It's about making our world work better.
It's about "Making Life Easy" and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first…
World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 200 events are organized in over 43 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.
Saturday, 14 November 2009, is World Diabetes Day. This year marks the start of a five-year campaign on "Diabetes education and prevention." In 2009-2013, the WDD campaign will engage millions of people in creating education and prevention programs for the 285 million people worldwide living with diabetes.
As diabetes prevalence increases worldwide, more and more people in low- and middle-income countries are bearing the brunt of the epidemic. Diabetes can be prevented by encouraging those at risk to maintain a healthy lifestyle and helping those living with diabetes to better manage the disease.
Join the WDD campaign by visiting www.worlddiabetesday.org(available in English, French, and Spanish) and find out about events being held in your area and globally. Follow the campaign online with these social networking sites.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/wdd
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/o7o6kf
YouTube: www.youtube.com/worlddiabetesday
Fllickr: www.flickr.com/groups/wdd
More than 760 monuments around the world will be lit in blue (the color of circle symbol for diabetes) on Saturday to commemorate World Diabetes Day. Prominent monuments include the London Eye in London, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Empire State Building in New York City, and the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. Go to www.worlddiabetesday.org/activities/wdd-monument-challenge for a complete list of participating monuments.
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HIROSHIMA, JAPAN -- An inconvenient invitation awaits President Obama when he lands Friday in Japan. It's one that no sitting U.S. president has accepted and that Obama's tight schedule in Japan cannot accommodate./.../
Yet many Japanese have been talking about the invitation
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday updated estimates of the number of H1N1 infections and deaths in the U.S. According to the new figures, about 4,000 Americans, including 540 children, have died of H1N1 flu, and 2 million people have been infected since April, when the novel flu virus first surfaced. The new death toll, which encompasses data through Oct. 17, represents a tripling of CDC estimates issued just last week; the number of deaths in children quadruples last week's figures. But the increase does not mean that the disease has suddenly become more deadly or severe, according to health officials, who say they are not surprised by the higher numbers.(See pictures of thermal scanners hunting for swine flu.)
Brazil
Nov 12th 2009
From The Economist print edition
WHEN, back in 2003, economists at Goldman Sachs bracketed Brazil with Russia, India and China as the economies that would come to dominate the world, there was much sniping about the B in the BRIC acronym. Brazil? A country with a growth rate as skimpy as its swimsuits, prey to any financial crisis that was around, a place of chronic political instability, whose infinite capacity to squander its obvious potential was as legendary as its talent for football and carnivals, did not seem to belong with those emerging titans.
Now that scepticism looks misplaced. China may be leading the world economy out of recession but Brazil is also on a roll. It did not avoid the downturn, but was among the last in and the first out. Its economy is growing again at an annualised rate of 5%. It should pick up more speed over the next few years as big new deep-sea oilfields come on stream, and as Asian countries still hunger for food and minerals from Brazil’s vast and bountiful land. Forecasts vary, but sometime in the decade after 2014—rather sooner than Goldman Sachs envisaged—Brazil is likely to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, overtaking Britain and France. By 2025 São Paulo will be its fifth-wealthiest city, according to PwC, a consultancy./.../
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Dr Maria das Graças Vieira Esteves admits that at first she was not a believer. But after 11 years as a director of one of Brazil’s health clinics she has no doubts.
“Initially, I did not believe the Family Health Programme could be effective, but gradually I saw they were doing marvellous work and getting results,” she says.
Over the past two decades, Brazil has worked hard to put into practice the 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata and its goal of achieving health for all by means of a primary health care approach.
Brazil’s vision of a system providing ‘health for all’ emerged towards the end of the military dictatorship that started in 1964 and during the years of political opposition that was to a large extent framed in terms of access to health care.
This struggle culminated in the 1988 constitution, which enshrined health as a citizens’ right and which requires the state to provide universal and equal access to health services for all of the country’s 190 million people, regardless of their ability to pay.
“Mal nos damos conta dela, a banal velocidade da vida, até que algum mau encontro venha revelar a sua face mortífera. Mortífera não apenas contra a vida do corpo, em casos extremos, mas também contra a delicadeza inegociável da vida psíquica.”
De Maria Rita Kehl, em seu livro O tempo e o cão.
