The Raw Story

Saturday, 16 May 2015

Electric wound care developed in England

Researchers at the University of Manchester are developing a shocking new solution to an age old problem: A medical method that can improve wound healing by electrifying a patient's skin.

Dr. Ardeshir Bayat and his colleagues recruited 40 volunteers and gave each of them a harmless, half-centimeter cut on their upper arm. Those study participants were then divided randomly into two groups - one group that was left to heal normally, and another which was treated with electrical pulses over a two-week period.

The researchers found that those pulses stimulated angiogenesis—or the process of forming new blood vessels, increasing blood flow to the wounded area. As a result, individuals receiving this type of treatment saw their wounds heal significantly faster than the control group. The authors published their findings in a recent edition of the journal .

Devices to speed up healing

Slow-healing skin wounds can be a huge pain for people all over the world, the researchers explained. In the UK alone, the NHS spends more than £1 billion, or $1.5 billion, on chronic wound care. Chronic wounds, they noted, are wounds that remain open and fail to heal for at least six weeks.

Dr. Bayat's team, in collaboration with Oxford BioElectronics Ltd., hope that these injuries can be treated using new devices that take advantage of electrical stimulation, based on the findings of their study. The university and the company teamed up on a five-year project to develop and evaluate dressings that can generate nerve impulses to the site of the damaged skin.

"This research has shown the effectiveness of electrical stimulation in wound healing, and therefore we believe this technology has the potential to be applied to any situation where faster wound healing is particularly desirable, such as following human or veterinary surgical wounds, accidental, or military trauma and in sports injuries," Dr. Bayat said in a statement.

"This is an exciting partnership, working on a pioneering project with the potential to change substantially the way cutaneous wounds are managed in the future," he added. "When used in acute and chronic wounds, bandages are essentially just a covering. With this technology we hope that the dressings will be able to make a significant functional contribution to healing the wounds and getting the patient back to full health as quickly as possible."

© Angelesa Ward
A beaver pauses in the middle of an aisle at the Lowe's store in Fairbanks, Alaska, Friday, May 15, 2015.

Sometimes driftwood just isn't enough, one beaver decided when it took an impromptu trip to Lowe's early Friday morning.

The beaver wandered into the parking lot of the Lowe's construction and home improvement store on the Johansen Expressway at about 7 a.m., triggering the automatic doors and strolling inside.

Once inside the store, the beaver made its way to the plumbing department, where store employees attempted to provide assistance to the wild animal.

A cellphone video of the incident shows employees asking the beaver if there is anything they can help it find in the store. However, the beaver — like many construction store shoppers — seemed to prefer to wander aimlessly through the store instead of asking for help.

One witness in the video observed that the beaver appeared to be injured.

Eventually, employees were able to trap the beaver under a cardboard box until a technician with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game could arrive to remove the animal from the store and bring it to wildlife biologist Tony Hollis, who had received a wake-up call about the beaver from the Alaska State Troopers dispatchers.

"Oftentimes it's usually something like there's a bear in town or an ornery moose or something, but this was a little different," Hollis said.

Hollis took the beaver for a ride down to the Chena Pump Boat Launch, where he released it into the Tanana River. He said he chose the location because it seemed like a place at which the beaver wouldn't become too much of a nuisance.

It's not exactly clear where the beaver came from since there is no open water in the direct vicinity of the Lowe's store, but Hollis guessed it may have come from the wetlands several blocks to the north and come south across the Johansen.

Ironically, the beaver was actually most likely looking for home-building supplies.

The beaver was about the age where it would typically be kicked out of the house and head out to build its own lodging, according to Hollis.

"I'm not really sure what he was thinking, but he was the age class that's dispersing out of the house," Hollis said. "Whether he got confused or who knows what happened in his mind that he ended up at Lowe's."

According to Assistant Store Manager Adam Vanhoveln, this is the first time an animal has triggered the store's automatic doors. Vanhoveln said the beaver didn't cause too much of a disruption to the store's operation.

Luckily for Lowe's, the beaver was unable to locate the lumber department.

© National Weather Service
The National Weather Service office in Bellemont just west of Flagstaff had received 8.4 inches of snow from the storm through late Friday afternoon.

