KETCHIKAN, Alaska - Fire officials in Alaska say a pet rabbit woke its owner when the house was on fire, allowing the woman to get herself and her daughter safely out of the burning building. But the rabbit ended up dying from smoke inhalation.
The woman was awakened early Tuesday by the rabbit scratching her chest, and she saw the house was full of smoke.
She rushed to get her daughter out of the home, but the rabbit was left behind in the confusion.
Ketchikan Fire Capt. Tracy Mettler tells the Ketchikan Daily News pets often find their own way out of a burning building but not this time.
The fire's cause is under investigation. The fire department wouldn't identify the home's two residents.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Computer can tell if you are feeling pain
CHICAGO - Can a computer tell when it hurts? It can if you train it, US researchers said on Tuesday.
A team at Stanford University in California used computer learning software to sort through data generated by brain scans and detect when people were in pain.
"The question we were trying to answer was can we use neuroimaging to objectively detect whether a person is in a state of pain or not. The answer was yes," said Dr Sean Mackey of the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, whose study appears in the journal PLoS One.
Currently, doctors rely on patients to tell them whether or not they are in pain. And that is still the gold standard for assessing pain, Mackey said.
But some patients - the very young, the very old, dementia patients or those who are not conscious - cannot say if they are hurting, and that has led to a long search for some way to objectively measure pain.
"People have been looking for a pain detector for a very long time," Mackey said.
"We're hopeful we can eventually use this technology for better detection and better treatment of chronic pain."
For the study, Mackey's team used a linear support vector machine - a computer algorithm invented in 1995 - to classify patterns of brain activity and determine whether or not someone is experiencing pain.
To train the computer, eight volunteers underwent brain scans while they were touched first by an object that was hot, and then by one that was so hot it was painful.
The computer used data from these scans to recognize different brain activity patterns that occur when a person is detecting heat or detecting pain.
In tests the computer was more than 80 percent accurate in detecting which brain scans were of people in pain, and it was just as accurate at ruling out those who were not in pain.
Mackey cautioned that the study was done in a controlled lab environment, and it did not look at the differences between chronic and acute pain.
More than 100 million people in the United States suffer chronic pain, and treating them costs around $600 billion each year in medical expenses and lost productivity, the Institute of Medicine, one of the National Academy of Sciences, reported in June.
A team at Stanford University in California used computer learning software to sort through data generated by brain scans and detect when people were in pain.
"The question we were trying to answer was can we use neuroimaging to objectively detect whether a person is in a state of pain or not. The answer was yes," said Dr Sean Mackey of the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, whose study appears in the journal PLoS One.
Currently, doctors rely on patients to tell them whether or not they are in pain. And that is still the gold standard for assessing pain, Mackey said.
But some patients - the very young, the very old, dementia patients or those who are not conscious - cannot say if they are hurting, and that has led to a long search for some way to objectively measure pain.
"People have been looking for a pain detector for a very long time," Mackey said.
"We're hopeful we can eventually use this technology for better detection and better treatment of chronic pain."
For the study, Mackey's team used a linear support vector machine - a computer algorithm invented in 1995 - to classify patterns of brain activity and determine whether or not someone is experiencing pain.
To train the computer, eight volunteers underwent brain scans while they were touched first by an object that was hot, and then by one that was so hot it was painful.
The computer used data from these scans to recognize different brain activity patterns that occur when a person is detecting heat or detecting pain.
In tests the computer was more than 80 percent accurate in detecting which brain scans were of people in pain, and it was just as accurate at ruling out those who were not in pain.
Mackey cautioned that the study was done in a controlled lab environment, and it did not look at the differences between chronic and acute pain.
More than 100 million people in the United States suffer chronic pain, and treating them costs around $600 billion each year in medical expenses and lost productivity, the Institute of Medicine, one of the National Academy of Sciences, reported in June.
US poverty rate hits record high
WASHINGTON - Poverty rate in the United States is at its highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau said Tuesday, releasing a set of gloomy figures that show median household income declined and poverty rate increased.
