Scrapping plans for a badger cull trial in Wales is a "devastating blow" for farmers, which will put back efforts to tackle bovine tuberculosis for years, industry leaders have warned.
Environment minister John Griffiths has opted for a vaccination policy to reduce the disease in Wales after reviewing scientific evidence and has urged the farming industry to work with him on this.
"At present I am not satisfied that a cull of badgers would be necessary to bring about a substantial reduction in cases of TB in cattle," he told a Plenary session of the Welsh Government.
But Carl Padgett, president of the British Veterinary Association, said it was clear that the decision was based on politics not science. "It will potentially set back our efforts to tackle this devastating disease by many years," he said.
"The Science Review states that no scientific evidence exists to assess whether vaccinating badgers will reduce the incidence of TB in cattle. Vaccinating infected badgers has no effect and we know that there is a high level of infection in the badger population."
John Griffiths set out what he termed as the government's "challenging and progressive plans" for dealing with bovine TB over the next four years.
He acknowledged that TB had a significant financial and social impact on farmers in Wales and insisted he was personally committed to the eradication of the disease in the principality.
He had considered a number of options.
"After careful consideration I have decided to pursue a badger vaccination project within the Intensive Action Area,'' he said.
The minister has asked Wales' chief veterinary officer, Dr Christianne Glossop, to design a five-year vaccination programme which will begin in the Intensive Action Area. Other areas where vaccination could be expected to contribute to TB eradication will also be considered.
But the Farmers' Union of Wales questioned the feasibility of vaccination. The union's bovine TB spokesman, Brian Walters, said: "According to the experts who have conducted the most significant research to date into badger vaccine, it would require a massive trial covering thousands of square miles of land just to establish whether vaccination can have an impact on cattle herd breakdown.'' He accused the Welsh Government of a "cowardly betrayal" of Welsh farmers.
And Stephen James, deputy president of NFU Cymru, said vaccination had no chance of success unless diseased badgers in the IAA were culled first.
Plaid Cymru's rural affairs spokesman, Llyr Huws Gruffydd, said the relationship between government and the farming community was at its lowest point since devolution.
But RSPCA Cymru said it was relieved at the decision on vaccination. It strongly believes vaccination coupled with increased levels of cattle testing, improved bio-security and control on the movement of cattle is the way forward.
Source Citation
"Scrapping plans for a badger cull trial in Wales is a 'devastating blow' for farmers, which will put back efforts to tackle bovine tuberculosis for years, industry leaders have warned." Farmers Weekly 23 Mar. 2012. Environmental Studies and Policy. Web. 30 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA283954773&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=PPES&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A283954773
Showing posts with label scuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scuba. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Warmer waters aid some corals: Western Australian reefs faring betterthan eastern
Corals on Australia's Great Barrier Reef have fallen on hard times recently. But on the opposite side of the continent, their west coast brethren have been living the good life for at least a century.
Global warming may be helping these creatures out, a new study finds. "To date, it is the changes in temperature that are having the dominant impact on coral growth," says Timothy Cooper, a marine biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Crawley.
Cooper and his colleagues collected samples of Porites coral at six spots off Australia in the southeastern Indian Ocean. Porites build skeletons with layers that, like tree rings, can measure growth.
None of the creatures had slowed their growth in the last 110 years, the team reports in the Feb. 3 Science. Those at the southernmost sites have even been building reefs faster as surface waters there have warmed markedly.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
On the Great Barrier Reef, the same type of coral is stressed, previous work has shown. Porites grew 14 percent slower in 2005 than in 1990, a slowdown blamed on both warming waters and ocean acidification linked to rising carbon dioxide. About a third of all atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are soaked up by the oceans, where the gas reacts to make carbonic acid. That lowers the water's pH and levels of dissolved carbonate, the raw material corals use to build skeletons.
Ocean acidification is expected to have a greater effect at some of the higher latitudes surveyed in the new study, where dissolved carbonate is less plentiful to begin with. But Cooper and colleagues found no sign that changing pH bothered the corals they sampled. Acidification may still be a problem in the long run, but for now temperature seems to be the bigger factor. Warmth seems to make the reef builders more productive.
