The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| California health officials sound alarm over hookah smoking Posted: 14 Dec 2012 05:54 AM PST  California public health officials warned that tobacco smoking from hookah can be at least as harmful as cigarettes. — Reuters Hookah smoking among Californians jumped more than 40 per cent between 2005 and 2008, said Dr Ron Chapman, the state director of public health, citing a 2011 state tobacco survey published in the American Journal of Public Health. He said the trend was particularly pronounced among college-age adults, with nearly a quarter of men 18 to 24 years old reporting they had used a hookah at least once, according to the same study. Experts say the growing popularity of hookahs has been fuelled in part by a perception that the water pipes are more socially acceptable than cigarettes and the erroneous belief that inhaling tobacco smoke drawn through the water filters out some of its toxins. But smoke from hookah tobacco — which comes in such flavours as apple, strawberry, honey and mint — retains all the carcinogens of cigarette smoke while adding more carbon monoxide and extra carcinogens from the use of burning coals that are used to keep the nicotine flowing, health officials say. During a typical hour-long session, a hookah user inhales 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There is a very, very concerning misperception about the use of hookahs among youth, thinking it's somehow safer. In fact, it puts you at the same risk," Chapman said. The warning came as Chapman announced an anti-smoking advertising campaign aimed at those most likely to light up — low-income, minority youth, especially African-Americans. While California has in many ways led the nation in discouraging smoking, "tobacco use is still the No. 1 cause of death and disease in California," he said. Tobacco kills nearly 34,000 Californians a year and leads to annual healthcare costs of US$6.5 billion (RM20 billion), or US$400 for each state taxpayer, he said. Although pubs and restaurants in California have banned smoking since 1998, hookah bars and cafes are permitted under exemptions for owner-operated tobacco shops or other businesses where no food or beverages are sold without employees or staff, said Corey Egel, a state public health department spokesman. The growing popularity of hookahs among young adults in California mirrors a broader trend nationwide. A s tudy in May by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine of 152 universities nationwide found that over 30 per cent of students had smoked tobacco from a hookah during the previous month. Hookah smoking, which originated in Persia and India, has seen resurgence in Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere, too, with water pipes referred to as narguila in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey and as sheesha in Egypt. — Reuters |
| NASA moon-mapping mission to come to a crashing end Posted: 14 Dec 2012 05:47 AM PST  NASA handout image shows an artist's concept of the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission's twin spacecraft in orbit around the moon. — Reuters pic The twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft will make suicidal plunges on Monday into a mountain near the moon's north pole, a site selected to avoid the chance of hitting any of the Apollo or other lunar relics. The impacts, which are not expected to be visible from Earth, will take place about 20 seconds apart at 5.28pm EST (2228 GMT) on Monday. "They're going to be completely blown apart," GRAIL project manager David Lehman, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters on a conference call. Almost out of fuel and currently flying just 7 miles (11km) above the lunar surface, the probes will make a final steering maneuver today and shut down their science instruments in preparation for Monday's crash. The two spacecraft, each about the size of a small washing machine, have been flying in close formation around the moon for nearly a year to map the lunar gravity. Scientists precisely measure the distance between the two, a figure that slightly changes as they fly over denser regions of the moon. The gravitational pull of the additional mass causes first the leading probe and then the following one to speed up, altering the gap between them. Gravity maps from the first part of the mission, collected between March and May 2012 when the spacecraft were about 34 miles (55km) above the lunar surface, revealed the moon has a shallower and much more fractured crust than expected — the result of asteroid and comet impacts billions of years ago. "We know that the moon had been bombarded by impacts but what we found is just how broken up and fractured the crust of the moon is," said lead scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Similar bombardments happened on all the solid bodies of the inner solar system though the evidence on Earth has been erased by erosion, plate tectonics and other phenomena. "With Mars, there's a questions about where did the water that we think was on the surface go," Zuber said. "These fractures provide a pathway deep inside the planet and it's very easy to envision now how a possible ocean on the surface could have found its way deep into the crust." Scientists also discovered lava-filled subterranean cracks inside the moon, evidence that the body expanded early in its history. In addition to planetary science, the gravity maps, along with detailed images of the lunar surface, should help engineers pick landing sites for future robotic and human expeditions to the moon, Zuber said. "In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined that this mission would have gone any better than it has," she said, adding that NASA will be getting US$8 million (RM24 million) or US$9 million back from the mission's US$471 million budget. The spacecraft will hit the surface at about 3,760 miles per hour (6,120kph). No pictures are expected because the region will be dark at the time of impact, but a sister spacecraft circling the moon, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will attempt to survey the crash site. "These are two small spacecraft with empty fuel tanks, so we're not expecting a flash that is visible from Earth," Zuber said. — Reuters |
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