UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Food safety to take backseat to economy

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Fixing the U.S. food system will take a backseat to bigger problems such as the failing economy and healthcare, says Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

President-elect Barack Obama is sympathetic to calls to revamp the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, though it's unlikely his administration can get to it soon, said Durbin, a proponent of tougher food laws.

Obama is expected soon to name his choice to head the FDA and consumer groups expect his administration to handle food issues differently than the Bush administration, said Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America.

The Bush administration shunned aggressive regulation despite food-borne disease outbreaks in recent years which highlighted the government's inability to oversee a rapidly expanding food market, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Food-borne illnesses annually kill several thousand and sicken as many as 76 million people in the United States, the Times reported.

Canal would link Dead Sea to Red Sea

AMMAN, Jordan, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- A $4.4 billion canal that would stretch from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea would provide an abundance of power and fresh water, Jordanian officials say.

The proposed canal also would keep the Dead Sea from drying up and disappearing within 50 years, said Adnan Zoubi, a spokesman for the Jordanian water ministry.

The plan calls for a 110-mile long canal to channel several million tons of seawater into the Dead Sea each day, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

The Dead Sea sits about 1,300 feet below the Red Sea, meaning hydro turbines could produce ample energy while desalination units provide badly needed fresh water to the region, Zoubi said.

Currently, the Dead Sea's water level drops by several feet a year because agriculture uses so much water from the Jordan River, the only major influx into the Dead Sea, which has shrunk by a third in the past 40 years.

Environmental Resources Management, a British firm, has won the contract for a major part of the canal's feasibility study, the Telegraph reported.

Green energy thwarted by winter

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Winter's bitter cold can stall wind turbine blades, congeal biodiesel and render solar panels useless, say U.S. power developers.

As renewable energy assumes a larger role in the U.S. power grid, green energy advocates find they must plan carefully for obstacles presented by ice and snow, The New York Times reported Friday.

Ralph Brokaw, a Wyoming cattle rancher who has 69 wind turbines on his land, says his machine can hurl chunks of ice as they rotate.

Solar panels covered with snow are rendered useless, though panels kept clean get extra power from sunlight reflected off snow, the Times reported.

As for biodiesel, without internal heaters to warm the fuel, even a small amount of biodiesel, typically made from vegetables oil, will congeal and clog a fuel line, as John Jones well knows.

"We can't have people sitting on buses freezing to death while we get out there trying to get them restarted," Jones, a transit director for a Colorado bus line that hauls skiers to resorts, told the Times.

Harvard researcher quits Shaklee

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 26 (UPI) -- A Harvard professor and the California-based Shaklee Corp. differ on whether he approved the use of his name to promote a purportedly life-extending syrup.

David Sinclair, a anti-aging researcher at Harvard Medical School, disputes Shaklee's contention that he approved use of his name in advertisements for the Vivix Cellular Anti-Aging Tonic, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Sinclair resigned from Shaklee's advisory board last week after the Journal questioned his seeming endorsement of Vivex, which costs $100 for a month's supply and is made of resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine.

Shaklee Corp. calls Vivix "the world's best anti-aging supplement" and asks on its Web site, "How would you like to feel 25 years younger and live 25 years longer?"

The question is rhetorical and is designed to "engage people in a dialogue," not guarantee longer life, said Shaklee Chief Executive Roger Barnett.

In studies, resveratrol has proven beneficial in mice, not people, the Journal noted.