Fiquei impressionado com este parágrafo da psicanalista que andou por aqui há poucos dias e gostaria de propô-lo para reflexão. Ele é muito apropriado para quase todas as circunstâncias de nosso dia a dia, para pensarmos no trânsito, no açodamento para executar nossas tarefas, na pressa em atingir objetivos, na ansiedade em chegar...
O parágrafo citado, isoladamente, seria suficiente, dispensando mais comentários. Entretanto, a parte final da mensagem pode nos ajudar a resolver algumas perplexidades.
A difusão incontrolável do uso de psicotrópicos (cigarro, drogas lícitas e ilícitas, álcool), fenômenos de massa em que multidões procuram se expressar ou entrar coletivamente em êxtase em busca de uma identidade, a própria entrega à voragem coletiva do progresso e da pressa sem dar chance para parar e pensar, a violência banalizada, tudo isso pode ter uma explicação comum.
A medicina e a saúde pública têm se preocupado desproporcionadamente com a vida do corpo, muitas vezes até negociando em detrimento da vida psíquica. Embora busquemos e ensinemos a vigiar sinais e sintomas (pressão arterial, obesidade, diabetes, colesterol, dores no peito e tantos outros...), não temos dedicado a mesma atenção para os sintomas sociais.
Quase todas essas manifestações que nos deixam perplexos e que tentamos controlar com repressão, policiamento, cadeias, armamento, muros, alarmes, doutrinação, discursos, sermões, campanhas que atingem mais os que não precisam ouvir, são sintomas de mal-estar social que não têm estado no foco de nossas preocupações, e com os quais nem sabemos lidar.
Pior, o que origina o mal-estar social é também determinante da maior parte das doenças que afetam o corpo. É o preço a pagar pelo grau de evolução de nossa vida psíquica. Tornamo-nos mentalmente mais capazes, mas, ao mesmo tempo, mais sensíveis e vulneráveis em nosso relacionamento mútuo e com o meio onde vivemos.
Há um século e meio discutia-se a teoria dos germes, com grande sucesso no controle e tratamento de muitas doenças. Desvendaram-se também os riscos químicos, físicos e nutricionais. Está na hora de estudarmos o papel de nossa vida de relação e como nos organizamos e nos estruturamos em sociedade. Afinal, o que nos expõe a estes fatores de risco já bem aceitos e com os quais dispomos e nos colocamos neste conjunto?
Depois de conhecer a determinação biológica, química e física das doenças, ficou muito mais fácil preveni-las e preservar a saúde. Há muito já conhecemos também a importância da vida psíquica, mas teimamos em observá-la quase que estritamente do ponto de vista individual. Está na hora de buscarmos princípios de higiene social. Só com dinheiro para a saúde e educação e esmolas não se consegue destravar as estruturas sociais que nos separam e nos polarizam com repulsa mútua.
Quando se fala em determinação social, não se trata apenas de miséria ou pobreza. O essencial está na relação humana e em como nos dispomos nesta corrida desenfreada onde muitos saem pisoteados, têm de ficar para trás ou marginalizados. Esta ruptura do conjunto gera mal-estar social de ambos os lados e até a busca de estratégias para atrapalhar a corrida.
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William Ganz, MD, co-inventor of the Swan-Ganz catheter for measuring blood flow and a pioneer in thrombolysis, died Tuesday of natural causes at age 90 in Los Angeles. "Dr. Ganz was a giant in medicine and in life," said Prediman Shah, MD, director of the Cardiology Division at the Cedar-Sinai Heart Institute. "He changed the lives of millions through his significant contributions to medicine, but he never lost sight of the importance of family and friends." In 1966, Ganz joined the fledgling cardiology division at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he and the then-Chief of Cardiology Jeremy Swan, MD, invented a balloon-tipped catheter to assess heart function in critically ill patients in 1970./.../ |
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Bisphenol-A (BPA) hardens plastic but appears to be associated with the opposite effect in men. That's the conclusion of a cohort study of sexual dysfunction among more than 500 Chinese workers, some of whom were exposed to high levels of the controversial chemical in their workplace. The workers with high-level BPA exposure reported significantly higher levels of sexual dysfunction than workers whose jobs kept them away from the compound, De-Kun Li, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, Calif., and colleagues reported online in Human Reproduction./.../ |
International Traditional Healers Exchange &Conference on Promotion of“Traditional Medicine for Sustainable Healthcare
Don Avelino Paucar, a Kallawaya healer shows his cards that
affirm the Bolivian government's recognition of his healing knowledge.