According to the bureau, in 2010, real median household income in the United States was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median. The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 - the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate, and the highest since 1993.
There were 46.2 million Americans living in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 - the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
Moreover, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 49 million in 2009 to 49.9 million in 2010, while the percentage without coverage - 16.3 percent - was not statistically different from the rate in 2009.
These findings were contained in a report titled Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010. The results of the report were compiled from information collected in the 2011 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
According to the bureau, in 2010, real median household income in the United States was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median. The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 - the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate, and the highest since 1993.
There were 46.2 million Americans living in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 - the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
Moreover, the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 49 million in 2009 to 49.9 million in 2010, while the percentage without coverage - 16.3 percent - was not statistically different from the rate in 2009.
These findings were contained in a report titled Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010. The results of the report were compiled from information collected in the 2011 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Space shuttle brought payoffs to Earth
Space shuttle Atlantis and International Space Station crew members bid each other farewell as the hatches between the two spacecraft close for undocking in this image from NASA TV July 18, 2011.
WASHINGTON - Science from the space shuttle helped open Earth's eyes to the cosmos and sister planets. It created perhaps the most detailed topographical map of Earth. It even still is helping doctors understand, and sometimes fix, what is happening in people's aging and ailing bodies.
If you need help getting out of a crashed car, or if you are a soldier maneuvering around an active land mine field, space shuttle-derived technology may have saved your life.
And thanks to the space shuttle, we have healthier baby formula and cooling socks to wear in hot weather.
Most Americans wrongly credit the Apollo moon program with creating Earthly "spinoffs" of new technology that it never did: sticky Velcro, nonsticky Teflon and orange-powdered Tang _ all things used by NASA but not invented there.
Yet the 40-year space shuttle program often does not get recognized for its science and technology, NASA says. And shuttle-based science will come to an end when Atlantis, carrying mouse stem cell and vaccine experiments, comes home on Thursday.
Of course spending nearly $200 billion on any advanced technology will pay off in various unplanned ways. One scientist, a prominent critic of manned spaceflight, says NASA's claimed benefits are more hype than hope.
Bob Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, debunker of science myths and author of the book "Voodoo Science," said much of NASA's claims of science and earthly technological benefits is advertising hokum that helps companies sell items as being developed in space.
"If you trace them, there's nothing there," Park said. "Teflon, Tang, nothing was invented in space. Space used it."
Park points to a decades-old NASA spinoff report as supporting his skepticism.
Scientists who have worked with and for the space agency say, however, that the shuttle research has paid off.
"There's been a good deal of science learned on the shuttle," said astronautics and health technology professor Laurence Young of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has sent experiments on seven shuttle flights, mostly on how weightlessness affects the body.
Science was not the reason the shuttle was built, said Rice University physicist Neal Lane, who was the head of the National Science Foundation and President Bill Clinton's science adviser. However, the shuttle and the International Space Station, which could not have been constructed without the shuttle, are unprecedented places for important science. He has great hopes for an antimatter physics experiment that shuttle Endeavour delivered to the station in May.
People overlook the increased understanding in human biology that the shuttle and station have provided, Lane said. "We've learned some things about the human body that we had no other way to learn except to operate for some period of time _ some extended period of time _ in space."
Astronauts lose bone strength, have balance problems and weakened immune systems that in many ways are similar to aging. Studying how to combat bone loss on shuttle astronauts with exercise and other activity may help the Earth-bound, they figure.
Still, the most obvious science the shuttle helped generate is with astronomy. Exhibit 1 is the Hubble Space Telescope, which changed Earth's view of the cosmos and even its understanding of the age of the universe. It was launched with the shuttle, fixed with the shuttle and upgraded four other times by spacewalking shuttle astronauts. Without all that, Earth's view of the rest of the universe would have been fuzzy at best.
Former NASA science chief Alan Stern said the shuttle launched three other major space exploration probes: Galileo, which gave close-up views of Jupiter and its moons; Magellan, which mapped hot, chaotic Venus; and Ulysses, which examined the sun's larger influence on the edges of the solar system.
