TomorrowYesterday

Commuters Inhale Heavy Dose of Pollution – Yahoo! News
Driving is more hazardous than anyone knew: A heavy commuter inhales more pollution while driving than in the entire rest of the day, a new study finds.
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The research was done in Los Angeles, where the average driver spends 1.5 hours behind the wheel. That time in traffic accounts for 33 to 45 percent of total exposure to diesel and ultrafine particles (UFP), the study showed.
On freeways, diesel-fueled trucks are the source of the highest concentrations of harmful pollutants.
“If you have otherwise healthy habits and don’t smoke, driving to work is probably the most unhealthy part of your day,” said Scott Fruin, assistant professor of environmental health at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. “Urban dwellers with long commutes are probably getting most of their UFP exposure while driving.”
Ultrafine particles are of particular concern because, unlike larger particles, they can penetrate cell walls and disperse throughout the body, Fruin said. Particulate matter has been linked to cardiovascular disease, but the ultrafine fraction on roadways appears to be more toxic than larger sizes.
Previous research found children on school buses breathe more pollution. And a study in London found people in taxis, buses, and cars all inhale substantially more pollution than cyclists and pedestrians.

Fantastic

Hottest Chile Pepper Shatters Record – Yahoo! News
It’s hot. Scorching hot. Guinness World Records hot.
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Researchers at New Mexico State University have discovered the world’s hottest chili pepper. It’s called the Bhut Jolokia, a variety originating in Assam, India.
In tests that yield Scoville heat units (SHUs), the Bhut Jolokia reached 1 million SHUs, almost double the SHUs of former hotshot Red Savina (a type of habanero pepper), which measured a mere 577,000. The result was announced today by the American Society for Horticultural Science.
Chili is spelled “chile” by some, including Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences. Bosland collected seeds of Bhut Jolokia while visiting India in 2001. He grew the plants for three years to produce enough seeds to complete the field tests.
“The name Bhut Jolokia translates as ‘ghost chile,’” Bosland explained. “I think it’s because the chile is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it!”
The intense heat concentration of Bhut Jolokia could have a significant impact on the food industry as an economical seasoning in packaged foods, he said.

whoa

Lack of Ga. drought plan riles critics – Yahoo! News
Despite plenty of warnings, critics say, Georgia never got around to developing a water management plan to handle a severe drought. Now that reservoirs already are shrinking and water supplies are threatened, lawmakers are scrambling to cope.
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After years of lax zoning laws and pro-growth policies that led to urban sprawl throughout much of north Georgia, politicians are preparing a statewide water plan that would guide Georgia’s growth and provide emergency drought plans.

doh

Army medics train at Miami trauma center – Yahoo! News
The trauma center’s radio crackles an alert: A 34-year-old woman injured in an auto wreck is being brought in by helicopter. Parts of her scalp have been torn back, exposing her skull. Broken bones may be sticking out through the skin of her left leg. Her injuries may help save the lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
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For two weeks, 28 Army medics, nurses, doctors and nurse anesthetists have been learning trauma medicine and teamwork under pressure at the Ryder Trauma Center at downtown Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, a place that sees such carnage it often resembles a war zone.
Ryder is one of the busiest trauma centers in the nation, seeing an average of 11 trauma patients a day — about as many as the biggest military hospital in Iraq.
Jackson Memorial serves some of the city’s most crime-ridden sections, and patients arriving at the trauma center have been stabbed, injured in grisly auto accidents, wounded in shootouts with high-powered assault weapons, or hurt in falls and fights.
The Army sends 10 forward surgical teams a year through Ryder, which was selected six years ago because of the volume of bloodshed. It is the Army’s only trauma training center. The Air Force has similar programs in Baltimore, St. Louis and Cincinnati; the Navy’s trauma program is in Los Angeles.

interesting

W.Va. leads nation in pregnant smokers – Yahoo! News
More than a fourth of pregnant women in West Virginia smoked last year, putting themselves and their babies at risk.
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The state’s 27.3 percent maternal smoking rate was the highest rate in the country and nearly triple the national average, according to a recent report from the state Department of Health and Human Resource’s Health Statistics Center. The state’s rate was up slightly over the previous year and has hovered around 25 percent the past 10 years.
McDowell County had the highest rate of pregnant smokers, at more than 42 percent, the report said. The lowest rate, 15.8 percent, was in Monongalia County.
All total, smoking mothers across the state gave birth to about 5,500 babies last year.

