Cave News

Images from world’s first total body scanner

Explorer, the world's first medical imaging scanner that can capture a 3-D picture of the whole human body at once, has produced its first scans.

The brainchild of UC Davis scientists Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, Explorer is a combined positron emission tomography (PET) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner that can image the entire body at the same time.

Because the machine captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners, Explorer can produce an image in as little as one second and, over time, produce movies that can track specially tagged drugs as they move around the entire body.

The developers expect the technology will have countless applications, from improving diagnostics to tracking disease progression to researching new drug therapies.

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CDC warning: romaine lettuce is not safe to eat

The CDC told consumers to throw away any romaine lettuce (pictured at right) they may already have purchased. Restaurants should not serve it, stores should not sell it, and people should not buy it, no matter where or when the lettuce was grown. It doesn’t matter if it is chopped, whole head or part of a mix.

The unusually broad warning, issued just two days before Americans sit down for their Thanksgiving dinners, reflects the uncertainties about the origin and extent of the bacterial contamination. The CDC is not claiming that all romaine contains the dangerous bacteria — something the millions of people who have eaten the popular lettuce recently should bear in mind — but investigators don’t know precisely where, when or how the contamination happened.

Thus all romaine is suspect.

Full report here.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized after fracturing 3 ribs in a fall

Eighty-five-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (pictured) fractured three ribs in a fall in her office at the court and is in the hospital, the court said Thursday.

The court’s oldest justice fell Wednesday evening, the court said. She called Supreme Court police to take her to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

She was admitted to the hospital for treatment and observation after tests showed she fractured three ribs.

In her absence, the court went ahead Thursday with a courtroom ceremony welcoming new Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the court last month. President Donald Trump and new acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker were on hand.

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More than a quarter of all evening meals in the UK are vegan or vegetarian

Britain has gone vegetarian and vegan as a quarter of UK dinners have no meat or fish

More than a quarter of all evening meals in the the UK are vegan or vegetarian

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Canada has legalized recreational recreational marijuana

Canada has become the second country after Uruguay to legalize possession and use of recreational cannabis.

Will this be the new flag of Canada?

Medical marijuana has been legal in the country since 2001.

But concerns remain, including about the readiness for police forces to tackle drug impaired driving.

Information has been sent to 15m households about the new laws and there are public awareness campaigns.

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He walks with a cane made from his worn out hip replacement

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Medical doctors promoted smoking in 1950's cigarette advertisements

Old Gold cigarette ads bragged, "not a cough in a carload."

The Organic industry is lying to us!

Below is a link to a report titled, “The organic food industry gets fat on lies.”

In “The Wealth of Nations,” the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith observed about the chicanery of some businessmen, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Nowhere is that truer than in today’s organic agriculture and food industries.

More than two dozen synthetic chemical pesticides are permitted in organic agriculture, and organic farmers are demanding more. The reason is revealing. Organic practices are so primitive and inferior that constantly-challenged organic farmers periodically go whining to USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (whose members are from the organic industry), which rubber-stamps their requests for new chemicals to be approved.

We have long since stopped paying extra for organic food products suspecting there was little if any benefit. The report at the link below validates our decision.

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Primitive child car seats - some costing less than one dollar

How did children using these primitive travel restraints survive automobile accidents? Sadly, many of them didn’t.

Holy water blamed for Ethiopia diarrhoea outbreak

An outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region has killed 10 people over the past two weeks and more than 1,200 people have the illness.

The authorities have put the spread of the disease down to unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene, and have identified contaminated holy water in some of the region's monasteries as being behind the outbreak.

It is thought that the water is being taken from rivers that are carrying the disease.

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