The Secrets How To Do Cinnamon Challenge Safely!

Doctors warn teens about taking the 'cinnamon challenge' in new report

CHICAGO –  Don't take the cinnamon challenge. That's the advice from doctors in a new report about a dangerous prank depicted in popular YouTube videos but which has led to hospitalizations and a surge in calls to U.S. poison centers.

The fad involves daring someone to swallow a spoonful of ground cinnamon in 60 seconds without water. But the spice is caustic, and trying to gulp it down can cause choking, throat irritation, breathing trouble and even collapsed lungs, the report said.

Published online Monday in Pediatrics, the report said at least 30 teens nationwide needed medical attention after taking the challenge last year.

'Orange burst of dragon breath'

The number of poison control center calls about teens doing the prank "has increased dramatically," from 51 in 2011 to 222 last year, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

"People with asthma or other respiratory conditions are at greater risk of having this result in shortness of breath and trouble breathing," according to an alert posted on the association's website.

Thousands of YouTube videos depict kids attempting the challenge, resulting in an "orange burst of dragon breath" spewing out of their mouths and sometimes hysterical laughter from friends watching the stunt, said report co-author Dr. Steven E. Lipshultz, a pediatrics professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Cinnamon is made from tree bark and contains cellulose fibers that don't easily break down. Animal research suggests that when cinnamon gets into the lungs, it can cause scarring, Lipshultz said.

'It's not cool, and it's dangerous'

Dr. Stephen Pont, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Austin, Texas pediatrician, said the report is "a call to arms to parents and doctors to be aware of things like the cinnamon challenge" and to pay attention to what their kids are viewing online.

Related: Michigan teen hospitalized after attempting 'cinnamon challenge'

An Ypsilanti, Mich., teen who was hospitalized for a collapsed lung after trying the cinnamon challenge heartily supports the new advice and started her own website -- http://nocinnamonchallenge.com -- telling teens to "just say no" to the fad.

Dejah Reed, 16, said she took the challenge four times -- the final time was in February last year with a friend who didn't want to try it alone.

"I was laughing very hard, and I coughed it out, and I inhaled it into my lungs," she said. "I couldn't breathe."

Her father, Fred Reed, said he arrived home soon after to find Dejah "a pale bluish color. It was very terrifying. I threw her over my shoulder" and drove to a nearby emergency room.

Dejah was hospitalized for four days and went home with an inhaler and said she still has to use it when she gets short of breath from running or talking too fast. Her dad said she'd never had asthma or breathing problems before.

Dejah said she'd read about the challenge on Facebook and other social networking sites and "thought it would be cool" to try.

Now she knows "it's not cool and it's dangerous."

How To Suicide in MARS ! Wanted Volunteers!

I'm Sending Four People to Mars for the Rest of Their Lives

Space travel has always been tainted with a few big, unavoidable problems for me. The first is that I spent all three years of my university career occasionally learning what Foucault thinks about reality television, rather than anything vaguely scientific that would teach me how to launch myself through earth's atmosphere without dying immediately. The second is that everything is just so staggeringly, unfathomably far away. The half hour commute to work is bad enough; three days to get to a pretty nondescript floating hunk of rock just seems pointless and like a massive waste of time that could be spent not crowded up in a little shuttle hurtling through the sky.

Although, I suppose if there was an exciting prospect at the end of the journey I wouldn't mind so much. Like a new, ready-made home for me to spend the rest of my years, for example. Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp is going to be furnishing those exact dreams with his Mars One project, which aims to build a liveable settlement on Mars, before sending four humans to live there for the rest of their lives in 2023, followed by more batches of people as the years go on, living there for the REST of their lives.        

Besides that minor detail, his project is remarkable in that it aims to raise the majority of its funding through creating the biggest media spectacle the world has ever known – covering every stage of the project and allowing viewers to vote on who gets to take the trip – rather than relying on governments and having to deal with any kind of political interference. I met Bas for a drink to talk about his plans.

