KIds Playing Video Games- Risk Involved

I thought this was important!

Video Games Can Play Havoc With Kids' Joints

By Jennifer Thomas, HealthDay Reporter - Sun Oct 18, 4:03 PM PDT
http://health.yahoo.com/news/healthday/videogamescanplayhavocwithkidsjoints-print.html
The lead author of the study knows this all too well. Deniz Ince, who's 11 years old, got the idea to study joint pain among his classmates at Rossman Elementary in St. Louis, Mo., after noticing that his fingers ached while squeezing oranges. Deniz, an avid Wii player, wondered if his video game habit was the culprit.
With the help of his rheumatologist dad and researchers from New York University, the fifth-grader handed out questionnaires to 171 of his schoolmates who were 7 to 12 years old.
About 80 percent of them reported playing with game consoles (Xbox, PlayStation, Wii and the like) or hand-held devices (including iTouch, iPhone and PlayStation Portable). Roughly half of them said they used them less than an hour a day, about a third said they played one to two hours daily, 7 percent reported playing two to three hours a day and 6 percent reported playing more than three hours daily.
Each additional hour of use increased the likelihood of experiencing pain by 50 percent, according to the study. Younger children were also more likely to have wrist pain than older children.
"The younger the kids, the more significant the pain," said the study's senior author, Dr. Yasuf Yazici, an assistant professor of medicine at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York City. "The 7-year-old playing for two hours had more pain than the 10-year-old playing for two hours," he said.
The study was to be presented Oct. 19 at the American College of Rheumatology's annual meeting in Philadelphia.
The researchers said they weren't sure why younger children were more prone to joint pain, though it could be because their muscles and tendons are still developing. Similar motions might put more pressure on a younger child's hand and wrist, compared with an older child's, Yazici said.
Almost 12 percent of the kids surveyed said their finger pain was bad enough to limit how much they played, and nearly 10 percent reported wrist pain that limited their playing time. The pain experienced was generally mild.
However, playing a Wii exclusively resulted in more self-reported pain, independent of age or hours played, according to the research.
Dr. Eric Ruderman, an associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said the findings suggest that video game playing may not be good for children's developing muscles and tendons. But because the children weren't examined, he added, the cause of the pain, the potential for long-term damage and how much playing time is safe for a child remain unknown.
"Parents need to monitor what their children are doing," Ruderman said. "Two or three hours a day, irrespective of pain in their hands, is too much time for a 7- or 8-year-old to be playing video games."
Young children also might not be able to recognize the warning signs of overuse and know when to stop playing, Ruderman added.
The findings add to a growing body of research showing that video games, PDAs, cell phones and the assorted other electronic gadgets that have become part of daily life can lead to painful repetitive stress and nerve compression injuries.
Too much texting can bring on "BlackBerry thumb," a repetitive stress injury brought on by overtaxing a single digit. Cell phone elbow, otherwise known as cubital tunnel syndrome, is a tingling or numbness in the hands caused by a compression of the ulnar nerve, which can be brought on by flexing the elbow for too long while talking. "Guitar Hero wrist" is tendinitis of the wrist brought on by efforts to mimic Jimi Hendrix.
For his part, Deniz, who wants to be an orthopedic surgeon, has cut back on his video game playing, though he did plan to celebrate the completion of his study by buying a new Wii game.
And his advice to his fellow students is to turn off their video games, even if it's not easy. "I would tell them they shouldn't play for more than one hour a day," Deniz said. "And if I were younger, I wouldn't play before the age of 7."
More information
The Nemours Foundation has tips for parents on limiting video game and computer use by their children.

Food Art

While logging on to my yahoo mail today, I found an article with pictures...about "Food Art". I thought these were quite creative! There were other works, like a jelly bean mosiac of Larry King, etc.

CANNED FOOD ART
The structure above, created in 2005 by Platt Byard Dovell White Architects LLP, is made from 5,000 cans of sliced bamboo shoots and stuffed vine leaves. It’s one of several works to come out of Canstruction—a trademark charity event and design/build competition under the auspices of the Society for Design Administration. The challenge? To build large structures made of unopened food cans, which are later donated to city-registered food banks.

