| Mice can sense oxygen through their skin
Washington, Apr 18 : Training and testing of endurance athletes during the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing might take a dramatic turn as athletes would just have to expose their bodies to low levels of oxygen to boost their blood's oxygen-carrying capacity, which would ultimately perk up their performance, a team of researchers has suggested. .
He'll Have Four
Sprinter Tyson Gay was expected to chase three gold medals at the Olympic Games in Beijing. A year ago at the World Track and Field Championships in Osaka, Japan, Gay rushed to the first page of history by winning the 100 meters, (humbling world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica) 200 meters and anchoring Team USA's gold medal-winning 4x100-meter relay. It was the type of springboard performance that would leave a man, logically, in pursuit of the same goals on an even bigger stage just one year later. But Gay doesn't want three gold medals in Beijing. He wants four. "This is an Olympic year," Gay said this week at his spring training base in Texas. "2012 isn't promised to me, so this could be it. I'll be almost 30 years old at that time. You never know when your chance is going to come around again.
The medication wars
There's a war raging in the world of medicine as many people are opting for the path of "natural" or "herbal" remedies, as opposed to taking prescribed medicines from their medical practitioner. Many doctors are perplexed as to why patients would stop taking prescribed medication and opt for the "natural route". Their advise is not to. They say that while natural remedies may have their place, they may not be the safest bet. Dr. Martin Brown, a general practitioner cautions that while natural medicines have their uses, they have just as many side effects as natural ones. The difference he says is that pharmaceutical medicines have been researched and the side effects noted. In fact the drugs have to be approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before they are put on the market, which is not the case for natural medicines.
Figure Skater Peggy Fleming Teams With HealthSaver: Allergies and Asthma Relief
Allergies and asthma affect six times more Americans than cancer, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. As the fifth leading chronic disease, allergies, along with asthma, strike one out of every four Americans. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080415/NYTUFNS1 ) "There are many pro-active measures you can take to prevent or treat allergies and asthma," said Peggy Fleming, Olympic figure skating champion and HealthSaver spokesperson, "especially during spring, the main allergy season." Pollen, mold, dust and other allergens cause allergies in some people and not others because the immune system of allergy sufferers identifies these substances as harmful. The immune system's defense results in symptoms such as congestion, sneezing and watery eyes.
Jeff Ball: Slow-release fertilizer best benefits lawn soil
It's decision time again. Every year we all have to face more than a dozen piles of bags of lawn fertilizer. How to decide? Every brand has different NPK numbers, like 29-6-10. One bag says it covers 5,000 square feet of lawn and another, which looks the same size, says it covers 15,000 square feet. The prices for a bag range from $10 to $40. How to compare prices with all those variables? Guess what? The price is not the issue you should be worried about. It is the form of nitrogen and how much of it is water insoluble that is the biggest concern. You calculate percentage of water insoluble nitrogen (WIN) by looking to the back of the bag and reading the figures for the amount of nitrogen in that bag. You want the WIN to be at least 50 percent of all the nitrogen in the bag.
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