But what is taken for granted even more is how the shuttle improved our view of our home planet with one flight in 2000. The spacecraft carried a set of special radar instruments that mapped most of the world, including previously inaccessible areas such as jungles and mountaintops, with the most precise topographical measurements ever. This is important for military planning and aviation.
"It's a gift that is going to keep on giving. It's going to affect science, environment and national security," said University of Tennessee aviation and flight research professor John Muratore, a former NASA flight director. "And that is a really undervalued mission."
Another overlooked item from the space shuttle is the bioreactor, Muratore said. It was designed originally to grow cells and tissue in space for experiments in zero gravity, but it is used on Earth for all sorts of biomedical research, he said. Bioreactors can grow blood and human tissue in a constantly rotating growth medium that simulates the free fall of zero gravity. Then, scientists can direct tissue growth in predetermined shapes using plastic lattices, much like the way ivy climbs walls. It still is a developing technology, so who knows where it will lead, said Dan Lockney, NASA's spinoff technology manager.
Each year, NASA puts out a list of shuttle science spinoffs, which are either purposeful or accidental. NASA scientists were trying to design better space food and they looked to algae. They found an algae nutrient that had been seen only in human breast milk and developed it. It is now in 95 percent of infant formula, Lockney said.
"Millions of babies have been fed (by) NASA; that beats Tang," Lockney said. Another common item is a material designed for shuttle spacesuits that controls temperature, thereby cooling astronauts. Phase change materials from Outlast Technologies Inc. are now in socks, outdoor clothing and even some business suits, he said.
Famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey helped develop a tiny new artificial heart pump, a bridge for patients needing transplants, based on fluid flow through the space shuttle main engines, the most complicated engines ever built. A few hundred people have had the device implanted.
NASA helped develop a tool for firefighters that rescues people from crashed cars and is lighter and cheaper than the famed Jaws of Life; it also needs no outside power source or hoses. Also, shuttle rocket fuel has been used to develop a device that safely sets off buried land mines.
For MIT's Young, science on the space shuttle is ideal. Astronauts would get so familiar with the experiments they had to perform, that they became experts themselves, sometimes adapting the research and making it better. They often were co-authors of Young's published research papers.
This was "the way we thought science should be done," he said.
WASHINGTON - Science from the space shuttle helped open Earth's eyes to the cosmos and sister planets. It created perhaps the most detailed topographical map of Earth. It even still is helping doctors understand, and sometimes fix, what is happening in people's aging and ailing bodies.
If you need help getting out of a crashed car, or if you are a soldier maneuvering around an active land mine field, space shuttle-derived technology may have saved your life.
And thanks to the space shuttle, we have healthier baby formula and cooling socks to wear in hot weather.
Most Americans wrongly credit the Apollo moon program with creating Earthly "spinoffs" of new technology that it never did: sticky Velcro, nonsticky Teflon and orange-powdered Tang _ all things used by NASA but not invented there.
Yet the 40-year space shuttle program often does not get recognized for its science and technology, NASA says. And shuttle-based science will come to an end when Atlantis, carrying mouse stem cell and vaccine experiments, comes home on Thursday.
Of course spending nearly $200 billion on any advanced technology will pay off in various unplanned ways. One scientist, a prominent critic of manned spaceflight, says NASA's claimed benefits are more hype than hope.
Bob Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, debunker of science myths and author of the book "Voodoo Science," said much of NASA's claims of science and earthly technological benefits is advertising hokum that helps companies sell items as being developed in space.
"If you trace them, there's nothing there," Park said. "Teflon, Tang, nothing was invented in space. Space used it."
Park points to a decades-old NASA spinoff report as supporting his skepticism.
Scientists who have worked with and for the space agency say, however, that the shuttle research has paid off.
"There's been a good deal of science learned on the shuttle," said astronautics and health technology professor Laurence Young of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has sent experiments on seven shuttle flights, mostly on how weightlessness affects the body.
Science was not the reason the shuttle was built, said Rice University physicist Neal Lane, who was the head of the National Science Foundation and President Bill Clinton's science adviser. However, the shuttle and the International Space Station, which could not have been constructed without the shuttle, are unprecedented places for important science. He has great hopes for an antimatter physics experiment that shuttle Endeavour delivered to the station in May.
