Friday, January 4, 2008

A new study amongst doctors in the United States on the use of placebos—pills with no medical effect—shows that almost half of the questioned practitioners prescribe placebos, most of them within the last year.

The majority of 466 faculty physicians at Chicago-area medical schools interviewed by a research group of the University of Chicago stated that placebos are useful to calm a patient down or to respond to demands for medication that the doctor disagrees with, i.e. “to get the patient to stop complaining”.

96 percent of the physicians surveyed believe that placebos can have therapeutic effects. Close to 40 percent stated that placebos could benefit patents physiologically as well as mentally.

Twelve percent of surveyed physicians think that placebos should be banned from clinical practice. Among the doctors who prescribed them, one in five said they outright lied to patients by claiming a placebo was medication. But more often the physicians came up with ways to explain like that “this may help you but I’m not sure how it works.”

The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest association of U.S. doctors and medical students, tells its members that “[p]hysicians may use placebos for diagnosis or treatment only if the patient is informed of and agrees to its use.” The research, published in Journal of General Internal Medicine this week, is the first major U.S. study of doctors on the use of placebos since 1979.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

At least 113 people are now dead and hundreds more are missing after a 10 foot (3 m) tsunami destroyed several villages in a series of remote islands in western Indonesia. The tsunami was caused by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake which struck on Monday at 9:42 p.m. local time (14:42 UTC). The epicenter of the earthquake was 78 kilometers (48 mi) west of South Pagai, one of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra.

“We are predicting that people will need food supplies and shelter. The rain is coming down very hard, the wind is very strong,” a local police officer said, addind that emergency posts had been set up and patrols were being made to try and locate the missing. An official said that they had purchased 200 body bags “just in case.”

A local official said that most of the buildings in the coastal village of Betu Monga had been destroyed when the tsunami struck. “Of the 200 people living in that village, only 40 have been found. 160 are still missing, mostly women and children,” he said. “We have people reporting to the security post here that they could not hold on to their children, that they were swept away. A lot of people are crying.” Food supplies, he added, were running low.

Wisnu Wijaya, the preparedness director with the National Disaster Management Agency, said that the government is getting aid to the islands. “We already sent a rapid response team to this area, coordinated by the provincial government. We have local disaster management at Padang, because right now the condition of the wave is quite high,” he said. Wijaya added that high waves and stormy weather have made it difficult to reach the affected areas, and communication was a problem. Emergency shelters have been set up and the first team from Sumatra was arriving Tuesday evening to begin a rapid assessment of the aid that was needed. “Up to now, I think we still can manage this problem. Maybe also we’ll send staff to go there and make a better coordination. If they need national resources to deploy there, we’ll be ready to support local government,” Wijaya said.

The head of the regional government in the affected area told local television that some of the people recorded as missing may have moved to higher ground to take refuge from the waves. Rick Hallet, who was aboard his boat when the earthquake struck, told Australian television: “We threw whatever we could that floated—surfboards, fenders—then we jumped into the water. Fortunately, most of us had something to hold on to … and we just washed in the wetlands, and scrambled up the highest trees that we could possibly find and sat up there for an hour and a half.” The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a statement saying that radio contact had been lost with a tourist boat in the area which could have been nine Australians and a Japanese national. A humanitarian organisation said that there were “genuine fears” for those aboard.

A spokesperson for a surfing resort on the coast of North Pagai said that they had “experienced a level of devastation that has rendered the resort inoperable”. Witnesses suggested that villas at the resort had been “wiped out” by the tsunami. One report suggested that a 10 feet (3 m) wave had hit the resort, causing boats to burst into flames. “There was a lot of debris floating in the water, including bar stools and other pieces of furniture from Macaronis Resort,” a member of staff said. Reports suggested that water had reached rooftops in North Pagai.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area prone to seismic shifts that spark earthquakes and volcanic activity. A massive earthquake in 2004 caused a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people across the Indian Ocean. After that disaster Indonesia worked to establish early warning systems and disaster management programs to help deal with future quakes.