 VICE: So tell me what sparked this whole idea of sending people to live the rest of their lives on Mars.
Bas Lansdorp: I was originally inspired around 15 years ago when the first rover landed on Mars. I basically thought it'd be much cooler if humans were walking up on Mars, rather than the machine. I always wanted to go myself and knew I didn't stand a chance if I went through the normal NASA or European Space Agency (ESA) procedures, but I kind of forgot about the idea when I started studying mechanical engineering. Then, a few years later, someone told me that the Americans were planning a one-way trip to Mars – which is so much more feasible than a return mission – so I decided to drop everything and go for it.

What were you doing at the time?
I was working at a company, but I sold half my shares to get things going. Then John de Mol, the inventor of Big Brother, told me I could finance the project through the media, so I thought 'I really have to take this chance now.' I mean, it's extremely complex, but I have to take the risk and do it.

Yeah, it's interesting that you're planning on funding the whole project with media money.
Well, we have other revenue ideas, of course, but yeah – we need to finance a lot of things before we can send any humans out to Mars and creating a media spectacle is a good way to do that. I'll just add that it's not my main goal to create a media spectacle, though. There are much easier ways of doing that than sending humans on a one-way mission to Mars.

 Ha, yeah I assume there probably are. How much is it going to cost?
It's going to be £3.8 billion to set it up, then another £630 million for each one of the four astronauts. I initially thought that number was unrealistically high, but the International Olympic Committee had a revenue of one or two billion pounds for one three-week-long event, so that's half a billion a week, which makes our numbers not look too bad.

Literally everybody who has access to internet or TV will watch it and, by that time, nearly four billion people will have the internet, so imagine being the brand that sponsors an event like that. You'll immediately have the biggest name on the planet.  It's a lot of money, but I'm very entrepreneurial and also very down to earth, so I wouldn't do it if I didn't believe it was possible.

Cool. So what's the process? What's being sent up first?
We've got a demonstration mission in 2016 to show the technology that we've purchased, which is where we'll send a communications satellite to Mars, then, in 2018, we'll send a rover up to find the best location for the settlement.   

What factors determine a good place for a settlement?
It's got to be north enough to have a good amount of water crystals in the soil and south enough for the solar panels to be effective. It's gonna be on the northern hemisphere because the seasons are less extreme there. But it's also got to be as low as possible in altitude, because Mars has a very thin atmosphere and the lower down you go, the more time you'll have to slow down and land safely.

 And everything is going to be ready built for the humans' arrival, right?
Yeah, everything will land in big pre-built components that will be assembled by the rovers. There'll be two capsules for the life support system, two capsules for the living units and two capsules with supplies.   

Nice. Is it right that the astronauts are being picked with a lottery system?
No, that was just something some news show said. The way we're doing it is to have our experts determine who's suitable from those who apply, then we'll ask the audience who they want to send to Mars. The people picked will be the world's first ambassadors to Mars, so it's important that the general public have their say.

What would be your perfect candidate?
Well, when I started, I thought we'd need doctors and engineers, but the most important thing is actually the person's personality. You need someone who's capable of sitting in a very small vehicle for the seven month journey, then able to cope mentally with leaving earth behind. The medical and engineering aspects are obviously very important, too, but we'll train them in those for the eight years before they leave, so it's the personality that's the most crucial thing. 

 What happens if two of the astronauts have a baby, or something? 
Well, that's not the goal. We're putting people up there, but they'll be largely responsible for their own actions. Because of the time difference between Earth and Mars, it's not like we'll be able to say, "Pick up that rock" or guide them through stuff in realtime, so they'll have to be responsible.

And any responsible person knows that Mars – with only three other people for company – probably isn't the ideal place to have a baby. The means to get a baby into the world will be there, though, and the long-term goal is create an outpost where that could happen – maybe when there's 20 or 30 people there. 

So you eventually want to start a whole new Martian society?
Yeah, that should be the goal. We want to establish a small self-supporting society on Mars that doesn’t need the Earth anymore. Although, it's such long-term planning that it's not really something you can keep under control, so we'll have to see.

Do you want to go and live on Mars eventually?
I wanted to. I talked to our medical director, Norbert Craft, though, and he said I don't have the patience or the calmness to cope. I'm the architect and the entrepreneur, not the right person to actually go on the mission, but I will be extremely, extremely jealous when the first four people leave.

