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Gates Foundation Withdraws Anti-Smoking Funding

vicansdon — Thu, 13 May 2010 09:28:52 +0000

Scandal has rocked the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, which offers grants to charitable and health related organisations, after it came out that the chairwoman of one of their project partners, the International Development Research Centre in Canada, has links to a tobacco company.

Barbara Mcdougall, formerly external affairs minister in the Canadian government, was working with the foundation on stop-smoking research and tobacco control programs in Africa. However it has emerged that until last month, she sat on the board of Imperial Tobacco Canada.

Since then, the foundation has announced that it is withdrawing the remaining funds from its initial grant, worth $5.2 million.

The Gates Foundation was first alerted to the issue by the African Tobacco Control Alliance. The Alliance, who are based in Togo and have been organising some of the research program, were set to co-host a conference with the International Development Research Centre but announced they were pulling out after discovering about Ms. Mcdougall’s links to Imperial.

Their chairwoman, Rachel Kitonyo, said that the constitution of the ATCA forbids the group from working with anyone with direct or indirect links to the tobacco industry and that they never work with partners who do so.

In a statement, she said “This is a clear conflict of interests and we find it deplorable.”

The scandal puts the future of the stop-smoking program in jeopardy at a time when it is becoming apparent that anti-smoking initiatives are sorely needed in the continent. As smoking rates fall in the Western world and governments pour money into treatments like nicotine replacement therapies and Champix to encourage the population to quit smoking, tobacco companies have increasingly been turning to Africa as the next big source of income.

A report issued jointly by the American Cancer Society and the Global Smokefree Partnership has warned that if current trends continue, tobacco use in more than half of all African countries will double in the next 12 years.

While certain countries have introduced stringent anti-smoking laws and are encouraging the public to quit smoking, both through advertising campaigns and by making NRT and medications like Champix and Zyban more available, many are still lagging behind.

The Gates Foundation project funds a large number of stop-smoking programs and studies within the US and abroad. In an email message to African alliance members, a program officer for the foundation wrote, ““We are deeply disappointed by this revelation and feel this conflict is unacceptable as we work to support meaningful tobacco control programs in Africa.”

Tribal Tattoos: Endless Designs

Morgana Richards — Thu, 13 May 2010 07:26:26 +0000

There is a whole range of tribal tattoo designs and one generally gets confused looking at which one to get inked on their body. And the place where they want to get the tribal tattoo on their body is also a matter of significance. Generally tattoos are done at a place where people can see it easily but big designs are done on the back especially lower back as far as women are concerned. Lower back is considered as the focal point of feminine power and that is the basic reason why women go in for getting the tribal tattoos on their lower back.

Polynesian tattoo designs, Maori tattoos, Celtic designs are widely used by people as they represent a certain tribe and a particular historic phase. The tribal tattoos depict a specific idea or signify a specific idea. Each design and symbol notifies a special meaning. The internet platform is a great guide to pick up the right kind of tribal tattoo designs and sport it on the body. The selection of the tribal tattoos is indeed a daunting task for each tribe has a specific tattoo sign. Therefore, if one has a clear idea as to which tribal tattoo they would wish to sport, the selection of the tribal tattoos becomes more narrowed and specific.

The sizes of tribal tattoo designs vary widely and generally they range from medium size to large. People tend to get the tribal tattoos inked on a large portion of their arm, chest or back. Though color tribal tattoos are doing rounds, earlier they used to be only in black because that was the traditional ink shade people had easy access to.

Tribal tattoos enjoy the status they have today for the kind of symmetry and the flow of design they exhibit. The intricate lines and the abstractness is what capture many people’s attention and interest. In earlier times, the tribal tattoo designs depicted the social status of the person sporting it, the tribe to which the person belonged, location of the tribe and spiritual protection. But now, it is the fancy that the person has towards a particular tribal tattoo, which makes him sport that specific design.

There are different types of tribal tattoos which one could get inked on their body and represent different rituals that were prevalent in those tribes during their times like the Polynesian or the Maori tribes and still make a style statement of their own.

Morgana Richards is dedicated to helping you find the best Tribal Tattoo Designs resources available. Morgana rushed into her first Tribal Tatoo, and then had to go through a painful and lengthy tattoo removal process when she changed her mind a few months later.

