LinkedIn, eHarmony suffer data breaches

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CDC: Nearly 60 percent of teens text while driving

More than half of high school seniors admit they text or email while driving ? the first federal statistics on how common the dangerous habit is in teens.

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An anonymous national survey conducted last year found that 58 percent of high school seniors said they had texted or emailed while driving during the previous month. About 43 percent of high school juniors acknowledged they did the same thing.

"I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised at all," said Vicki Rimasse, a New Jersey woman whose son caused a fender bender earlier this year after texting in traffic. She made him take a safe-driving class after the mishap.

"I felt like an idiot," said her 18-year-old son, Dylan Young.

"It caused me to be a lot more cautious," said the high school senior, although he conceded that he still texts behind the wheel.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the survey results Thursday. Some earlier studies had suggested teen texting while driving was common though perhaps not quite so high.

Still, the numbers aren't really surprising, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center in Washington. She studies how teens use technology.

A typical teen sends and receives about 100 text messages a day, and it's the most common way many kids communicate with their peers. Even during short car rides it's not uncommon for messages to be coming in and for teens to respond, she said.

"A lot of teens say 'Well, if the car's not moving and I'm at a stoplight or I'm stuck in traffic, that's OK,'" said Lenhart, who has done focus groups with teens on the topic.

Other teens acknowledge they know it's not safe, but think it is safer if they hold the phone up so they can see the road and text at the same time, she said.

The CDC survey didn't ask whether high school students' texting was done while the vehicle was moving or stopped. The survey is conducted every two years, but this was the first time it asked about texting while driving.

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Russia wants broad meeting on Syria to support Annan plan

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10 Jobs That Will Make You Fat: Study

That muffin you grabbed on your way into this morning's breakfast meeting is probably making you fat.

A new study by CareerBuilder confirmed what many previous studies have reported: work life leads to weight gain. According to the study, 44 percent of workers surveyed said they have gained weight at their current job.

Weight gain isn't the only health risk associated with having a job -- previous studies have found that spending too much time working at a desk can lead to an increased risk of diabetes, cancer and death -- yes, death.

What's causing us to get fat at work? The CareerBuilder survey found that the most commonly reported causes of weight gain include sitting at a desk all day, eating lunch on the job, stress-induced eating and dining out regularly.

Check out CareerBuilder's list of 10 jobs that had the greatest likelihood of reporting weight gain and let us know what you think. We at HuffPost Money cast doubts on this study's findings -- where is Online Editor on this list?!

  • Travel Agent

  • Attorney/Judge

  • Social Worker

  • Teacher

  • Artist/Designer/Architect

  • Administrative Assistant

  • Physician

  • Protective Services (Police, Firefighter)

  • Marketing/Public Relations Professional

  • Information Technology Professional

Contribute to this Story:

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Antidepressant Cymbalta (duloxetine) has been found to relieve the ...

Antidepressant Cymbalta (duloxetine) has been found to relieve the symptoms of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, a painful tingling sensation many patients experience after undergoing chemotherapy. The researchers, from the University of Michigan School of Nursing, reported their findings at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting. They explained that Cymbalta was effective for 59% of the patients in their clinical trial. Some chemotherapy medications can cause peripheral neuropathy - a tingling feeling which is usually felt in the toes, feet, fingers and hands...

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Splish Splat? Why Raindrops Don't Kill Mosquitoes

When a raindrop hits a mosquito, the mosquito and drop join together, and the mosquito rides the drop for about a thousandth of a second before its wings, which act like kites, pull it out of the water. Enlarge CDC Public Health Image Library

When a raindrop hits a mosquito, the mosquito and drop join together, and the mosquito rides the drop for about a thousandth of a second before its wings, which act like kites, pull it out of the water.

CDC Public Health Image Library

When a raindrop hits a mosquito, the mosquito and drop join together, and the mosquito rides the drop for about a thousandth of a second before its wings, which act like kites, pull it out of the water.

Imagine how tough life would be if raindrops weighed 3 tons apiece as they fell out of the sky at 20 mph. That's how raindrops look to a mosquito, yet a raindrop weighing 50 times more than one can hit the insect and the mosquito will survive.

How?

Put yourself in a mosquito's shoes ? or rain boots ? for a moment and step outside into a downpour of seemingly gigantic raindrops.

"They're basically plummeting comets falling all around you," says David Hu, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. You'd think a mosquito wouldn't stand a chance. "We expected the similar thing to happen as when you drive your car through bugs ? you see this bug just splattering."

Yet mosquitoes clearly survive close encounters with raindrops. So Hu's group set out to run an experiment that made the most of their skills as mechanical engineers and biologists.

Hitting a mosquito with a raindrop is a difficult experiment. ... It's kind of like playing the worst game of darts you can imagine.

"Hitting a mosquito with a raindrop is a difficult experiment," he says. "The first thing we did was drop small drops from the third floor story of our building onto a container of mosquitoes, and you can imagine that didn't go very well. It's kind of like playing the worst game of darts you can imagine."