 One of my friends put his name down for it. He's always wanted to live in the remote Scottish wilderness, so I suppose Mars would be an even better alternative.
Oh, cool. We just got a bid from an investor, so we're getting really close to signing contracts with our suppliers. When that happens, we think we'll be far enough along to start selecting astronauts.

Nice, I'll let him know. Lastly, what's your personal mission with this? Scientific discovery? Moving the human race forward? Or just leaving your mark on the universe?
Somewhere in the middle, I suppose. I’m interested in the science – I mean, imagine if we found life on Mars. We don't know how much life there is in the universe, let alone on our neighbouring planet. And who knows – it could even bring us closer to understanding the history of the solar system and where we all come from. Of course, the prospect of putting humanity on a different planet is also just breathtaking. It seemed incomprehensible to me before, so my biggest motivation at the moment is to achieve sending the first ever people to Mars. 

The Top Secrets How To Slim Down Forever

Dead student's family call for clampdown on slimming drug

Sarah Houston, 23, died after taking banned dinitrophenol (DNP), which she ordered online, alongside antidepressants

Sarah Houston was studying medicine at the University of Leeds at the time of her death last September. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

A coroner and the family of a medical student suffering from bulimia who died after taking a banned weight-loss drug bought online have called for a change in the law to further tighten the distribution of the substance, which has been blamed for other deaths.

Dr Graham Mould, a forensic toxicologist, told an inquest into the death of Sarah Houston, 23, that a combination of dinitrophenol (DNP), which is banned from human consumption but is used as a chemical pesticide, and antidepressants may have been fatal.

DNP, which was first used to treat obesity in the 1930s but was banned as a food substance due to its dangerous side effects, continues to be used as a slimming aid by bodybuilders around the world. It was linked to 62 deaths in a study published last year in the Journal of Medical Toxicity.

The University of Leeds medical student, who comes from a family of doctors, is believed to have been taking the drug secretly alongside a prescribed antidepressant Fluoxetine. Houston was found dead in her bedroom by a flatmate.

The inquest in Wakefield heard she had complained of feeling hot and unwell and had been breathing heavily on the evening before she died in September last year.

Mould said there was no evidence of an overdose. "We don't know how long Sarah had been taking DNP but it may have accumulated in her system," he said. "It increases the body's metabolic rate. The side effects can be overheating and breathlessness caused by an increased heart rate and this seems to be consistent with how Sarah was feeling that evening.

"The side effects of DNP were clearly present and it's possible that Fluoxetine may have exacerbated the affect of DNP. At a very high dose, Fluoxetine can have a similar affect to DNP and so one can speculate that the two drugs together might have speeded up the affect."

Mould pointed out that the Food Standards Agency had previously issued a report warning the public not to take DNP.

Coroner David Hinchliff said: "The only way to combat the use of DNP is to bring to the attention of the public how dangerous a substance it is.

"This is not a one-off case and it needs bringing to the public's attention."

Outside court, Houston's family said she was not depressed at the time she died and her health had improved leading up to her death. In a statement, they said that it was incomprehensible that DNP could be purchased over the internet and called on the government to take steps to ensure that no other family suffered in the same way in future.

"It's going to be a slow process, but hopefully approaching the Home Office to begin with will be the right step and hopefully it will be made illegal," said Sarah's father, Geoff Houston. "For those who are selling it, if you have any ounce of decency you must stop."

The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

A Hole In Chinese Condoms - Warning !

Ghana seizes 'faulty Chinese condoms'

The FDA said the condoms were also not adequately lubricated

About 230,000 people in Ghana are living with HIV

More than 110 million Chinese-made condoms have been seized in Ghana after laboratory tests revealed they were faulty, Ghanaian officials have said.

"There are holes in them and... the condoms burst easily," a Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) spokesman told the BBC.

The condoms were being distributed free as part of an HIV/Aids prevention campaign by the Ghana Health Service.

About 200 million of the faulty condoms are believed to have been imported into the country.

The BBC's Sammy Darko in the capital, Accra, says the condom packaging is silvery white with a red Aids ribbon incorporated into the design and the words "Be Safe" also in red.