Cereal Art
This mosaic of President Barack Obama, created by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev of CerealArt.com, showcases a slew of sugary cereals including Honeycomb, Life and Froot Loops. The company, which is inspired by 3D visual art and consumer culture, wanted to make a commentary about the president’s iconic and commercial appeal, much in line with Thomas’ other work, which typically deals with the complex issues of race, identity, class and history in the age of consumerism.

Veggie Art
The above artwork, inspired by one of Vincent van Gogh’s many self-portraits, was displayed at the Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery from November 23, 2008 to January 22, 2009 as part of Chinese artist Ju Duoqi’s exhibit titled The Vegetable Museum. In the series, Duoqi recreates Western masterpieces using common Chinese cuisine ingredients—including tofu, cabbage, ginger, lotus roots, coriander and sweet potato—then photographs them for gallery and museum showings.

Toast Art
This 14.5 x 16.5-inch mosaic by Ingrid Falk and Gustavo Aguerre was made entirely of toast—specifically, 3,053 slices with varying degrees of toastedness, including shades of white, beige, tan, ochre, rust and black. The two artists are known for using bread and food as a recurring theme in their artwork. This piece, which took several days of toasting—and the use of multiple friends’ toasters—to complete, was displayed at the Galleria Milano in Milan, Italy, in October and November 1999.

PLANTS GLORIOUS PLANTS

The plant pictured here is a Bamboo Palm

The National Gardening Association site reports....

Students are Happier in Classrooms with Plants

It’s widely known that the presence of houseplants in rooms improves air quality, reduces eye irritation and stress, motivates employees, and even improves concentration. In one study, employees’ reaction time on computer tasks improved 12% with houseplants present. Now researchers have found that University students can benefit from having houseplants in the classroom as well.

Researchers from Texas State University and Texas A&M University analyzed three sets of two classes each -- about 385 students. One set of classes had no plants in their classroom, while the others had an assortment of tropical plants. At the end of the semester, students filled out a survey. Although there was no difference in overall grades or academic performance, researchers found students in the classroom with houseplants evaluated the course higher in instructor’s enthusiasm and organization. They generally had more positive feelings about the class than those in plant-less room. The plants had the most impact in classrooms with no other natural elements.
For more information on this study, go to: Science Daily News...and this is it:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163947.htm#

Greening University Classrooms: Adding Plants Increases Student Satisfaction
ScienceDaily (Sep. 6, 2009) — In today's frenetic world, many urban dwellers spend more than 80% of the day indoors. Bringing nature in to living spaces by enhancing homes and offices with ornamental plants has become another popular facet of the move to "green" our lives. In addition to their aesthetic beauty, indoor plants have been shown to offer psychological and restorative values, such as reduced tension, better coping mechanisms, and increased concentration and attention.

Researchers have found that the presence of houseplants in homes and workplaces can reduce eye irritation and stress, motivate employees, improve concentration, and even reduce air impurities. Plants appeared to have a positive effect on headaches and fatigue and hoarseness, and employees even reported having less dry skin when plants were introduced to offices. Interior plants have also been shown to increase work productivity; in one study, employees' reaction time on computer tasks improved by 12% when plants were present.

Now, scientists are testing the impact of plants on student performance and satisfaction in the classroom. Jennifer S. Doxey and Tina Marie Waliczek from the Department of Agriculture, Texas State University, and Jayne M. Zajicek of the Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, published a study of the impact of plants in university classrooms in a recent issue of HortScience. Their main objective was to investigate the impact of plants in classrooms on course performance and student perceptions of the course and instructor.

The study was designed to include a minimum of two classes of the same coursework taught by the same professor in the same room during one semester. Three sets of two classes each and 385 students were included within the study. Throughout the semester, an experimental group of students attended classes in rooms that contained an assortment of tropical plants. The control group of students attended class in rooms with no plants.