May is looking like March in Flagstaff -- and the National Weather Service in Bellemont is right in the middle of it.

The most recent storm to roll through the Flagstaff stalled over the Weather Service office early Friday, dumping more than 8 inches of snow into its gauge through 5 p.m.

"It's always good to see rain and snow this late in the season," said Brian Klimowski of the National Weather Service. "Every storm we get like this helps push back the onset of our fire season."

Meanwhile, just to the east, Flagstaff's Pulliam Airport recorded just 0.3 inches of snow along with a half-inch of rain.

The snow was coming down so fast early Friday morning that snowplows were dispatched to the I-40 and I-17 corridors.

The snow was coming down so fast early Friday morning that snowplows were dispatched to the I-40 and I-17 corridors.

By Friday evening, the storm was still lingering over the western Mogollon Rim, causing the Weather Service to extend its winter weather advisory to 8 a.m. Saturday. Up to 2 additional inches of snow was forecast overnight, with 5 more inches in the White Mountains.

The Flagstaff airport has seen more than 3 inches of snow on May 15 or later only a handful of times.

Flagstaff and Bellemont have similar climatology, but a cold trough settled over Bellemont overnight and left just traces of snow in Flagstaff on Friday.

By this time last year, many northern Arizona cities and forests had fire restrictions in place.

Flagstaff averages about 1.5 inches of snow in May, but Klimowski said "to see heavy snow in late May is rather uncommon." He said Flagstaff could end up with about 4 inches of snow by the time the storm is done.

The latest snowfall on record for the Flagstaff airport is June 8 more than 100 years ago.

The mountain city is still well below the average 102 inches of snowfall for the season at 62 inches.

Friday's snowfall didn't cause any major problems. A travel center in Bellemont was without power for about three hours after a transformer blew, but Arizona Public Service Co. said it couldn't say definitively whether it was caused by the weather.

Sunday will be sunny with a high near 60 degrees, but two more weak fronts are expected to move through Flagstaff early and later next week.

As you look up into the sky, you will see a different view each day. Many saw a fairly rare weather phenomenon Thursday called a circumhorizontal arc, which may look similar to a sun halo, but it's not the same thing.

A number of viewers sent in photos of the circumhorizontal arc, but many didn't understand what exactly was in the sky.

The sun refracts off of ice crystals in cirrus or cirrostratus clouds to form a spectrum-colored band. The arc was either in full or close to that Thursday, resulting in a well-defined spectrum-colored band running parallel to the horizon below the sun.

We also need a high sun angle, so the sunlight can hit the ice crystals at the needed angle or 58 degrees or more. Since our days are getting longer, we met that requirement and most of the viewer pictures were taken around midday.

In some cases, the arc may appear as a fire rainbow, but that is not the correct way to identify what happened.

A number of viewers sent in photos of the circumhorizontal arc, but many didn't understand what exactly was in the sky.

In some cases, the arc may appear as a fire rainbow, but that is not the correct way to identify what happened.

Two people who applied to work in classrooms had been convicted of murder, three for attempted murder and one for soliciting to murder

Murderers, paedophiles and heroin dealers are among thousands of convicted criminals who have applied to work in classrooms across Britain.

More than 16,000 people with criminal convictions have applied to work as teachers, teaching assistants and even heads in the past three years, despite racking up more than 44,000 offences between them.

Criminal record checks reveal the applicants had 22 child sex offence convictions, including two for gross indecency with a girl under 16 and 12 for indecent assault on children.

Another six had made indecent pictures of children, according to data obtained by education newspaper Schools Week.

Two applicants had been convicted of murder, three for attempted murder and one for soliciting to murder.
The figures, which were uncovered by a Freedom of Information request, showed more than 300 had drug-dealing convictions - 30 of them for peddling heroin.

Three were for kidnapping, 28 for indecent assaults on women and another 70 related to arson.

Some 228 convictions were for loitering or soliciting to use a prostitute. Others included exposure, blackmail and robbery.

The most convictions - 5,815 - were for drink-driving, while 3,537 were for shoplifting.

