Vaping just took a huge step forward in its quest for public acceptance. A report published today by Public Health England (PHE), an agency sponsored by the UK’s Department for Health, has concluded that e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than traditional smokes. In addition, it’s recognised their potential to help people quit smoking altogether, and says it looks forward to the day when the NHS can prescribe medicinally regulated devices. “E-cigarettes could be a game changer in public health, in particular by reducing the enormous health inequalities caused by smoking, ” Professor Ann McNeill from King’s College London, and one of the review’s independent authors said. The problem, the research found, is that close to half of the UK population (44.8 percent) isn’t aware that vaping is less harmful than tobacco. In fact, a growing number of people think e-cigarettes are just as dangerous, if not more so than the regular kind — 22.1 percent hold this view in 2015, up from 8.1 percent in 2013. PHE hasn’t suggested that vaping is a healthy pursuit — it’s likely not risk free — but it believes public perception could be stopping smokers from trying e-cigarettes and, eventually, dropping the habit entirely. “Local stop smoking services should look to support e-cigarette users in their journey to quitting completely, ” Professor Kevin Fenton, Director of Health and Wellbeing at PHE said. Legislation due in October will ban under-18s from buying e-cigarettes in the UK, in part because their long-term health effects are still unknown. Today’s report isn’t an all-clear for lifelong vaping, but it could help the technology slowly shake its troubled image . [Image Credit: Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] Filed under: Misc Comments Source: Public Health England Tags: departmentforhealth, ecigarette, ECigarettes, publichealthengland, vape, vapers, vaping
Originally posted here:
UK research finds vaping is 95 percent safer than smoking
HughPickens.com writes: BBC reports that Germany has abandoned tuition fees altogether for German and international students alike and more than 4, 600 US students are fully enrolled at Germany universities, an increase of 20% over three years. “When I found out that just like Germans I’m studying for free, it was sort of mind blowing, ” says Katherine Burlingame who decided to get her Master’s degree at a university in the East German town of Cottbus. “I realized how easy the admission process was and how there was no tuition fee. This was a wow moment for me.” When Katherine came to Germany in 2012 she spoke two words of German: ‘hallo’ and ‘danke’. She arrived in an East German town which had, since the 1950s, taught the majority of its residents Russian rather than English. “At first I was just doing hand gestures and a lot of people had compassion because they saw that I was trying and that I cared.” She did not need German, however, in her Master’s program, which was filled with students from 50 different countries but taught entirely in English. In fact, German universities have drastically increased all-English classes to more than 1, 150 programs across many fields. So how can Germany afford to educate foreign students for free? Think about it this way: it’s a global game of collecting talent. All of these students are the trading cards, and the collectors are countries. If a country collects more talent, they’ll have an influx of new ideas, new businesses and a better economy. For a society with a demographic problem — a growing retired population and fewer young people entering college and the workforce — qualified immigration is seen as a resolution to the problem as research shows that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany. “Keeping international students who have studied in the country is the ideal way of immigration, ” says Sebastian Fohrbeck.”They have the needed certificates, they don’t have a language problem at the end of their stay and they know the culture.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Just before midnight, UPS’s Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky begins to come alive. Boeing 757s start roaring overhead. Packages whoosh by on miles of conveyer belts. Before the sun is up, 1.6 million packages will be unloaded and loaded again, sent along toward their final destinations. Read more… 
This 3D scan shows a tangle of abnormal blood vessels beneath a patient’s skin. Their presence caused speech and vision problems, and were in danger of rupturing—which could have ended his life. Now, they’ve been removed during the course of a full face transplant. Read more… 
HughPickens.com writes Jonathan Mahler writes in the NYT that just as Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America’s college students a decade ago, the social app Yik Yak, which shows anonymous messages from users within a 1.5-mile radius is now taking college campuses by storm. “Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board — or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union, ” writes Mahler. “It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school.” While much of the chatter is harmless, some of it is not. “Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps, ” says Danielle Keats Citron. “It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way.” Since the app’s introduction a little more than a year ago, Yik Yak has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses, including the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and Penn State. Racist, homophobic and misogynist “yaks” have generated controversy at many more, among them Clemson, Emory, Colgate and the University of Texas. At Kenyon College, a “yakker” proposed a gang rape at the school’s women’s center. Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app’s privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that “banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional, ” especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak’s particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. “It’s a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension, ” says Elias Aboujaoude.” “You don’t know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it’s very close to you.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes “Google today began automatically converting Adobe Flash ads to HTML5. As a result, it’s now even easier for advertisers to target users on the Google Display Network without a device or browser that supports Flash. Back in September, Google began offering interactive HTML5 backups when Flash wasn’t supported. The Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tools for the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Campaign Manager created an HTML5 version of Flash ads, showing an actual ad rather than a static image backup. Now, Google will automatically convert eligible Flash campaigns, both existing and new, to HTML5.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
schnell writes: MIT grad and former Google exec Megan J. Smith is the third Chief Technical Officer of the United States and the first woman to hold the position created five years ago by President Obama. But, as a New York Times profile points out, while she fights to wean the White House off BlackBerries and floppy disks, and has introduced the President to key technical voices like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf to weigh in on policy issues, her position is deliberately nebulous and lacking in real authority. The President’s United States Digital Service initiative to improve technology government-wide is run by the Office of Management and Budget, and each cabinet department has its own CIO who mandates agency technical standards. Can a position with a direct access to the President but no real decision-making authority make a difference? Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
rossgneumann writes If everyone always wants to look different than everybody else, everybody starts looking the same. At least, if you use a recently published mathematical model describing the phenomenon. “The hipster effect is this non-concerted emergent collective phenomenon of looking alike trying to look different, ” in the words of Jonathan Touboul, mathematical neuroscientist at the College de France in Paris. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Even if you don’t have a kid in college, these $5 care packages from Target are a fantastic bargain, and feature items that anyone can use. Read more…