Sunday 6 November 2016

11 Odd Facts About Marijuana By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor

Going mainstream
 Credit: mikeledray/Shutterstock.com

Going mainstream

Marijuana, the most commonly used illegal drug in America, is going mainstream. Now legal for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, pot seems poised for wider use, too: 21 states allow the possession and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And legalization campaigns are underway in Oregon, California and even Alaska.
But just how much do you know about the wacky weed and its odd effects? How exactly does marijuana provide its high, and who discovered the effects of smoking the plant in the first place? Read on for some of the stranger facts about cannabis consumption.

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US Designates Electric Vehicle Charging Corridors By Bobby Magill, Climate Central

Federal corridors dotted with charging stations for electric vehicles could become a reality.
Credit: otomobil / Shutterstock.com
The federal government is designating 48 electric vehicle charging corridors along 25,000 miles of major U.S. highways as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and make it easier for drivers to switch to electric cars, the White House announced Thursday.
The plan calls for electric vehicle charging stations to be installed at least every 50 miles within the corridors and new government-approved signage to help drivers identify the locations of charging stations along the highway in 35 states.
The Federal Highway Administration said the goal is to accelerate the installation of electric and alternative-fuel vehicle charging infrastructure nationwide as a way to help drive down carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles — the nation's second-largest single source of pollution causing climate change behind the electric power sector.
The corridors are part of the Obama administration's plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
The corridor designation follows a White House announcement in July of$4.5 billion in loan guarantees to companies building electric vehicle charging stations nationwide.
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"Alternative fuels and electric vehicles will play an integral part in the future of America's transportation system," U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. "We have a duty to help drivers identify routes that will help them refuel and recharge those vehicles and designating these corridors on our highways is a first step."
The U.S. Department of Energy is studying how many charging stations need to be installed in the corridors and how to standardize them across the country, the White House said. The federal government is required to re-designate the electric vehicle charging corridors every five years, possibly expanding them.
Some of the major electric vehicle charging corridors include Interstate 5 from San Diego to the Canadian border; Interstates 25 and 70 through Colorado; Interstates 10, 20, 30, 35 and 45 through Texas; Interstate 80 from Nebraska to New York City; Interstate 95 from Washington, D.C., to Portland, Me.; and Interstates 75 and 85 through Georgia.
States without corridors include Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and most of Florida.
Twenty-eight local governments, companies, utilities and organizations are lined up to work with the federal government to establish the electric vehicle charging stations, including General Electric, General Motors, BMW, Nissan, New York State, Rocky Mountain Power, investor group Vision Ridge Partners and others.
Josh Goldman, a policy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the corridors will give electric vehicle owners peace of mind that they'll be able to recharge on a long road trip and signage associated with the program will raise awareness among the general public that infrastructure exists to support electric cars.
"The climate benefit will accrue once we have more electric vehicles on the road," Goldman said. "It'll make it easier to own electric vehicles and increase interest in the electric vehicle market."
Jonathan Levy, policy director for Vision Ridge Partners, said the charging corridors will allow electric cars to be used as the primary vehicle for many Americans as travel ranges increase from less than 50 miles per charge for early electric cars to more than 300 miles for new generations of electric vehicles.
"Charging infrastructure is the critical enabling factor for mass deployment of electric vehicles in the U.S." said Levy, whose company has invested in EVgo, a company developing fast-charging stations for electric vehicles.
Environmental groups hailed the announcement as a boon for both the climate and the economy.
"Coupled with renewable power, electric vehicles offer the promise of 100 percent clean transportation as we move forward," Sierra Club Electric Vehicles Initiative Director Gina Coplon-Newfield said in a statement. "The Obama administration's continued efforts to increase accessibility to electric vehicle charging at our highways, homes and businesses will help speed our transition to a 21st century clean transportation system."
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Do Kids Take Years Off Your Life? Giving Birth May Make Cells 'Older' By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer


Do Kids Take Years Off Your Life? Giving Birth May Make Cells 'Older'
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Women who give birth may be biologically "older" than women who don't, a new study suggests.
For the study, the researchers analyzed information from 1,556 U.S. women ages 20 to 44 who took part in a national survey from 1999 to 2002, which involved giving blood samples.
The researchers looked at the genetic material inside the women's cells, specifically the length of their telomeres. These are caps on the ends of chromosomes that protect the chromosomes from damage. Telomeres naturally shorten as people age, but the structures don't shorten at the same rate in every person. The longer a person's telomeres are, the more times their cells could hypothetically still divide, research has shown. Thus, telomeres are considered a marker of biological age — that is, the age of a person's cells, rather than the individual's chronological age.
Women in the survey who said they'd given birth to at least one child had telomeres that were about 4 percent shorter, on average, than those of women who'd never given birth. The findings held even after the researchers took into account other factors that could affect telomere length, including the women's chronological age, body mass index and smoking habits.
These findings suggest that a "history of live birth may be associated with shorter telomeres," the researchers wrote in their abstract, which was presented this week at the meeting of the American Public Health Association in Denver. [9 Uncommon Conditions That Pregnancy May Bring]
The study was not designed to determine the reason behind the link, the researchers said. But one hypothesis is that having children increases stress levels, and high stress has been linked with shorter telomeres, the scientists said.
"It is possible that pregnancy, birth and child-rearing can induce chronic stress, leading to shorter telomere length perhaps through an inflammatory pathway," study researcher Anna Pollack, an assistant professor and environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia, told Live Science. However, because the survey was conducted at a single point in time, the researchers cannot determine which came first in the women's lives — giving birth or havingshorter telomeres, Pollack said. It's also possible that for some yet-unknown reason, women with shorter telomeres are more likely than women with longer ones to have children, Pollack said.
More studies are needed that follow women over time and measure the length of their telomeres before, during and after pregnancy, she said.
"It would be interesting to see how telomere length changes during pregnancy, after birth and during the child-rearing years, and how these changes compare to women who do not have children," Pollack said.
Future studies could also investigate the findings further, by including a measurement of women's levels of cortisol, a hormone linked to stress, said study researcher Kelsey Rivers, an undergraduate student at George Mason University majoring in global and community health, who presented the findings. Other studies could compare telomere length in women who have given birth with telomere length in those who adopt children, to see if the effect might be linked to parenting or giving birth, Rivers said.
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Inflammatory Bowel Disease on Rise in US By Karen Rowan, Health Editor

Inflammatory Bowel Disease on Rise in US
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More than 3 million U.S. adults may have inflammatory bowel disease, according to a new government estimate. That's nearly triple the number of some previous estimates, the researchers said.
The new estimate is based on a national survey conducted by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Survey respondents were asked whether a doctor or other health professional had ever told them that they had either Crohn's disease orulcerative colitis, which are the two types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Based on the responses, the researchers estimated that 1.3 percent of U.S. adults, or 3.1 million Americans, have IBD.
People with IBD have chronic inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract. Patients often have abdominal pain, cramping, fatigue and diarrhea. They may also have a poor quality of life, as they often have complications and need to be hospitalized or undergo surgery, the report said. [11 Surprising Facts About the Digestive System]
"According to this report, the prevalence of IBD is much higher than previously estimated," said Dr. Siddharth Singh, a gastroenterologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Knowing the true rate of IBD is important because that knowledge will help health care providers offer better "strategies for high-value care" to patients with the condition, Singh told Live Science. It will also help researchers understand the impact of this condition on the health care system, he said.
The report additionally found that IBD is more common in some groups, including adults ages 45 and older, Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites, and adults with less than a high school level of education.
"For a disease traditionally thought to affect young adults, it is surprising to see a high prevalence of [IBD] in older adults," Singh said. The report found that 1.5 percent of adults ages 45 to 64, and 1.7 percent of adults ages 65 and older said they had been diagnosed with IBD.
In the new report, the researchers looked at data gathered in 2015 during the CDC's annual National Health Interview Survey. In this survey, researchers conduct in-person interviews with participants from across the U.S. about a broad range of health topics.
Previous estimates of IBD prevalence in the U.S. have come from surveys done in limited geographic areas, or from health care claims data. For example, a study published in 2013 used claims data from 12 million people and estimated that 1.2 million U.S. adults had IBD. A 2007 study, based on the residents of one county in Minnesota, estimated that, nationally, 1.1 million people had the disease.
However, Singh said that the new report may overestimate the condition's prevalence. The symptoms often seen in patients with IBD may also occur in other, more common gastrointestinal diseases, such as irritable bowel syndrome, he said. A diagnosis of IBD needs to be confirmed with an exam done using an endoscope (a device that has a small camera mounted on flexible tube, which doctors use to view the inside of the gastrointestinal tract), Singh said.
"Some individuals may misinterpret their symptoms" and think that they have IBD when they may actually have irritable bowel syndrome, he added. [The Poop on Pooping: 5 Misconceptions Explained]
The authors of the new report, led by James Dahlhamer of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, also noted that a limitation of the new estimate was that it relied on people's self-reports of being diagnosed with the condition.
There is no known single cause of IBD. "IBD is complex disease, and is caused by an interplay of several genetic and environmental factors, such as diet and [the] intestinal microbiome and our immune system," Singh said.
The increasing rate of the condition in the U.S. could be linked with several factors, including a change in people's diets that involves eating more packaged food or fast food, and increasing fat and sugar consumption, he said. But the increased use of antibiotics, dietary chemicals and the increasing prevalence of obesity may all also play a role, he said.
Most patients with IBD tend to have normal life spans, but "their quality of life may be significantly impacted," he said.
The new report was published Oct. 28 in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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