Los Angeles can continue being the butt of smog jokes now that it has once again topped the American Lung Association's bad air list of most polluted cities in America.
The association found that the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside metropolitan area had the worst air based on 2003 through 2005 figures.
The Pittsburgh area was ranked as the nation's second most polluted metropolitan area followed by Bakersfield, Calif., Birmingham, Ala., Detroit and Cleveland. Visalia, Calif., Cincinnati, Indianapolis and St. Louis rounded out the top 10.
The news wasn't all bad for Los Angeles. Despite the dubious distinction, the number of days residents breathed the nation's worst ozone levels was fewer than in previous years.
"Nobody is surprised that LA has an air pollution problem," said Janice Nolen, the association's assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy. "The problems there are one of the reasons we have the Clean Air Act. But it is important for folks to know that there has been some improvement."
The organization based the rankings on ozone pollution levels produced when heat and sunlight come into contact with pollutants from power plants, cars, refineries and other sources. The group also studied particle pollution levels emitted from these sources, which are made up of a mix of tiny solid and liquid particles in the air.
Such pollution can contribute to heart disease, lung cancer and asthma attacks, the association said. Those especially vulnerable to polluted air are children, senior citizens, people who work or exercise outdoors and people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Nearly half of the U.S. population lives in counties that still have unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution, even though there appeared to be less ozone in many counties than previous years, the study found.
I wonder what it would rank in the world. Prolly not as high, considering there are tons of other countries far hotter, with far more output of polution in the world. Spoiler — click to revealPakistan comes to mind. :bleh:
Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com Thu Jun 28, 12:35 PM ET
Exercise stimulates the growth of new brain cells, a new study on rats finds. The new cells could be the key to why working out relieves depression.
Previous research showed physical exercise can have antidepressant effects, but until now scientists didnft fully understand how it worked.
Astrid Bjornebekk of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and her colleagues studied rats that had been genetically tweaked to show depressive behaviors, plus a second group of control rats. For 30 days, some of the rats had free access to running wheels and others did not.
Then, to figure out if running turned the down-and-out rats into happy campers, the scientists used a standard gswim test.h They measured the amount of time the rats spent immobile in the water and the time they spent swimming around in active mode. When depressed, rats spend most of the time not moving.
gIn the depressed rats, running had an antidepressant-like effect after running for 30 days,h Bjornebekk told LiveScience. The once-slothful rodents spent much more time in active swimming compared with the non-running depressed rats.
The researchers also examined the hippocampus region of the brain, involved in learning and memory. Neurons there increased dramatically in the depressed rats after wheel-running.
Past studies have found that the human brainfs hippocampus shrinks in depressed individuals, a phenomenon thought to cause some of the mental problems often linked with depression.
gThe hippocampus formation is one of the regions they have actually seen structural changes in depressed patients,h Bjornebekk said.
Running had a similar effect as common antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on lifting depression.
The research is published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.
The research is published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.
I've seen this place! I think it's over on Hollywood Blvd. between Madame Cleo's Tarot Reading and The Leather Castle Adult Book Store :beaten: [/list:u]
gaijinmark wrote: I've seen this place! I think it's over on Hollywood Blvd. between Madame Cleo's Tarot Reading and The Leather Castle Adult Book Store :beaten: [/list:u]
Man's smelly feet trigger police raid
Mon Jul 9, 8:11 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - German police broke into a darkened apartment fearing they would find a dead body, after neighbors complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase.
The shutters of the apartment had been closed for more than a week and the mailbox was filled with uncollected mail.
But instead of a corpse, they found a tenant with very smelly feet, asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry, police in the southwestern town of Kaiserslautern said on Sunday.
tabana wrote:Man's smelly feet trigger police raid
Mon Jul 9, 8:11 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - German police broke into a darkened apartment fearing they would find a dead body, after neighbors complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase.
The shutters of the apartment had been closed for more than a week and the mailbox was filled with uncollected mail.
But instead of a corpse, they found a tenant with very smelly feet, asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry, police in the southwestern town of Kaiserslautern said on Sunday.
tabana wrote:Man's smelly feet trigger police raid
Mon Jul 9, 8:11 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - German police broke into a darkened apartment fearing they would find a dead body, after neighbors complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase.
The shutters of the apartment had been closed for more than a week and the mailbox was filled with uncollected mail.
But instead of a corpse, they found a tenant with very smelly feet, asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry, police in the southwestern town of Kaiserslautern said on Sunday.
Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks \ and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.
Destination: Idaho.
With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast \ he could turn a spigot, release water and rise \ Couch headed into the Oregon sky.
Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.
"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch told the Bend Bulletin.
"When you're laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them," he said. "This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It's just like that."
Couch is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters \ who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.
