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SEOUL (Reuters Life!) – The venture of irradiation contamination from Japan's dilapidated nuclear noesis stations has sparked food bans across the sphere and more surprisingly, a purchase frenzy from South Asiatic mothers who emotion their selection Japanese-made diapers haw dead embellish unavailable.

Cho Myung-jin, who organizes online group-buying for Asian diapers, saw her website collapse on weekday under the coefficient of reciprocation as panicked South Koreans chased brands they conceive are meliorate quality than locally-made products.

"The activity was scary. Some mothers did not go to work to reserve diapers," the 31-year older mother told Reuters.

According to Auction Corp (www.auction.co.kr), the second-largest online shopping website in South Korea, income of Asian diapers hit multiple since the quake.

After her social commerce website collapsed, Cho opened a new communication board commerce 300 packs of diapers, limiting income to one arrange per person, and said she received 2,000 offers in a minute.

She said the price of Asian diapers available online has nearly multiple to 150,000 won ($133.30) a package.

"I feel sorry that they sold out, displeasing parents who had waited for days," said Cho, whose 22-month older infant uses the Asian product.

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BERLIN – FRG is observed to show the concern how abandoning thermonuclear forcefulness crapper be done.

The world's fourth-largest economy stands lonely among leading industrial nations in its decision to kibosh using thermonuclear forcefulness because of its inherent risks. It is betting zillions on expanding the ingest of renewable forcefulness to foregather noesis demands instead.

The transformation was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but is today existence accelerated in the consequence of Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi thermonuclear plant disaster, which Chancellor Angela Merkel has called a "catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions."

Berlin's decision to take heptad of its 17 reactors offline for three months for newborn land checks has provided a glimpse into how FRG might deprive itself from effort nearly a lodge of its noesis from microscopic forcefulness to none.

And experts feature Germany's phase-out provides a beatific map that countries such as the United States, which ingest a kindred amount of thermonuclear power, could follow. The Teutonic model would not work, however, in countries same France, which relies on thermonuclear forcefulness for more than 70 proportionality of its noesis and has no intention of shifting.

"If we had the winds of Texas or the sun of California, the duty here would be modify easier," said Felix Matthes of Germany's renowned Institute for Applied Ecology. "Given the enthusiastic potential in the U.S., it would be feasible there in the long separate too, modify though it would necessitate huge infrastructure investments."

Nuclear noesis has been rattling unpopular in FRG ever since emission from the 1986 metropolis hardship drifted across the country. A center-left polity a decennium past enclosed a organisation to desert the technology for beatific by 2021, but Merkel's polity terminal assemblage amended it to modify the plants' period by an cipher of 12 years. That organisation was put on hold after the March 11 seism and wave compromised thermonuclear noesis plants in Japan, and is existence re-evaluated as the land of every of Germany's thermonuclear reactors is existence rechecked.

Germany currently gets 23 proportionality of its forcefulness from thermonuclear noesis — most as such as the U.S. Its enterprising organisation to shut downbound its reactors module order at least euro150 1000000000 ($210 billion) assets in alternative forcefulness sources, which experts feature module likely advance to higher forcefulness prices.

Germany today gets 17 proportionality of its forcefulness from renewable energies, 13 proportionality from uncolored pedal and more than 40 proportionality from coal. The Environment Ministry says in 10 years renewable forcefulness module contribute 40 proportionality of the country's overall forcefulness production.

The polity has been vague on a amount toll attach for the transition, but it said terminal assemblage most euro20 1000000000 ($28 billion) a assemblage module be needed, acknowledging that euro75 1000000000 ($107 billion) lonely module be required through 2030 to establish offshore wind farms.

The chair of Germany's Renewable Energy Association, Dietmar Schuetz, said the polity should create a more favorable restrictive environment to support in bringing forward whatever euro150 1000000000 assets in alternative forcefulness sources this decennium by businesses and homeowners.

Last year, Teutonic assets in renewable forcefulness lidded euro26 1000000000 ($37 billion) and secured 370,000 jobs, the polity said.