"It is good to see some corals doing well in the warming," says marine biologist Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. But he cautions that Australia's west coast may ultimately be heading for a downturn as well. Patches of coral in other parts of Western Australia have already been spotted bleaching--spitting out the symbiotic algae that keeps them alive--when struck by surges of warm water.
Powell, Devin
Source Citation
Powell, Devin. "Warmer waters aid some corals: Western Australian reefs faring better than eastern." Science News 10 Mar. 2012: 15. General Science Collection. Web. 24 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA283156727&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=PPGS&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A283156727
Global warming may be helping these creatures out, a new study finds. "To date, it is the changes in temperature that are having the dominant impact on coral growth," says Timothy Cooper, a marine biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Crawley.
Cooper and his colleagues collected samples of Porites coral at six spots off Australia in the southeastern Indian Ocean. Porites build skeletons with layers that, like tree rings, can measure growth.
None of the creatures had slowed their growth in the last 110 years, the team reports in the Feb. 3 Science. Those at the southernmost sites have even been building reefs faster as surface waters there have warmed markedly.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
On the Great Barrier Reef, the same type of coral is stressed, previous work has shown. Porites grew 14 percent slower in 2005 than in 1990, a slowdown blamed on both warming waters and ocean acidification linked to rising carbon dioxide. About a third of all atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are soaked up by the oceans, where the gas reacts to make carbonic acid. That lowers the water's pH and levels of dissolved carbonate, the raw material corals use to build skeletons.
Ocean acidification is expected to have a greater effect at some of the higher latitudes surveyed in the new study, where dissolved carbonate is less plentiful to begin with. But Cooper and colleagues found no sign that changing pH bothered the corals they sampled. Acidification may still be a problem in the long run, but for now temperature seems to be the bigger factor. Warmth seems to make the reef builders more productive.
"It is good to see some corals doing well in the warming," says marine biologist Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. But he cautions that Australia's west coast may ultimately be heading for a downturn as well. Patches of coral in other parts of Western Australia have already been spotted bleaching--spitting out the symbiotic algae that keeps them alive--when struck by surges of warm water.
Powell, Devin
Source Citation
Powell, Devin. "Warmer waters aid some corals: Western Australian reefs faring better than eastern." Science News 10 Mar. 2012: 15. General Science Collection. Web. 24 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA283156727&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=PPGS&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A283156727
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Health & safety
April 27, on this day most of the college juniors who hope to attend medical school will take the Medical College Admission Test; this year's test is a completely new one, and is designed to put greater emphasis on logical reasoning and communications skills, and less on math and science. In addition to answering multiple-choice questions, those taking the MCAT will be required for the first time to write essays. (Sample topics from an MCAT practice test: "Price is not necessarily a reflection of value"; "In politics, good intentions cannot justify bad actions.") "The impetus for including the essay," says Dr. Karen Mitchell, an official at the Association of American Medical Colleges, which oversees the MCAT, "came from a number of sources, one being reports from medical-school deans who felt their students could not communicate well either in writing or orally, and another being the criticism of doctors in general for being technocrats and not allowing patients to participate in their own health care."
Source Citation
"Health & safety." The Atlantic Apr. 1991: 14. Popular Magazines. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA201490948&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A201490948
April 27, on this day most of the college juniors who hope to attend medical school will take the Medical College Admission Test; this year's test is a completely new one, and is designed to put greater emphasis on logical reasoning and communications skills, and less on math and science. In addition to answering multiple-choice questions, those taking the MCAT will be required for the first time to write essays. (Sample topics from an MCAT practice test: "Price is not necessarily a reflection of value"; "In politics, good intentions cannot justify bad actions.") "The impetus for including the essay," says Dr. Karen Mitchell, an official at the Association of American Medical Colleges, which oversees the MCAT, "came from a number of sources, one being reports from medical-school deans who felt their students could not communicate well either in writing or orally, and another being the criticism of doctors in general for being technocrats and not allowing patients to participate in their own health care."
