Posts Tagged ‘National’

Nurses are in high demand now more than ever. Some believe that today’s lifestyles are considerably unhealthy, thus more illness and disease. More and more nurses are needed every day to help care for the sick and dying. The United States Government predicts that nursing will soon become the second most popular profession in the entire nation. As more men and women choose to pursue a nursing career, more and more scholarships are being offered by an array of organizations. Here are 7 great scholarships almost any nursing student can get.

AAOHN Leadership Development Scholarship : Offered by the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, this scholarship can be yours if you’re pursuing a career in occupational and environmental health nursing. There are 2 scholarships up for grabs. One is offered by the AAOHN in the amount of $1,000.00, and the other is offered by Texas State AOHN and is also in the amount of $1,000.00.
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As the United States’ oil reserves dwindle, some say the nation will have to rely on synthetic petroleum fuel made from its large stores of coal.

A two-step chemical process augments a method of making cleaner-burning alternative fuel from coal and other carbon sources by transforming some of its waste products into diesel fuel, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, report.

“Two percent of the United States’ energy reserves is in oil, 3 percent is in gas, and 95 percent is in coal,” said Dr. Maurice Brookhart, W.R. Kenan Jr. professor of chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. “Many people in the energy sector think that when oil starts to run out, coal will be a source of transportation fuel for some time before we perfect the science behind solar and hydrogen-based energy. Producing diesel fuels from coal is especially attractive since diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline engines.” Read the rest of this entry »

Coal dust exposure is directly linked to severity of emphysema in smokers and nonsmokers alike, according to new research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

‘In this study we have shown that coal mine dust exposure is a significant predictor of emphysema severity,’ said Eileen Kuempel, Ph.D., a senior scientist at NIOSH and lead author of the study.

The findings, which were reported in the August 1 issue of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM), highlight a health problem related to a growing industry. In the past 25 years, coal production has nearly doubled worldwide.

Dr Kuempel and colleagues compared lung autopsy results from 722 individuals, including 616 coal miners from West Virginia and 106 non-miners from West Virginia and Vermont. Those from West Virginia were collected from consecutive autopsies from 1957 and 1973 at the Beckley Southern Appalachian Regional Hospital as part of a black lung study. Those from Vermont were taken from consecutive autopsies performed at the University of Vermont between 1972 and 1978. Age at death, race, miner/non-miner status and smoking history were established where possible, and individual exposure to coal dust was estimated using work history data and job-specific dust exposure estimates. Read the rest of this entry »

New research, reported this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that coal burning, primarily in North America and Europe, contaminated the Arctic and potentially affected human health and ecosystems in and around Earth’s polar regions.

The study, titled “Coal Burning Leaves Toxic Heavy Metal Legacy in the Arctic,” was conducted by the Desert Research Institute (DRI), Reno, Nev. and partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

Detailed measurements from a Greenland ice core showed pollutants from burning coal–the toxic heavy metals cadmium, thallium and lead–were much higher than expected. The catch, however, was the pollutants weren’t higher at the times when researchers expected peaks.

“Conventional wisdom held that toxic heavy metals were higher in the 1960s and ‘70s, the peak of industrial activity in Europe and North America and certainly before implementation of Clean Air Act controls in the early 1970s,” said Joe McConnell, lead researcher and director of DRI’s Ultra-Trace Chemistry Laboratory. Read the rest of this entry »

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