The trial closest to Syracuse involves Cornell University and the University of Rochester, whose researchers will use Internet-based interventions to promote the health of pregnant and postpartum women. They are looking for 3,500 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse women in their first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Learn more at www.emomsroc.org/

The six other trials will recruit people who live close to the study sites in Memphis, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Durham, N.C., San Diego and Providence. Get details at www.clinicaltrials.gov Syracuse

That’s why countries around the world — 80 in all — will celebrate Global Handwashing Day on Friday, Oct. 15.

In the United States, we may scoff at a day to celebrate handwashing, but in many developing countries, handwashing in no joking matter.

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Every year, diarrhea and acute respiratory infections cause the death of more than 3.5 million children under age 5. These figures could be cut dramatically if handwashing with soap were widely practiced, experts say.

On Global Handwashing Day, playgrounds, classrooms, community centers and the public spaces of towns and cities will focus on washing hands. Global Handwashing Day will be the centerpiece of a week of activities that will mobilize millions of people across all five continents to wash their hands with soap.

The campaign is spearheaded by the Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing, which includes support from UNICEF, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program, and soap producers such as Unilever.

In the developing world, diarrhea remains one of the main threats to child health and well-being. Each year, two million children under age 5 in developing nations die of diarrheal diseases and diarrhea causes more than 5 billion illnesses.

Washing hands with soap at critical times — after contact with feces and before handling food — could reduce diarrheal rates by up to 47 percent, researchers say. However, rates of handwashing with soap remain low throughout the developing world and large-scale promotion of handwashing behavior change is a challenge.

Turning handwashing with soap before eating and after using the toilet into an ingrained habit could save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter.

That’s where Global Handwashing Day and other initiatives come in, trying to teach innovative approaches to change people’s behavior. Handwashing day is aimed at two groups in particular – primary schoolchildren (ages 5 to 9) and women of reproductive age (ages 15-49).

Children suffer disproportionately from diarrheal and respiratory diseases and deaths. But research shows that children — the segment of society most open to new ideas — also can be powerful agents of behavioral change.

Here in the United States, there’s some evidence that grown-ups may need to be reminded about handwashing.

In the latest observational study sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology and the American Cleaning Institute, 85 percent of adults washed their hands in public restrooms. Observers were paid to see how many people actually washed their hands after using the restrooms in public places (Turner Field in Atlanta, Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the Shedd Aquarium, New York City’s Grand Central Station and Penn Station, and San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal Farmer’s Market).

The good news? The 85 percent total was actually the highest observed since these studies began in 1996.

The bad news? When you ask people if they always wash their hands in public restrooms, 96 percent say yes.

Men stepped up to the sink a bit more than they have in the past when it comes to public handwashing. More than three-quarters of the guys (77 percent) washed their hands publicly in 2010, compared to 66 percent in 2007.

But men still lag behind women in handwashing — no matter where they are.

Turner Field by far fielded the worst percentage for the guys — barely two-thirds (65 percent) washed their hands after using the restroom — though that’s still better than just 57 percent in 2007.

How about women? Women did well at all venues, but at Turner Field, 98 percent of women washed their hands. By Linda Shrieves, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant

Australian National University scientists set out to assess the risk of chronic illness when infants are prematurely weaned off breast milk.

They found that one in 10 people are in danger of major diseases later in life because they were not breast-fed for a minimum six months.

Breastfeeding has been proven to reduce the long-term risk of chronic disease.

But during the 1960s and ’70s, 90 per cent of people now aged between 35 and 45 were weaned off breast milk before they were six months old.

They found that, even now, very few Australian babies are breastfed to six months.

Lead researcher Dr Julie Smith said: “Depending on how we measure exposures for different types of chronic disease, more than one in ten Australians will face heightened risk in later life because they were not breastfed, many from disadvantaged families.

“From what we know about the effects of premature weaning … a significant proportion of the current burden of chronic disease might have been avoided.”

This was because “inappropriate and unsupportive” health policies, as well as public attitudes, had undermined breastfeeding in postwar decades, Dr Smith said.

