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Labs Are Vital™ Announces Winners Of 2009 National Video Contest To Highlight Careers In Lab Sciences
Labs Are Vital™ announced that a 2009 high school graduate from northern California, Kelly Peterson, is the grand prize winner of its national video contest. High school students around the country submitted their views on video about why careers in the clinical lab sciences are vital.
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Bridging The Mouse-Human Gap With Engineered Pig Stem Cells
The discovery that adult skin cells can be "reprogrammed" to behave like stem cells has been a major scientific boon, providing a way to tap the potential of embryonic stem cells without the associated ethical quandaries. Now, in a study appearing online in JBC, researchers have created a line of such reprogrammed stem cells from adult pigs. As pigs are large animals with a physiology very similar to humans, this work provides a valuable model to study the therapeutic potential of this new "induced pluripotent stem cell" (iPS) technology.
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California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Signs Budget That Cuts $52M From HIV/AIDS Programs
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) on Tuesday signed a state budget in which he made $489 million in line-item veto cuts that "will affect child welfare and children"s health care, the elderly, state parks and AIDS treatment and prevention, going beyond the dramatic cuts that were part of the deal Schwarzenegger negotiated with legislative leaders," the Los Angeles Times reports (Rothfeld/Goldmacher, 7/28). "Services for people with AIDS, which had previously been spared by the Legislature, were reduced by $52 million by Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. That cut will mean no state spending on HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, education or housing services for people with the disease. The state will continue paying for AIDS medications and for tracking the epidemic," the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Buchanan, 7/29). Schwarzenegger said, "The legislators have given me a budget with a $156 million negative reserve, so now I had to go in over this weekend and work with my team and make additional cuts." He added, "That"s ugly, when already we have cut so much, and then we had to make additional cuts" (Steinhauer, New York Times, 7/28). Mark Cloutier, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said of the cuts to HIV/AIDS programs, "This means there are going to be more people who are HIV-positive who are unwittingly infecting others" (Buchanan, 7/29).
Cardiovascular

Walk, Don't Drive! Community Promotion Of Physical Activity Has Two-Fold Benefit

About half of the car trips in the U.S. are less than five miles - a distance easily navigated by walking or cycling. Reducing short-distance car trips has many benefits - it decreases car accidents, has positive benefits for the environment and increases physical health and activity, says communication professor Edward Maibach of George Mason University. An expert in climate change communication research, Maibach says that community leaders should make promotion of physical activity a priority. "There are lots of proven low-cost options that communities can use to encourage people to get out of their cars and walk or ride instead," he says. "Use of these options helps people remain healthy (by promoting physical activity and reducing obesity) and helps reduce heat-trapping pollutants that cause global warming." In a recent article in the journal Preventative Medicine, Maibach suggests that policy makers and government officials at all levels should look at communication, marketing and policy enhancements that can be implemented with relative ease to promote active transport. Maibach cites the Web site Active Living by Design as showcasing many examples of successful programs such as city-bike sharing, customized walking or cycling maps and grassroots campaigns. "One of my favorite examples is "walking school buses" in which children and a few parents walk together to the local school," says Maibach. He also suggests policy changes such as reducing speed limits, giving cyclists priority at intersections and closing some roads to cars, can also encourage people to consider alternative ways of commuting. "There is no one magic bullet. All of these examples can be effective here in the U.S., and all should be implemented in as many communities as possible. The more that are implemented, the more we will wean people away from sole reliance on their cars when they could be walking and/or riding, and improving their health as a result." Maibach is the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. His work over the past 25 years has helped define the fields of public health communication and social marketing, and his book, Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and Public Health Practice, is widely used by academics and practitioners alike. Tara Laskowski George Mason University


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