Patients say it feels like being trapped in a corpse: They awake during surgery, unable to move or scream. Some remember hearing their surgeons talk, and a few recall feeling intense pain.

Some experts have said special brain-wave monitors were the best way to prevent anesthesia awareness. Now, in a big setback for efforts to prevent it, the first large, independent test of the monitors shows they are no better than older technology.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis compared two groups of about 1,000 patients each, all deemed at high risk of waking up during surgery because of health conditions, medication or other factors.

One group used the leading brain-monitoring system, which uses electrodes on the forehead to measure brain waves and software to calculate likelihood of consciousness. The other used an older device that analyzes exhaled anesthetic gas.

scary

Restaurants have long engineered menus to allow the bigger profits from pastas and vegetable side orders to subsidize such loss leaders as rib-eye steaks. But rising prices have prompted a furious new round of behind-the-scenes shuffling. San Francisco's Slanted Door is known for its rack of lamb. On many days, chef and owner Charles Phan offers a more-profitable lamb sirloin stir-fry instead, shaving his food costs by a third. It is a temporary fix that draws some complaints. "Everyone wants that rack," he says.

At Le Cirque in New York, diners can choose from four pasta dishes, up from two a year ago. "Pasta's a great item for reducing food costs," says co-owner Mauro Maccioni. He estimates that he is paying 5% more for the food his restaurant prepares, including big increases for truffles and butter. He touts as good values his new pasta dishes, which include a chestnut-flour pappardelle with wild mushrooms and a veal ragu.

whoa

Adults show the same tendency. In a study that appeared in the March 2006 Journal of Consumer Research, Prof. Nayakankuppam and his co-authors, Arul Mishra and Himanshu Mishra, found that people were less inclined to spend if they had, say, a $50 bill rather than 10 $5 bills.

Classic

Hollywood has its star Walk of Fame, but San Francisco could soon have a Walk of Shame - complete with human-shaped bronze sidewalk plaques marking where the city's homeless have died on the streets.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution last week urging the Department of Public Works to approve a privately funded plan to install "commemorative bronze sidewalk plaques" in the districts of Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi, both champions of the city's homeless.

However, it doesn't seem many of the supes bothered to read the resolution before voting "yes."

Mirkarimi, for example, was listed as co-sponsor - but he knew little about the project when we contacted him after the vote, and he referred us to Daly's office.

Daly did not return calls or a written request for comment, although his staff confirmed he had met with the memorial's organizer.

only in sf

For the 2004-05 school year, the government named Hallmark/Westland the school lunch program's Supplier of the Year. But the company began to unravel in late January, when a video made by an investigator from the Humane Society of the U.S. came to light.

The video showed workers at the plant trying to make sick or injured cattle stand up with electrical-shock devices, forklifts and high-pressure water hoses. Cattle that can't walk or stand on their own are generally banned from the nation's food supply. Such "downer" cows can be sources of mad-cow disease, which can cause a rare but fatal brain disorder in humans.

The video "just astounded us," Mr. Magidow said Friday. "Our jaws dropped....We thought this place was sparkling perfect."

classic

A college student was arrested in the theft of a briefcase containing more than $140,000 from the home of the chairman of meat processing giant Tyson Foods Inc., police said.
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Ryan Silvey, 19, was arrested in Olathe, Kan., by the FBI Fugitive Task Force, the Johnson Police Department said. He was taken back to Arkansas to answer a theft charge and was being held in lieu of $50,000 bond Saturday at the Washington County jail.

The briefcase was stolen during a party thrown by John Tyson's daughter at the family's home in Johnson around Dec. 27 without his knowledge or consent, police said. Silvey and another friend were uninvited guests who acted suspicious while looking around the house, police said.

and no one wondered why the Chair of Tyson had $140k in cash in a briefcase?

More recent hospital records from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center on Manhattan’s West Side, for example, show that there were 105,000 visits to the emergency room last year, up from 59,000 in 1999. “I can’t foresee how we can keep up that pace,” said Dr. Dan E. Wiener, chairman of the hospital’s department of emergency medicine. “The overcrowding is just there — it’s the background noise of life. Some days things are O.K., it’s tolerable. Some days it’s over the top.”

