By TSC Staff
June 18, 2009

It's a terrifying scenario.  You're on a transatlantic flight from Brussels to Newark.  Over the intercom, flight attendants ask if there's a doctor on board because of a medical situation. 

There are 247 passengers on board, but no one is told about the severity of the medical crisis.

It turns out the 60-year-old pilot is ill.  Around three or four hours into the flight, he dies.

 

By TSC Staff
June 16, 2009

Every now and then, we come upon a survival story that's almost impossible to believe.  This time, we bring you the tale of a week-old Cocker Spaniel puppy that survived an accidental flush down the toilet. Yes, a flush down the loo in west London, England.

It all began when Daniel Blair, the puppy's four-year-old master, tried to give the muddy dog a bath in the toilet.  To rinse the dog, he pulled the chain.  Poof.  The dog vanished down the drain.

Daniel's mother Allison discovered the dog was missing and ran into the street.  "I assumed it was dead," she told the Daily Mirror of London.  "I went into the garden, managed to lift up the drain cover, and was amazed to hear him crying."

By Ben Sherwood
TSC Founder & CEO

Not long ago, I drove to El Centro, Calif., a dusty town in the Imperial Valley just miles from the border with Mexico.  I was drawn to this outpost in the Sonoran Desert after reading a column in The New York Times that described it as the "capital city" of the Great Recession.

El Centro means "the center" in Spanish but it sits in the middle of nowhere, really.  El Centro was settled by hardscrabble men and women at the turn of the last century who managed to transform the desert into a vast garden that produces 66 percent of the country's winter fruits and vegetables.  It's a place accustomed to ups and downs and tough economic times.  Even so, it has been especially hard hit by this recession.  Today, unemployment in the El Centro stands at 26.9 percent - the highest of any big metropolitan area in the country -- and that number will surely rise in the broiling summer months ahead.

My purpose in visiting El Centro was to learn how people are surviving (and thriving) in these incredibly hard times.  Sure enough, I saw people who are struggling.  I also met many people who are realistic about the challenges and optimistic about the future.  The city's glossy promotional brochure proclaims that El Centro is the "center of opportunity." While many residents are losing their homes and straining to feed their families, the city's leaders are confident that brighter days lie ahead.

To read more about El Centro and surviving the recession, please take a look at my article in Parade magazine (excerpted below):

By TSC Staff
June 11, 2009

West Nile Virus season is here.  In Utah, for instance, public health officials are bracing for the worst mosquito season in 20 years, according to experts. Mosquito abatement workers are seeing twice the number of mosquitoes compared to last year. 

In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control reports there were 1,356 cases of West Nile virus activity in the US and 44 deaths.

West Nile virus is spread by infected mosquitoes, and can cause serious, life-altering and even fatal disease, according to the CDC.  Enjoy the warm weather, the CDC says, but remember that mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus are already on the wing in some areas, so lather on some mosquito repellent. Remember to check around your home and drain any standing water where mosquitoes lay eggs.

Among those with severe illness due to West Nile virus, case-fatality rates range from 3% to 15% and are highest among the elderly. Less than 1% of people who become infected with West Nile virus will develop severe illness -- most people who get infected do not develop any disease at all.

By TSC Staff
Sunday, June 7, 2009

America’s 12 million cancer survivors observed the 22nd annual National Cancer Survivors Day on Sunday.  Hundreds of communities across America and around the world hosted events to celebrate life. There were picnics, dinners, parties and inspiring stories about facing life-threatening adversity.

At every event, there was one essential message about living with cancer.  “This is not a death sentence,” says Susan Sheehan, a breast cancer survivor from Palm Desert, California.  “More people with cancer are living longer," says Sheehan, a mother and grandmother. "You just have to take it one day at a time.”

By the year 2020, according to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 20 million Americans will be cancer survivors.  And many of them will learn the wisdom of Susan Sheehan: “I live my life one day at a time,” she says.  “I don't make my life about, ‘Oh my God, I have cancer.'”

By the TSC Staff
June 10, 2009

How safe is your home town?

Cities in the US grew safer last year while small towns became more dangerous, according to new FBI crime statistics.  Violent crime nationwide dropped by 2.5 percent in 2008.  Property crimes also fell by 1.6 percent.  Cities with more than 1 million people saw murders fall by 4.3 percent; cities with 500,000 to 1 million people saw murders fall by nearly 8 percent.  Yet in towns with fewer than 10,000 residents, murders rose 5.5 percent, rape increased 1.4 percent, and robbery 3.9 percent.

Nationwide, murder and manslaughter dropped 4.4 percent in 2008, the AP reports.  Aggravated assault declined 3.2 percent, forcible rape decreased 2.2 percent, and robbery dropped 1.1 percent. The country also saw a huge drop in car thefts — more than 13 percent.

