Private
Arsenic in the water of private wells in New England is more widespread than previously thought and its threat to residents may be growing because of increasing private well use, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. Chronic exposure to small amounts of arsenic has been linked to cancer. But people can keep their water's arsenic levels in check by careful monitoring and filtering, the researchers add.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board is drawing together some of the nation's most experienced investigators and safety experts from the aviation, naval nuclear propulsion, medical, scientific and academic communities to determine the cause of the February 1, 2003 space shuttle accident.
A little-known organization that canvasses private industry to quickly find and develop innovative solutions to problems inherent in fighting terrorism may be emerging from the shadows. The Technical Support Working Group seeks "better ideas" from industry for use by military and other government and civilian agencies' counterterrorism missions, said Jeffrey M. David, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Defense's Combating Terrorism Technology Support Office.
An ongoing national shortage of a vaccine that prevents meningitis and pneumonia in children has left doctors scrambling to provide even the minimum number of shots, and has exposed gaps in the nation's "patchwork" vaccine system, the first-ever in-depth study of the problem finds.
Only 58 percent of patient care physicians in California are accepting new patients with HMO coverage, and the "California Model" of loose networks of private practice physicians organized into large managed care practice organizations is unraveling, according to University of California research. "California led the nation's charge into managed care. Our study of the state's physicians tells us that California has now sounded the retreat," said Kevin Grumbach, MD, director of the Center for California Health Workforce Studies. "Private physicians are starting to abandon HMOs, IPAs and managed care networks."
Black Americans' fruit and vegetable intake increased by 32 percent for each additional supermarket in the neighborhoods where they lived, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health study. White Americans' fruit and vegetable consumption increased by 11 percent with the presence of one or more supermarket in their neighborhoods, the study showed. "We don't know why we saw a larger influence of supermarkets on the diets of black Americans compared to white Americans," said Dr. Kimberly Morland of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. "Based on our previous research showing a lack of private transportation in predominately black neighborhoods, we suspect that white Americans may have a larger geographic area in which to select places to patronize.
An international research consortium has launched an approximately $100 million public-private effort to create the next generation map of the human genome. Called the International HapMap Project, the new venture is aimed at speeding the discovery of genes related to common illnesses such as asthma, cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
PC users of the world beware! A new worm called BugBear is making the rounds, and New Scientist says it reflects a worrying new trend in virus code. Instead of disabling your computer, or turning it into a denial of service pod to flood other machines with garbage, BugBear contains a Trojan horse program that can collect credit card details, passwords and other private information stored from a computer and send it to a hacker. "When run, the Trojan disables anti-virus programs running on your machine," New Scientists says. "It then installs a 'keyboard sniffing' program that remains in the background and copies every keystroke on your keyboard and saves them to a file. At some point later it opens a network connection and transmits the file to its creator, or bundles it up and sends it out as an email." One side effect of the worm is that it tries to mail itself to any other machines on your network, including printers. So if you see unexpected, long junk printouts spewing for the LaserJet, you ought to get checked for infection.
See also:
>>BugBear at Sophos
Wired.com carries a gee-whiz tale from the Office of Naval Research on development of an army of drones that would fight the battles of tomorrow. It all sounds very Star Wars --- and expensive. But the notion is that human commanders at the top would provide goals that a network of unmanned but highly-networked machines would work to achieve. That could be taking a hill in a combat zone, capturing a known enemy, or helping rescue disaster victims. One wonders who such an army would fight (the Chinese army of 2020? A resurgent Russia?) But maybe this will be one of those ideas that die on the vine in the armed services but find a robust future in the private sector. The original technology, after all, came from drones built to track migrating whales.