Many New York hospitals are also contending with yet another new influx of patients who normally would have sought care at nearby hospitals that have closed, merged with other hospitals or will soon close. A state commission in 2006 ordered almost two dozen mergers or closings in an effort to shrink the state’s enormous hospital industry, because beds at some of them were going unused.

Other hospitals across the nation, sustaining big losses in their emergency rooms and depleting their charity care funding for the uninsured, have shut down their emergency rooms or even closed completely.

I'm surprised emergency rooms continue to exist. They don't seem profitable at all... and isn't that the benchmark for everything these days? I'm surprised they're not all replaced with botox centers.

The state Supreme Court breathed new life today into a consumer complaint about the chemically induced orange coloring of farm-raised salmon and ruled that private citizens can sue to enforce California's food labeling laws.

The unanimous decision reinstated lawsuits filed in 2003 and 2004 that accused supermarket chains of misleading customers by failing to disclose on the labels that the fish had been fed chemicals to give their flesh the orange color of wild salmon.

Salmon raised in fish farms are naturally grayish but take on the orange hue of their free-swimming kin after consuming the chemicals canthaxanthin and astaxanthin. Those substances are also part of wild salmon's natural diet, and the plaintiffs are not claiming that they are harmful to humans.

But the suits contended that the stores induced some customers to pay higher prices for salmon and led others to buy fish they normally would have shunned because of the artificial coloring.

yum

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

yipes

The bhut jolokia chili pepper fires up the imagination, as well as the taste buds. The thumb-sized chilies are so potent they could be used in pepper spray, says the director of India's Defense Research Lab, R.B. Srivastava. "I've been told the U.S. and Israel have considered it for antiriot material," he says.
[Pepper photo]

Most admirers prefer eating them. The Indian pepper is the latest discovery by a fraternity of eaters who relish the sweaty, addictive pleasures of hot chilies.

The bhut jolokia pepper, which is farmed in the northeast part of the country, was plucked from obscurity last year when the Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world's hottest. The standard measure for such things is the Scoville Heat Unit, or SHU, named after Wilbur Lincoln Scoville, a chemist who in 1912 developed a method of assessing the heat given off by capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers. Jalape peppers measure about 5,000 SHUs. The bhut jolokia tops a million.

"When you eat it, it feels like dying," touts one online retailer. Even packaging the stuff is a pain. "Our workers wear goggles, face masks, head cover and protective clothing," says Ananta Saikia, whose firm is the pepper's sole exporter. "They look like astronauts." He and his wife have started shipping tons of dried bhut jolokia around the world, including Germany, England and the U.S. Annual sales, he says, are expected to jump 500% this year.

whoa

A few years ago, at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, I noticed something strange on the departure boards. American Airlines had three flights scheduled that afternoon from ORD to Boston, and all were apparently operating on time. United, on the other hand, had three flights scheduled from ORD to Boston, but none were operating on time. In fact, all three United flights showed "canceled."

I smelled a rat. I went to the United counter and asked the reason for the cancellations. "Weather."

Weather? The airlines couldn't have it both ways. Either American Airlines pilots were irresponsible, crazy air jockeys who were going to tease the gods and fly into the face of serious storms, or United's official cancellation reason was a convenient untruth.

I checked the weather in both Chicago and Boston: totally clear.

I went back out to the United gates and informed the counter agents that I knew the weather was fine and also explained that all the American flights were operating without problem. And then I invoked Rule 240 — which states that in the event of any flight delay or cancellation caused by anything other than weather, the airline would fly me on the next available flight — not their next available flight, which might not leave for another 24 hours.

And guess what happened? A lot of United passengers made it to Boston that day — on American.

classic

Some advice from specialists sounds counterintuitive. For example, Dr. Aviv advises that candidates not whisper when they get hoarse because whispering stretches vocal cords. "It's the worst thing you can do," he says.