So the team took the experiment inside. They fired jets of water drops at the mosquitoes and recorded the results with a super-high-speed video camera. They found that mosquitoes don't actually dodge raindrops ? they hitch a ride.

"As the raindrop falls, rather than resisting the raindrop, they basically join together kind of like a stowaway on this comet," Hu says. "So as a result they get very, very little force."

To them it's like getting hit with a feather. They ride the drop for about a thousandth of a second until their wings catch the wind like little kites, and tear the mosquito away from the drop. The mosquitoes don't seem any the worse for wear.

"It's hard to see the expression on a mosquito's face, but they definitely survived. And most of them didn't even land ? they continued flying as if nothing had happened," Hu says.

The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It's hard to see the expression on a mosquito's face, but they definitely survived. And most of them didn't even land ? they continued flying as if nothing had happened.

The real hazard for mosquitoes is apparently if they are flying very close to the ground. If they don't peel off from the raindrop in time, they live out that axiom about being between a rock and a hard place.

"For example, if you're standing on the ground, and a piano falls on you, you basically get smashed," Hu says. He expects that's what would happen to the mosquito.

So what did researchers learn? For the folks who are making flying robots the size of insects, as long as your robot is small enough, you don't have to worry about rain.

For biologists, here's another exquisite example of how life has evolved to survive on a planet that's inundated with fluids. And for anyone who might be tempted to kill a mosquito by swatting it in midair ? it'll never work.

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Russia's Putin in China for regional security talk

(AP) ? The leaders of Russia and China are meeting this week to foster an evolving partnership that has counterbalanced U.S. influence and shielded Syria from international moves to halt its crackdown on a 15-month uprising.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Tuesday in Beijing on his first visit to his country's vast neighbor since resuming the Russian presidency earlier this month. He was to hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao later Tuesday expected to touch on the crisis in Syria as well as on Iran, bilateral trade and energy cooperation, before joining a regional summit later in the week.

Russia and China have repeatedly defied calls by the international community to confront Syria's regime over spiraling violence, saying they will not back steps that could lead to foreign intervention. Russia has long been a close ally of President Bashar Assad's regime, while Beijing opposes setting precedents that could potentially be applied to its troubled western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.

China and Russia vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions which raised the threat of possible sanctions against Syria and have ruled out any Libya-style military action to protect civilians in Syria. The two also voted against a resolution Friday that condemned last month's massacre of more than 100 civilians in the cluster of villages known as Houla and called for an independent investigation.

The U.S. has pushed Russia to join international efforts for a political transition in Syria that would see Assad driven from power.

Putin, meanwhile, has sought to use Russia's burgeoning ties with Beijing as a counterweight to U.S. global predominance, and the sides have found common cause in rejecting Western calls for more open politics and respect for civil liberties.

Both countries also oppose further sanctions against Iran over its suspected drive to develop nuclear weapons.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the Putin and Hu will be among leaders attending the annual summit of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a grouping of Russia, China and four Central Asian states seeking to boost regional integration and curb Western influence. The countries are also preparing for the U.S. departure from Afghanistan.

Ties between the former Cold War rivals have grown steadily warmer over the course of Putin's decade-long dominance of Russian political life. Along with close coordination in international affairs, they've sought to boost economic ties, particularly in the energy sector, setting a target of raising bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2015 from $83.5 billion last year.

Despite that, disputes and mistrust linger. Moscow is unhappy with China's copying of Russian fighter jets and other military hardware and the sides have wrangled for years about the price of gas to be delivered by two Siberian pipelines. Russia prefers to link gas prices to oil prices, as it does in Europe, while China wants a lower price. If Russia's OAO Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp. can reach a deal, deliveries are to start by 2015.

Putin's visit follows his attendance Monday at an EU summit in St. Petersburg at which he defended his country's human rights record, saying Russia has no political prisoners and dismissing criticism of a draconian bill that hikes fines for unsanctioned street rallies.

His visit to China is the first since his return to the presidency in May after stepping down in 2008 due to term limits.

Associated Press

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Practical tool can 'take pulse' of blue-green algae status in lakes

ScienceDaily (June 4, 2012) ? Scientists have designed a screening tool that provides a fast, easy and relatively inexpensive way to predict levels of a specific toxin in lakes that are prone to blue-green algal blooms.

Blue-green algae is not your average pond scum -- rather than consisting of plant-like organisms, blue-green algae actually are cyanobacteria, and some species are linked to the production and release of the toxin microcystin into the water. Human exposure to the toxin through drinking or recreational water contact can threaten public health by causing liver damage, neurological problems and gastrointestinal illness in humans.

The Ohio State University researchers devised a tool that would allow inland lake beach managers to test water samples for the existence of a pigment called phycocyanin -- the substance that gives blue-green algae their distinctive color. Measures of the pigment level combined with an assessment of the water's transparency provide strong clues as to whether microcystin is at high enough levels to threaten health.

