Twenty-one-year-old Alexander Kinyua is being held without bail after confessing that he killed his roommate and ate his brain and heart, according to Baltimore's CBS affiliate, WJZ. Authorities are waiting on the coroner's report to make positive identification of the body, but believe that the victim is Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie, a 37-year-old man who went missing last Friday.
It was in the home that Kinyua and the older man shared that Kinyua's brother stumbled across what appeared to be human remains in the house's laundry room. The brothers argued, with Alexander Kinyua insisting that the remains were those of an animal. The brother left the house and returned with their father, but by then the remains were gone.
The two accusers contacted police, who entered Kinyua and Agyei-Kodie's home bearing a search warrant. There, they discovered a severed head and a pair of hands. Kinyua, a student at Morgan State University was taken into custody, where he admitted to police that he had eaten portions of the other man's body parts, including the heart and brain.
More body parts were found blocks away in the dumpster of Towne Baptist Church, which was forced to cancel Wednesday night services as police and coroner's office personnel collected evidence on church grounds. Church members and nearby residents expressed horror and amazement that such shocking violence could take place so close by.
Choose water to hydrate your body - say no to sugary fruit juices and sodas! Here's a challenge - drink nothing but water and herbal tea for a week, see the changes in your energy and body. (Reuters Health) - Women who chose plain water, instead of sweet drinks such as sodas or fruit juice, had a slightly lowered risk of developing diabetes in a large new study.
The results, based on more than 80,000 women followed for more than a decade, suggest that adding water to the sugary beverages a person drinks throughout the day won't make a difference, but replacing sweet drinks with water could help stave off the metabolic disorder.
"It is essentially not that water helps, except with hydration, but that the others hurt," Barry Popkin, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.
(Reuters) - Behind every suicide in crisis-stricken countries such as Greece there are up to 20 more people desperate enough to have tried to end their own lives.
And behind those attempted suicides, experts say there are thousands of hidden cases of mental illness, like depression, alcohol abuse and anxiety disorder, that never make the news, but have large and potentially long-lasting human costs.
The risk, according to some public health experts, is that if and when Greece's economic woes are over, a legacy of mental illness could remain in a generation of young people damaged by too many years of life without hope.
"Austerity can turn a crisis into an epidemic," said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Britain's Cambridge University who has been studying the health impacts of biting budget cuts in Europe as the euro crisis lurches on.
HACKENSACK, N.J. - A New Jersey man was in critical condition Wednesday after repeatedly stabbing himself with a 12-inch knife and throwing his intestines at cops.
Wayne Carter, who has a history of psychiatric problems, had barricaded himself inside his Hackensack, N.J., home when the gruesome event took place late Sunday, The Record reported Tuesday.
Police were called to the house after the 43-year-old was spotted cutting himself with the knife.
When they arrived at the scene, Carter refused to drop the weapon and began waving it -- along with a hammer -- at the officers. He then repeatedly stabbed himself in the legs, abdomen and neck. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com
The risk of gonorrhea becoming untreatable is very real, experts have warned.
New figures from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) show that diagnoses of gonorrhea increased by 25 per cent between 2010 and 2011.
This fueled an overall increase in diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) of two per cent in England last year.
There were almost 427,000 new cases of STIs in 2011, with young heterosexual adults and men who have sex with men (MSM) recording the largest increases.
Floating material including buoys and styrofoam has washed up on Montague Island, some 120 miles southeast of Anchorage, in volumes that clearly suggest a wave of debris from the March 11, 2011 killer tidal wave.
Patrick Chandler of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies said debris from Asia has been washing up on Alaska shores for years, so "it is incredibly difficult to say with complete confidence that a given piece of debris is from the tsunami."
Will this Japanese debris contaminate the Alaskan wild caught salmon food supply?
Kellogg is facing anger on social-media sites because of complaints that its popular Kashi brand of cold cereals doesn't live up to the company's "natural" billing on ads and boxes.
The controversy went viral a week ago after a Rhode Island grocer tacked a note to one of his store shelves, telling customers he wouldn't sell the cereal because he found out the brand used genetically engineered, non-organic ingredients. Photos of the note began popping up on Facebook pages and food blogs as some consumers claimed Kellogg was misrepresenting its cereal.
The soy in Kashi cereals comes from soybeans that have had a gene inserted to protect the soybeans from the herbicide Roundup, which kills weeds.
A growing number of pet owners say their dogs were sickened or died after eating chicken jerky dog treats made in China.
The Food and Drug Administration has received more than 900 complaints since issuing the latest warning about the jerky six months ago.
Owners say their dogs experienced vomiting and kidney failure - and in some cases the illnesses proved fatal.Read more here: http://articles.nydailynews.com
Monsanto has agreed that glyphosate-based products are neither "biodegradable" nor "environmentally friendly" and has discontinued using these terms in advertising -- at least in New York State.