Humming, however, may help. Battling repeated bouts of laryngitis during his 1992 campaign, Mr. Clinton learned to feel vibrations in the middle of his face and nose as he hummed, says James Y. Suen, his longtime otolaryngologist. Speaking from this "mask" area gives people "a better voice when they are hoarse" and reduces strain on vocal cords, the Little Rock, Ark., doctor explains.

interesting

Japan's Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering how his Self-Defense Forces could respond to an attack by space aliens while adhering to limits on military action under the country's war-renouncing Constitution.

Ishiba is the second Cabinet member to profess his belief in unidentified flying objects after Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura suggested on Dec. 18 they are the only explanation for ``unexplainable'' things like the Nazca Lines, pre-Columbian etchings in the desert south of Lima, Peru.

Ishiba said yesterday a Japanese military response, such as those in the Godzilla movie series, would require legal review and said he is studying ways Japan could deal with an attack. Ishiba said his comments represent a ``personal view,'' and not Defense Ministry policy, according to the transcript of the press conference published on the ministry's Web Site.

``There are no grounds for us to deny there are unidentified flying objects and some life-form that controls them,'' Ishiba said. ``Few discussions have been held on what the legal grounds are'' for a military response.

Ishiba said that, if the aliens arrived in Japan in peace, a military response would not be legal under the terms of Japan's pacifist Constitution. He also said he was concerned about communication difficulties if a UFO landed.

``If they descended, saying `People of the Earth, let's make friends,' it would not be considered an urgent, unjust attack on our country,'' he said. ``How can we convey our intentions if they don't understand what we are saying?''

Japanese politicians, and the local media's, recent interest in UFOs stems from a parliamentary question from opposition lawmaker Ryuji Yamane about the government's policy on UFOs. The government is not doing any UFO research or preparing for a response if UFOs fly over Japan, according to a report by Kyodo News on Dec 18.

hm

Japan's Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering how his Self-Defense Forces could respond to an attack by space aliens while adhering to limits on military action under the country's war-renouncing Constitution.

Ishiba is the second Cabinet member to profess his belief in unidentified flying objects after Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura suggested on Dec. 18 they are the only explanation for ``unexplainable'' things like the Nazca Lines, pre-Columbian etchings in the desert south of Lima, Peru.

Ishiba said yesterday a Japanese military response, such as those in the Godzilla movie series, would require legal review and said he is studying ways Japan could deal with an attack. Ishiba said his comments represent a ``personal view,'' and not Defense Ministry policy, according to the transcript of the press conference published on the ministry's Web Site.

um.

Japan's Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba is considering how his Self-Defense Forces could respond to an attack by space aliens while adhering to limits on military action under the country's war-renouncing Constitution.

Ishiba is the second Cabinet member to profess his belief in unidentified flying objects after Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura suggested on Dec. 18 they are the only explanation for ``unexplainable'' things like the Nazca Lines, pre-Columbian etchings in the desert south of Lima, Peru.

Ishiba said yesterday a Japanese military response, such as those in the Godzilla movie series, would require legal review and said he is studying ways Japan could deal with an attack. Ishiba said his comments represent a ``personal view,'' and not Defense Ministry policy, according to the transcript of the press conference published on the ministry's Web Site.

um.

Wesley Snipes to Go on Trial in Tax Case
Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: January 14, 2008

Correction Appended

From 1999 to 2004, the actor Wesley Snipes earned $38 million appearing in more than half a dozen movies, including two sequels to his popular vampire thriller “Blade.”
Skip to next paragraph
Peter Cosgrove / AP File Photo

Actor Wesley Snipes with his press assistant Judy Smith in December 2006. The 45-year-old action star is set to go on trial Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, on tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

The taxes he paid in the same period? Zero.

But unlike other celebrities who find themselves on the wrong side of the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Snipes has a flamboyant explanation: he argues that he is not actually required to pay taxes.