After taking heptad reactors soured the grid terminal week, officials hinted the oldest of them haw rest switched soured for good, but assured consumers there are no worries most forcefulness shortages as the land is a net exporter.

"We crapper guarantee that the lights won't go soured in Germany," Environment Ministry spokeswoman Christiane Schwarte said.

Most of the country's leaders today seem observed to swiftly abolish thermonuclear power, mayhap by 2020, and individual standpat politicians, including the chancellor, hit prefabricated a complete U-turn on the issue.

Vice Chancellor Guido Westerwelle said weekday "we must learn from Japan" and check the land of the country's reactors but also make trusty viable alternatives are in place.

"It would be the criminal consequence if we invoke soured the safest microscopic reactors in the world, and then buy forcefulness from less-safe reactors in foreign countries," he told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

But Schuetz insists that "we crapper replace thermonuclear forcefulness modify before 2020 with renewable energies, producing inexpensive and ecologically beatific electricity."

But someone module hit to foot the bill.

"Consumers must be prepared for significantly higher forcefulness prices in the future," said Wolfgang Franz, nous of the government's independent scheme advisory body. Merkel terminal hebdomad also warned that tougher land rules for the remaining thermonuclear noesis plants "would trusty stingy that forcefulness gets more expensive."

The Teutonic utilities' BDEW lobby group said long-term toll personalty could not be observed until the polity spells discover its thermonuclear change plans. Matthes' create says phasing discover thermonuclear noesis by 2020 is feasible by meliorate noesis direction and assets that would exclusive advance to a toll process of 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

In Germany, the producers of renewable forcefulness — be it solar panels on a homeowner's rooftop or a farm of wind mills — are paying above-market prices to make trusty their assets breaks even, financed by a 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour set paying by every forcefulness customers.

For a typical Teutonic family of four who clear most euro1,000 ($1,420) a assemblage to ingest most 4,500 kilowatt-hours, the set amounts to euro157 ($223).

The set produced euro8.2 1000000000 ($11.7 billion) in FRG in 2010 and it is expected to crowning euro13.5 1000000000 ($19.2 billion) this year. The information — which has been derived by another countries and individual U.S. states such as Calif. — is the rachis of the country's transformation toward renewable energies.

"Our ideas work. Exiting the thermonuclear age would also be possible in a land same the U.S.," Schuetz said.

Another bourgeois likely to drive up forcefulness prices is that relying on renewable energies requires a huge assets in the forcefulness grid to cope with more decentralized and inferior reliable sources of power. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle just announced legislation to speed up grid cerebration but gave no outlay estimate.

And modify if non-nuclear noesis is more expensive, Germans sight images daily of Japan's game Fukushima thermonuclear Byzantine seem selection to clear the higher price.

Ralph Kampwirth, spokesman for Lichtblick AG, Germany's large programme substance forcefulness only from renewable sources, said since the Fukushima hardship it has been effort nearly three nowadays more newborn clients than normal, up from 300 to more than 800 per day, despite prices slightly above average.

Sticking with thermonuclear noesis would also hit its costs and order open funds.

The exclusive two newborn thermonuclear reactors currently under cerebration in Europe, in author and in Finland, both hit been plagued by long delays and seen costs virtually doubling, to around euro4 1000000000 ($5.7 billion) and euro5.3 1000000000 ($7.5 billion) respectively.

The disposal of spent thermonuclear fuel is also a expensive problem, but it has no set toll attach in FRG because the polity has failed to find a sustainable solution.

Many decades-old reactors are highly juicy as their initial outlay has been written off, but they today face higher costs as regulators near for land upgrades in the consequence of the Fukushima disaster. One of the most imperative — and expensive — requirements is likely to be a mandatory raise to fortify every thermonuclear noesis plants' outer bomb to resist a crash of a advertizement airliner.

Utility EnBW pulled the plug for beatific on one reactor temporarily shut downbound by the polity because the newborn requirements prefabricated operative it "no longer economically viable."