People overlook the increased understanding in human biology that the shuttle and station have provided, Lane said. "We've learned some things about the human body that we had no other way to learn except to operate for some period of time _ some extended period of time _ in space."
Astronauts lose bone strength, have balance problems and weakened immune systems that in many ways are similar to aging. Studying how to combat bone loss on shuttle astronauts with exercise and other activity may help the Earth-bound, they figure.
Still, the most obvious science the shuttle helped generate is with astronomy. Exhibit 1 is the Hubble Space Telescope, which changed Earth's view of the cosmos and even its understanding of the age of the universe. It was launched with the shuttle, fixed with the shuttle and upgraded four other times by spacewalking shuttle astronauts. Without all that, Earth's view of the rest of the universe would have been fuzzy at best.
Former NASA science chief Alan Stern said the shuttle launched three other major space exploration probes: Galileo, which gave close-up views of Jupiter and its moons; Magellan, which mapped hot, chaotic Venus; and Ulysses, which examined the sun's larger influence on the edges of the solar system.
But what is taken for granted even more is how the shuttle improved our view of our home planet with one flight in 2000. The spacecraft carried a set of special radar instruments that mapped most of the world, including previously inaccessible areas such as jungles and mountaintops, with the most precise topographical measurements ever. This is important for military planning and aviation.
"It's a gift that is going to keep on giving. It's going to affect science, environment and national security," said University of Tennessee aviation and flight research professor John Muratore, a former NASA flight director. "And that is a really undervalued mission."
Another overlooked item from the space shuttle is the bioreactor, Muratore said. It was designed originally to grow cells and tissue in space for experiments in zero gravity, but it is used on Earth for all sorts of biomedical research, he said. Bioreactors can grow blood and human tissue in a constantly rotating growth medium that simulates the free fall of zero gravity. Then, scientists can direct tissue growth in predetermined shapes using plastic lattices, much like the way ivy climbs walls. It still is a developing technology, so who knows where it will lead, said Dan Lockney, NASA's spinoff technology manager.
Each year, NASA puts out a list of shuttle science spinoffs, which are either purposeful or accidental. NASA scientists were trying to design better space food and they looked to algae. They found an algae nutrient that had been seen only in human breast milk and developed it. It is now in 95 percent of infant formula, Lockney said.
"Millions of babies have been fed (by) NASA; that beats Tang," Lockney said. Another common item is a material designed for shuttle spacesuits that controls temperature, thereby cooling astronauts. Phase change materials from Outlast Technologies Inc. are now in socks, outdoor clothing and even some business suits, he said.
Famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey helped develop a tiny new artificial heart pump, a bridge for patients needing transplants, based on fluid flow through the space shuttle main engines, the most complicated engines ever built. A few hundred people have had the device implanted.
NASA helped develop a tool for firefighters that rescues people from crashed cars and is lighter and cheaper than the famed Jaws of Life; it also needs no outside power source or hoses. Also, shuttle rocket fuel has been used to develop a device that safely sets off buried land mines.
For MIT's Young, science on the space shuttle is ideal. Astronauts would get so familiar with the experiments they had to perform, that they became experts themselves, sometimes adapting the research and making it better. They often were co-authors of Young's published research papers.
This was "the way we thought science should be done," he said.
Obama honors Mandela on eve of 93rd birthday
WASHINGTON - In honor of Nelson Mandela's 93rd birthday on Monday, President Barack Obama is calling the South African leader "a beacon for the global community, and for all who work for democracy, justice and reconciliation."
In a statement issued Sunday, Obama congratulated Mandela for devoting his life to public service and a legacy that exemplifies what Obama calls "wisdom, strength and grace."
Obama's wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia met Mandela last month in Johannesburg during a trip to Africa that focused on service, youth leadership, education and healthy living. The president said their time with Mandela was "the most moving" part of their trip."
In 2009, the US and 192 other UN member states created Nelson Mandela International Day to honor the African leader through acts of community service.
