abandoned altogether, creating an exaggerated pool of homebuyers that led to ballooning home prices that many, especially real estate investors, expected to continue forever.  Now that the bubble has burst, the losses are staggering.

The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they're exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.

The attack happened when hackers exploited a security hole in the foundation's publishing software that allowed them to quickly make numerous posts and overwhelm the site's support forums.

Within the hackers' posts were small flashing pictures and links — masquerading as helpful — to pages that exploded with kaleidoscopic images pulsating with different colors.

"They were out to create seizures," said Ken Lowenberg, senior director of Web and print publishing for the foundation.

He said legitimate users are no longer able to post animated images to the support forum or create direct links to other sites, and it is now moderated around the clock. He said the FBI is investigating the breach.

Security experts said the attack highlights the dangers of Web sites giving visitors great freedom to post content to different parts of the site.

In another recent attack, hackers exploited a simple coding vulnerability in Sen. Barack Obama's Web site to redirect users visiting the community blogs section to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's official campaign site.

The hackers who infiltrated the Epilepsy Foundation's site didn't appear to care about profit. The harmful pages didn't appear to try to push down code that would allow the hacker to gain control of the victims' computers, for instance.

By JENNIFER C. KERR – 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Depression, teens and marijuana are a dangerous mix that can lead to dependency, mental illness or suicidal thoughts, according to a White House report being released Friday.

A teen who has been depressed at some point in the past year is more than twice as likely to have used marijuana as teens who have not reported being depressed — 25 percent compared with 12 percent, said the report by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"Marijuana is a more consequential substance of abuse than our culture has treated it in the last 20 years," said John Walters, director of the office. "This is not just youthful experimentation that they'll get over as we used to think in the past."

Smoking marijuana can lead to more serious problems, Walters said in an interview.

For example, using marijuana increases the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 percent, the report said. And teens who smoke pot at least once a month over a yearlong period are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than nonusers, it said.

The report also cited research that showed that teens who smoke marijuana when feeling depressed were more than twice as likely as their peers to abuse or become addicted to pot — 8 percent compared with 3 percent.

Experts who have worked with children say there's nothing harmless about marijuana.

"I've seen many, many kids' lives negatively impacted and taken off track because of marijuana," said Elizabeth Stanley-Salazar, director of adolescent services for Phoenix House treatment centers in California. "It's somewhat Russian roulette. There are so many factors, emotional, psychological, biological. You can't predict the experimentation and how it will impact a kid."

Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, an organization that advocates the decriminalization of marijuana, called the study "an absolutely dishonest report, deliberately confusing correlation with causation."

"This very week the British government's official scientific advisers on illegal drugs issued a report saying they are 'unconvinced that there is a causal relationship between the use of cannabis and any affective disorder,' such as depression, he said.

The drug control policy office analyzed about a dozen studies looking at marijuana use, including research by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Overall, marijuana use among teens has decreased 25 percent since 2001, down to about 2.3 million kids who used pot at least once a month, the drug control office said.

While the drop is encouraging, Walters appealed to parents to recognize signs of possible drug use and depression.

"It's not something you look the other way about when your teen starts appearing careless about their grooming, withdrawing from the family, losing interest in daily activities," Walters said. "Find out what's wrong."

by Science Daily

Preventing hospital infections — from such stubborn bugs as Staphylococcus aureus — is a little easier with a non-toxic, silver-based material. Used in coating, it helps keep hospital air ducts bacterium- and fungus-free. The material is also used in a number of products including athletic footwear, door hardware, pens and business supplies.

DUARTE, Calif.–For more than 6,000 years, humans have used silver to fight germs, also known as microbes. Now, some hospitals are using a silver compound to reduce hospital infections.

You can't see them, but millions of microorganisms are living quietly among us, in places where we least expect them.

 Cancer patient Steve Measer worries about germs a lot. "In the last two months I have been in three separate hospitals." But at the Helford Clinical Research Hospital at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., where he is receiving treatment, microbes are hard to find.

 Dr. James Miser, Chief Executive Officer at City of Hope National Medical Center, says, "The room which we are currently standing is as free of germs as medically possible in a hospital."

This is possible because the ducts delivering air to patients' rooms are coated with a silver-based anti-microbial compound called AgION. It can kill bacteria, viruses and fungus. Jeffrey Trogolo, Chief Technology Officer at AgION Technologies, Inc. in Wakefield, Mass., says, "When the conditions are right, it turns on, and that's where the silver comes out."

 Agion technologies is using silver, a centuries-old germ killer, in a unique compound to coat surfaces and instruments that could spread disease. When bacteria are detected, the compound releases silver ions to the surface, killing existing microbes and any new ones that come along. "We have virtually no organisms grown," Dr. Miser says.

 It's potent enough to kill germs, but is safe to use on virtually any surface. Trogolo says, "It's less toxic than table salt and less irritating than talcum powder. Ultimately we hope this will result in less infections and actually better outcomes for the patients."

 The silver compound can also kill germs in your kitchen, on shopping cart handles, even in your sneakers. It's already used in a number of products including athletic footwear, door hardware, pens and business supplies.