Tag: Health

Red Alert!

Red: the colour of love, anger … and now a symbol for an exciting product line, aiming to help people in Africa with AIDS.  (Product) Red contains items from various companies, including Gap Inc., Apple Computer Inc., and Emporio Armani.  Some of the eye-catching products include: a red MotoRazr from Motorola, vibrant red shirts from Gap, and a cute red iPod nano. A portion of profits will go to Global Fund, an organization that fights AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. 

Doug Piwinski, a spokesman for (Product) Red, says the initiative has raised more than $12 million for African AIDS programs, since starting last spring in Britain.

The (Product) Red website also features a gift registry.  What a great way to let people know what you want for Christmas, and give to charity at the same time!

Dial-a-Meal

Over at OneWorld South Asia they are running this neat story about a dial-a-meal program:

“Hunger Helpline allows hungry in Gujarat to dial-a-meal. Poor and hungry and living in Gujarat? A meal is just a phone call away, if the state’s food and civil supplies department, which is launching a Hunger Helpline, is to be believed

A novel Hunger Helpline in Gujarat, initiated by the state government in collaboration with civil society organisations (CSOs), aims to connect poor people in need of a meal with food donors through the telephone.

The brainchild of the state’s food and civil supplies department, this first-of-its-kind service aims to ensure than no person in the state goes hungry, either during a natural calamity or even on an ordinary day.”

Smoking Bans Help Workers’ Health

A new study points out how banning smoking in bars is really really good at improving the health of bar workers. I assume the same goes with barflies. This particular study was done in Scotland with a before and after look at people’s health.

“The findings show that smoking bans such as those in effect in Ireland, Norway, Sweden and 11 U.S. states are an effective way to quickly improve workers’ health, University of California at San Francisco researcher Mark Eisner wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.”

Eat Like a Greek and Remember

A Mediterranean diet can help to fend off Alzheimer’s, according to a well-researched study. The diet is low in red meat and high in oils and lots of fruits and vegetables.

“In accordance with our previous results,” the authors wrote,” the associations between Mediterranean diet and Alzheimer’s disease remain unchanged and significant even when simultaneously adjusting for the most commonly considered potential confounders for Alzheimer’s disease, such as age, sex, ethnicity, education, APOE genotype, caloric intake, and BMI. Higher adherence to Mediterranean diet reduced risk for probable Alzheimer’s disease either with or without coexisting stroke.”

Water from Air

A company has created a way to extract water from plain old air. This is a great tool to help people in areas where water is scarce or hard to make potable. It can be a great help in areas hit by a disaster too.

“We figured out how to tap it in a very unique and proprietary way,” Sher said. “We figured out how to mimic nature, using natural salt to extract water and act as a natural decontamination.

“Think of the Dead Sea, where nothing grows around it because the salt dehydrates everything. It’s kind of like that.”

The 20-foot machine can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts. The machine was displayed on Capitol Hill last week where a half-dozen lawmakers and some staffers stopped by for a drink.

“It was very interesting to see the technology in action and learn about its possible implementation in natural disasters,” said Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Republican from Florida whose hurricane-prone district includes Fort Lauderdale.

The research and development into this technology was need-driven by the US Army wanting a way to keep soldiers fueled to fight. It’s unfortunate that this device is created out of a need to kill than a need to help live. That being said, this technology has lots of potential to help many people in need around the world.