The States

 

The United States of America (USA or U.S.A.), commonly referred to as the United States (US or U.S.), America, and sometimes the States, is a federal republic consisting of 50 states and a federal district. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also has five populated and nine unpopulated territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. At 3.71 million square miles (9.62 million km2) and with around 318 million people, the United States is the world's 3rd or 4th-largest country by total area and third-largest by population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States is also extremely diverse, and it is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Eurasia to what is now the U.S. mainland around 15,000 years ago, with European colonization beginning in the 16th century. The United States emerged from 13 British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. Disputes between Great Britain and these colonies led to the American Revolution. On July 4, 1776, as the colonies were fighting Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, delegates from the 13 colonies unanimously issued the Declaration of Independence. The war ended in 1783 with the recognition of independence of the United States from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and was the first successful war of independence against a European colonial empire. The current Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787. The first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and guarantee many fundamental civil rights and freedoms.

Driven by the doctrine of manifest destiny, the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century. This involved displacing native tribes, acquiring new territories, and gradually admitting new states. The American Civil War ended legal slavery in the country. By the end of the 19th century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country with nuclear weapons, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower.

The United States is a developed country and has the world's largest national economy, with an estimated GDP in 2013 of $16.8 trillion—23% of global nominal GDP and 19% at purchasing-power parity. The economy is fueled by an abundance of natural resources and high worker productivity, with per capita GDP being the world's sixth-highest in 2010. While the U.S. economy is considered post-industrial, it continues to be one of the world's largest manufacturers. The U.S. has the highest mean and 4th highest median household income in the OECD as well as the highest gross average wage, though it has the 4th most unequal income distribution, with roughly 15% of the population living in poverty as defined by the U.S. Census. The country accounts for 37% of global military spending, being the world's foremost economic and military power, a prominent political and cultural force, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovation.

Want To Lower Your Blood Pressure? Get Seven Hours of Sleep Nightly

 

Rosanne Olson/Photolibrary/Getty Images

Updated September 07, 2014.
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.

  If your blood pressure is difficult to get under control, you may want to ask yourself how much sleep that you are getting each night. If you are not getting six to seven hours of sleep each night this can be a major impediment to lowering your blood pressure. Sleep deprivation has major consequences above and beyond higher blood pressure, including a  weakened immune system, increased work of the adrenal glands, decrease in cognitive abilities to name a few. Those who are middle aged (both men and women) and women seem to have a higher risk of resistant hypertension due to the effects of sleep deprivation.

There are several ways that sleep deprivation can contribute to high blood pressure.

1) Sleep deprivation impairs your circadian rhythms.

2) Sleep deprivation increases insulin resistance. Lack of sleep can actually increase your risk of developing diabetes. There is a connection between numbers 1 and 2, i.e, sleeping less hours can disrupt your body's rhythms. This influences hormone production which can impair the metabolism or processing of insulin and glucose. Higher insulin levels, due to the phenomenon of insulin resistance is linked to the development of hypertension.

3) Sleep deprivation is associated with the development of endothelial dysfunction. An article from the peer-reviewed journal Sleep in March 2014 actually examined this association. This was a laboratory based study, but the results were interesting and different from what I would have expected. The connection between high blood pressure and endothelial dysfunction is well-established and each can be a cause and effect of the other. This article demonstrated that the sleep deprivation causes endothelial dysfunction independent of blood pressure. Lack of sleep in the animals in this study caused there to be a lack of production of endothelial derived relaxing factor (EDRF) which dilates the blood vessel. This hormone is important over time for keeping the blood vessels elastic and pliable. This means that sleep deprivation, independent of its effects on blood pressure, can affect the health of the blood vessels over time.

4) Sleep deprivation can exaggerate the body's stress response. I have written about in prior blog posts the effects of increased cortisol secretion on diminishing sleep quality. This article from the journal Health Psychology in May 2014 looks at this from another angle: the body's reaction to stress is magnified big time. Lack of sleep can increase the body's secretion of cortisol in response to a stressful event. Many, if not all of us, deal with multiple stressors, both physical and psychological on a daily basis. Our body's ability to deal with these stresses can be compromised because of increased cortisol production in reaction to these stressful events.