Source Citation
"Health & safety." The Atlantic Apr. 1991: 14. Popular Magazines. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA201490948&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A201490948
Email: leonard.wilson2009@hotmail.com(Web-Page) http://scuba.diver2007.googlepages.com
(Album / Profile) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10028&id=1661531726&l=c7a1668cdcEmail: leonard.wilson2009@hotmail.com
Monday, March 5, 2012
Making House Calls Via Home Computers
Online disease management programs help the chronically ill closely monitor their conditions
IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS since Shirl Hutton received a free personal computer from LifeMasters, a disease management company, and began using the Internet to track and monitor her heart condition. At 76, she feels more aware and in control of her health thanks to the Internet, but less in control of her new habit: Web surfing and e-mailing her children and grandchildren.
"Being on the Internet is great, but it cut into my reading time, so I've cut hack." said the energetic woman in a recent interview in her sunlit home facing the Pacific ocean in Santa Cruz. Calif. After years of taking medication for a weak heart valve, Hutton. a trim and stylish swimmer and walker, suffered a heart attack a year and a half ago.
LifeMasters, based in Newport Beach and South San Francisco, Calif., was founded in 1994 but just started marketing its programs about a year ago. Initially it is working with its HMO customers to serve patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) and diabetes, but it plans to eventually include those with lung disease and other chronic conditions.
The company appears to be the first player in the field to introduce an Internet component--thanks to an investment by Intel Corp.--to its disease management programs. Some rivals, including Cardiac Solutions, based in Buffalo Grove, ill., are planning to follow suit.
Physicians whose patients enroll in a LifeMasters program lay out a treatment program, and the company's nurses teach patients to monitor their health at home between office visits.
For those who have never used a computer or the Internet, LifeMasters' technical staff offers computer training to get them started. (Beyond the specific Intel-funded pilot programs, LifeMasters does not plan to give away PCs to patients.)
Then, like Ms. Hutton, patients log on daily from home to their password-protected, customized Web site, designed by LifeMasters, and take a few minutes to measure and report their vital signs and answer a few questions regarding their illness.
Patients are assigned a personal LifeMasters nurse (whom the company likens to a personal trainer for weightlifters), who calls them whenever they answer "yes" to the final question or report any aberration.
Nurses also call their patients every week to discuss their health in detail, including their medications and any visits they have made or might need to make to their physician.
LifeMasters executives are betting that, of the estimated 100 million chronically ill patients in the United States, the large percentage who are not in critical condition are healthy enough to use a computer and thereby take more control of their medical care.
Most of the patients it targets are over 50, and many are in their 70s and 80s.
Intel knows well that the elderly are taking to the Internet in droves. That means the promise of more Intel-inside computers, and more internet-aided LifeMasters SelfCare programs in U.S. households down the road.
According to market research firm Jupiter Communications, 14.8 percent of people over 50 have an online account. That number is expected to rise to 33.6 percent in 2003.
Hutton is one of about 150 CHF patients in Santa Cruz whom LifeMasters has enrolled in a pilot study, largely funded by Intel, through Physicians Medical Group.
A third of the patients were randomly selected to use computers to track their disease; another third are using an automated telephone system, and the rest are a control group, receiving daily calls from staff nurses.
Chris Selecky, president and chief executive officer of LifeMasters, said it's too soon to tell if patients using the company's Web-based program are making doctor or emergency room visits with less frequency, but they are clearly entering their vital data at least as regularly as they would using the more conventional interactive voice response (IVR) method.
"Our philosophy is to do whatever it takes to make patients successful," Selecky said. "That's why we use multiple systems--the phone, IVR, the Internet, and eventually paging devices. The Internet is the most cost-effective means."
The advantage of using Internet technology, she said, is that it already exists, it's flexible, it's nearly ubiquitous, and it offers the opportunity for community.
For community-building measures, LifeMasters provides bulletin boards and chat rooms for its Web-connected patients, and it encourages them to contact each other directly and to access health-related Web sites.