Glyphosate is the most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among landscape maintenance workers in California, and the third most commonly-reported cause of pesticide illness among agricultural workers in California. A few more facts:
The surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself and the combination of the two is yet more toxic.
Glyphosate is suspected of causing genetic damage.
Glyphosate is acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance.
Popular resistance is boiling over on the GMO labeling issue, as the New York Times reported last week in a front-page story.
More than a million people have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food on a legal petition in March and on May 2, nearly a million voter signatures were submitted in California to place a GMO labeling initiative on ballot in November. Clearly, Americans believe strongly in their right to know what's in their food. Ninety percent of U.S. voters want this type of labeling. Yet we still don't have it. Why?
Twenty years ago this week, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA's policy on genetically engineered food as part of his "regulatory relief initiative." The policy, Quayle explained, was based on the idea that genetic engineering is no different than traditional plant breeding, and therefore required no new regulations.
Richmond council has passed a motion banning genetically modified plants and crops from being grown in the city, the first predominantly agricultural jurisdiction in B.C. to enact such a ban.
The motion passed unanimously by council Tuesday night was considerably stronger than the action recommended by city staff, who suggested lobbying senior levels of government for mandatory labeling of foods that contain ingredients from genetically engineered crops.
Under the motions passed, Richmond will seek stronger labeling requirements and integrate education about consumer choice and awareness of the issues raised by genetically modified organisms - known as GMOs or GE crops - into the city's public outreach programs.
Because GE crops are federally regulated, Richmond is limited in its ability to enforce the ban, but proponents of the motion are delighted with the message it sends.
On March 23, 2012 the collective of farmers, seed growers and farm groups (OSGATA) supporting organic and non-GMO farming filed an appeal for their case against Monsanto to be heard in The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Manhattan. Hallelujah! Please add your name here to our brand new petition letter and show your support for Organics over Monsanto. Your comments will be heard, so please sign and speak your truth.
The farmers' appeal is in response to Judge Naomi Buchwald's dismissal of OSGATA's case against the biotech behemoth Monsanto on Feb. 24, 2012. This outrageous decision sent shockwaves around the world. Passionate responses were heard from countries far and wide, with many voiced on the first petition we created in March to support OSGATA. Thanks to all of you who signed and commented on it; together we totaled over 8,500 signatures and over 1,000 heartfelt comments from countries all over the globe, some of which I had never even heard of! Thank you to all of you who took the time to sign and share it!
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has commissioned research into reported links between working night shifts and breast cancer in women in an attempt to establish whether working at night increases the risk of chronic disease.
A number of studies have suggested that women working night shifts may be more prone to breast cancer. Fresh research from Denmark, covering women who have worked in the country's military, and published on Monday in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, showed that night shift work was associated with a 40% increased risk of breast cancer.
MIAMI (CN) - A homeless man whose face was eaten off by a naked and crazed man in broad daylight on Saturday is in stable condition in the Intensive Care Unit, a worker in the Emergency Room of Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami told Courthouse News Tuesday.
THIS STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC DETAILS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN.
Details of the bizarre story emerged slowly as hospital and police sources spoke to Courthouse News, not for attribution, and showed photos of the victim's head almost devoid of skin, covered in blood.
The victim, a homeless man naked from the waist down, was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital on Saturday afternoon in critical condition, with up to 80 percent of his face missing, including his nose and an eyeball, police said.
Naphthalene is best known as the key ingredient in mothballs
According to a new study, children exposed to high levels of the common air pollutant naphthalene are at increased risk for chromosomal aberrations (CAs), which have been previously associated with cancer. These include chromosomal translocations, a potentially more harmful and long-lasting subtype of CAs. Researchers from the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Medical Center, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report the new findings in Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Naphthalene is found in both outdoor and indoor urban air. It is present in automotive exhaust, tobacco smoke, and is the primary component of household mothball fumes. Classified as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency for Cancer Research, naphthalene belongs to a class of air pollutants called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Prior research at the CCCEH has established a link between prenatal exposure to PAH and increased risk for childhood obesity, IQ deficits, and CAs. The new study is the first to present evidence in humans of CAs, including translocations, associated with exposure to one specific PAH - naphthalene - during childhood. The researchers followed 113 children, age 5, who are part of a larger cohort study in New York City. They assessed the children's exposure to naphthalene; a CDC laboratory measured levels of its metabolites - 1- and 2-naphthol - in urine samples. (Metabolites are products of the body's metabolism, and can serve as marker for the presence of a chemical.) Researchers also measured CAs in the children's white blood cells using a technique called fluorescent in situ hybridization. Chromosomal aberrations were present in 30 children; of these, 11 had translocations. With every doubling of levels of 1- and 2-naphthol, translocations were 1.55 and 1.92 times more likely, respectively, to occur.