The FDA has issued an alert about their safety.

Thomas Amedzro, head of drug enforcement at the FDA, said the condoms had been imported via Kenya from a Chinese manufacturer.

All imported condoms are supposed to be tested by the FDA before distribution, he said.

"Somehow there was a lapse; the batches of the condoms were not submitted as duly required for the appropriate testing to be conducted," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Anybody using them could be "exposed to sexually transmitted infections or be saddled with unwanted pregnancies", Mr Amedzro said.

"You may not be able to see the holes with your naked eye but when you look at it under the microscope you can see holes," he said.'

They were also not adequately lubricated, the FDA said.

Our reporter says the health service took delivery of the condoms in February this year, but they arrived in the country in the last quarter of 2012.

"Since the alert went out, a number of individuals and organisations have already reported to us that they have stocks, which we are already retrieving," Mr Amedzro said.

A publicity campaign was underway to ensure that all the other unsafe condoms were found, he added.

According to UN figures, an estimated 230,000 people in Ghana, which has a population of 25 million, are living with HIV.

The Hottest Temperatures for 1,400 Years

 Late 20th century was warmest in 1,400 years

PARIS, France - Earth was cooling until the end of the 19th century and a hundred years later, the planet's surface was on average warmer than at any time in the previous 1,400 years, according to climate records presented on Sunday, April 21.

In a study spanning two millennia published in Nature Geoscience, scientists said a "long-term cooling trend" around the world swung into reverse in the late 19th century.

In the 20th century, the average global temperature was 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than that of the previous 500 years, with only Antarctica bucking the trend.

From 1971-2000, the planet was warmer than at any other time in nearly 1,400 years.

This measure is a global average, and some regions did experience warmer periods than that -- but only for a time. Europe, for instance, was probably warmer in the first century AD than at the end of the 20th century.

The investigation is the first attempt to reconstruct temperatures over the last 2,000 years for individual continents.

It seeks to shed light on a fiercely-contested aspect in the global-warming debate.

Skeptics have claimed bouts of cooling or warming before the Industrial Revolution -- including two episodes in Europe called the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age -- are proof that climate variations are natural, not man-made.

The new study does not wade into the debate about greenhouse gases, but points to two planetary trends.

The first is a clear, prolonged period of cooling. It may have been caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in volcanic activity, with stratospheric ashes reflecting the sunlight, or a decrease in solar activity or tiny changes in Earth's orbit, both of which would diminish sunlight falling on the planet.

The cooling -- between 0.1-0.3 C (0.2-0.6 F) per thousand years, depending on the region -- went into reverse towards the end of the 19th century, and was followed by an intensifying period of warming in the 20th, the paper said.

Beneath this global trend over 2,000 years were episodes of continental cooling or warming, some of which were quite long.

And some continents lagged the overall planetary trend, but with the exception of Antarctica, all followed it.

"Distinctive periods, such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age stand out, but do not show a globally uniform pattern on multi-decadal time scales," said Heinz Wanner of the University of Bern in Switzerland, one of 78 researchers from 24 countries who took part in the project.

"There are things that are common to all the regions of the planet -- long-term cooling, until the 19th century, followed by warming on all continents, except for Antarctica, where it is less clear, but also strong variations from one region to another," Hugues Goosse, a climatologist at Belgium's Catholic University of Leuven, told AFP.

Previous research into climate change has pointed to a warming spurt in the 20th century and attributed it to the rise of heat-trapping carbon gases emitted by burning coal, oil and gas.

The warming trend shifted up a gear in the middle of the 1970s, in line with record-breaking levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to this past research.

2012 saw the 36th straight year that global temperatures were above average since 1880, when scientifically acceptable records were first kept, and was the ninth or 10th warmest on record, US scientists said in January.

The temperature reconstruction published on Sunday was coordinated by a scientific initiative called the Past Global Changes (PAGES) 2K Network.

It brings together weather data as well as telltales of temperature variation from tree rings, pollen, corals, lake and marine sediments, ice cores and stalagmites garnered at 511 locations across seven continental-scale regions.

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