America
According to the Center for Disease Control, 9 million young people in America are overweight, making the need to promote nutrition and health a public priority. Teaching children about healthy eating habits is an important part of student health education in public schools. According to a recent study published in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, technology-based teaching was more effective in increasing adolescent development of self-efficacy for healthy eating.
As part of a long-term effort to restore the view of scenic vistas in our national parks and wilderness areas, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt signed a rule that would cut emissions of air pollutants that reduce visibility. The proposal amends EPA's 1999 Regional Haze Rule, which requires the installation of best available retrofit technology (BART) on older facilities emitting pollution that states determine harms visibility in specially protected areas.
Researchers studying the environmental consequences of acid rain have reached an important milestone, adding evidence for a theory that has been the focus of much scientific debate. Publishing in the December, 2003 issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, a team at the University of Maine reported that a modest addition of acid in a paired watershed experiment resulted in a decrease of crucial nutrients in forest soils.
Despite growing population and increasing electricity production, water use in the United States remains fairly stable, according to a new report released today by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS report shows that in 2000, Americans used 408 billion gallons of water per day, a number that has remained fairly stable since 1985 and a sign that conservation is working. In the report, Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000, USGS researchers found that the chief water users for the Nation are power generation, agriculture and public water supply. The USGS report also finds that the personal use of water is rising, but not faster than population change.
As hybrid electric cars become more commonplace on America's highways, the U.S. Navy is working to bring hybrid electric ships to the high seas. The Office of Naval Research is developing innovative propulsion systems based on new fuel-cell technology for efficient generation of electrical power--and greater design flexibility--for future ships. To ensure a relatively quick transition to this promising technology, ONR is funding development of a method to extract hydrogen from diesel fuel.
Sometimes the most extreme environment for life isn't at the bottom of the ocean or inside a volcano. It's just south of Chicago. Illinois groundwater scientists have found microbial communities thriving in the slag dumps of the Lake Calumet region of southeast Chicago where the water can reach extraordinary alkalinity of pH 12.8. That's comparable to caustic soda and floor strippers -- far beyond known naturally occurring alkaline environments.
Mars is kind of like Texas: things are just bigger there. In addition to the biggest canyon and biggest volcano in the solar system, Mars has now been found to have sand ripples twice as tall as they would be on Earth. Initial measurements of some of the Red Planet's dunes and ripples using stereo-images from the Mars Orbiter Camera onboard the Mars Global Surveyor have revealed ripple features reaching almost 20 feet high and dunes towering at 300 feet.
The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park may be the key to maintaining groves of cottonwood trees that were well on their way to localized extinction, and is working to rebalance a stream ecosystem in the park for the first time in seven decades, Oregon State University scientists say in two new studies.
Every 45 seconds, someone in America experiences a stroke. This week, researchers announced that compounds in cranberry may potentially offer a way to reduce stroke damage. A preliminary rat cell tissue study ? led by principal investigator Dr. Catherine Neto at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, who presented the findings at the American Chemical Society meeting in New York ? suggests that cranberry may protect against the brain cell damage that occurs during a stroke. According to the study, cranberry may reduce the stroke's severity via an antioxidant mechanism during the early stages of stroke, when the most damage occurs.
On June 18, 2002, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake occurred in southern Indiana, followed by a 1.2 magnitude aftershock on June 25, 2002. Because the region of occurrence, the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone, is seismically active, Dr. Won-Young Kim, a seismologist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, conducted research to determine the potential hazard of future earthquakes to this region. His findings suggest that an ancient fault line dating back to the Precambrian era of geological history (from 4.6 billion to 570 million years ago) has become reactivated and was the likely cause of the June 2002 earthquakes. Kim is presenting his findings at the Seismological Society of America in May, and publishing in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Archaeologists have found a 4,000-year-old gourd fragment that bears an archaic image of the Staff God ? the principal deity in South America during thousands of years. "Like the cross, the Staff God is a clearly recognizable religious icon," says Jonathan Haas, MacArthur curator of North American anthropology at The Field Museum. "This appears to be the oldest identifiable religious icon found in the Americas. It indicates that organized religion began in the Andes more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought."
Baby fat may be cuddly to new parents but pediatricians are increasingly warning families about serious medical problems resulting from baby fat that never goes away. Type 2 diabetes is on the increase in overweight and obese children in America. According to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center pediatric endocrinologist David Geller, M.D., Ph.D. "Childhood obesity is the primary reason we are seeing such a huge increase in type 2 diabetes in kids today. Clearly there is an inexorable increase in body girth and body mass in our children which needs to be taken seriously in order to avoid a lifetime of physical and psychological problems."
Discrimination in many social and institutional environments poses an important threat to the health and well-being of gay and lesbian seniors and their families. This problem exists despite changes in attitude in recent years towards gays and lesbians, according to a recent study.
From its base in America, the gambling industry is exporting technology and know-how to often fragile political systems in Asia and the Middle East, causing conditions that could threaten both U.S. and world security, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign argues in a law journal article. The lightning spread of "Western-style" gambling overseas has increased the problems of addicted and problem gamblers, organized crime and alleged corruption in such countries as Malaysia, North Korea, the Philippines, South Korea and the strife-torn West Bank of Israel, according to John W. Kindt, an Illinois professor of business and legal policy.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon Town Hall meeting that his department is still "not yet arranged to deal successfully" with the new threat of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, and that a reorganization he began before September 11, 2001 must continue.
