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"Antibiotics: Killing Off Beneficial Bacteria … for Good?"

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 29 August 2011 08:55

"It’s an accepted concept by now that taking antibiotics in order to quell an infection disrupts the personal microbiome, the population of microorganisms that we all carry around in our guts, and which vastly outnumbers the cells that make up our bodies. That recognition supports our understanding of Clostridium difficile disease — killing the beneficial bacteria allows C. diff room to surge and produce an overload of toxins — as well as the intense interest in establishing a research program that could demonstrate experimentally whether the vast industry producing probiotic products is doing what it purports to do.

But implicit in that concept is the expectation that, after a while — after a course of antibiotics ends — the gut flora repopulate and their natural balance returns.

What if that expectation were wrong?"

Read more: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/killing-beneficial-bacteria/

"Irene: Wet, deadly and expensive, but no monster" - Images

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 29 August 2011 08:51

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Stripped of hurricane rank, Tropical Storm Irene spent the last of its fury Sunday, leaving treacherous flooding and millions without power -- but an unfazed New York and relief that it was nothing like the nightmare authorities feared.
Slowly, the East Coast surveyed the damage -- up to $7 billion by one private estimate. The center of Irene crossed into Canada late Sunday, but for many the danger had not passed.

Rivers and creeks turned into raging torrents tumbling with limbs and parts of buildings in northern New England and upstate New York. Flooding was widespread in Vermont, and hundreds of people were told to leave the capital, Montpelier, which could get flooded twice: once by Irene and once by a utility trying to save an overwhelmed dam.

Meanwhile, the nation's most populous region looked to a new week and the arduous process of getting back to normal."

"Better, Faster, Stronger"

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 29 August 2011 08:48

"A few months ago, Timothy Ferriss, a self-help author, threw himself a party in San Francisco, where he lives. Officially, it was not a celebration for his most recent book, “The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman,” which came out in December and is already in its eleventh printing. In the book, Ferriss tells his readers, “Hack yourself,” and presents them with hundreds of “scientific rules for redesigning the human body”: bathing in ice to lose weight, eating organic almond butter on celery sticks to treat insomnia."

"Canadians naive about how long they'll be in debt"

By Rob Winters - Published on Monday, 29 August 2011 08:45

"OTTAWA — Canadians are overly optimistic in their expectations of when they will be debt-free, according to a survey released Monday.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce survey of people between the ages of 18 and 64 showed 55 as the average age people expected to be without debt.

But in the same survey, only 35 per cent of people between the ages of 55 and 64 reported being debt-free."