Mr. Snipes, who is scheduled to go on trial Monday in Ocala, Fla., has become an unlikely public face for the antitax movement, whose members maintain that Americans are not obligated to pay income taxes and that the government extracts taxes from its citizens illegally.

whoa

telephone company cut off an FBI international wiretap after the agency failed to pay its bill on time, according to a U.S. government audit released on Thursday.
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The Justice Department's inspector general faulted the FBI for poor handling of money used in undercover investigations, which it said made the agency vulnerable to theft and mishandled invoices.

It cited the case in which a wiretap under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs electronic spying in terrorism and intelligence cases, was disrupted due to an overdue bill.

oops

Andrew Flaton survived a brain tumor as a child, but he still suffers from the effects of his cancer treatments. One of his most challenging tasks: holding down a job.

He was left almost entirely deaf after undergoing chemotherapy. He can't work more than four hours a day without feeling exhausted, and he often suffers from panic attacks, which he struggles to keep under control. The 25-year-old Oakville, Mo., resident earns less than $700 a month and lives with his grandparents, and the longest period he has spent in one job -- doing part-time filing work for an anesthesiologist -- is two years.

Before landing his current job as a retail clerk, Mr. Flaton was unemployed for a year. He filled out close to two dozen job applications without receiving any calls for an interview. "It was very difficult to find an employer who was accepting of what I could and could not do," he says.

As Mr. Flaton's struggle illustrates, the transition into the workplace can be rocky for many childhood-cancer survivors -- especially those who have been treated with high doses of radiation and chemotherapy. The resulting cognitive and physical impairments can make it hard to keep a job. And while workers who contract cancer or a chronic illness as adults carry similar impairments, childhood survivors face the added obstacle of trying to get and keep that all-important first job -- for many people the first chance to get employer-provided health insurance -- and establish a career.

One day in late July, Jim Dawson happily returned home. He had spent the previous five months in the hospital battling an infection that nearly killed him. The phone rang shortly after Mr. Dawson and his wife, Loretta, entered their house.

It was the hospital. California Pacific Medical Center was calling to remind the Dawsons that they owed it $1.2 million.
Jim Dawson survived a catastrophic illness only to face a $1.2 million medical bill.

Mr. Dawson, 61 years old, had health insurance through his employer, but had maxed out his plan's $1.5 million lifetime cap halfway through his long hospital stay. In addition to the bill from CPMC, Mr. Dawson owed tens of thousands of dollars more to scores of doctors who were involved in his care. Mr. Dawson and his wife's combined assets totaled a fraction of their medical debt.

[snip]

On March 6, Mr. Dawson was admitted to Seton delirious and screaming. It was there doctors realized he had a staph infection that had spread through his bloodstream and invaded his entire body. His organs were failing and he was going into septic shock. A nurse told Mrs. Dawson her husband was very sick and might die.

Doctors at Seton began treating Mr. Dawson with massive doses of antibiotics but surmised they wouldn't be able to cure him unless they removed Mr. Dawson's pacemaker, which was encased in bacteria. Mr. Dawson had been carrying the device in his chest since 1995.

The surgery didn't go well. One of the pacemaker's two leads, wires that connect the device to the heart, broke off as it was being extracted and remained stuck in Mr. Dawson's right ventricle. On April 20, Mr. Dawson was transferred to CPMC in San Francisco, a leading cardiac hospital in the region.

The Dawsons wouldn't find out until later, but the six-week stay at Seton was costly. The hospital billed Valero's health plan $1,135,633.84. After negotiating a $283,908.46 discount, Valero's plan paid $851,725.38. More than half of Mr. Dawson's insurance had been used up. A spokeswoman for Seton declined to comment about Mr. Dawson's case, citing the hospital's patient-privacy policy.

At CPMC, Mr. Dawson was operated on again. The plan was to remove the broken pacemaker lead and replace part of Mr. Dawson's infected aortic valve with the valve of a pig. Doctors also needed to repair another heart valve that had been damaged by the infection. Mrs. Dawson was told the odds were very low that her husband would survive the extremely complex operation.

But the surgery was a success, and Mr. Dawson pulled through.

Over the next few weeks, Mr. Dawson fought through various other complications and began to recover. Then on June 18, he went into cardiac arrest during a rehabilitation session. He was rushed into intensive care and revived. Doctors decided he would need another heart operation to implant a defibrillator.

