Let the music make you healthier

There are many ways of getting healthy, like walking, running, biking, working out at the gym, but who knew listening to music can be so beneficial to you.

In this article, it shows five ways of how music can be beneficial to your health. One by making your body relaxed, lowering your blood pressure and heart rate, lowering your breathing rate, and sparking your neurons to jolt your thoughts to make you have a better memory and better mentality. Also a good song, can help motivate you to exercise, or just walk.

If music is this beneficial to health I wonder if implementing it with hospitals and health care areas, as well as schools would help recovery for patients and have students, one retain more information and two, be more alert during class.

Software makes the switch from detecting fraud to diagnosing illness

Autonomy a company known for creating anti-fraud software has recently adapted their fraud detection algorithms for use in the medical field to aid doctors when diagnosing patients. This system would search for patterns in a large database of medical histories. I found this article interesting because I am fascinated with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

I think there is a lot of potential in the production of such a system. This could potentially reduce the risk of wrong medical diagnoses as well as provide doctors insight in to conditions they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

Would you feel comfortable releasing your medical history to be used by this software system? What measures should be taken to ensure patients medical records remain private?

Article: http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T11106146097&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T11106146063&cisb=22_T11106146062&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=10939&docNo=12

Post-Construction Stormwater Mitigation

In an effort to improve water quality, reduce sewer overflow, and runoff into streams many local governments are requiring developers to implement post-construction mitigation techniques for storm water management. As part of an EPA decree techniques being asked for consideration are "green" infrastructure. Examples of "green" infrastructure include vegetated swales, buffers, rain gardens, green roofs, and tree boxes.

According to the EPA, sites involving construction greater than one acre are required to develop storm water pollution prevention programs to help reduce pollutant runoff. The EPA itself does not at this time plan to address the issue of storm water mitigation. With many local governments beginning to enforce post-construction mitigation, would things be made easier and clearer if the EPA where to mandate these mitigation practices?

The district does plan to use tax credits that would apply against storm water fees as a method of promoting "green" tactics to lessen storm water runoff.

Article: http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/hottopics/lnacademic/?

Deep Hole Economics

2008 Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman wrote the article `Deep Hole Economics` on the NY Times. In a nutshell, the article warns the readers to be dubious about the recent economic improvements. The author uses a variety of resources such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, unemployment and growth rates to warn readers and policy makers about the recent small economic upturns that have the potential to pull back the US economy into a recession again.

Recently several economists have confirmed that the consumer spending rates in certain sectors are increasing and that a 4% growth rater maybe possible in the upcoming years. However, Krugman cautions that although a 2.5% growth rate is required to keep up with increasing productivity and population, 2 extra growth points are requited to bring down the 10% current unemployment rate. Krugman fears that optimistic policy makers may read too much into the dry statistics, declare that the recession is over and cease the `recovery process`, this could potentially bring down the economy again. Moreover word has also spread that the Federal Reserve will not implement the $600 billion bond-buy back plan it has announced previously; this too will not increase consumer spending or ameliorate the faltering economy.

Krugman urges readers to be prudent about the status quo and policymakers to uphold the recovery process and consumption rates. However with wavering banking, investment and construction industries its unlikely that consumers will start spending more without incidences of tax breaks, which in turn will may cause budget deficit. One question that remains unanswered is how is the Obama administration going to strike a balance between high consumption rate and low government spending?

Follow the link http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/opinion/03krugman.html to read the article.

Recycler nearing time for big move

Bring Recycling is one of the oldest non-profit recyclers in the country. They take old piece of buildings that would otherwise be thrown away and sell them for others to use.

The article talked about the companies move from a small warehouse to a new and better location where they could employ many of the green building practices they preach to others to use. What I found interesting about the article was how the company funded the move through donations when there are many people out there who believe that "green building" is only a fad.

I liked the article because I am a past customer of the company and truly believe that there are many benefits to green building beyond just reducing their carbon foot print.

Do you believe supporting the green building industry is worth while and that its not just a fad?

breast cancer

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/4591266/NZ-fourth-in-world-in-rate-of-cancer

In this article it talks about how New Zealand is highest in the world for women having cancer. As well as higher income coutries have higher rates for cancer than do lower income countries. Away that people could decrease the risk of that would be to stop eating and being overweight, as well as drinking and smoking. People dont think about not eating the junk food and eating the healthy food, because some people are blind to the fact that being obese causes you to become unhealthy which could leave to a disease as well as death.

Salt can harm Your Heart in just 30 Minutes:

Researchers recently found out that salt and unsaturated fats can effect blood flow much more rapidly than what was previously believed. If fact in a recent study volunteers who were given soup with a very high salt index had restricted blood flow after just 30 minutes. They were tested using a blood pressure cuff to cut off blood flow while a ultrasound was taken to measure the width of the arteries. The experiment was repeated a couple times to check for replication of results.