The research, published in the international journal Public Health Nutrition, suggests more should be done to promote breastfeeding past the age of six months to combat the risk of chronic disease in the future.

“Many public health measures to prevent chronic disease are ineffective or expensive to sustain. But being breastfed for a time in infancy reduces the long-term risk of chronic disease,” Dr Smith said.

“Few other one-off preventative health interventions shows consistent, long-term effects in reducing chronic disease.” By Caris Bizzaca, Daily Telegraph Australia

But unfortunately it is not doing this. The problem is not with the concept of deemed universities or autonomous institutes but in the process of granting colleges such status. The 2007 notification by the HRD ministry laid down that an institute must be assessed for innovation, excellence in all aspects of education, world class infrastructure, qualified faculty, accreditation and so on, before it is granted deemed university status. But unfortunately we messed up everything, creating chaos in higher education.

I believe that deemed university status should be granted to any institute which is excellent in education, research and development, infrastructure, innovation and faculty and is committed to the betterment of society. We should make accreditation by any national or international agency mandatory for granting an institute such a status. Peer review at regular intervals should be done to make sure it retains its high standards of education. Autonomous institutions should be agents of change in this fast changing world where life is influenced by globalisation and technological innovations in a big way.

But unfortunately some are setting a bad example. It may also be true that some deemed universities have failed to perform. But that doesn’t mean the concept is itself bad. Ideally, the government should be encouraging institutes to follow the norms and attain autonomy to excel further. A few bad eggs in the basket should not kill the objective of developing excellent and innovative institutions, which can help the country’s progress. By K. Balaveera Reddy, Deccan Chronicle

The number of people with the disease is projected to grow to 44 million in 2034 from 23.7 million in 2009. And while the population with diabetes doubles, the costs to treat the disease will triple, costing Medicare $171 billion, up from $5 billion currently. These figures do not factor in a rise in obesity among Americans.

In Canada, approximately 1.8 million, or about one in 18 people, had diagnosed diabetes according to the Public Health Agency of Canada in 2004-05. The prevalence of the disease increased by 24 per cent between 2000-01 and 2004-05, and the Canadian Diabetes Association predicts there will be three million Canadians living with the disease by 2010.

Researchers at the University of Chicago created a model to determine the cost burden of diabetes on society, which factored in trends in risk factors for the disease, its history and the effects of treatments.

Those studied were between 24 and 85. The findings are published in the December issue of the journal, Diabetes Care.

“Without significant changes in public or private strategies, this population and cost growth are expected to add a significant strain to an overburdened health-care system, write the authors. “We will find ourselves in a lot of trouble as a population.”

The authors say their dire projections are based on the fact that earlier studies failed to represent the scope of the problem, projecting numbers that have already been surpassed.

For example, they cite one study from 1991 that predicted that the number of diabetics would double between 1987 and 2030 — from 6.5 million to 11.6 million. The projected 2030 figure is less than half the cases reported in 2009.

The researchers add that their prediction may be too conservative.

On a more positive note, the authors believe that obesity may level out in the next 10 years and then begin to decline, from 30 per cent in 2009 to 27 per cent by 2033.

“We anticipate that the population will reach an equilibrium in obesity levels, since we cannot all become obese,” write the authors. CBC News

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His claims, made last month, would be laughable if they weren’t so common among Palestinians. Sheik Tamimi is only the latest to insist that, in his words, Jerusalem is solely “an Arab and Islamic city and it has always been so.” His comments come on the heels of those by Shamekh Alawneh, a lecturer in modern history at Al Quds University. On an Aug. 11 PA television program, “Jerusalem—History and Culture,” Mr. Alawneh argued that the Jews invented their connection to Jerusalem. “It has no historical roots,” he said, adding that the Jews are engaging in “an attack on history, theft of culture, falsification of facts, erasure of the truth, and Judaization of the place.”

As President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team gear up to propose yet another plan for Israeli-Arab peace, they would do well to focus less on important but secondary issues like settlement growth, and instead notice that top Palestinian intellectual and political leaders deny basic truths about the region’s most important city.