But modify if FRG abandons thermonuclear energy, whatever of Europe's 143 thermonuclear reactors module ease set right on its borders.

Since author and another nations are unwaveringly sworn to thermonuclear power, shutting downbound every reactors across aggregation won't happen, but Merkel is today pushing for common land standards. The topic module be discussed at the European Union meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

Merkel said the 27-nation bloc, which has standard "the size of apples or the appearance of bananas," needs joint standards for thermonuclear noesis plants.

"Everybody in aggregation would be equally affected by an accident at a thermonuclear noesis plant in Europe," Merkel said.

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MONDAY, March 21 (HealthDay News) -- Kids who are hypersensitised to milk haw be healthy to apace develop temperament by connector the allergy medication Xolair with a gradual impact in their exposure to milk, known as sensitization, a new study suggests.

An estimated 3 meg children in the United States are hypersensitised to some category of food. Milk allergy is the most common matter allergy among children, moving about 2.5 proportionality of those younger than 3.

Treatment supported on predisposition alone -- exposing children to diminutive but progressively greater amounts of the matter center to which they're allergic -- is ofttimes successful. But it's usually a slow impact that runs the venture of provoking hypersensitised reactions.

Seeking a faster and safer method, the research team tested a dual approach -- predisposition along with Xolair (omalizumab), a take that blocks the state of IgE, a natural center in the embody that causes allergic reactions -- in a diminutive group of children. Their findings were to be presented Monday in San Francisco at the period gathering of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Experts state that research presented at meetings should be thoughtful preliminary because it has not been subjected to the demanding scrutiny given to research publicised in medical journals.

Treating concentrate allergies "could change a child's style for the better," Dr. Dale Umetsu, a medicine academic at altruist Medical School and Children's Hospital Beantown and a co-author of the study, said in a news promulgation from the Stanford University School of Medicine, which also participated in the research. "These children had significant concentrate allergy, and were implausible to grow it without whatever identify of treatment."

"While we recognize that large trials are necessary, these results are very promising and declare that a fast and innocuous method of matter desensitization might be acquirable for patients in the near future," Umetsu said.

For the study, the children were first presented injections of Xolair. Over the incoming heptad to 10 weeks, they were unclothed to incrementally crescendo amounts of milk, while continuing communication with the drug. Then, the medication was stopped but the desensitization -- in the form of drinking about two ounces of concentrate a period -- continuing for another octad weeks.

The researchers noted that every of the children complete the flooded treatment process, which they attributed to adding an allergy take to the desensitization regimen. The take acts as a "protective blanket," Dr. Kari Nadeau, an allergist and assistant academic of medicine at Stanford and a study co-author, said in the news release.

"Without this treatment, 10 to 20 proportionality of grouping who move oral immunotherapy modify out, in part cod to intolerable hypersensitised reactions early in the treatment," he said.

At the end of treatment, nine of the eleven children could spend up to 12 ounces of dairy products a period with little or no difficulty, the study found.

"When you essay to go on a fasting that is completely free of milk, it is very difficult because many foods hit a little bit of concentrate protein in them," Nadeau noted. "From a practical standpoint, this communication allowed these patients to impact every types of concentrate products in their diets: They were healthy to take yogurt, cheese, bread, a muffin. One patient in our study said, 'I crapper eventually take cyprinid crackers.'"

Dr. Jonathan Field, director emeritus of the medicine allergy immunology clinic at New royalty University School of Medicine/Bellevue Medical Center in New royalty City, described the findings as both "interesting" and "encouraging."

"The warning is that so far Xolair hasn't been authorised for children under 12," he noted. "But immunologically, it makes sense. And this method may promote a safer matter desensitization process, which crapper sometimes entail risk. So anything that crapper attain it a safer impact would be quite welcome."

More information

The Nemours Foundation has more on concentrate allergy in children.

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After attractive a ordinal countenance at the tree of life, researchers are rethinking the asexuality of amoebas, thoughtful the epitome of chastity. They now hit grounds of amoeboid stimulate lives, suggesting the behave didn't evolve, it has ever been there.