I was drawn to this article because the title talked about salt negatively effect you in just 30 minutes, which me wonder how it could effect someone so quickly. Also after reading the first paragraphs I was interested in it enough to continue in order to seek the answer to my original question.

It was interesting to me because I have always been into nutrition and how eating different types of food effect the body and mind. This including how quickly something can have an effect. After reading the article I'm still curious about how long it would take to combat the effects of the salt after the first 30 minutes. Would exercise re-widen the arteries?

New Meadowlands Stadium

The New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was finished last year and is home to both the New York Jets and the New York Giants football teams. The stadium was built in just over three years and used innovative and creative techniques to increase the building footprint by more than 50% compared to the old stadium. It also has 28 times as much space for suites and club seating.

The increase in space was made possible by several features. First, expansion joints were reduced from eight in a typical stadium, to only four. Also, beam span lengths were increased, reducing the number of columns and other structural elements which reduce space for seating.

One of the biggest reasons for the success of the project was the use of building information modeling (BIM). BIM allows people to view the structure and plans in 3D and makes it a lot easier to catch mistakes that aren't easy to see on traditional two dimensional plans. It also makes it easier to coordinate different disciplines such as electrical and mechanical contractors. With BIM, the construction schedule was reduced to several months, making it possible to use the stadium at the beginning of the season. When will this method replace traditional methods of construction planning? Although not widely used today, I think its advantages will make this the preferred method in the future.

Article: http://proxy.library.oregonstate.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=55155707&site=ehost-live

Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl!

This article talks about a Border Collie, Chaser, who has a vocabulary of 1,022 nouns. Her owner, Dr. Piley, who is a psychologist, trains with her up to five hours per day. Along with about 1000 common nouns, Chaser also knows categories. She can distinguish between “fetch the green Frisbee” and “fetch a Frisbee.” Even more amazingly, she can correctly put a noun and a verb together, such as “paw” and “ball.” Dr. Piley has also tested her intelligence in a lab setting, to ensure that she is not just picking up on non-verbal cues, such as facial expression or subtle body language, but that she actually understands what each word means.

Does this really mean anything, or is Chaser just abnormally smart? While most pet owners do not have five hours a day to spend training with their pets, Chaser’s accomplishments bring a new light to the mental capacity of dogs. The size of her vocabulary is related to that of a child, and while nowhere near our own, is far beyond what was originally thought our pets to be capable of. Chaser’s accomplishment may have future implications on how we will one day communicate and teach our pets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sit%20stay%20parse&st=cse

OHSU Surgeon Wins Research Award

According to this article from the Oregonian, Dr. Neuwelt of the Oregon Health and Science University, the recipient of the Javits Award, is attempting new research for treating brain tumors. Dr. Neuwelt’s research involves treating tumors through drugs instead of surgery, as cutting out a tumor can prove more dangerous and may not even be necessary if the tumor is not cancerous. His research also has to do with attaching drugs to antibodies in order to attack the tumor-causing cancers. Over the next 7 years, Neuwelt will have $3.7 million to put toward finding better cures for cancer and brain tumors.

Neuwelt is also researching whether a certain drug called NAC can keep the effectiveness of tumor cell-killing chemotherapy drugs, while protecting patients against the negative side-effect of damaging bone marrow. Brain and cancer research is ongoing, but how long will it take until we actually see this research put to use with cancer patients?

It is interesting to see how people are so commonly misled to think that brain tumors are only caused from brain cancer. Many tumors in the brain are caused from cancer, but not just from brain cancer. In fact, lung and breast cancers are much more common (up to 10 times) and can result in brain tumors, but are not given as much attention. However, now that there is more research being done on alternative, non-surgical treatments, I hope that more patients with tumors will be treated without the life-altering side effects that can result from surgery.

Welcome to our blog!

Hello class,

Welcome to our class blog, home of our biz buzz posts for the next few weeks. Here's a refresher about how to write your biz buzz posts:

1. Find a news article online or though OSU's databases that sparks your interest. The topic of the news article should, in some way, relate to the general focus or interest of the non-profit that you will eventually write your newsletter for (i.e. if your non-profit will be a group that helps cancer patients, because you know that you want to become an oncologist, write your bizz buzz posts about something happening in cancer research, health technology, new research on cancer-causing products, or cancer-preventing foods, etc. etc.) You don't need to "force" this connection, but save yourself some time by researching news in the field that your final project will relate to. 
2.  Write a short reflection about the article. This reflection should explain why you were drawn to the article, why you think it's interesting or unusual, and should include at least one question that the article made you think about. Include a link to the article in your post.
3.  Comment on one class mate's post. Your response should be long enough for you to pose (or answer) a question, make an observation about the article, or for you to relate it to your post. Please avoid responses that are trivial (ex. "wow, great biz buzz post Steven!"), and respond thoughtfully to your peers.

Each of the 5 Biz Buzz assignments (including post and comment) will be worth 10 points. Thanks!