“I never comment on whether I’m carrying a handgun or not,” he said. “That’s why
it’s called concealed.”
Excessive sitting linked to premature death in women
In an 18-year career at the University of Michigan, where she's a customer service center supervisor in the payroll department, Jackie Adams figures she's done a whole lot of sitting.
And that scares her.
So when her department installed a treadmill desk, Adams started using it to fit a little bit more exercise into her day.
"I heard that those who have a sit-down job take years off their lives. That scared me. I came in here and said 'Everybody walk at lunch. Everybody walk on the treadmill,' " recounts Adams, 43, of Saline.
"We can't help it if we have desk jobs, but I don't want to die early because of it."
Research released last fall found that women who sat for more than six hours a day had a 37 percent increased risk of premature death, compared to 18 percent for men. Those results stayed the same, even when factors such as an individual's diet, amount of physical activity and smoking were taken into account.
Dr. Alpa Patel, senior epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society, is the lead author of that study, the largest on how sitting affects mortality. The study was based on information from surveys of 123,000 people who participated in the study between 1992 and 2006.
Females who sat the longest and exercised the least had twice the risk of death compared with women who recorded more activity and less sitting. Under similar circumstances for men, there was only a 50 percent greater chance of death.
Patel can't explain why sitting may be more hazardous to women's health. It's unclear whether the varying results are caused by gender, or if there's some other influence at work.
"We don't understand the biological reason why it might be more detrimental to women than men."
Patel now walks to talk to colleagues instead of using e-mail, and she sends some of her documents to a printer in a different room at her Atlanta workplace to force herself to move more. She sits on a balance ball in her office, rather than a chair. And she doesn't use instant messaging to communicate with colleagues.
"I walk to their office to take a quick break," she says. "There are very small changes that you can make that collectively add up."
Patel says she always had a hard time sitting still in front of the TV. Now, she channels that extra energy into multitasking endeavors. She tries to fold laundry while watching her favorite shows. She knits.
And she's lost 40 pounds in the past two years.
Office furniture manufacturers are paying attention to the research. Grand Rapids-based Steelcase, for example, in 2007 introduced treadmill desks -- Walkstations, which combine an adjustable desk surface with a slow-moving treadmill. The Walkstation sells for $4,399.
Steelcase has sold more than 2,000 of them to corporations such as Humana, Google, Kraft Foods, eBay and General Electric, says Steelcase spokeswoman Katie Hasse.
The Steelcase treadmill desks were inspired by Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic. Levine approached Steelcase with research that showed how lean people consume more calories by incorporating more movement into everyday activities -- even by fidgeting.
"Many corporate customers have purchased multiple units as part of wellness initiatives," says Hasse. "We launched the product to better serve our customers after multiple studies which point to mixing up time spent sitting with intermittent standing as a way to engage metabolism, keep nutrient and oxygen flowing to the brain as well as burn a few more calories than remaining seated for long periods."
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/healthcare/prevention/story/2011/08/Excessive-sitting-linked-to-premature-death-in-women/49996086/1
Study: An hour of TV can shorten your life by 22 minutes
After the age of 25, watching 60 minutes of television is like smoking two cigarettes, researchers find
The AFP news agency said scientists at the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland studied 11,000 Australian adults who were aged at least 25 in the year 2000.
The academics checked their data against an estimate from 2008 that Australians aged 25 or above watched TV for 9.8 billion hours. This was associated with the loss of 286,000 years of life, the AFP said.
An extrapolation of these figures found that a single hour of TV was responsible for the loss of just under 22 minutes of life, the news agency reported.
Smoking two cigarettes has approximately the same effect.
The problem is not actually TV itself but the lack of activity by the viewer for long periods, the researches said. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, excess weight and other health problems are associated with a sedentary lifestyle.
Population implications
Lennert Veerman, who was involved in the study, said the research showed watching television was "in the same ballpark as smoking and obesity," according to a report in The Guardian newspaper.
"While smoking rates are declining, watching TV is not, which has implications at a population level," he said according to the report.
A previous study in Australia found there was an 8 percent greater risk of dying prematurely associated with watching an hour of TV a day.
"We've taken that study and translated it into what it means for life expectancy in Australia given how much TV we watch," Veerman said.
The latest research was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Story: 15 minutes of fitness a day can add 3 years to your life
Meanwhile, a large study in Taiwan found that doing just 15 minutes of moderate exercise a day might add three years to your life.
Lead researcher Chi Pang Wen of Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes said dedicating 15 minutes a day to a moderate form of exercise, like brisk walking, would benefit anyone.
"It's for men, women, the young and old, smokers, healthy and unhealthy people. Doctors, when they see any type of patient, this is a one-size-fits-all type of advice," Wen told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Wen and colleagues, who published their findings in medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday, tracked over 416,000 participants for 13 years, analyzing their health records and reported levels of physical activity each year.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44156412/ns/health/
NEO coming, Truth stranger then fiction
Fact following fiction? Scientists plan mission to blow up an asteroid 'hurtling towards Earth'
Plan is similar to the plot of Hollywood film Armageddon
It seemed far-fetched on the silver screen.
But the European Space Agency is planning to launch a mission similar to the plot of Hollywood movie Armageddon, in which Bruce Willis and his intrepid team attempt to blow up a huge asteroid that’s hurtling towards Earth.
The real version, if it goes ahead in 2015, will see a satellite fired at break-neck speed into a ‘test’ asteroid to see if its course changes.
Rescue plan: The European Space Agency is planning mission Don Quijote - to blow up a huge asteroid that could potentially be hurtling towards Earth
The aim is to assess whether it would be possible to save Earth using this method, should we discover that an asteroid is on a collision course with our planet.
The mission, called Don Quijote, will involve sending two spacecraft towards a near-Earth asteroid.
One will be an ‘impactor’, which is fired into the asteroid, the other an orbitor that will analyse data from the experiment.
More...Galactic grammar: Collision between two nebulas produces cosmic exclamation mark
One potential target is a 1600ft-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis, which experts say does have a minute chance - around one in 250,000 - of hitting Earth in 2036, so it would be useful target practice.
The 500kg impact craft, which will be called Hidalgo, will ram into the asteroid at a speed of around six miles a second.
The orbitor, called Sancho, will scan the collision and monitor whether the asteroid changes direction at all.
Brucey bonus: Armageddon starred Bruce Willis as the leader of a team of astronauts who destroy an asteroid that threatens to wipe out Earth
There will be a lot of fingers crossed in mission control, as a big asteroid impact could wipe out life on Earth.
Nasa, meanwhile, is planning something even more spectacular.
It wants to put humans on the surface of an asteroid within 15 years.
But sending people to one won't be easy. You can't land on an asteroid because you'd bounce off - it has virtually no gravity. Astronauts couldn't even walk on it because they'd float away.
Reaching it might require a Nasa spacecraft to harpoon the space rock.
Nasa is thinking about jetpacks, tethers, bungees, nets and spiderwebs to allow explorers to float just above the surface of it while attached to a smaller mini-spaceship.
Kent Joosten, chief architect of the human exploration team at Johnson Space Center, said: 'This is the big step. This is out into the universe, away from Earth's gravity completely... This is really where you are doing the Star Trek kind of thing.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2026710/Fact-following-fiction-Scientists-plan-mission-blow-asteroid-hurtling-Earth.html
Might to read up on it in one of Jerry D. Youngs PAW Fictions at
http://jerrydyoung.fatcow.com/large-pdf-files/CosmicBuckshot.pdf
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