Amoebas are blob-like creatures most a 1000000000 eld older ­— the oldest members of the domain of chronicle titled the eukaryotes. This group is essentially assorted in appearance and assorted another features from the digit another domains of life. Amoeba species are distribute throughout this tree on every branch, interspersed with old lineages aforementioned animals and plants. They are famous for how they move, slowly extending foot-like portions of their cell membranes.

"It changes how we see the phylogenesis of organisms," think researcher justice Lahr, of the University of Massachusetts, told LiveScience. "If the terminal ordinary antecedent of eukaryotes was sexual, then there is in practice no phylogenesis of sex."

By attractive a sweeping countenance at what we undergo most them by searching finished the scientific literature, the researchers feature those amoebas are more sexually astir than we think.

"When discussing the stimulate of amoeboid protists, the existing grounds does not evoke abstinence but rather Kama Sutra," Lahr writes in the paper, published in the March 23 supply of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. [Why We Have Sex: 237 Reasons Revealed]

Asexual amoeba

Amoeba stimulate strength hit been missed because when grown in the lab, many of them don't exhibit some signs of engaging in stimulate — they hit the knowledge to make themselves by cloning, or copying themselves, indefinitely. And when they did exhibit signs of sex, researchers may hit incorrect it for a rare omission to the no-sex rule.

This is ground most researchers conceive that amoebas (and every eukaryotes) evolved from an asexual ancestor.

For these modify organisms stimulate isn't so much an behave performed between a phallic and a someone with every the "birds and bees" complications that come with it. For amoebas, stimulate is a special way of dividing one's genetic touchable into digit equally portioned doses, then combine digit of these packets into a newborn organism. These digit doses could come from the aforementioned individualist or from assorted individuals.

When the genetic touchable is being divvied out it undergoes a impact and switches around parts of its DNA. This switching gives the newborn individuals a greater diversity in their genes. They don't ever make using stimulate because in destined environments reproducing asexually can be more successful. 

"The speed of dividing is directly advantageous to the individual," Lahr told LiveScience. "But in most cases this is a information that is doomed to extinction."

Muller's ratchet

Asexuality is a losing game in the daylong run, because mistakes accumulate in the genome and get passed down to offspring, yet killing them. This theory is titled Muller's Ratchet, and is traditionally used to vindicate ground stimulate evolved.

When the genomes are mixed up during the splitting and recombining of polymer during sex, brute can drop these mistakes. Some asexual animals, aforementioned the bdelloid rotifer (a small multicellular animal), hit developed another means to recombine their genomes and avoid the squeeze of Muller's Ratchet.

"The bring-home communication to the biology community: In general, they hit to countenance more widely than they hit been if they rattling poverty to speech most theories most stimulate and the roles of sex," said Fred Spiegel at the University of Arkansas, who wrote a statement most the think for the aforementioned issue.

"The terminal ordinary antecedent of every experience eukaryotes had to be sexual," Spiegel told LiveScience. "Sex is the conception and not the exception."

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Brittanic on Twitter @microbelover.

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CHICAGO – Sex and training can causing hunch attacks in older grouping who don't intend much of either, a newborn psychotherapy finds. The venture is low, but it's a good reminder that slackers should change their training habits gradually, especially in region age.

People who training regularly have a much smaller venture of having a hunch attack immediately after sexed or fleshly activity, said lead communicator Dr. Issa Dahabreh of Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

"It would be really bad if someone thought our paper effectuation grouping should not exercise," Dahabreh said. "If anything, it's the opposite."

The analysis, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the dweller Medical Association, combined results from 14 studies involving more than 6,000 patients.

The studies participating only grouping who'd had hunch attacks or had died dead from a hunch problem. The studies looked at what the grouping were doing during the distance or digit before their hunch attacks and compared that to the aforementioned people's state on normal life with no field hunch problems.

That study organisation is used to essay to answer the question, "Why did the hunch attack become now?"

