A book that criticizes alternative medicine to treat conditions that have names but no criteria is controversial - because it runs up against a supplement and alternative medicine enabled by governments that believe science can't be trusted
The latest report card on Great Barrier Reef water quality shows signs of improvement, but the health of the marine environment close to the shore remains poor, driven by pollution runoff from the land. Among the good news is that pollution levels in reef waters have declined in the past five years, and most pollutants seem to track towards the pollution reduction targets set for 2018.
It’s been 60 years since the first TV ad was broadcast in the UK. In that time, we’ve moved from the innocent grainy black-and-white “Tingle of Health” of Gibbs SR toothpaste, to the sophisticated hyper-reality of 4K TV and beyond, in lock-step with developing communications technologies. The next 60 years will certainly see an even faster pace of change. So what can we look forward to (or not) in the realm of advertising?
Volkswagen has set aside €6.5 billion to cover the costs of the growing scandal over cheating on emissions tests in the US. Putting a number on the cost further down line will be far harder, however, as it is a crisis which calls into question the ethical credentials of the company and the industry, as well as posing tough questions about the regulators and authorities who were duped.
“If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.” Hsin Hsin MingAlmost every person who walks through my practice doorway is anxious in some way. And so they should be. While their anxiety might be blasting messages at an overly high volume, the messages themselves are worth paying attention to: abusive relationships, significant losses and workplaces that have squeezed their personal, physical and spiritual lives into a corner too small for a hamster to burrow in.
Last week there was another very public case of a journal article being retracted as a result of academic misconduct. This time it was in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), with the lead author – Dr Anna Ahimastos, working at Melbourne’s Baker IDI – reportedly admitting she fabricated data.
Gayle Newland, 25, has been convicted of three counts of sexual assault against a woman who had believed she was in a sexual relationship with a man. Newland’s case has thrown up some very thorny questions about gender and sexual consent – and about what, exactly, we are required by law to reveal to our sexual partners.
In Australian homes, reliable hot water supplies for taking showers or bathing the kids are taken for granted. But this has a significant cost – conventional hot water heaters can account for up to 30% of household energy use and can be significant carbon emitters.One alternative is solar hot water, which can supply more than 90% of household hot water and reduce energy bills by 50-85%, as well as lowering carbon emissions.
There are countless parenting questions that science can’t answer: “is it gross to eat food my child spat out?”, “why do my kids hate wearing pants?” and, of course, “when they grow up, will my kids remember how much I loved them, or just that I made them wear pants?”.Fortunately, there are some important parenting issues science can address. Here are five simple tips for raising healthy children based on scientific studies from the last 12 months,.1. Dads can – and should – help with breastfeeding
This spring, the world learned of a newly discovered missing link between microbes and humans called Lokiarchaeota. The actual story is that the microbe Lokiarchaeota, discovered on the deep sea floor by a hydrothermal vent called Loki’s Castle, shares features with both bacteria and us. The spin is that this makes it a missing link between the two.
Imagine if you could ban a certain, easily replaceable food component and save thousands of lives as a result. That’s the claim of new research that says a ban on trans fats in England could prevent 7,200 deaths between 2015 and 2020. The problem is that industrial trans fats have already virtually disappeared from UK diets.
Individually, we use thousands of chemicals in our households and very few of us think about whether they are harming the environment. We often think about buying a “green” detergent to wash our clothes, but the simple act of shampooing and conditioning our hair, even with green products, results in more than 30 chemicals being washed into our sewers.Despite our best efforts in the supermarket, our waste water treatment systems are well designed for removing most of these chemicals, as the majority are biodegradable. However, a number of household chemicals are difficult to remove and end up being discharged into our coastal environments and waterways.
In the Mediterranean climate of California, with its warm, wet winters and hot, dry summers, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains plays a critical role. It serves as a natural water storage system that feeds waterways and reservoirs during the dry summer months.That’s why it was very fitting that when Governor Jerry Brown announced the first-ever mandatory statewide water restrictions, he did it from the snow-barren Phillips snow course station in the Sierra Nevada. The April 1 snowpack’s water content has been measured at this station since 1941 and has averaged at 66.5 inches over this period.