It was Couch's second flight.
In September, he got off the ground for six hours. Like Walters, he used a BB gun to pop the balloons, but he went into a rapid descent and eventually parachuted to safety.
This time, he was better prepared. The balloons had a new configuration, so it was easier to reach up and release a bit of helium instead of simply cutting off a balloon.
He took off at 6:06 a.m. Saturday after kissing his wife, Susan, goodbye and petting his Chihuahua, Isabella. As he made about 25 miles an hour, a three-car caravan filled with friends, family and the dog followed him from below.
Couch said he could hear cattle and children, and he said he even passed through clouds.
"It was beautiful \ beautiful," he told KTVZ-TV. He described the flight as mostly peaceful and serene, with occasional turbulence, like a hot-air balloon ride sitting down.
Couch decided to stop when he was down to a gallon of water and just eight pounds of ballast. Concerned about the rugged terrain outside La Grande, including Hells Canyon, he decided it was time to land.
He popped enough balloons to set the craft down, although he suffered rope burns. But after he jumped out, the wind grabbed his chair, with his video recorder, and the remaining balloons and swept them away. He's hoping to get them back some day.
Brandon Wilcox, owner of Professional Air, which charters and maintains planes at the Bend airport, said Thursday that Couch definitely did it. Wilcox said he flew a plane nearby while Couch traveled, and a passenger videotaped the flying lawn chair.
Whether Couch will take a third trip is up to his wife, and Susan Couch said she's thinking about saying no. But she said she was willing to go along with last weekend's trip.
"I know he'd be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind," she said. "This way, at least he's fulfilled his dream."
tabana wrote:Man's smelly feet trigger police raid
Mon Jul 9, 8:11 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - German police broke into a darkened apartment fearing they would find a dead body, after neighbors complained of a nasty smell seeping out onto the staircase.
The shutters of the apartment had been closed for more than a week and the mailbox was filled with uncollected mail.
But instead of a corpse, they found a tenant with very smelly feet, asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry, police in the southwestern town of Kaiserslautern said on Sunday.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Sun Jul 15, 12:05 AM ET
A spine specialist trying to figure out why people so often have bad backs says he has come up with a new theory about when and how early humans evolved the ability to walk upright.
The uncannily human-looking backbone of a 21 million-year-old precursor of humans and apes gives the first clue, said Dr. Aaron Filler of the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
A major change in the vertebrae that allowed this pre-human to stand upright and carry things also made it easier to crush and strain the spongy discs between each vertebra, Filler, a medical doctor with a doctorate in anthropology proposes.
That, in turn, explains why back pain is a leading cause of disability, he said.
Writing in the journal Neurosurgical Focus on Sunday, Filler said one main clue was a bone feature called the transverse process, which sticks out from the side of the hollow, round vertebrae, Filler said in a telephone interview. This is where muscles attach to the spine.
"The vertebra is transformed in a way that literally reverses the mechanics of the spine," Filler said. "The bone lever of the vertebrae gets switched from bending the spine forward to bending the spine back."
Most vertebrates are oriented forward, to walk on all fours. The transverse process is at the front of each vertebra, facing the animal's belly. This is true of monkeys, too.
But in humans and in the 21 million-year-old fossil of a creature called Morotopithecus bishopi, a tree-dwelling, ape-like creature that lived in what is now Uganda, the transverse process has moved backward, behind the opening for the spinal cord.
Great apes, such as chimpanzees, share this feature.
'THE UPRIGHT APE'
The fossil was discovered in the 1960s but no one noticed the important change until 1997, when paleontologist Laura MacLatchy of the State University of New York at Stony Brook reported on the remarkable features of Morotopithecus.
"That means that upright posture bipedalism goes back 20 million years, not just 5 or 6 million years," said Filler.
In his study and in a book published last week called "The Upright Ape -- a new origin of the Species," Filler argues that this common ancestor, and ancestors going back many millions of years before, walked upright. Homo sapiens, the human species, continued upright, while apes evolved back toward all fours, he argues.
"When you look at most ape species, their spines and most of their bodies still look pretty monkey-like," Filler said.
He also said humans evolved a new structure of muscles that pull the body from side to side while standing.
"This is very important for carrying an infant or child," Filler said. "From the point of view of back pain, now we have big muscles doing this heavy work that never did before. They can get torn and strained."
The backward orientation also allows the cushiony discs to get crushed, Filler said. "In most animals the vertebrae get spread apart when they carry infants on their backs when on all fours," he said.
What further differentiates humans from apes is the positioning of the place where the spine attaches to the hips, said Filler, who dissected the backbones of dead gibbons, chimpanzees and macaque monkeys and compared them to bones from living and extinct species of other animals and fossils from various pre-humans.