At the end of the semester, the students were asked to complete the university's course and instructor evaluation survey, and each student provided demographic data, including class rank, gender, and ethnicity. To measure course performance, the professor for each course reported each student's grade for the course.
Although the researchers found no significant differences in students' grades and academic performance, differences were identified in students' overall course and instructor evaluation scores. Of particular interest, statistically significant differences were found between control and treatment groups when students scored questions related to "learning", "instructors' enthusiasm", and "instructors' organization". Students from the group whose classrooms included plants rated these items higher on the satisfaction scale. In comparisons of the two student groups, the most apparent differences were reported by students who attended class in the room that was windowless and stark.

According to Waliczek, "Our results showed that interior plants appeared to have the greatest impact on students who were in the classroom that had no other natural elements. Results also showed that interior plants can be a suitable alternative in some cases to architectural elements such as windows. Our study supports other research showing that plants have value beyond aesthetics in interior environments, including promoting positive feelings in university students."

Journal reference:
Jennifer S. Doxey and Tina Marie Waliczek. The Impact of Interior Plants in University Classrooms on Student Course Performance and on Student Perceptions of the Course and Instructor. HortScience, 2009; 44: 384-391 [link]
Adapted from materials provided by American Society for Horticultural Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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I also found this list ....

NASA scientists have found houseplants surprisingly useful in absorbing harmful gases and cleaning the air inside many homes and office buildings. A study that tested the effectiveness of these plants found the following especially cleansing:

1. Bamboo Palm (Chamaedorea Seifritzii)
2. Chinese Evergreen
3. English Ivy
4. Gerbera Daisy
5. Janet Craig
6. Marginata
7. Mass Cane / Corn Plant
8. Mother-in-Law’s Tongue
9. Pot Mum
10. Peace Lily

When to plant your bare root raspberry "canes"

I just found out from Cal Herbold's Nursery here in the High Desert that they get their new shipment of raspberries in Jan/Feb....$4.95 each. And that is the time to plant them.

So now, I can start thinking about trellises for them. Here is a post from

http://20minutegarden.com/2008/02/24/plans-raspberry-trellis/

1. Trellising raspberries keeps the berries off the ground. When berries touch the soil, you have an increased chance of spoilage and contamination. Berries near the ground are more accessible to insects– and less accessible to you. Trellised berries are far easier to pick. For you, that means less squatting and more eating.

2. Trellising raspberries makes pruning easier by far. Raspberries grow on second-year canes. Meanwhile first-year canes, that is next year’s berry producers, grow up among the second-year branches. After berry-picking season, Jim does a superfine job of taking out the “old” canes to give the new ones room to grow. Having the canes held up, but not attached to, trellis-supported plastic-coated wiring makes that job a bit easier.

3. Trellising raspberries helps us keep a reasonable number of plants. When raspberry canes touch the ground over a long period of time, a new bush can take root from that spot. This is all fine and good, if you have no limit on the space you can devote to growing raspberries or if you want to add additional plants. But at some point, you might reach your raspberry plant limit. Trellising raspberry bushes makes it much easier to take inventory of how many plants you have.

4. Trellising raspberry canes makes it much easier to monitor plant health. What’s worse than one of your raspberry plants dying of rust or blight? All of your raspberry plants dying of rust or blight. Trellised raspberry plants are much easier to monitor. Unfortunately, we have had the experience of plants getting rust; fortunately, we acted quickly and mercilessly, pulling up and disposing of the plants (NOT COMPOSTING!), and we prevented the spread of disease among our berries.

For raspberry trellis plans and additional information, see our articles in this post and this one.

Darlene White's Article on Raspberries

http://www.finegardening.com/plants/articles/reliable-raspberries.aspx

This is a great site!!!!! I learned so much. Lots of details about how to prevent problems, etc.

I want to grow raspberries

A dream of mine is to grow a lot of raspberries....and here is a motivating article for me to keep and re-read unitl I become an expert.

http://www.walterreeves.com/food_gardening/article.phtml?cat=2&id=554
I hate to brag .... but I did something last spring that has given me more pleasure this summer than just about anything else in my garden.

