Eideard

Electronics giant Sony Corp has suffered a fresh blow after several of its Bravia LCD televisions sets emitted smoke or parts began to melt. Sony said it will offer free inspection and repairs available to 1.6 million of the TV sets.

Sony’s television unit is already heading for its eighth straight year of losses, as it battles fierce competition from Samsung and LG of South Korea.

The 11 overheating incidents all took place in Japan, but the faulty parts may affect TV sets sold around the world, the company said in a news release.

There have been no reports of injuries or damage to anything other than the televisions, Sony said.

Sony hasn’t figured out, yet, whether to compete head-to-head in a commoditized market – or try to come up with a product sufficiently advanced to survive as an upper end niche.

The fact that Howard Stringer shut down most of their R&D as one of his earliest decisions in just another symptom of the incompetence he brought to leadership of that once-great company.

She looks better in this older mugshot – this is from 2 years ago

A 25-year-old woman was arrested for giving crack cocaine to her disabled grandmother, Pasco deputies said.

Karissa Lee Glisson…was arrested Tuesday and charged with abuse of an elderly or disabled adult. The 63-year-old grandmother “smoked the crack cocaine” at her Port Richey home Tuesday afternoon and passed out, according to a Pasco County Sheriff’s Office report.

The woman was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Glisson “admitted to providing and smoking crack cocaine with the victim, who is her grandmother,” the sheriff’s report states.

Glisson told paramedics her grandmother is disabled and suffers from “various health issues.”

Glisson…is being held at the Pasco jail in lieu of $5,000 bail. She declined to say why she gave her grandmother crack and refused to speak to deputies any further…

So much for Florida folk medicine. Surely she didn’t think crack would make her Gran less disabled?

In the global war against smoking, Europe remains a difficult battlefront. Despite ad campaigns featuring grisly images of rotting lungs and crumbling teeth, “the beautiful continent” continues to have the highest smoking rate in the world.

So forgive Iceland for considering something truly radical — prescription-only cigarettes. Under proposed legislation, only those with valid medical certificates would be permitted to buy cigarettes from pharmacies.

“I think Iceland can be a test tube to try out progressive things because we are a small country and we don’t have a massive lobby for tobacco,” said Thorarinn Gudnason, a cardiologist at Landspitali University Hospital in Rejkyavik. ”We are taking care of people who are dying of this disease in their 40s and we’re fed up with it.”

Iceland’s smoking rate is already one of the lowest in Europe. Just 15 per cent of the population lights up compared to an average of 31 per cent across the continent. However, the story among young Icelanders is more worrisome: 20 per cent of children and teenagers smoke. Dr. Gudnason hopes the new plan will dramatically reduce that figure and cut overall smoking rates to less than 10 per cent…

Tobacco and nicotine would be classified as addictive drugs and second-hand smoke would be treated and controlled like other carcinogenic substances. Lighting up in public places such as parks and in cars with children would be outlawed.

Eventually, smokers who are unable to kick the habit through treatment and various addiction programs — or those smokers who simply refuse to quit — may get a prescription for tobacco from their doctors. Once cigarettes become available only through physicians, the price will go down again — as it would be unfair to tax those unable to quit supporters of the plan say.

“Tobacco is very addictive and we would recognize them as addicts,” said Ms. Fridleifsdottir.

Bravo! Once again the political side of Iceland is willing to experiment with a daring approach to a disgusting problem. It would force a lot of people with lazy personal ethics to confront a personal problem. They can still maintain their addiction if they wish.

Saving their lives is a side effect.

Out for our first walk after sunrise this morning – the sun to the East was masked by the smoke from the Wallow Fire in Arizona drifting across New Mexico.

Really tough on everyone – with or without built-in respiratory problems.

 
Even though Nissan sneaks in the tiniest dig at the Chevy Volt at the end – an outstanding commercial aimed at the fossil fuel junkies.

Can’t wait to show this to my dentists.

Ferrari recalled more than 400 luxury Italia cars today after reports that a design fault could cause them to catch fire.

The first incident occurred in July, when the driver noticed the rear panel of his 458 Italia was on fire while he was driving in Paris. A passerby used a fire extinguisher to douse the flames.

A few days later the engine of an Italia driving up a mountain pass in Switzerland caught fire. Last month a 458 in China and one in the US burst into flames.

After sending its engineers around the world to investigate the reports of “thermal incidents”, Ferrari asked the owners of more than 1,200 of the supercars, including around 50 in Britain, to bring them in for modification work. Louis Saha, the Everton footballer, Eric Clapton, the rock star, and Chris Evans, the broadcaster, are among the car’s owners.

Ferrari said the problem had been traced to adhesive used in the wheel-arch assemblies. In certain circumstances the glue can begin to overheat, smoke and even catch fire. In extreme cases, the melting of the adhesive can lead the heat shield – the liner protecting the engine – to deform and move closer to the exhaust, causing the lining to catch fire.

The owners who first reported the fires will now receive a new car.

That’s over a quarter-million dollars apiece.

Frequent exposure to environmental tobacco smoke among 13-year-olds is associated with an increased risk of future blood vessel hardening and greater risks of other heart disease factors, according to new research published in…a journal of the American Heart Association.