doh

Emotions Run Amok in Sleep-Deprived Brains – Yahoo! News
Anyone who has ever gone without a good night’s sleep is aware that doing so can make a person emotionally irrational. While past studies have revealed that sleep loss can impair the immune system and brain processes such as learning and memory, there has been surprisingly little research into why sleep deprivation affects emotions, Walker said.
Walker and his colleagues had 26 healthy volunteers either get normal sleep or get sleep deprived, making them stay awake for roughly 35 hours. On the following day, the researchers scanned brain activity in volunteers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they viewed 100 images. These started off as emotionally neutral, such as photos of spoons or baskets, but they became increasingly negative in tone over time—for instance, pictures of attacking sharks or vipers.
“While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn’t predict they’d overreact as much as they did,” Walker said. “They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That’s a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok.”
The researchers pinpointed this hyperactive response to a shutdown of the prefrontal lobe, a brain region that normally keeps emotions under control. This structure is relatively new in human evolution, “and so it may not yet have adapted ways to cope with certain biological extremes,” Walker speculated. “Human beings are one of the few species that really deprive themselves of sleep. It’s a real oddity in nature.”
In modern life, people often deprive themselves of sleep “almost on a daily basis,” Walker said. “Alarm bells should be ringing about that behavior—no pun intended.”

not surprising

The Middle Seat – WSJ.com
There are 62 shopping days until Christmas, but most of the airfare bargains are already sold out.
Ticket sellers say smart consumers bought early for Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday trips this year. Now, prices are up, and the number of open seats is down. Spurred by higher fuel prices, many airlines have boosted fares in recent weeks. And with some big airlines still cutting domestic capacity and demand for tickets running high, especially to beach destinations, the availability of cheap holiday seats has dwindled, experts says. But savvy travelers can still sleuth out holiday deals — if they are willing to be flexible with their travel dates.

no kidding. It’s been brutal.

Living paycheck to paycheck gets harder – Yahoo! News
The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder. What used to last four days might last half that long now. Pay the gas bill, but skip breakfast. Eat less for lunch so the kids can have a healthy dinner.
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Across the nation, Americans are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as they juggle higher rent, food and energy bills. It’s starting to affect middle-income working families as well as the poor, and has reached the point of affecting day-to-day calculations of merchants like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 7-Eleven Inc. and Family Dollar Stores Inc.
Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government funding at the very time that they are seeing a surge of new people seeking their help.
While economists debate whether the country is headed for a recession, some say the financial stress is already the worst since the last downturn at the start of this decade.
From Family Dollar to Wal-Mart, merchants have adjusted their product mix and pricing accordingly. Sales data show a marked and more prolonged drop in spending in the days before shoppers get their paychecks, when they buy only the barest essentials before splurging around payday.
“It’s pretty pronounced,” said Kiley Rawlins, a spokeswoman at Family Dollar. “It seems like to us, customers are running out of food products, paper towels sooner in the month.”
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said the imbalance in spending before and after payday in July was the biggest it has ever seen, though the drop-off wasn’t as steep in August.

interesting

70 punished in accidental B-52 flight – Yahoo! News
The Air Force said Friday it would punish 70 airmen involved in the accidental, cross-country flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber following an investigation that found widespread disregard for the rules on handling such munitions.
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“There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base,” said Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations.
Newton was announcing the results of a six-week probe into the Aug. 29-30 incident in which the B-52 was inadvertently armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown from Minot in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana without anyone noticing the mistake for more than a day.

oops

Study Reveals Why Flu Thrives in Winter – Yahoo! News
For the first time, scientist have solid evidence suggesting exactly why the flu is so common in winter.
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A new animal study suggests that the influenza virus’ success hinges on low relative humidity and cold temperatures. Such conditions keep the virus more stable and in the air longer than warm, humid conditions, scientists said. And apparently, the frosty weather’s role is more important than that of the human body in helping the virus thrive.
“We’ve always thought the immune system wasn’t as active during the winter, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case,” said study coauthor Peter Palese, a virologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
When we cough or sneeze, tiny droplets of water enter the air and hang around until they drop to the ground—or an unsuspecting passerby breathes them in. Once inside our airways, any flu viruses that have hitched a ride on the droplets can launch an attack.
“We found that the flu’s transmission period is much, much longer when temperatures and humidity levels are low,” Palese told LiveScience.

interesting