I decided back then to grow raspberries ... and to do it right.

This June I stuffed my face with juicy red fruit for three weeks. Whenever I needed a break from planting or weeding or watering I turned to the bramble arbor and picked thumb-sized berries to my heart’s content. My son and I picked three plastic containers-ful in just a few minutes one day.

Last year in April my berry patch was a mess, sprawled over everything nearby. How did I get such good results in just over a year?

RAISED BED My first step was to decide where I really wanted the vines to grow. They need full sunshine so I found a spot along my back property line. One of the reasons my initial patch was such a failure is that raspberries send up root sprouts many inches from the parent plant. I resolved to dig all of the existing plants and their progeny, build a raised bed two feet wide and twenty feet long, and replant my thorny friends inside it.

I filled the raised bed with well-amended soil before I planted. Since the area around the bed is hard clay, I figured that roots would find it inconvenient to escape their comfortable confines in the bed.

At each end of the bed I firmly buried a wooden post extending five feet aboveground. Between the posts I strung three lengths of twelve gauge clothesline wire, at twenty four, forty two and sixty inches above the soil.

With leather gloves, sharp pruners and an up-to-date tetanus shot I removed dead canes from the raspberries I’d previously dug. I left the green canes on the plant, knowing that they would provide the energy to grow strong canes in summer, which canes would flower and fruit this June.

And that’s all I did. No spraying, infrequent fertilizing and occasional watering was all the care I provided last year. I had no fruit... but I didn’t expect any, knowing I’d harvest my reward the next summer.

GOOD VARIETIES Most of my plants are ‘Dormanred’ trailing raspberry but they are mixed with a couple of un-named plants I salvaged from behind a cottage at Wahsega 4-H Camp a few years ago. I also have a ‘Kiowa’ erect blackberry mixed with the raspberries. ‘Kiowa’ has satin fruit almost as big as a golf ball but it is the thorniest plant I’ve ever seen!

‘Heritage’ erect raspberry does well in the upper half of Georgia and there are several blackberry varieties that also thrive here. The culture of all of these brambles is similar. If you have a lot of space the erect varieties can be grown with minimal arborage but I prefer the wire system for a small plot. The three wires give me something to tie wayward canes to when they grab my ankles and they make picking the fruit so much easier.

MINIMAL CARE NEEDED If a plant needs coddling it has no place in my garden. I don’t grow peaches or plums for that reason. I suppose I could grow dwarf apples but even they require a couple of pesticide sprays for optimum production.

Raspberries and blackberries have hardly any pests. Japanese beetles sometimes attack the fruit and leaves but this year the last fruit was picked before beetles became a nuisance. Blackberries sometimes get rust disease but it is not so troublesome as the scab, fire blight and brown rot which attack tree fruit.

Blackberries and raspberries produce fruit on canes that grew the previous year. Mid-summer jobs include an application of 10-10-10 fertilizer and sufficient water to avoid wilting. True, the canes that fruited this June need to be removed as they fade but that is not a terrible chore. I attend to it every few days, just as I attended to the tying up of wandering young canes back in May.

OTHER LOW CARE FRUIT I’m sold on raspberries for my garden but your family may have a different hankering. Rabbiteye blueberries are just about as pest-free as brambles and best of all, they don’t have thorns! Muscadine grapes are mouth watering in September and require little more than an annual pruning in January. Despite their attractiveness to birds, figs are another fruit that yields great bounty with little management.