It is unknown how many of the applicants are working in schools because it is up to individual heads whether to give them a job. But working with children requires a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, formerly known as a CRB check.

It is against the law to appoint anyone on a list of people barred from working with children.

Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said: 'It's astonishing there are so many. Thank goodness for DBS checks, otherwise very serious offenders might be let loose on our children.

'These findings show the importance of the checks in keeping out people who want to be around children for the wrong reasons.

'It may be that some of these people feel they have put their crimes behind them.

'But I think schools are about things beyond teaching maths, English and science - they're about developing character.

'Even if the offence committed was theft, it would still raise question marks about whether they are the right kind of person to be setting an example.'

Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: 'Schools are rigorous in carrying out pre-employment checks. Practice in this area is extremely closely inspected by Ofsted.

'The majority of checks are clear. However, occasionally applicants have a conviction in their past for a relatively minor offence which was clearly an aberration. In such cases schools may still decide to employ them if they are certain there is no risk attached to this.'

Schools Week obtained the figures from the DBS, which holds data on those unsuitable to work with children.

The newspaper asked for the total number of people who applied for positions between April 1 2012 and March 31 2015, and the criminal convictions that showed up.

The roles applied for included head and deputy posts, teachers and teaching assistants. The list of convictions did not include the date of the offence.

Human Rights Watch has issued a report stating that mentally ill prisoners are being abused in detention facilities across the US, and that these practices are happening in over 5,000 facilities.

US prison staff use excessive & even malicious force on prisoners with mental disabilities http://bit.ly/1IIbcYN http://pic.twitter.com/sK3QqDDPjh

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) May 12, 2015

The activist group says inmates are being subjected to unnecessary and excessive use of force, and the problem is widespread.

The report provides details of cases where inmates were shocked with Tasers, and where pepper spray was used against them.

In some cases, prisoners were left in restraint chairs for days, or put in scalding showers.

I think the public and legislators for far too long have been willing to send people to prison, without thinking a whole lot about what life behind bars [is like]. And what goes on behind bars is often hidden, people don't know what is happening," Jamie Fellner, one of the report's authors and senior adviser at Human Rights Watch, told RT.

She added that prison authorities

Fellner concluded.

Among the especially troubling cases was Nick Christie, a 62-year-old man who had recently stopped taking his medications for depression and anxiety. He was incarcerated in Florida in 2009 for a nonviolent misdemeanor.

At one point, locked in his cell and crying out for medical help, he kept yelling and banging on the cell door.

Prison officials sprayed him with chemical spray over a dozen times in 36 hours, and immobilized him in a restraint chair with a spit mask covering his face. He died from cardiac arrest.

Another Florida prisoner diagnosed with schizophrenia defecated on the floor of his cell and refused to clean it up.

Officers allegedly put him in a scalding shower, left him there for over an hour, and the inmate subsequently died.

However, the case that specifically caught the attention of human rights activists was 35-year-old Christopher Lopez. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and was discovered on his cell floor semi-conscious.

Staff failed to call medics and instead put Lopez in a restraint chair. A few hours later, he experienced a severe seizure.

The officers finally released him from the chair, but left him lying handcuffed on the floor. Lopez died a few hours later. His lawyer spoke to RT about the case.

attorney David Lane said.

he added.

The lawyer also told RT that the general attitude towards mentally ill inmates in the US is that they are a and they are dealt with like this,

Around 20 percent of prisoners in the US have a serious mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, according to a press release issued by Human Rights Watch. Inmates suffering from such conditions often find it difficult to cope with imprisonment and to comply with instructions.

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The Raw Story

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Saturday, 16 May 2015

Electric wound care developed in England

Odd animal behaviour: A beaver walks into a hardware store in Fairbanks, Alaska

8 inches of snow falls in May in Flagstaff, Arizona

Rare rainbow phenomenon 'circumhorizontal arc' appears in Tennessee sky

Rare rainbow phenomenon 'circumhorizontal arc' appears in Tennessee skies

Thousands of criminals including murderers, paedophiles and heroin dealers seek work in British schools

Human Rights Watch: Mentally ill prisoners suffering abuse in facilities across the US

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