USA Today: 5 Facts about HIV on World AIDS Day.

Red Ribbon for AIDS Awareness

Today is not just Cyber Monday, today is also World AIDS day. A day for awareness of the continuing threat the disease poses to people all around the world. Today's article, from USA Today, is one of many that has come out today to help remind and educate people about HIV and AIDS.

The five facts today's article shares are that 34 million people world wide are HIV positive--with 1.2 million of those living in the US, 70% of new HIV cases occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, the rate of new infections in the US is down to about 50,000 per year from a height of 130,000 per year in the 1980s, advances in anti-retroviral treatments means that many people can live relatively normal lives after an HIV diagnoses even though there is still no cure, and though the death rate due to AIDS has dropped overall teens are still dying of AIDS at the same rate they were in 2005.

For my contribution to spreading awareness and understanding about AIDS, I would like to look into that last fact in more detail. What has research shown to be the cause of the consistent high death rate of HIV+ teens in spite of the dropping death rate overall?

Blinded me with Science: Aerobic Exercise and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

One teacher, one scientist, and one paper; but how many conclusions?

Today's post is a little bit different, but this type of post will hopefully become a semi-regular thing. I'm cross-posting with Sara-Liz. She is one of my favorite people; she stood up with me at my wedding. More relevant to the science part of this blog, she is a special education teacher with both personal and professional experience in learning disabilities. She has a masters degree from Clemson in Special Education and is currently pursuing a second masters degree in Educational Administration and Leadership. This background gives her unique insight on child development, teacher practices, and special education from the education policy and teacher interaction with kiddos perspective.

There's no news article associated with today's post; I found this research by serendipity. I was looking for the article I reviewed last week and while searching Google scholar this one came up. It looked like an interesting and potentially important bit of research as I know many families struggling with ADHD (either in the kids or the adults). I also knew that this would be a great article to seek input from Sara-Liz about. Sara-Liz's content and comments are in purple; mine are in black.

Fox: Laundry Pods Pose Serious Poisoning Risk to Young Children, Study Finds

A sample size package of Tide Pods free & gentle.
Image by Me (CC BY-NC-ND)

Today's article is from Fox news, and there is also a very similar article published in the NY Times (Detergent Pods Pose Risk to Children, Study Finds). Both of these articles share the findings of a new study released today in the journal of Pediatrics. The basic message is one that has been on the news several times in the last two years or so: the new colorful and convenient laundry pods are very dangerous to small children. I want to take a closer look at the statistics presented so that we can better understand how big a risk these are to children. Are laundry pods a major concern or is the media fueling needless paranoia and creating a new battle field in the "mommy wars"?