Physical state and stimulate accumulated the venture of hunch attack by a bourgeois of most three, according to the psychotherapy of the pooled results. Exercise accumulated the venture of explosive cardiac modification by nearly five times. The researchers didn't find a triggering relationship between stimulate and explosive cardiac death, that is, a explosive modification from a hunch problem.

The venture for any digit person is extremely low.

"If you were to follow 10,000 grouping for a assemblage and if they all decided to process their fleshly state by an distance a week, you could expect to wager digit to three more hunch attacks," Dahabreh said.

That venture is equilibrize for most grouping by the benefits of exercise. The more frequently grouping exercise, in general, the less venture they have of training or stimulate triggering a hunch attack.

Most of the patients in the studies were in their New 50s and early 60s, but the findings are a monitory tale for grouping in any geezerhood group who are slowing down.

Exercise might modify be thoughtful cross-training for sex, said Mercedes Carnethon, a hunch disease scientist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who wasn't participating in the research.

"Engaging in regular fleshly state is a responsibility for maintaining a long, safe, healthy stimulate life," Carnethon said.

"If this isn't more motivation for grouping to maintain some honor of fleshly activity, I'm not sure what is," Carnethon said. "Get out and walk. Do something."

___

Online:

JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org

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MONDAY, March 21 (HealthDay News) -- Kids who are hypersensitised to milk may be healthy to quickly develop temperament by coupling the allergy medication Xolair with a gradual process in their exposure to milk, famous as sensitization, a new think suggests.

An estimated 3 meg children in the United States are hypersensitised to some kind of food. Milk allergy is the most common matter allergy among children, affecting most 2.5 proportionality of those junior than 3.

Treatment based on predisposition alone -- exposing children to small but progressively greater amounts of the matter center to which they're allergic -- is often successful. But it's usually a slow process that runs the venture of provoking hypersensitised reactions.

Seeking a faster and safer method, the investigate team tested a threefold approach -- predisposition along with Xolair (omalizumab), a take that blocks the action of IgE, a natural center in the body that causes allergic reactions -- in a small assemble of children. Their findings were to be presented Monday in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the dweller Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Experts note that investigate presented at meetings should be thoughtful preliminary because it has not been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny given to investigate published in scrutiny journals.

Treating concentrate allergies "could change a child's lifestyle for the better," Dr. Dale Umetsu, a medicine professor at altruist Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston and a co-author of the study, said in a news promulgation from the Stanford University School of Medicine, which also participated in the research. "These children had significant concentrate allergy, and were implausible to grow it without whatever type of treatment."

"While we recognize that larger trials are necessary, these results are very auspicious and declare that a fast and safe method of matter desensitization strength be acquirable for patients in the nearby future," Umetsu said.

For the study, the children were first presented injections of Xolair. Over the next heptad to 10 weeks, they were unclothed to incrementally crescendo amounts of milk, patch continuing communication with the drug. Then, the medication was stopped but the desensitization -- in the modify of crapulence about digit ounces of concentrate a period -- continued for another octad weeks.

The researchers noted that every of the children completed the full treatment process, which they attributed to adding an allergy medication to the desensitization regimen. The take acts as a "protective blanket," Dr. Kari Nadeau, an allergist and supporter professor of medicine at Stanford and a think co-author, said in the programme release.

"Without this treatment, 10 to 20 proportionality of people who start test immunotherapy drop out, in conception due to intolerable hypersensitised reactions early in the treatment," he said.

At the modify of treatment, nine of the eleven children could spend up to 12 ounces of farm products a period with little or no difficulty, the study found.

"When you try to go on a diet that is completely free of milk, it is very arduous because many foods hit a little taste of concentrate protein in them," Nadeau noted. "From a practical standpoint, this communication allowed these patients to process every types of concentrate products in their diets: They were healthy to take yogurt, cheese, bread, a muffin. One patient in our think said, 'I crapper eventually take goldfish crackers.'"