5) Lack of sleep causes weight gain. This article talks about " sleep debt" and its relation to weight gain. This is likely due to the cumulative effects of numbers 1-4 listed here in addition to other mechanisms that are theorized in the chapter. Again, sleep is important in keeping the body in balance.

How Can You Get Out of Sleep Debt?

One of the biggest ways is to shut off the cell phone, computer, smart phone and all unnecessary electronic media. This probably contributes to late nights and sleep debt. Realize that sleep is a necessary part of your life for your over health, not a commodity that can be exploited.

The more that we learn about the science of health and high blood pressure, in many ways, it means going back to the basics: eating right, exercising, and getting a good night's sleep.

Dietary recommendations may be tied to increased greenhouse gas emissions

 

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Researchers report that if Americans adopted the recommendations in USDA's "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010," while keeping caloric intake constant, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions would increase 12 percent.

If Americans altered their menus to conform to federal dietary recommendations, emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases tied to agricultural production could increase significantly, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers.

Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian of U-M's Center for Sustainable Systems looked at the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of about 100 foods, as well as the potential effects of shifting Americans to a diet recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

They found that if Americans adopted the recommendations in USDA's "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010," while keeping caloric intake constant, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions would increase 12 percent.

If Americans reduced their daily caloric intake to the recommended level of about 2,000 calories while shifting to a healthier diet, greenhouse gas emissions would decrease by only 1 percent, according to Heller and Keoleian.

A paper by Heller and Keoleian titled "Greenhouse gas emission estimates of U.S. dietary choices and food loss" is scheduled for online publication Sept. 5 in theJournal of Industrial Ecology.

"The take-home message is that health and environmental agendas are not aligned in the current dietary recommendations," Heller said.

The paper's findings are especially relevant now because the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is for the first time considering food sustainability within the context of dietary recommendations, he said.

In its 2010 dietary guidelines, USDA recommends that Americans eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy products, and seafood. They should consume less salt, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, added sugar and refined grains.

The guidelines don't explicitly state that Americans should eat less meat. However, an appendix to the report lists the recommended average daily intake amounts of various foods, including meat. The recommended amount of meat is significantly less than current consumption levels, which Heller and Keoleian estimated using the USDA's Loss Adjusted Food Availability dataset as a proxy for per capita food consumption in the United States.

While a drop in meat consumption would help cut diet-related greenhouse gas emissions, increased use of dairy products -- and to a lesser extent seafood, fruits and vegetables -- would have the opposite effect, increasing diet-related emissions, according to the U-M researchers.

In the United States in 2010, food production was responsible for about 8 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. In general, animal-based foods are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions per pound than plant-based foods.

The production of both beef cattle and dairy cows is tied to especially high levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

For starters, cows don't efficiently convert plant-based feed into muscle or milk, so they must eat lots of feed. Growing that feed often involves the use of fertilizers and other substances manufactured through energy-intensive processes. And then there's the fuel used by farm equipment.

In addition, cows burp lots of methane, and their manure also releases this potent greenhouse gas.

Greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing the U.S. diet are dominated by the meats category, according to Heller and Keoleian. While beef accounts for only 4 percent by weight of the food available, it contributes 36 percent of the associated greenhouse gases, they conclude.

The U-M researchers found that a switch to diets that don't contain animal products would lead to the biggest reductions in this country's diet-related greenhouse emissions.

But Heller said he's not arguing that all Americans should go vegan, and he believes that animals need to be part of a sustainable agricultural system. However, reduced consumption would have both health and environmental benefits.

In their Journal of Industrial Ecology paper, Heller and Keoleian also looked at wasted food and how it contributes to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. They concluded that annual emissions tied to uneaten food are equivalent to adding 33 million passenger vehicles to the nation's roads.