Serotonin Syndrome

katebush — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:48:58 +0000

The case study subject is a female patient with a development disability diagnosis and a history of seizures. She resides in an institution for mental diseases and disorders. Her chronological age is not listed nor her mental age. General assumptions can be made about this case study subject that will assist in setting the groundwork for her case. The individual is most likely over the age of 18 and is most likely at a severe or profound diagnosis level. This is assumed as she is not in a home and community based program often utilized by higher functioning individuals to bring the highest level of independence. A severe or profound individual is often unable to accurately relate information as to their current condition, whether or not there is a fundamental change in how there are feeling in regards sudden onset symptoms. The frequency, severity and duration of seizure activity will alter an individual’s ability to communicate.
Defining Serotonin Syndrome
Serotonin is a chemical substance produced by nerve cells. When the body produces too much serotonin, most often from a drug reaction, serotonin syndrome occurs. This condition has the potential of being life threatening (ADAM 2009). Serotonin syndrome is a result of a hyperserotonergic state; it does not occur due to natural processes of the body (Sorenson 2002).
Serotonin syndrome was first diagnosed in 1959 as a patient with tuberculosis was given a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) and tryptophan. The symptoms that manifested included unsteady gait, hyperactive reflexes, clonus, dilated pupils, tremors, CNS excitation, incoordination, paresthesias and lightheadedness.
While these symptoms may be obvious as new symptoms manifesting in the patient with tuberculosis, it is not as easily determined in an individual who has a severe or profound developmental disability and suffers from seizure disorders. To determine if this person has or is experiencing lightheadedness would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish.
Causes of Serotonin Syndrome
When two drugs are taken together that has an effect on the body’s level of serotonin often causes too much serotonin to be produced, released or remains in the brain (ADAM 2009). The medications currently being utilized that can cause the syndrome to develop: migraine medications also known as triptans taken along with antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or selective serotonin/enepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SSNRIs) (ADAM 2009). Brand names for SSRI’s included Lexpro, Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac and Celexa. SSNRI brand names include Effexor and Cymbalta. Triptan brand names are Imitrex, Relpax, Amerge, Zomig, Frova, Maxalt and Axert.

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Statistics And Psychology

lorachester — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:52:48 +0000

In psychology, research is an essential process that provides data and information about the various aspects that affect the human behavior. In general terms, research can be defined as an investigative activity that deals with collection and presentation of statistical information about a certain subject in order to enable a clear understanding of the subject by the recipients. In psychology, research deals with studying and presenting reliable information about human behavior for the use by the various interested parties in the field of psychology. Generally, research will use scientific methods to provide statistical data and empirical evidence to prove or disprove psychological theories.
Psychology is a branch of social sciences that deals with study of human behavior. Just as science entails observation and experimentation, psychology applies scientific approach to observe and experiment human behavior. According to Dyer (2006), science has been instrumental in psychological research due to the usefulness of scientific approach in generating new knowledge on human memory that is virtually immutable. In addition, psychology and science go together due to the requirement for transparency in reasoning – commitment to public knowledge, rationality – reasoning that follows rules of logic and is trans-cultural and acknowledgement of a single source of authority (Dyer, 2006).
Both research and statistics are important to psychology due to their affiliation to science. While research generally deals with trying to prove or disprove the psychological theories on human behavior and brain, statistics tends to determine the validity and significance of the findings on psychological research through probability. Research and statistics focus on proving psychological theories through empirical evidence to make practical and critical conclusions. This is done through scientific method, which is an investigative technique that involves collecting observable evidence, explanation through formulation of hypotheses, logical predictions based on the hypotheses formulated and testing of the hypotheses to establish the validity of the predictions. One importance of scientific method is elimination of researcher’s bias ness on the outcome of an experiment.
In carrying out psychological research, the researcher may use either primary data or secondary data, or both. Either of the two data collection methods has merits and demerits although the two may have some similarities based on their application. As the name suggests primary data is fresh data that has never been researched or collected before and may be obtained through observation, survey, interview or questionnaire. Secondary data on the other hand involves data sourced from the work of other previous researchers which may be contained in books, journals or other pre-presented material.

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Health Equality For All

lauraclark — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:53:36 +0000

As a result of experiences arising out of the Great Depression of the 1930s and wartime experiences of the 1940s, Canada decided to follow other western developed countries and set up a welfare state organization to promote full employment and provide social supports for those who needed social care. But in 1945-46 efforts to introduce new programs of federal grant aid to enable the provincial governments to set up better service delivery schemes were thwarted, at first, by two provinces which raised constitutional objections to the federal government involvement in social affairs. These objections were ultimately overcome, but there were long delays in implementing federal plans and the Canadian welfare state was not in place until the end of the 1960s. In the meantime the Province of Saskatchewan led the others in developing a plan for providing a provincial level of collectivist health care. Other English-speaking provincial governments were not so far ahead in their thinking as Saskatchewan, but they could see electoral advantages in sup- porting welfare state approaches. After Ontario’s resistance to federal intervention was removed in 1957, the provinces were able to claim open-ended matching grants and to set up a wide range of social programs. Quebec made a separate deal with the federal government in 1963 which enabled that province to claim grant aid on its own terms. Quebec’s planning activities influenced the new federal Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Dr. Maurice Le Clair, appointed in the late 1960s. He raised a series of questions about the management of federal grant aid by the provinces and whether the current aims of the health care programs, that were to provide access to hospital and medical care, were really good enough for a collectivist system of care. By proposing that the emphasis on access should be shifted to concern for outcomes, he altered the model for health care from a biomedical to a social model. There were many resistances to changing the model of care. First there were the constitutional resistances by the provinces to any federal intervention into social affairs. Then there were resistances of the medical profession to changes in practice organization. Compromises had to be made to the rational plans of Saskatchewan and Quebec. The doctors continue to maintain the organizational structures which were developed for providing individualistic health care before the war. Few changes to these have been accepted. While public health staffs have been more ready to consider organizational change, this acceptance may still be rhetoric rather than reality. Care for the elderly is also threatened by medical resistance to change from the biomedical to the social model of care proposed by Le Clair. The welfare state developments restricted community members from making inputs into decision making about social care.

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