In a statement issued Sunday, Obama congratulated Mandela for devoting his life to public service and a legacy that exemplifies what Obama calls "wisdom, strength and grace."
Obama's wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia met Mandela last month in Johannesburg during a trip to Africa that focused on service, youth leadership, education and healthy living. The president said their time with Mandela was "the most moving" part of their trip."
In 2009, the US and 192 other UN member states created Nelson Mandela International Day to honor the African leader through acts of community service.
Los Angeles braces for weekend traffic jam of biblical proportions
Traffic moves slowly on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, California, on Thursday. A massive traffic jam is expected this weekend when a 16-km stretch of the freeway is closed for construction.
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles, a city renowned for its traffic, is about to face a jam of biblical proportions.
"Carmageddon" is the name Los Angeles residents are giving the likely epic traffic tie-up that will result when a 16-km stretch of the 405 Freeway is closed for construction from Friday night to Monday morning between two of the nation's busiest interchanges.
The unprecedented 53-hour shutdown, expected to delay motorists for hours on alternate routes with ripple effects on about a dozen other major highways, will allow crews to demolish a bridge as part of a $1 billion freeway-widening project.
In a sign that few motorists in America's second-largest city take a breezy attitude toward the closure, Los Angeles plans to open its emergency operations center over the weekend.
Officials have also recruited celebrities to warn motorists of the impending gridlock. The main message: Stay away! That message has inspired a number of leisure destinations outside Los Angeles to offer special "Escape Carmageddon" discount packages, from a Mammoth Mountain hotel in the Eastern Sierras to a hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
But most people who live and work in and around the gridlock zone have no choice but to hunker down for the weekend.
The UCLA Medical Center has secured 600 dorms and apartments as temporary quarters for hospital staff as part of an emergency plan to prevent doctors and nurses from getting stuck in traffic.
"We see this as being a disaster - only it's a planned disaster," said Posie Carpenter, the medical center's chief administrative officer.
The Getty Center, a popular art museum nestled in the hills above the 405 Freeway, has said it will be closed to visitors this weekend because of the construction project.
Booking a hotel
Lisa McGuinness is going to stay in a hotel for three nights near the deli she owns, rather than risk stewing in traffic for hours.
"The freeway stresses me out every day," McGuinness said. "With this, I'm just thinking we just have to stay out of it. I just can't even imagine what the streets are going to be like."
In an "Over-the-405" promotion launched on Wednesday by JetBlue Airways, the discount airline offered special nonstop flights between Long Beach and Burbank for Saturday priced at just $4 each way, taxes and fees included.
The 600 seats available on the four flights - two each going in either direction - sold out within three hours, the airline said.
Charter helicopter companies are selling air "taxi" service to Los Angeles International Airport for well-heeled travelers fearful of missing pre-booked airline flights to more distant destinations.
Adventure Helicopter Tours is offering 45-minute flights over the area, complete with champagne, for $400 per couple.
The stretch of the 405 Freeway that will be closed, known locally as the Sepulveda Pass, is traversed by about 500,000 vehicles on a typical summer weekend, said Marc Littman, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), an agency handling the project.
The canyon pass is a traffic choke point even without a construction project, as it serves as a north-south gateway from the city's San Fernando Valley to several beaches and the more temperate westside.
The 405, a US interstate route that runs from Irvine, California, north to the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, is perhaps best known elsewhere for the widely televised low-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson, then suspected in the murder of his ex-wife, in June 1994.
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles, a city renowned for its traffic, is about to face a jam of biblical proportions.
"Carmageddon" is the name Los Angeles residents are giving the likely epic traffic tie-up that will result when a 16-km stretch of the 405 Freeway is closed for construction from Friday night to Monday morning between two of the nation's busiest interchanges.
The unprecedented 53-hour shutdown, expected to delay motorists for hours on alternate routes with ripple effects on about a dozen other major highways, will allow crews to demolish a bridge as part of a $1 billion freeway-widening project.
In a sign that few motorists in America's second-largest city take a breezy attitude toward the closure, Los Angeles plans to open its emergency operations center over the weekend.