Atomically thin material opens door for integrated nanophotonic circuits

 

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Far-field photons excite silver nanowire plasmons. The wire plasmons propagate to the wire's distal end where they efficiently interact with the two-dimensional material semiconductor molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). The plasmons are absorbed in the MoS2 creating excitons that subsequently decay converting back into propagating photons.

A new combination of materials can efficiently guide electricity and light along the same tiny wire, a finding that could be a step towards building computer chips capable of transporting digital information at the speed of light.

Reporting today in The Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optica, optical and material scientists at the University of Rochester and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich describe a basic model circuit consisting of a silver nanowire and a single-layer flake of molybendum disulfide (MoS₂).

Using a laser to excite electromagnetic waves called plasmons at the surface of the wire, the researchers found that the MoS₂ flake at the far end of the wire generated strong light emission. Going in the other direction, as the excited electrons relaxed, they were collected by the wire and converted back into plasmons, which emitted light of the same wavelength.

"We have found that there is pronounced nanoscale light-matter interaction between plasmons and atomically thin material that can be exploited for nanophotonic integrated circuits," said Nick Vamivakas, assistant professor of quantum optics and quantum physics at the University of Rochester and senior author of the paper.

Typically about a third of the remaining energy would be lost for every few microns (millionths of a meter) the plasmons traveled along the wire, explained Kenneth Goodfellow, a graduate student at Rochester's Institute of Optics and lead author of the Optica paper.

"It was surprising to see that enough energy was left after the round-trip," said Goodfellow.

Photonic devices can be much faster than electronic ones, but they are bulkier because devices that focus light cannot be miniaturized nearly as well as electronic circuits, said Goodfellow. The new results hold promise for guiding the transmission of light, and maintaining the intensity of the signal, in very small dimensions.

Ever since the discovery of graphene, a single layer of carbon that can be extracted from graphite with adhesive tape, scientists have been rapidly exploring the world of two-dimensional materials. These materials have unique properties not seen in their bulk form.

Like graphene, MoS₂ is made up of layers that are weakly bonded to each other, so they can be easily separated. In bulk MoS₂, electrons and photons interact as they would in traditional semiconductors like silicon and gallium arsenide. As MoS₂ is reduced to thinner and thinner layers, the transfer of energy between electrons and photons becomes more efficient.

The key to MoS₂'s desirable photonic properties is in the structure of its energy band gap. As the material's layer count decreases, it transitions from an indirect to direct band gap, which allows electrons to easily move between energy bands by releasing photons. Graphene is inefficient at light emission because it has no band gap.

Combining electronics and photonics on the same integrated circuits could drastically improve the performance and efficiency of mobile technology. The researchers say the next step is to demonstrate their primitive circuit with light emitting diodes.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Rochester.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Kenneth M. Goodfellow, Ryan Beams, Chitraleema Chakraborty, Lukas Novotny, A. Nick Vamivakas. Integrated nanophotonics based on wire plasmons and atomically-thin material. Optica, Vol. 1, Issue 3, pp.149-152 (2014) [link]

3 Best Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners

 

 

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What’s the link between making money from blogging and your daily life?

Close to a decade after the Wall Street meltdown, people are still finding it tough to recover past losses and make ends meet.  Fewer and fewer of us can count on steady, lifelong employment, and for those who are so fortunate, the salary and benefits (if any) are barely enough to meet our basic needs.

Second job, anyone?  In America, two income families are the norm, but think of the havoc it wrecks on your daily life.  You’re so exhausted by the time you get home from work, you barely have enough time and energy to make dinner and help the kids out with their homework.  Even that becomes difficult if you work at more than one place, whether evenings or on weekends.

The Internet has made blogging mainstream, to the point where there may be over half a billion blogs online as you read this article.  While income generation is not the only reason (or even the best reason) to blog, opportunities do exist for people to create supplemental income via this activity.