For the record: Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism, mentioned more than 600 times in the Hebrew Bible. Three times a day, religious Jews face eastward toward the city when they pray. At Jewish weddings, the couple’s joy is diminished as they shatter a glass to acknowledge Jerusalem’s still unfulfilled redemption. It is a widespread custom then to recite the 137th psalm (“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate. . .” ).

According to Jewish tradition, Jerusalem’s designation as Judaism’s most sacred city made it the obvious place for King Solomon to build the Holy Temple following the death of his father, King David. After the temple’s destruction by the Babylonians, it was rebuilt by King Herod before being destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.

Earlier this month, archaeologists with the Israeli Antiquities Authority discovered a 3,700-year-old Jerusalem wall—the oldest and biggest ever uncovered in the region—that they believe was built by the Canaanites before the First Temple period. It’s true: there is scant archaeological evidence of the First Temple. But not so for the Second Temple, which is accepted as historical fact by most archaeologists. From the Herodian period, aside from dozens of Jewish ritual baths surrounding the temple that have been uncovered, one retaining wall of the temple, the Western Wall, still stands.

But Sheik Tamimi doesn’t need to take the Jews’ word for any of this, or that of legions of world-class scholars. For proof of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, he need only look at writings from his own religious tradition.

The Koran, which references many biblical stories and claims figures like Abraham as Islamic prophets, also acknowledges the existence of the Jewish temples. The historian Karen Armstrong has written that the Koran refers to Solomon’s Temple as a “great place of prayer” and that the first Muslims referred to Jerusalem as the “City of the Temple.” Martin Kramer, a historian who has combed through Koranic references to the temples in Arabic, notes surra 34, verse 13, which discusses Solomon’s building process: “They [jinn/spirits] worked for him as he desired, (making) arches, images, basins large as wells, and (cooking) cauldrons fixed (in their places).”

There is still more recent official Muslim acknowledgment of Jerusalem’s Jewish history—a booklet put out in 1924 by the Supreme Muslim Council called “A brief guide to al-haram al-sharif.” Al-haram al-sharif, the Arabic name for the Temple Mount, is currently the site of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque. It is, according to Islamic tradition, where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Yet it is also, according to the council’s booklet, a site of uncontested importance for the Jews. “The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.” And the booklet quotes the book of Samuel: “This, too, is the spot, according to the universal belief, on which ‘David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offering and peace offerings.’” Later, the booklet says the underground structure known as King Solomon’s Stables probably dates “as far back as the construction of Solomon’s Temple.” Citing the historian Flavius Josephus, it claims the stables were likely used as a “place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D.”

So why do those like Mr. Tamimi deny what their predecessors acknowledged? To undermine Israel, which earned statehood in 1948 and captured the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six Day War of 1967. Since then, Palestinian leaders have fought to erase any Jewish connection to sacred places, particularly the Temple Mount.

While Israel has never hesitated to acknowledge Jerusalem’s holiness in Islam—albeit saying that it has less importance than Mecca—Palestinian leaders insist that Jews are transplants in the region, nothing more than white European colonialists. This denial has formed the foundation for their argument that Jerusalem should become Palestine’s capital. This is why the previous mufti of the Palestinian Authority, Sheik Ikrama Sabri, dismisses the Western Wall as “just a fence.” Yasser Arafat classified it, bizarrely, as “a Muslim shrine.” As Saeb Erekat, Arafat’s chief negotiator, said to President Clinton at Camp David in 2000: “I don’t believe there was a temple on top of the Haram [holy site], I really don’t.”

These sentiments are echoed in Palestinian primary-school textbooks, preached at mosques, and printed in official newspapers. The Palestinian leadership isn’t bellyaching over borders—it is stating, in full voice, that Israel has no right to its most basic historical and religious legacy.

This is no foundation for “peace talks.” By Bari Weiss, Wall Street Journal.