Officials have also recruited celebrities to warn motorists of the impending gridlock. The main message: Stay away! That message has inspired a number of leisure destinations outside Los Angeles to offer special "Escape Carmageddon" discount packages, from a Mammoth Mountain hotel in the Eastern Sierras to a hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
But most people who live and work in and around the gridlock zone have no choice but to hunker down for the weekend.
The UCLA Medical Center has secured 600 dorms and apartments as temporary quarters for hospital staff as part of an emergency plan to prevent doctors and nurses from getting stuck in traffic.
"We see this as being a disaster - only it's a planned disaster," said Posie Carpenter, the medical center's chief administrative officer.
The Getty Center, a popular art museum nestled in the hills above the 405 Freeway, has said it will be closed to visitors this weekend because of the construction project.
Booking a hotel
Lisa McGuinness is going to stay in a hotel for three nights near the deli she owns, rather than risk stewing in traffic for hours.
"The freeway stresses me out every day," McGuinness said. "With this, I'm just thinking we just have to stay out of it. I just can't even imagine what the streets are going to be like."
In an "Over-the-405" promotion launched on Wednesday by JetBlue Airways, the discount airline offered special nonstop flights between Long Beach and Burbank for Saturday priced at just $4 each way, taxes and fees included.
The 600 seats available on the four flights - two each going in either direction - sold out within three hours, the airline said.
Charter helicopter companies are selling air "taxi" service to Los Angeles International Airport for well-heeled travelers fearful of missing pre-booked airline flights to more distant destinations.
Adventure Helicopter Tours is offering 45-minute flights over the area, complete with champagne, for $400 per couple.
The stretch of the 405 Freeway that will be closed, known locally as the Sepulveda Pass, is traversed by about 500,000 vehicles on a typical summer weekend, said Marc Littman, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), an agency handling the project.
The canyon pass is a traffic choke point even without a construction project, as it serves as a north-south gateway from the city's San Fernando Valley to several beaches and the more temperate westside.
The 405, a US interstate route that runs from Irvine, California, north to the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, is perhaps best known elsewhere for the widely televised low-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson, then suspected in the murder of his ex-wife, in June 1994.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Smoking in US movies declines
Tobacco use also falls among teens
WASHINGTON - The number of US movies in which an actor lights up fell sharply between 2005 and 2010, and this could have contributed to the decline in smoking among US teens, a study released on Thursday says.
A majority of movies - 55 percent - that scored huge box office success in the United States in 2010 had no scenes that included tobacco use, compared with a third of top-grossing films in 2005, according to the study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In the same six-year period, the number of what are called "tobacco incidents" in top-grossing movies fell by 56 percent - but still clocked in at nearly 2,000 scenes where an actor used tobacco either openly, on screen, or implicitly, off-screen, the study says.
"The percentages of 2010 top-grossing movies with no tobacco incidents were the highest observed in two decades," the CDC says in the study published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
"The decreased presence of onscreen smoking might have contributed to the decline in cigarette use among middle school and high school students," it says.
A study released last year by the CDC found that the percentage of middle school students in the United States who smoked cigarettes fell from 11 percent to 5 percent between 2000 and 2009 and those who "experimented" with cigarettes fell from nearly 30 percent to 15 percent.
Use of other tobacco products, such as cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco, was also down among middle schoolers, generally between the ages of 11 and 14.
Among high school students, smoking was down, too, although less sharply, the 2010 study showed.
Seventeen percent of high school students smoked cigarettes in 2009 compared with 28 percent in 2000, while three in 10 high schoolers tried smoking two years ago, compared with nearly four in 10 in 2000.
An analysis of four studies linked 44 percent of teens who started smoking with seeing tobacco products being used in movies, the CDC said in the study. Most people start to smoke or use smokeless tobacco products when they are teens, the CDC added.
With studies pointing to a link between less smoking on the silver screen and fewer teens taking up smoking, the US Department of Health and Human Services has made reducing youth exposure to on-screen smoking part of its 2010 strategic plan to cut tobacco use.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)