If you are new to blogging, or have just recently started a blog, congratulations!  I hope your main motivation is to provide valuable content for your readers, because that’s how you will establish expert status in your specialization (niche) in the long-term.

However, there is nothing wrong with making some extra money through blogging, and several simple methods exist for getting the ball rolling:

1. Google Adsense

Google Adsense might be the fastest and easiest way for a beginner to start earning so-called passive income with a blog.  As the name implies, Adsense is acontextual advertising network that places partner (business) ads on your website.  It’s easy to set up – a quick copy and paste of some Adsense code and you’re good to go!

Don’t worry that your blog niche won’t be able to draw quality ads to your site.  Google Adsense is one of the biggest networks on the Web, so you should get a healthy enough list of clickable sites to attract your readership.

Just make sure your content is of the highest quality!

2. Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is the long established in-house affiliate program run by Seattle-based Amazon.com – the biggest online retailer in the world today.  It offers bloggers the chance to earn commissions (up to 8.5%) by advertising Amazon products on your website – provided visitors click-through from your blog to Amazon.com and make a purchase.

The one caveat about Associates is that it probably suits bloggers who write about merchandising, retail products and shopping a fair bit.  Logically, it will help your performance if visitors arrive at your website already predisposed to buying.

The program works by getting Amazon links, banners, or widgets (e.g. slideshows, ‘My Favorites’, ‘Wish List Widget’) onto your pages.

3. Create E-books

Regular blogging is the ideal training ground for creating e-books, still one of the most popular forms of information products being sold by online entrepreneurs today.

Consider your blogs as “free” information that you offer to readers to demonstrate your expertise.  With time, they become your fans and are ready formore in-depth material.  This is your opportunity to make money – by presenting your e-books for sale alongside your free blog.

Just make sure that the e-book builds on your blog output – don’t simply rehash what they have already seen!  After all, these people are now paying customers and will get upset with old information.  Later on as you become more established and your archived material becomes more extensive, poll your readers to see what topics they’d be interested in learning more about and potentially what topics of e-books they’d be interested in purchasing.

Notice that I avoided putting a specific dollar figure on the amount you can make from blogging.  It will come down to your work ethic, your skills as a writer, your ability to generate targeted traffic, and plain old good luck.  It’s a bit like baseball: everyone played it as a kid, only a small fraction make it to college ball, an even smaller number become professional, but only the cream of the crop make it to the majors.

You have to decide where in the blogging “big leagues” you want to end up.

The reality is that as more and more people from all over the world come online, the harder it will become to get attention and generate income.  As of February 20, 2014, according to their respective websites, there were around 172 million Tumblr and 75.8 million WordPress blogs.  Blogger.com does not release statistics, but is said to be the most popular blogging site.

That being said, there are countless success stories out there, and the formula for success is surprisingly simple.  It’s just up to you to get it done!

Sitting Still Risks Found

 

 

 

• Sitting Raises Risk of Type II Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Early Death: A compendium of studies published in 2012 found that sitting for long periods raised the relative risk of type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease over 100%; the association was strongest for diabetes. The studies found this effect regardless of whether the sitter got the recommended amount of moderate and vigorous intensity exercise the rest of the day.
• Sitting Slows Metabolism: Dr. Marc T. Hamilton says research shows thatfat-burning is slowed by prolonged sitting, so you burn less fat when you finally get up and exercise. "Sitting time and non-exercise activity have been linked in epidemiological studies to rates of metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease," Dr. Hamilton concludes.
• Sitting Increases Diabetes Risk in Women: A study found that the more sitting hours per day reported by women over age 40, the more their markers of insulin resistance and inflammation were increased. This points to an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This was true whether or not they got moderate exercise each day.
• Two-Minute Walk Breaks Improve Glucose Control and Insulin Response: Breaking up sitting time with two-minute walk breaks every 20 minutes improved the body's response to a meal by 30% in a 2012 study. The study simulated an office environment with middle-aged, overweight people. Walking at light or moderate intensity for two minutes after each 20 minutes of sitting helped maintain glucose control and insulin response. There may be good benefits in developing habits of getting up more frequently during the workday and at home while video gaming, watching television or using the computer.
• Screen Time Is a Health Risk: Two hours a day of sitting in front of the TV or computer may double your risk of a heart attack or other cardiac event. Four hours a day of screen time increases your risk of death by any cause by 50%, according to findings of a study of more than 4,500 middle-aged men in Scotland.
• Sit More-Die Younger: The American Cancer Society's Cancer II study of more than 100,000 healthy people tracked since 1992 found that women who sit for more than six hours during their leisure time each day had a 37% greater chance of death than women who sat for three hours or less. Men had an 18% greater chance of death. This finding was independent of whether the people got in a good dose of exercise each day. However, the good news is that those who also got exercise had a lower risk of death than those who didn't—just not enough to overcome the presumed effects of the sitting hours.
• Sounding the Alarm About Sitting: An editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that "recent observational studies have suggested that prolonged bouts of sitting time and lack of whole-body muscular movement are strongly associated with obesity, abnormal glucose metabolism, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease risk and cancer, as well as total mortality independent of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity," say the authors.