The study of 494 children showed that those with higher levels of exposure to secondhand smoke from ages 8 to 13 had, by age 13, significantly increased blood vessel wall thickness and functioning problems, both of which are precursors to arterial structural changes and hardening…

“Although previous research has found that passive smoke may be harmful for blood vessels among adults, we did not know until this study that these specific effects also happen among children and adolescents,” said Katariina Kallio, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study…

The research adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that secondhand smoke has objectively measurable effects on children’s heart health…

“These findings suggest that children should not face exposure to tobacco smoke at all,” Kallio said. “Even a little exposure to tobacco smoke may be harmful for blood vessels. We need to provide children a smoke-free environment.”

Smokers are among the most egregious of selfish human beings. They will squash their butts on the parlor floor or in the bowl of a spoon remaining at the dinner table. If no one is keeping an eye on them.

If their friends and family must also die – so be it.

Nicotine in third-hand smoke, the residue from tobacco smoke that clings to virtually all surfaces long after a cigarette has been extinguished, reacts with the common indoor air pollutant nitrous acid to produce dangerous carcinogens. This new potential health hazard was revealed in a multi-institutional study led by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

“The burning of tobacco releases nicotine in the form of a vapor that adsorbs strongly onto indoor surfaces, such as walls, floors, carpeting, drapes and furniture. Nicotine can persist on those materials for days, weeks and even months. Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with ambient nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs,” says Hugo Destaillats… “TSNAs are among the most broadly acting and potent carcinogens present in unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke…”

Since the most likely human exposure to these TSNAs is through either inhalation of dust or the contact of skin with carpet or clothes, third-hand smoke would seem to pose the greatest hazard to infants and toddlers. The study’s findings indicate that opening a window or deploying a fan to ventilate the room while a cigarette burns does not eliminate the hazard of third-hand smoke. Smoking outdoors is not much of an improvement, as co-author Lara Gundel explains.

“Smoking outside is better than smoking indoors but nicotine residues will stick to a smoker’s skin and clothing,” she says. “Those residues follow a smoker back inside and get spread everywhere. The biggest risk is to young children. Dermal uptake of the nicotine through a child’s skin is likely to occur when the smoker returns and if nitrous acid is in the air, which it usually is, then TSNAs will be formed…”

“Nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco smoke, has until now been considered to be non-toxic in the strictest sense of the term,” says Kamlesh Asotra of the University of California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, which funded this study. “What we see in this study is that the reactions of residual nicotine with nitrous acid at surface interfaces are a potential cancer hazard, and these results may be just the tip of the iceberg…”

Destaillats’ comment is more to the point than anything I might say: “We know that these residual levels of nicotine may build up over time after several smoking cycles, and we know that through the process of aging, third-hand smoke can become more toxic over time.”

RTFA. Deal with it.

The ban on smoking in public places, such as bars and restaurants, has been one of the greatest public health debates of the early 21st century. Now, two large studies suggest that communities that pass laws to curb secondhand smoke get a big payoff — a drop in heart attacks.

Overall, American, Canadian, and European cities that have implemented smoking bans had an average of 17 percent fewer heart attacks in the first year, compared with communities who had not taken such measures.

Then, each year after implementing smoking bans (at least for the first three years, the longest period studied), smoke-free communities have an average 26 percent decline in heart attacks, compared with those areas that still allow smokers to light up in public places…

How harmful is secondhand smoke? Nonsmokers have a 25 percent to 30 percent higher risk of heart attack if they inhale smoke at home or at work, and smoke has been shown to affect heart health within minutes, says Dr. David Meyers.

“We can measure chemical changes within 20 minutes,” he says. “The changes that occur primarily involve the clotting system. Basically, exposure to smoke makes your blood sticky and real clot-y and that’s what causes heart attacks.”

While this health effect is well established, it has not been clear if banning smoking could help reduce heart attacks, he says.

“We know that if you expose somebody, it’s bad,” says Meyers. “How about if you ban the exposure — will that make any difference? So that end of the logic had to be looked at, and now we can say, absolutely.”

RTFA. Anyone who still needs convincing – well, I worry about their ability to perceive the realities around them.

All it took was looking around and realizing that people who smoked had more illnesses of every kind.

This fire resulted from lousy connection of an aftermarket Li-ion battery

The world’s largest pilots union said Tuesday it wants bulk shipments of lithium batteries and products containing the batteries immediately banned from passenger and cargo planes because they can start a fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it is not prepared to take emergency action on the issue.

In seeking a federal ban, the Air Line Pilots Association pointed to three incidents since June in which lithium battery shipments apparently caused fires aboard U.S. planes…

The union emphasized that it is not seeking a ban on passengers carrying electronic devices containing lithium batteries onto planes, such as laptop computers, cell phones, and cameras. Instead, the union’s concern is with cargo containing multiple batteries, either loose or inside products.

He noted that Douglass told a House panel this spring that the safety administration is working on new regulations for the shipment of lithium batteries. However, he said that if the government doesn’t act quickly, the union will ask Congress to step in.

Depending upon how votes the issue is worth, Congress may complete hearings on the topic in time for the 2012 elections.

George Kerchner, executive director of The Rechargeable Battery Association, said…the shipments cited by the pilots union probably didn’t conform to existing hazardous materials regulations and suggested the Transportation Department step up enforcement of those regulations.

Enforce regulations? Good grief.