Selecky said managed-care companies and agencies have begun embracing the disease management concept in the past six months, partly out of a "huge backlash in public opinion" against HMOs and demands for better care, especially for the chronically ill. As part of that trend, she said, "there's been a real sea change [by health organizations] to incorporate the Internet as a tool."
Rich Jacobsen, an investment banker at Bear Steams who follows the health care industry, said LifeMasters' foray into cyberspace is well timed. With HMOs trying to cut costs, and with doctors less willing to assume the risks they might have accepted a couple of years ago, HMOs are looking for outside vendors such as disease management companies to help them improve care while curbing costs, he said.
"In general, disease management companies are offering the prospect of higher-quality care at lower cost," Jacobsen said. "LifeMasters is ahead of the game, in general, in its move to an Internet-based strategy."
The Internet strategy has helped woo investors, too. LifeMasters has received three rounds of private financing, from Weiss Peck & Greer, Pacific Venture Group, InnoCal, Vantage Point Venture Partners, and Piper Jaffray Ventures; last year Intel added to its health care investments with an undisclosed handout. Other funders did not disclose their amounts either.
And what about an "exit strategy" in this frothy market? "At this stage, I don't want to predict whether the next step will be an IPO or an acquisition or what. We're all certainly open to all those," Ledecky said of LifeMasters, which is unprofitable on top of scant, and undisclosed, revenue.
LifeMasters' key rival, Cardiac Solutions, is less enamored of the Internet. The company serves roughly 10,000 chronically ill patients, most of them suffering from heart failure.
Jean Fultin, head of marketing for Cardiac Solutions, said the company plans within the next year and a half to incorporate some aspects of Internet technology into its programs.
"We'll incorporate technology where it makes sense," Fultin said. "One pitfall of technology is that with some disease states commingled (diabetes and congestive heart failure, for instance), lots of human intervention is needed to pick up on subtle questions."
search: PERSONALIZED SERVICES
Source Citation
Moran, Susan. "Making House Calls Via Home Computers." Internet World 3 May 1999: 44. General OneFile. Web. 5 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA54613008&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54613008
Online disease management programs help the chronically ill closely monitor their conditions
IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS since Shirl Hutton received a free personal computer from LifeMasters, a disease management company, and began using the Internet to track and monitor her heart condition. At 76, she feels more aware and in control of her health thanks to the Internet, but less in control of her new habit: Web surfing and e-mailing her children and grandchildren.
"Being on the Internet is great, but it cut into my reading time, so I've cut hack." said the energetic woman in a recent interview in her sunlit home facing the Pacific ocean in Santa Cruz. Calif. After years of taking medication for a weak heart valve, Hutton. a trim and stylish swimmer and walker, suffered a heart attack a year and a half ago.
LifeMasters, based in Newport Beach and South San Francisco, Calif., was founded in 1994 but just started marketing its programs about a year ago. Initially it is working with its HMO customers to serve patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) and diabetes, but it plans to eventually include those with lung disease and other chronic conditions.
The company appears to be the first player in the field to introduce an Internet component--thanks to an investment by Intel Corp.--to its disease management programs. Some rivals, including Cardiac Solutions, based in Buffalo Grove, ill., are planning to follow suit.
Physicians whose patients enroll in a LifeMasters program lay out a treatment program, and the company's nurses teach patients to monitor their health at home between office visits.
For those who have never used a computer or the Internet, LifeMasters' technical staff offers computer training to get them started. (Beyond the specific Intel-funded pilot programs, LifeMasters does not plan to give away PCs to patients.)
Then, like Ms. Hutton, patients log on daily from home to their password-protected, customized Web site, designed by LifeMasters, and take a few minutes to measure and report their vital signs and answer a few questions regarding their illness.
Patients are assigned a personal LifeMasters nurse (whom the company likens to a personal trainer for weightlifters), who calls them whenever they answer "yes" to the final question or report any aberration.
Nurses also call their patients every week to discuss their health in detail, including their medications and any visits they have made or might need to make to their physician.