Six Ways You Can Decrease Sitting Time

Decrease the amount of time you sit still throughout the day by using these tactics:

• Wear a pedometer: Aim not only to increase your total daily steps gradually to 10,000 steps per day, but also to log 500 steps per hour to ensure you are not sitting still for long periods of time. If you carry your phone with you all day, you may only need a pedometer app.
• Activity monitors and apps with sitting time alerts: Some activity monitors and apps can be set to alert you when you've been inactive too long.
• Screen Alerts: Those with computer-based jobs may want to install a program, such as RSIGuard, that pops up to alert them to move around each hour. For those tied to the cubicle, this can mean standing and walking in place, desk stretches, pacing while on the phone, etc.
• Treadmill Desk: Build or buy a treadmill desk so you can walk slowly while working on the computer, reading, gaming or watching videos.
• Switch to Active Video Games: Rather than play sitting-based computer games, switch to a Wii or other gaming device that includes active games that have you standing and moving.
• Walk on Your Breaks: Use your break and lunch times to get in a brisk walk.

_Sources:

_{Wilmot, E. G., et al. "Sedentary time in adults and the association with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and death: systematic review and meta-analysis",DIABETOLOGIA, Volume 55, Number 11 (2012), 2895-2905, DOI: 10.1007/s00125-012-2677-z}

_{Hamilton, Marc T., et al. "Role of Low Energy Expenditure and Sitting in Obesity, Metabolic Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Disease." Diabetes. 2007 Nov;56(11):2655-67.}

_{Bakl, Elin, et. al. "Are we facing a new paradigm of inactivity physiology?" British Journal of Sports Medicine}

_{Emmanuel Stamatakis, et al. "Screen-Based Entertainment Time, All-Cause Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events," J Am Coll Cardiol, 2011; 57:292-299, doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2010.05.065}

_{Alpa V. Patel, Leslie Bernstein, Anusila Deka, Heather Spencer Feigelson, Peter T. Campbell, Susan M. Gapstur, Graham A. Colditz, and Michael J. Thun "Leisure Time Spent Sitting in Relation to Total Mortality in a Prospective Cohort of US Adults." Am. J. Epidemiol., Advance Access published on July 22, 2010; doi: doi:10.1093/aje/kwq155}

_{Yates T, Khunti K, Wilmot EG, Brady E, Webb D, Srinivasan B, Henson J, Talbot D, Davies MJ. "Self-reported sitting time and markers of inflammation, insulin resistance, and adiposity." Am J Prev Med. 2012 Jan;42(1):1-7}

_{Dunstan DW, Kingwell BA, Larsen R, Healy GN, Cerin E, Hamilton MT, Shaw JE, Bertovic DA, Zimmet PZ, Salmon J, Owen N. "Breaking Up Prolonged Sitting Reduces Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Responses." Diabetes Care. 2012 Feb 28.}