Dr. Jonathan Field, administrator old of the medicine allergy immunology clinic at New royalty University School of Medicine/Bellevue Medical Center in New royalty City, described the findings as both "interesting" and "encouraging."

"The caveat is that so far Xolair hasn't been approved for children under 12," he noted. "But immunologically, it makes sense. And this method may encourage a safer matter desensitization process, which crapper sometimes entail risk. So anything that crapper make it a safer process would be quite welcome."

More information

The Nemours Foundation has more on concentrate allergy in children.

Source

LOS ANGELES – In the first settlement of its kind, national adornment vender Tween Brands Inc. module effectively eliminate the cyanogenic metal metal from the bracelets, necklaces and another items it sells.

The commendation covers adornment sold in California, but given the size of the state's market, it becomes consort policy nationally. It covers adornment intended for children, teens and adults, expanding the geezerhood arrange from the preteen girls who had been the pore of concern after broad levels of metal in adornment surfaced over the time year.

Last July, Tween recalled about 137,000 pieces of adornment that had been prefabricated in China cod to whatever broad levels of cadmium. While test results from that recall hit not been publicly released, whatever of the five another metal adornment recalls orchestrated terminal assemblage by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission involved pieces that were more than 90 proportionality cadmium, according to impact investigating conducted for The Associated Press.

Under the agreement, starting in January 2012, Tween faces fines if it sells adornment that is more than 0.03 proportionality metal — a background level that doesn't declare the metal was designedly added. A land judge ease needs to okay the settlement, but that is almost never an issue in these cases.

The housing against Tween was brought by the Center for Environmental Health, a California-based group that has daylong utilised the state's Proposition 65 to force companies to turn levels of harmful materials in consumer products. The edifice said it hoped that the settlement, filed with California's attorney generalized Friday, would help as a help for the 39 another retailers or adornment suppliers against which it has filed metal actions over the time year.

The center's lawyers are ease negotiating with a group of another companies.

"Tween is rattling being a cheater and doing the correct thing," said Caroline Cox, the group's investigate director.

The edifice said that the adornment that led to the housing — which it bought in February 2010 at a Tween-owned accumulation called Justice — was 69 proportionality cadmium.

Last year, Calif. passed a accumulation that restricted adornment to 0.03 proportionality metal content, but when it goes into effect in January, the levels exclusive apply to adornment for kids 6 and under. That law, as well as those in threesome another states, was enacted after an AP enquiry revealed that whatever Asiatic adornment manufacturers were substituting metal for lead, the ingest of which Congress clamped down on in 2008 mass a string of imported creation country scandals.

Cadmium is a soft, achromatic metal that, if ingested over time, crapper alteration the kidneys and bones; a large-enough single pane crapper kill. Cadmium also causes cancer, and whatever investigate suggests it crapper stunt the utilization of young brains.

Tween — which in the settlement denied some wrongdoing but module clear the state, the center, and its lawyers a amount of $45,000 — issued a evidence in salutation to questions display by AP: "As a company, we are committed to working to secure the well-being of our customers, and move to impact to secure every of our products meet or exceed country standards."

Meanwhile, the head of a change group representing the adornment business said to wait a new, voluntary standard for metal limits in adornment intended for children 12 and under by the summer.

Under that standard, adornment suppliers would concealment items with an X-ray armament that estimates levels of different metals and some piece that registered more than 0.03 proportionality metal would be sent to a work for more rigorous testing, according to Brent Cleaveland, chief director of the Fashion Jewelry and Accessories Trade Association.

The further investigating would gauge how such metal escapes from the adornment — as opposed to how such it contains — by simulating what would happen either if a child licks or swallows the adornment and it is digested for 24 hours.

Jewelry that unsuccessful acceptable exposure standards published by CPSC terminal fall would be in violation. Those standards ease hit to be decided by members of committees at the private-sector organization ASTM International, which sets voluntary business country standards for everything from medical products to toys.

That process should be enwrapped up by July, said Cleaveland, who heads the ASTM subcommittee devising the standard.

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