"Using this tool is kind of like taking the vital signs of a lake. Phycocyanin measurements coupled with transparency measurements can give you the pulse of the blue-green algae situation in a lake at any given moment in time," said Jason Marion, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in environmental health sciences at Ohio State.

If the screening suggests that microcystin levels may be high enough to threaten public health, additional testing could be done for confirmation. In the meantime, beach managers would be better able to inform the public of the risk from swimming or fishing in tested waters, researchers say.

"That's really the power of this work. Beach managers have all of the tools readily at their fingertips, and they have the necessary skill level. It's an important step toward better protection of Ohio residents," said Timothy Buckley, associate professor and chair of environmental health sciences at Ohio State and senior author of the study.

The research also showed that 26.4 percent of water samples taken from seven Ohio lake beaches in 2009 showed that microcystin levels exceeded the lowest threshold for health risks as determined by the World Health Organization (WHO). This finding alone suggests that Ohio's inland lakes need better protection from potential threats to water quality, the scientists say.

"Population growth and urbanization in general, lacking or failing infrastructure for managing storm water and wastewater, managing agricultural runoff -- all of those things come together to raise additional concern about the future for these recreational water resources and public health," Buckley said.

"This screening tool is only a solution in that it provides a means for a feedback loop, but it's not going to decrease the threats to our surface waters. It's just going to help us figure out how to better manage the resources. Unfortunately, manage means limit public access, which is not a good outcome."

The research is published in a recent issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

This study focused on lakes in Ohio that tend to contain significant amounts of organic pollution and high nutrient levels, also known as eutrophic lakes. Nutrients such as phosphorus find their way to lakes from a variety of sources -- among them farm fertilizers and failing septic systems -- which are known to contribute to the production of blue-green algae.

Precise testing for the presence of microcystin itself in water is costly, time-consuming and available only at specially equipped labs, and often is prompted by public or agency reports of suspected blue-green algal blooms. The researchers came up with a system that could be used for regular surveillance of lakes so beach managers are better able to immediately predict when conditions might be poor for swimming, boating and other recreational uses.

The equipment required for screening of phycocyanin levels is a portable, handheld fluorometer, which costs about $2,300. Water transparency is measured by a simple $25 tool called a secchi disk, which is submerged in water until it can no longer be seen to determine the lake's clarity.

"Phycocyanin has been used as a proxy for this type of algal bloom for a long time, but we have really validated the predictive nature of phycocyanin, especially in this type of water," said Jiyoung Lee, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences and food science and technology at Ohio State and corresponding author of the study. "With the low cost and ready availability of these instruments, I think more routine testing at lakes would be a good use of this field-applicable, rapid and first-line screening tool so managers can have an early warning that water may have a dangerous level of toxin."

In the summer of 2009, the scientists collected 26 samples each from public beach areas in lakes at seven Ohio state parks: Buck Creek, Delaware, Alum Creek, Madison Lake, Deer Creek, Lake Logan and East Fork. "We focused mostly on beaches where people swim and the opportunity for water contact is the greatest," Marion said.

They documented several characteristics of the water, including temperature; measures of oxygen, chlorophyll, pH, organic pollution, phycocyanin and microcystin; and transparency as determined by secchi disk depth.

Of those characteristics, the combined levels of phycocyanin and water transparency were shown to be highly predictive of levels of microcystin. According to the model designed by the researchers, beach managers could enter values for phycocyanin and secchi depth into a spreadsheet or a simple mathematical formula and receive an automatic calculation of whether microcystin levels are likely to be high enough to pose at least minimal health risks.

For this study, the researchers created a model that would predict a microcystin level of at least 4 micrograms per liter of water, which equates to approximately 20,000 cyanobacteria cells per milliliter. According to the WHO, this represents the low end of risk for short-term health problems such as skin irritation or gastrointestinal illness after exposure to the water, and warrants an advisory to the public as well as additional testing of the water.

"Our study shows that as phycocyanin increases, the amount of blue-green algae is likely to be increasing, and the amount of toxin production is also likely to be increasing in this type of water," Marion said. "When tested for effectiveness, this screening tool gives very good to excellent reliability."

Lee is continuing this work, conducting a new research project this summer to explore environmental factors that affect microcystin production by cyanobacteria and rapid detection of microcystin at Ohio beaches.

This study was supported by a grant from the Ohio Water Development Authority.

Additional co-authors include J.R. Wilkins and Cheonghoon Lee of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences; Stanley Lemeshow, dean of the College of Public Health; and Evan Waletzko of the Environmental Science Graduate Program, all at Ohio State.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ohio State University. The original article was written by Emily Caldwell.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Jason W. Marion, Jiyoung Lee, J. R. Wilkins, Stanley Lemeshow, Cheonghoon Lee, Evan J. Waletzko, Timothy J. Buckley. In Vivo Phycocyanin Flourometry as a Potential Rapid Screening Tool for Predicting Elevated Microcystin Concentrations at Eutrophic Lakes. Environmental Science & Technology, 2012; 46 (8): 4523 DOI: 10.1021/es203962u

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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