The western region of the country saw the biggest declines, with a 4.2 percent drop in property crime and a 3.4 percent drop in violent crime. The Northeast saw a slight increase in property crime, which rose by 1.6 percent.

Where does your city rank?  And how can you protect yourself and your family?

 

By TSC Staff
Updated Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The wreckage of Air France Flight #447 has been found in the equatorial Atlantic.  Search planes spotted two debris fields, including one that stretched  across three miles of ocean.  The Air Bus A330 with 228 people on board crashed en route from  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris.  There are no survivors.

What happened?  The plane went down three hours into an 11-hour flight with no mayday call from the crew.  Despite many theories, the causes of the crash will likely remain a mystery.  Around 4:15 a.m. Paris time, Air France 447 began to send automatic messages to the company's maintenance computers indicating serious electrical problems.  Brazilian authorities say the plane also experienced rapid decompression, meaning it somehow lost pressure in the cabin at 35,000 feet.

The two-engine Airbus A330 has a nearly flawless safety record, according to experts.  The Air France #447 crew was made up of three experienced pilots including a captain with 11,000 hours in flight.

Among the key questions:

> Was it terrorism or foul play?  Probably not, according to the Los Angeles Times, which reports that "the investigation was assigned to officials in suburban Bobigny near the (Charles De Gaulle) airport, working with investigators of the paramilitary gendarmerie detailed to the transport secretariat. If foul play were suspected, the case would be handled by prosecutors in Paris and anti-terrorism police."

> Was it lightning?  Lightning is a leading suspect and may have triggered some kind of electrical chain reaction, frying the plane's crucial computer systems, but it's unlikely that lightning alone brought down AF 447, according to the French news service AFP.  Commercial airplanes are struck by lightning on average twice a year - or every 1,000 hours - and experts discount the possibility that lightning is the reason for this disaster.

> Was it some kind of catastrophic failure never seen before?  Most likely, according to the Associated Press.

> Will we ever know for sure?  Maybe not.  Locating the plane (or wreckage) will be extremely difficult in a vast area of ocean with depths of 15,000 feet.

> With 600 of these Airbus A330s in service with 82 airlines around the world, how safe is flying?  Flying remains extraordinarily safe.  Your risk of death on your next domestic jet flight in the United States is one in 60 million, according to MIT Professor Arnold Barnett, a leading authority on aviation safety statistics.  That means you could fly every day for the next 160,000 years - on average - until you got into trouble.  Your risk of death on your next international jet flight in the industrial world is marginally worse, according to Barnett, but air travel is still remarkably safe.

What follows are some of the myths of air travel and some lessons for your next flight.

By TSC Staff
Friday, June 6, 2005

Hurricane season begins this week.  Are you ready?  Alas, probably not...

A new poll from Mason Dixon finds that Americans are "grossly unprepared" for the rough weather ahead.

Fully 83 percent of residents in coastal states have not taken any steps in the past year to make their homes stronger, even after last year's active season.

Sixty-six percent have no hurricane survival kit, and 62 percent do not feel vulnerable to a hurricane or related tornado or flooding. Fifty-five percent do not have a family disaster plan.

 

By TSC Staff

The typical adult body has 17 square feet of skin.  And guess what?  It's crawling with critters.

New research in the journal Science finds that healthy skin is covered with far more bugs and bacteria than previously known.

As the Los Angeles Times explains: "People's bodies are ecosystems, believed home to trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that naturally coexist in the skin, the digestive tract and other spots. But scientists don't have a good grasp of which microbes live where, much less which are helpful, even indispensable, in maintaining health."

NowThe NIH's "Human Microbiome Project" aims to change that, recruiting healthy volunteers to learn what microbes they harbor so scientists can compare the healthy with diseases of microbes gone awry — from acute infections to mysterious conditions like psoriasis or irritable bowel syndrome.

By TSC Staff

The Survivors Club grows every second of the day because of the impact of climate change, according to a report from a London-based think-tank led by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.  Indeed, climate-change disasters kill around 300,000 people a year and cause about $125 billion in economic losses, the report says.

An estimated 325 million people are seriously challenged by climate change, according to the Global Humanitarian Forum — a number that will double by 2030 as climate-change-related natural disasters and environmental degradation strike more people.

"Climate change is a silent human crisis," Annan said in a statement. "Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time."

The report, titled "Human Impact Report: Climate Change -- The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis" comes just six months before the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto climate agreement for 2012 and beyond.

According to the Associated Press, the report suggests that rising sea levels, desertification and changing rainfall patterns are reducing many people's access to safe drinking water and food. This in turn increases diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.

The report said 99 percent of all people who die due to climate-change related causes live in developing countries, even though those countries generate less than 1 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

The report used existing data on weather-related disasters, population trends and economic forecasts to draw its conclusions. It was released ahead of climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, next week, that are to lead to a possible new global treaty on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen in December.