The nation's food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere. The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints the highest resolution picture yet of how groundwater depletion varies across space and time in California's Central Valley and the High Plains of the central U.S. Researchers hope this information will enable more sustainable use of water in these areas, although they think irrigated agriculture may be unsustainable in some parts. "We're already seeing changes in both areas," said Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology and lead author of the study. "We're seeing decreases in rural populations in the High Plains. Increasing urbanization is replacing farms in the Central Valley. And during droughts some farmers are forced to fallow their land. These trends will only accelerate as water scarcity issues become more severe."
The definition of acidosis from a few medical dictionaries is as follows: Acidosis: Too much acid in the body, a distinctly abnormal condition resulting from the accumulation of acid or from the depletion of alkaline reserves. In acidosis, the pH of the blood is abnormally low. Acidosis is associated with diabetic ketoacidosis, lung disease, and severe kidney disease. The opposite of acidosis is alkalosis in which there is too high a pH due to excess base or insufficient acid in the body. Acidosis is a condition in which there is excessive acid in the body fluids. It is the opposite of alkalosis (a condition in which there is excessive base in the body fluids).
What is pH? (Potential of Hydrogen)
pH is a measure of the degree of the acidity or the alkalinity of any solution as measured on a scale (pH scale) from 0 to 14. The centre of 7.0 on the pH scale represents neutrality, or a "neutral" solution is neither acid nor alkaline. Numbers below 7.0 indicate acidity; numbers greater than 7.0 indicate alkalinity. However note that, it is important to understand that pH is a measure of intensity, and not capacity; i.e., pH indicates the intensity of alkalinity in the same way temperature tells how hot something is - but not how much heat the substance carries. The pH scale is logarithmic which means that moving on (unit either way on the pH scale results in a 10 fold increase in the degree of alkalinity or acidity.
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are molecules produced in the skin to fend off infection-causing microbes. Vitamin D has been credited with a role in their production and in the body's overall immune response, but scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say a hormone previously associated only with maintaining calcium homeostasis and bone health is also critical, boosting AMP expression when dietary vitamin D levels are inadequate. The finding, published in the May 23, 2012 online issue of Science Translational Medicine, more fully explains how the immune system functions in different situations and presents a new avenue for treating infections, perhaps as an alternative to current antibiotic therapies. The immunological benefits of vitamin D are controversial. In cultured cell studies, the fat-soluble vitamin provides strong immunological benefits, but in repeated studies with humans and animal models, results have been inconsistent: People with low levels of dietary vitamin D do not suffer more infections. For reasons unknown, their immune response generally remains strong, undermining the touted immunological strength of vitamin D.
Older adults who are at high risk of falls should have physical therapy and take vitamin D supplements to reduce their chance of injury, according to new recommendations from a government-backed panel. Falling is "a common problem and it's often overlooked because doctors may not be aware of their patients' fall risk," said Dr. Albert Siu, a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and vice co-chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which came out with the recommendations on Monday."By asking about falls and by observing the patient in terms of walking, we might be able to asses who might be at risk and who can benefit from preventive measures," Siu told Reuters Health.Falls are a leading cause of injury among older adults, he added.According to the new guidelines, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, 30 to 40 percent of people age 65 or older fall at least once each year, and five to 10 percent of them will have a serious injury such as a hip fracture.The USPSTF makes recommendations on a range of prevention and treatment issues, and its guidelines on reducing the risk of falls in the elderly had not been updated since 1996.There has been considerable research done since then on what seniors can do to prevent falls -- and what doesn't seem to work. For instance, correcting vision, wearing a shield called a hip protector, stopping some medications or taking protein supplements do not reduce the risk that someone will have a fall, according to the guidelines.Vitamin D, exercise and physical therapy, however, are moderately beneficial, reducing the risk of falling by 13 to 17 percent (see Reuters Health report of December 21, 2010).
Babies delivered by Caesarean section may have an increased risk of obesity by age 3, a new study has found.
Among 1,255 women recruited in early pregnancy for the study, 284 gave birth by Caesarean section. By age 3, 15.7 percent of those children were obese (with a body mass index in the 95th percentile or greater), compared with 7.5 percent of those delivered vaginally.
Mothers who delivered by Caesarean were on average heavier than those who delivered vaginally, and they breast-fed less. But after controlling for these and other maternal health and socioeconomic factors, the scientists found that Caesarean delivery was associated with a doubling of the odds of obesity in these children. Whether the Caesarean was planned or an emergency delivery made no difference.
"Those mothers who are considering C-section in the absence of a medical indication should be counseled about this potential risk," said the lead author, Dr. Susanna Y. Huh, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard.
Babies born by Caesarean develop different intestinal flora from those born vaginally, and the authors suggest this could be a factor. Or, the mode of delivery might have long-term effects on immune or endocrine function.
