Again; Coffee = Good

CNN from 2014/4/28

Need an excuse to drink yet another cup of coffee today?  A new study suggests that increasing coffee consumption may decrease the risk for type 2 diabetes. The apparent relationship between coffee and type 2 diabetes is not new.  Previous studies have found that drinking a few cups or more each day may lower your risk - with each subsequent cup nudging up the benefit.

The conclusion: People who upped their consumption by more than a cup per day had an 11% lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared with people whose consumption held steady.  Decreasing coffee consumption by the same amount - more than a cup a day - was associated with a 17% increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

The data is based on an analysis of more than 120,000 health professionals already being followed observationally long term.  Researchers looked at the study participants' coffee drinking habits across four years to reach their conclusions.

Just how much coffee each day provides a benefit?

"For type 2 diabetes, up to six cups per day is associated with lower risk," said Shilpa Bhupathiraju, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead study author, citing previous research. "As long as coffee doesn't give you tremors, doesn't make you jittery, it is associated with a lot of health benefits."

Wait, though.  Before you scramble out to purchase your fourth latte of the day, it is important to note that the type of coffee matters. Lattes and other types of specialty drinks - often laden with sugar - were not studied.  The type of coffee involved in this study tended to be a simple eight-ounce cup of black coffee containing about 100 milligrams of caffeine.

And while coffee may be associated with a reduction in some chronic diseases (not just diabetes, but cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and - according to a New England Journal of Medicine study - with a longer life, overall) scientists are still  reluctant to call coffee a panacea. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy one more cup in the meantime.

Funny 'cus it's true

Hourly wage to pay for 1-bedroom apartment

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/county-rental-wages/index.html

The National Low Income Housing Coalition took those fair market rents and calculated how much a worker would have to earn per hour to cover such modest housing, if we assume a 40-hour work week and a 52-week year. They call this rate a "housing wage," and it is, unsurprisingly, much higher than the minimum wage in much of the country.


We've mapped this more detailed data in the interactive below. This is what you'd need to earn per hour, working a 40-hour week, to cover the kind of housing that the federal government considers modest in your county:

Click through for interactive version »

Mapped in finer detail than by state, several geographic patterns are clearer. No single county in America has a one-bedroom housing wage below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 (several counties in Arkansas come in at $7.98).

Coastal and urban counties are among the most expensive. Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties in California rank as the least affordable in the country (scroll over each county in the interactive version for rankings; click to zoom). In each of those counties, a one-bedroom hourly housing wage is $29.83, or the equivalent of 3.7 full-time jobs at the actual minimum wage (or an annual salary of about $62,000).

[Note: Prince Georges County was $23.83, and tied for 13 out of 3144 counties.]

 Top most expensive counties:

State	County	1-br. housing wage
California	Marin	$29.83
California	San Francisco	$29.83
California	San Mateo	$29.83
Hawaii	Honolulu	$26.58

Earth-Size Planet Found that Might Hold Liquid Water

http://spaceref.com/extrasolar-planets/earth-size-planet-found-that-might-hold-liquid-water.html
4/17/2014

In a dim and faraway solar system, astronomers have for the first time discovered a rocky, Earth-sized planet that might hold liquid water -- a necessary ingredient for life as we know it.

The planet Kepler-186f is the fifth and outermost world orbiting the red dwarf Kepler-186. The slow-burning sun is smaller and cooler than our own. Too faint to be seen without a telescope, it's roughly 500 light-years away in the direction of the northern constellation Cygnus.

Two attributes make the newfound planet special. First, it's within its star's habitable zone. That's the range of orbital distances where a planet with an atmosphere could harbor lakes, rivers or oceans that wouldn't freeze or boil away. Second, the planet is about the size of the Earth.

"One of the most interesting questions in science is whether life can arise on other planets or, alternatively, if life on this planet is unique. The discovery of planets with Earth-like properties is one important link in the chain required to answer this question.

Over the past two decades, astronomers have found some 1,800 exoplanets in other solar systems. Only 20 orbit their stars in a habitable zone. But these are all thought to be much larger than the Earth, according to a news release from the SETI Institute.

LADEE planned crash onto the Moon

http://spaceref.com/moon/nasa-completes-ladee-mission-with-planned-impact-on-moons-surface.html

 

 

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft impacted the surface of the moon, as planned, between 9:30 and 10:22 p.m. PDT Thursday, April 17.

LADEE lacked fuel to maintain a long-term lunar orbit or continue science operations and was intentionally sent into the lunar surface. The spacecraft's orbit naturally decayed following the mission's final low-altitude science phase.

On April 11, LADEE performed a final maneuver to ensure a trajectory that caused the spacecraft to impact the far side of the moon, which is not in view of Earth or near any previous lunar mission landings. LADEE also survived the total lunar eclipse on April 14 to 15. This demonstrated the spacecraft's ability to endure low temperatures and a drain on batteries as it, and the moon, passed through Earth's deep shadow.

In the coming months, mission controllers will determine the exact time and location of LADEE's impact and work with the agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) team to possibly capture an image of the impact site. Launched in June 2009, LRO provides data and detailed images of the lunar surface.


Launched in September 2013 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, LADEE began orbiting the moon Oct. 6 and gathering science data Nov. 10.

LADEE also hosted NASA's first dedicated system for two-way communication using laser. The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over the 239,000 miles from the moon to the Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits-per-second (Mbps).

LADEE gathered detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere. In addition, scientists hope to use the data to address a long-standing question: Was lunar dust, electrically charged by sunlight, responsible for the pre-sunrise glow seen above the lunar horizon during several Apollo missions?