The power equation behind colliders

The power equation behind colliders
The most powerful particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider, will begin to operate in 2008 at 14 trillion electron volts. The next collider to be built, the International Linear Collider, will operate at only 0.5 trillion electron volts. Why are we going backward in collider energy levels? The smaller energy needs of the linear collider do not represent a step backward, just a different way of looking at the nature of matter. The two colliders are looking for different information about the nature and interaction of elementary particles that make up the material world. The larger one is trying to bang beams of protons together at great energy in the hope of shaking out one tiny “marble” from the jumbled bag of particles called quarks and gluons that make up the proton. The target is the elusive Higgs boson, which theoretical physicists believe endows all the other constituents of nature with mass. The linear collider, on the other hand, can be seen as setting two little “marbles” on a collision course to see what happens, so it does not need all that much energy. In this case, the “marbles” are electrons and their antimatter opposites, positrons. They have no innards, so their collisions are cleaner, and thus can be used to study whatever new particles are found by the larger collider. (NYT)

FDA urged to toughen rules on salt
A US consumer group prodded the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday to regulate salt as a food additive, arguing that excessive salt consumption by Americans may be responsible for more than 100,000 deaths a year. The government has long placed salt in a “generally recognised as safe” or GRAS category, which grandfathers in a huge list of familiar food ingredients. But in an FDA hearing on Thursday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) urged the agency to enforce tougher regulations for sodium. Doing so “lays the foundation for saving tens of thousands of lives per year,” said CSPI Director Michael Jacobson in an interview after the hearing. It “just has tremendous potential to health and to cut health-care costs.” The average American consumes 3,353 milligrams of sodium every day—more than twice what the Institute of Medicine says is adequate for healthy people and 1,000 milligrams more than the 2,300 milligrams set as a daily limit by the 2005 US Dietary Guidelines. The intake considered adequate is far lower: 1,500 milligrams for those 9 to 50 years old; 1,300 milligrams for those 51 to 70, and for people 70 and older 1,200 milligram. Salt intake is closely linked to stroke, kidney disease and high blood pressure.

Measles deaths world over have dropped by two-thirds since 2000
Worldwide deaths from measles have fallen by two-thirds since 2000, the result of stepped-up immunisation efforts and the distribution of vitamin A capsules in developing countries, a partnership of five health organisations said on Thursday. Africa, which has long had the most measles deaths, has seen the biggest drop, 91 percent. In many villages, measles shots, polio vaccine, deworming pills and insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria prevention are all being given out together. Measles mortality has fallen less steeply in India and Pakistan, but campaigns are now starting there. The dramatic results are the product of a little-known project, the Measles Initiative, launched in 2001. The news comes as the better-known Global Polio Eradication Initiative is struggling to complete its job, nearly eight years over a self-imposed deadline. In 2000, global measles mortality was 757,000. In 2006, it was down to 242,000—a drop of 67 percent. In 1990, there were about 1.06 million measles deaths, more than four times the current annual total. “This is a major achievement in global health,” said Kathy Calvin, an official of the United Nations Foundation, one of the partners.