Traditional medicine (TM) plays an important role in meeting demands of primary health care in many developing countries and thus occupies a key space in contemporary community health education. TM is increasingly becoming popular in many developed countries as well and functions under the title of complementary and alternative medicine. In a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) Congress in Beijing (November 2008), WHO called on member countries:/.../
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — There are just over 100 people in the world serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed as juveniles in which no one was killed. All are in the United States. And 77 of them are here in Florida./.../
BY CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR
The New Yok Times
Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday, advancing legislation that the Democrats said could be their defining social policy achievement.
After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years and that Democrats said would provide relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.
Surfando em uma onda de otimismo após sobreviver de pé à crise financeira internacional, o Brasil ainda tem muito para avançar no desenvolvimento de suas instituições, apontou estudo divulgado ontem.
O Índice de Qualidade Institucional, organizado pela International Policy Network (IPN- Londres), mostrou que o país está na 98º posição entre os 191 países estudados.
Para chegar ao índice, a metodologia do IPN utiliza oito critérios, quatro que avaliam a liberdade econômica e quatro que medem as liberdades cívicas e políticas. Segundo o responsável pelo estudo, Martín Krause, diretor do Centro de Investigaciones de Instituiciones y Mercados de Argentina, a posição reflete a influência de problemas conhecidos dos brasileiros, como a alta carga de impostos e a corrupção. No critério que avalia a tributação, o Brasil está na 150ª posição entre as 200 nações avaliadas por este item. Krause também chamou a atenção para o fraco desempenho nas relações de trabalho./.../
ACE Inhibitor Use Linked to Liver Toxicity | ||
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The review identified 52 cases of ACE inhibitor-associated hepatotoxicity. However, the most detailed study was published in 1993. Given the widespread, chronic use of ACE inhibitors, the frequency could be greater than currently recognized, Saurabh Sethi, MD, reported here at the American College of Gastroenterology meeting./.../
Uma nova normatização de várias organizações profissionais identificou critérios específicos para o diagnóstico clínico de síndrome metabólica, ajustando a definição, que, anteriormente era diferente de uma organização para outra [1].
A declaração, publicada na internet na Circulation, inclui a participação da International Diabetes Federation (IDF), National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), World Heart Federation, International Atherosclerosis Society, e da American Heart Association (AHA) e é uma tentativa de eliminar algumas confusões a respeito de como identificar pacientes com a síndrome.
“Este artigo representa uma tentativa de tornar a definição global”, contou Dr. Robert Eckel (University of Colorado, Denver), um dos autores do novo artigo, a heartwire. “A definição da IDF e a definição do National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel ATP III foram as duas utilizadas mais frequentemente, e agora diferentes organizações – International Diabetes Federation, International Atherosclerosis Society, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute e a American Heart Association – assinaram uma definição comum. Acredito que este é um passo adiante no sentido de não continuar confundindo profissionais que trabalham nesta área”.
A woman smoking while pregnant. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty
Smoking during pregnancy significantly increases the risk of having a child with behavioural problems, according to research published today. Disturbances can manifest themselves in children as young as three years old, the study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health claims./.../
Secondhand Tobacco Smoke Exposure Among Children and Adolescents: United States, 2003–2006
OBJECTIVE The implementation of policies that prohibit tobacco smoking in public places has resulted in a significant reduction in secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure in the US population; however, such policies do not extend to private homes, where children continue to be exposed. Our objective was to assess SHS exposure among US children and adolescents by using serum cotinine measures to compare those who were exposed to SHS in the home and those without home exposure.
METHODS We analyzed serum cotinine data from the 2003–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 5518 children (3–11 years) and nonsmoking adolescents (12–19 years). We calculated geometric mean serum cotinine levels by sociodemographic and household characteristics according to self-reported home SHS exposure. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to evaluate independent predictors of serum cotinine levels.
RESULTS Geometric mean serum cotinine levels were 1.05 ng/mL among those with home SHS exposure and 0.05 ng/mL among those without home exposure. Among children who were exposed to SHS at home, serum cotinine levels were inversely associated with age and were similar for non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white children. Conversely, among children without SHS exposure at home, serum cotinine levels were higher among non-Hispanic black compared with non-Hispanic white children, and there was no relationship with age. Mexican American children had the lowest level of SHS exposure.
CONCLUSIONS Serum cotinine levels were an order of magnitude higher among children with reported SHS exposure at home compared with those with no exposure in the home.
http://pediatrics.
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