On June 29, Mrs. Dawson says she was leaving the hospital when she was ushered into a small conference room by Ema Beronilla, an employee from CPMC's financial office. She says Ms. Beronilla told her that her husband's insurance had run out and showed her a sheet of paper indicating that they owed the hospital more than $1 million. Valero's health plan had just paid CPMC $553,727.12 for Mr. Dawson's care through May 19 and informed the hospital that he had maxed out his policy. Any additional bills were Mr. Dawson's responsibility.

[snip]

Before they made any decision, Mrs. Dawson asked to see an itemized bill from CPMC. When she received it, she was shocked by how much the hospital had marked up inexpensive items like the stockings. CPMC charged Mr. Dawson between $2,225 and $6,675 a night for an oxygen mask to help him breathe while he slept. After he was discharged from the hospital, the Dawsons rented one from a medical-supply store for $250 a month. Mrs. Dawson resolved to try to negotiate the bill drastically down.

"I do not deny that our charges look insane," says Dr. Pont, CPMC's chief medical officer. But all hospitals operate the same way, he says. "It's the reality of the industry."

Once its operating costs are factored into an item's charge price, Dr. Pont says the hospital marks up that price by threefold to account for the fact that it only collects on average a third of what it bills in any given year. Although the nonprofit hospital reported $123.7 million in operating income last year, Dr. Pont says the money goes to charity care, cutting-edge medical equipment and new facilities to comply with the state's stringent earthquake-safety guidelines. CPMC says it dispensed $5 million in charity care last year and gave another $6 million to community clinics and health centers.

In her quest to know exactly what she was being billed for, Mrs. Dawson also asked the hospital for copies of all her husband's medical records. A copy service used by the hospital called to say the copies would cost $1,030. Mrs. Dawson was outraged. Further angering her, a letter from CPMC's foundation soliciting a donation came in the mail.

wow. :(

A tropical fish that lives in mangrove swamps across the Americas can survive out of water for months at a time, similar to how animals adapted to land millions of years ago, a new study shows.
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The Mangrove Rivulus, a type of small tropical killifish, seeks refuge in shallow pools of water in crab burrows, coconut shells or even old beer cans in the tropical mangrove swamps of Belize, the United States and Brazil.

When their habitat dries up, they live on the land in logs, said Scott Taylor, a researcher at the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Program in central Florida.

I for one welcome our rivulus marmoratus overlords...

By law, a bidder may retract his or her
bid at any time before the auctioneer says "SOLD!"
[ Uniform Commercial Code ｧ2-328(3) ]

If you're an eBay user, you probably know that retractions are allowed only in rare and exceptional circumstances. Guess what? That's just an eBay company policy! By law, any bidder may retract any bid for any reason while the auction is still in progress. Of course, at a live auction this means interrupting the auctioneer and bringing the sale to a temporary halt, which is another reason bidders let auctioneers get away with such antics.

interesting

Four transplant recipients in Chicago have contracted H.I.V. from an organ donor, the first known cases in more than a decade of the virus being spread by organ transplants.

The organs also gave all four patients hepatitis C, in what health officials said was the first reported instance of the two viruses being spread simultaneously by a transplant.

Though exceedingly rare, this type of transmission highlights a known weakness in the system for checking organ donors for infection: the most commonly used tests can fail to detect viral diseases if they are performed too early in the course of the infection. Officials say the events in Chicago may lead to widespread changes in testing methods.

ick

The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion — roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.
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The report, released Tuesday, attempted to put a price tag on the two conflicts, including "hidden" costs such as interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars, lost investment, the expense of long-term health care for injured veterans and the cost of oil market disruptions.

The $1.6 trillion figure, for the period from 2002 to 2008, translates into a cost of $20,900 for a family of four, the report said. The Bush administration has requested $804 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, the report stated.

For the Iraq war only, total economic costs were estimated at $1.3 trillion for the period from 2002 to 2008. That would cost a family of four $16,500, the report said.

interesting that 81% was spent on Iraq...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.