FACTSHEETS TO GET STARTED Any landscape has room for edible plants. It may be herbs, vegetables, fruit or even nuts. Imagine the pleasure you’ll get from eating something you’ve personally cared for and harvested! Even if you have never tried it before, your local county Extension office (404-897-6261) has free brochures which cover everything you need to know to get started. If you can’t wait to receive the brochures in the mail, you can download them. I’m sure you’ll find that small fruit, particuarly raspberries, can be berry, berry good in your garden.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

John is beginning to think he has chronic fatigue syndrome, so I have put this recent article (that he

www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-fatigue9-2009oct09,0,3368993.story
latimes.com

Virus discovery called breakthrough in fight against chronic fatigue syndrome

Traces of a retrovirus similar to HIV are found in most patients with the mysterious disorder. It could be an opportunistic virus, but researchers want further testing to see if it causes the syndrome

By Thomas H. Maugh II

October 9, 2009

In what may prove to be the first major breakthrough in the fight against the mysterious and controversial disorder known as chronic fatigue syndrome, researchers reported Thursday that they had found traces of a virus in the vast majority of affected patients.

The same virus has previously been identified in at least a quarter of prostate tumors, particularly those that are very aggressive, and has also been linked to certain types of cancers of the blood.

It remains possible that the virus, known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, is a so-called passenger virus that is simply infecting patients whose immune systems have been suppressed by other causes. But the new findings were sufficiently alarming that the National Cancer Institute called together a group of experts in August to consider its potential effect on public health.

"We are in the very early days," said Stuart Le Grice, director of the National Cancer Institute's Center of Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Cancer Virology, who organized the meeting but was not involved in the new study. "The data need to be confirmed and repeated. . . . We need to know that it is a cause and not just a passenger. In a sense, we are at the same stage as we were when HIV was first discovered. Hopefully, we can take advantage of what we learned from working with it."

Le Grice emphasized, however, that traces of the virus had been found in blood samples preserved for 25 years. "This is not associated with a new and spreading disease. We are not on the verge of an epidemic," he said.

Chronic fatigue syndrome, which affects at least 1 million Americans and more than 17 million people worldwide, is characterized by debilitating fatigue, chronic pain and depression, as well as other symptoms. Many doctors have argued that it is not a real disorder because there have previously been no biochemical markers that characterize it. The only effective treatments are behavioral changes and antidepressants, and they are of limited benefit.

Chronic fatigue syndrome has been theoretically linked to a variety of other viruses, including Epstein-Barr virus and human herpesvirus 6, but none have been found in a significant proportion of patients. Today's findings could explain why.

Like HIV, which causes a constellation of symptoms, XMRV is a retrovirus; retroviruses are known to suppress the immune system, making it easier for other viruses to establish a beachhead.

Dr. William C. Reeves, who heads chronic fatigue syndrome research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned against racing to conclusions based on the findings, even though he characterized them as promising.

"It is almost unheard of to find an association of this magnitude in any study of an infectious agent and a well-defined disease, much less an [ill-defined] illness like chronic fatigue syndrome," he said in an e-mail. It is extremely difficult to prove causation with a ubiquitous virus like XMRV, and it "is even more difficult in the case of CFS, which represents a clinically and epidemiologically complex illness," he said.

The new study was organized by Judy A. Mikovits, director of research at the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro Immune Disease, a small, 3-year-old institute on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Others involved in the study included cancer biologist Robert H. Silverman of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, who discovered XMRV three years ago and was the first to link it to prostate cancer, and Francis Ruscetti of the laboratory of experimental immunology at the National Cancer Institute, where Mikovits worked for 20 years.

The team reported in the online version of the journal Science that they found the virus in 68 of 101 blood samples from patients with the syndrome, but in only eight of 218 healthy patients.

In a telephone interview, Mikovits said they had also found antibodies against the virus in 95% of the chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Experts noted that no test was perfect at identifying all cases of an infection, and the antibody tests Mikovits used were being refined.

"My gut feeling is it's not a carrier virus," she said. "It's a human retrovirus, just like HIV, which is why all those other pathogens are not able to be controlled." The close association with chronic fatigue syndrome is important, she added, because "never before has there even been a biomarker in this disease."

The team concluded that the virus is not transmitted through the air. It is found in saliva and blood products, and the implication is that it is sexually transmitted, "but that has not been proven," Le Grice said.

Unfortunately, Reeves said, the major flaw of the study is that there is not enough information about how subjects were selected to rule out any bias in choosing them.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times