LifeMasters executives are betting that, of the estimated 100 million chronically ill patients in the United States, the large percentage who are not in critical condition are healthy enough to use a computer and thereby take more control of their medical care.
Most of the patients it targets are over 50, and many are in their 70s and 80s.
Intel knows well that the elderly are taking to the Internet in droves. That means the promise of more Intel-inside computers, and more internet-aided LifeMasters SelfCare programs in U.S. households down the road.
According to market research firm Jupiter Communications, 14.8 percent of people over 50 have an online account. That number is expected to rise to 33.6 percent in 2003.
Hutton is one of about 150 CHF patients in Santa Cruz whom LifeMasters has enrolled in a pilot study, largely funded by Intel, through Physicians Medical Group.
A third of the patients were randomly selected to use computers to track their disease; another third are using an automated telephone system, and the rest are a control group, receiving daily calls from staff nurses.
Chris Selecky, president and chief executive officer of LifeMasters, said it's too soon to tell if patients using the company's Web-based program are making doctor or emergency room visits with less frequency, but they are clearly entering their vital data at least as regularly as they would using the more conventional interactive voice response (IVR) method.
"Our philosophy is to do whatever it takes to make patients successful," Selecky said. "That's why we use multiple systems--the phone, IVR, the Internet, and eventually paging devices. The Internet is the most cost-effective means."
The advantage of using Internet technology, she said, is that it already exists, it's flexible, it's nearly ubiquitous, and it offers the opportunity for community.
For community-building measures, LifeMasters provides bulletin boards and chat rooms for its Web-connected patients, and it encourages them to contact each other directly and to access health-related Web sites.
Selecky said managed-care companies and agencies have begun embracing the disease management concept in the past six months, partly out of a "huge backlash in public opinion" against HMOs and demands for better care, especially for the chronically ill. As part of that trend, she said, "there's been a real sea change [by health organizations] to incorporate the Internet as a tool."
Rich Jacobsen, an investment banker at Bear Steams who follows the health care industry, said LifeMasters' foray into cyberspace is well timed. With HMOs trying to cut costs, and with doctors less willing to assume the risks they might have accepted a couple of years ago, HMOs are looking for outside vendors such as disease management companies to help them improve care while curbing costs, he said.
"In general, disease management companies are offering the prospect of higher-quality care at lower cost," Jacobsen said. "LifeMasters is ahead of the game, in general, in its move to an Internet-based strategy."
The Internet strategy has helped woo investors, too. LifeMasters has received three rounds of private financing, from Weiss Peck & Greer, Pacific Venture Group, InnoCal, Vantage Point Venture Partners, and Piper Jaffray Ventures; last year Intel added to its health care investments with an undisclosed handout. Other funders did not disclose their amounts either.
And what about an "exit strategy" in this frothy market? "At this stage, I don't want to predict whether the next step will be an IPO or an acquisition or what. We're all certainly open to all those," Ledecky said of LifeMasters, which is unprofitable on top of scant, and undisclosed, revenue.
LifeMasters' key rival, Cardiac Solutions, is less enamored of the Internet. The company serves roughly 10,000 chronically ill patients, most of them suffering from heart failure.
Jean Fultin, head of marketing for Cardiac Solutions, said the company plans within the next year and a half to incorporate some aspects of Internet technology into its programs.
"We'll incorporate technology where it makes sense," Fultin said. "One pitfall of technology is that with some disease states commingled (diabetes and congestive heart failure, for instance), lots of human intervention is needed to pick up on subtle questions."
search: PERSONALIZED SERVICES
Source Citation
Moran, Susan. "Making House Calls Via Home Computers." Internet World 3 May 1999: 44. General OneFile. Web. 5 Mar. 2012.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA54613008&v=2.1&u=22054_acld&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54613008
Email: leonard.wilson2009@hotmail.com(Web-Page) http://scuba.diver2007.googlepages.com(Album / Profile) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10028&id=1661531726&l=c7a1668cdcEmail: leonard.wilson2009@hotmail.com
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