Now India is putting its faith in the sun in a more literal sense by revealing what experts describe as the world’s most ambitious plan to develop solar energy over the next three or four decades. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, will chair a meeting today to decide whether to approve a National Solar Mission designed to curb India’s carbon emissions and ease its crippling power shortages. It proposes boosting India’s solar power generation capacity from almost zero to 20 gigawatts (20 billion watts) by 2020, 100GW by 2030 and 200GW by 2050, according to a draft seen by The Times. The entire world can generate about 14GW of solar power today.

India’s plan also proposes reducing the price of solar power to the same level as that from fossil fuels by 2020, according to the draft, dated April 29. Solar power in India currently costs about 15 rupees (37.4 cents) per kWh, compared with an average 3.5 rupees per kWh for electricity from the national grid, which is largely produced by coal-fired thermal power plants. Other targets include forcing all government buildings to have solar panels by 2012 and developing micro-financing to encourage 20 million households to install solar lighting by 2020.

The plan also outlines a system — similar to Germany’s — of paying households for any surplus power from solar panels fed back into the grid. To achieve these and other goals, the mission proposes that the Government invest 920 billion rupees ($23bn) in developing, manufacturing and installing solar technology over the next 30 years. The mission is primarily designed to improve India’s energy security as it has abundant supplies of coal — the dirtiest of the fossil fuels — but has to import 70 per cent of its crude oil and half its natural gas. It is also meant to ease a chronic power shortage that has left 400m Indians without electricity, causes daily blackouts in cities, and represents one of the biggest obstacles to economic growth.

India now has the capacity to produce 150GW — less than a fifth of China’s — and demand outstripped supply by 9.5 per cent between 2008-09, and by 13.8 per cent during peak hours, according to the Power Ministry. Indian officials also hope that the mission will help to ease the pressure from Western governments at international talks for a new UN climate pact in December. Environmental campaigners have welcomed the plan, saying that solar energy is India’s most realistic alternative power source, as it does not have the space for large wind plants.

Siddharth Pathak, chief climate change campaigner for Greenpeace in India, said: “India’s putting a very strong argument in front of developed countries that it has huge potential for renewable energy.” However, some government officials remain sceptical about risking so much money on new technology, rather than spending it on providing all Indians with electricity from conventional sources.

In addition, these toxins have a detrimental effect upon the cells of our bodies to limit absorption of nutrients. (nativevillage.org)  Even our busy lifestyles limit the time we feel we have to prepare food and eat properly.

And yet, it’s common knowledge that disease is rampant and on the rise.  How can we ward off serious illness, much less the common cold, if our immune systems are not nourished and functioning properly?

Isolated vitamins aren’t the answer.  We’ve tried that.  It doesn’t work.  The isolated vitamins are just that: they are isolated from the other compounds in the food that they were grown with.  There’s a reason Mother Nature put them all together in the combination in which they occur.  Whole foods contain a complete nutritional profile which is more absorbable in the body than one of the compounds isolated from the others.  See www.theholisticvet.com/nutrition.html  for a discussion on the mistaken idea that taking more of an isolated vitamin will make up for full-spectrum nutrition.

Perhaps this shotgun approach to vitamin and mineral supplementation explains the reason  we’re still becoming ill and staying that way–and dying. There’s got to be a better way.

What about juicing?  Do you have a juicer?  Not many people do.  However, if you do, and you’re willing to use it every day, do you keep a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables around?  Do you actually USE the juicer–then clean it up, only to do the whole thing over again the next day?  That’s not very practical, or appealing to most people.

OK, juicing was a great idea, but impractical.  Still, it’s a step in the right direction.  We know that vitamins and minerals work better in the combinations they come in as they grow in nature.  What if we could get them daily, on a guaranteed basis, assured of their purity, and convenient?  Wouldn’t that be wonderful?  It is wonderful, and it is happening.

In my next article, I’ll discuss some of the current health statistics in the United States today.  You will be amazed, surprised, and shocked to find out the obesity rate, the cancer rate, and other important markers for our health.   But there are answers, and some of them are easier and closer than you think..  Stay tuned!

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