Monday, April 24, 2006

At the start of the tournament, 19-year-old Rafael Nadal of Spain was seeded as the second favourite to take the Monte Carlo Masters clay court title, ranked only behind the current world number one, 25-year-old Roger Federer of Switzerland. The finals match-up in question, the first where the number 1 and 2 seeds faced each other since 1985, was won in four sets; 6-2, 6-7, 6-3, 7-6, ending in just eleven minutes short of four hours.

As the lengthy matchtime suggests, the action on the court was a see-saw battle with both players looking as though they would go on to win at different points of the match. At times, it was difficult to see who was the more experienced. Nadal, the more successful of the two on a clay tennis surface, played to Roger Federer’s weakness. Roger Federer didn’t give up without a fight, but his best, which is capable of beating anybody on his day, seemed to remain in the locker room as Roger Federer’s aggression came a rare second to Nadal’s accurate baseline style.

Nadal wins the Monte Carlo Masters for a second consecutive time. Nadal can celebrate his unexpected but much welcomed victory in Monaco, if only for a little while ahead of the next tournament in the clay court series.

A view of the Leonard Zakim bridge from the construction site. The warehouses at right will be replaced by a five-acre park within two years. The elevated roadway in the foreground is the John F. Gilmore Bridge.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Cambridge, Massachusetts —Construction of two condominium buildings and a five-acre park began on March 21, in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. The buildings and park are part of the 45-acre Northpoint development, which will take 15 years and more than $2bn to complete, according to the Boston Globe. The buildings, designated as “Building S” and “Building T” by the planners of the project, Spaulding & Slye Colliers, have been designed by local architectural firm Childs Bertman Tseckares and Architects Alliance from Toronto. Buildings S and T are the first of an eventual 20 buildings planned at the site.

The development will fill what used to be a railroad yard for the Guilford Rail System, a subsidiary of Guilford Transportation Industries. According to Hoovers.com, Guilford is controlled by Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking fortune. Guilford Rail Systems has its headquarters in North Billerica and owns 1600 miles of railroad throughout New England. The tracks in the Northpoint plot have been removed, though Boston subway’s Lechmere station remains within walking distance of the site, along with parts of Boston and Cambridge. The site is bordered by Route 93 on its eastern side, Monsignor O’Brien Highway to the west, and the Gilmore Bridge to the south.

The landscape architecture of the park is provided by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, a landscape architecture firm on Concord Avenue in Cambridge. The firm’s principal teaches in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. MVVA is also completing the landscape for Harvard’s Northwest Science Building.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

A Chinese government official convicted of working for the Taiwanese government has been executed, and thousands of civil workers viewed the taped trial for “educational purposes” on Monday. The prisoner’s name was Tong Daning and was in his mid-50’s and held a rank just under “Assistant-Minister” before he was found guilty of espionage. According to the anonymous sources, Daning had been selling state sources for over 15 years, making a profit of about US$250,000.

Daning is the highest ranking person executed in China since 1999, when a Major General and Senior Colonel were executed for selling state secrets. China and Taiwan have been spying on each other ever since 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was officially created, but that has not stopped over 1 million Taiwanese citizens from working and investing over 100 billion USD in China. There have been many cases of espionage within the last few years, with all but two resulting in a death sentence.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Australian police have questioned four more people in connection with the failed bombing attempts in London and Glasgow, seizing computers and other evidence in several raids.

The four being questioned are all doctors, working in hospitals in Perth and Kalgoorlie. They are reported to be of Indian origin, and have all been linked to the UK’s National Health Service. Two of the men arrested in the UK have similarly been linked to Western Australian hospitals, to which they had applied for jobs, receiving multiple rejections.

Police have been granted an extra 96 hours to question Mohammed Haneef, who was arrested at Brisbane International Airport on July 3. They will be examining several thousand files stored on Haneef’s laptop and a mobile telephone SIM card which had been left with a suspect.

Raids have also taken place in Cambridge, UK, at which four of the arrested suspects are believed to have lived and met in 2005.

The four men being questioned in Australia have not currently been placed under arrest, but are described as having links to the UK by the Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.