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Lower-than-normal zinc levels may contribute to high blood pressure (hypertension) by altering the way the kidneys handle sodium. The study is published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology—Renal Physiology. Zinc deficiency is common in people with chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease. People with low zinc levels are also at a higher risk for hypertension. The way in which the kidneys either excrete sodium into the urine or reabsorb it into the body—specifically through a pathway called the sodium chloride cotransporter (NCC)—also plays a role in blood pressure control. Less sodium in...

A spike in hospitalizations for a dangerous low-salt condition is the latest in a growing list of health threats linked to climate change. An average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit could lead to a 14% increase in hospitalizations for critically low sodium levels in the blood, a condition called hyponatremia, according to a Swedish study. Hyponatremia cases increase in the summer months, but the impact of warming temperatures due to climate change was unclear. To learn more, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, analyzed nine years of data on Swedish adults and identified more than 11,000...

being an old yankee, this is a tip for those who are going to experience this storm and do not live in areas where they always get snow

Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view.Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in a paper published Nov. 29 in Nature Communications.Enabled by a joint design of the camera’s hardware and computational processing, the...

House Democrats just passed President Biden's multi-trillion-dollar "Build Back Better" spending agenda. They're pitching it as a historic investment in the middle and working class. So why is its second-largest provision a tax cut for the rich? That's right: The latest version of the Build Back Better plan includes $125 billion for healthcare subsidies and $130 billion to expand the child tax credit - yet it allocates $280 billion to fund tax relief for wealthy residents of blue states. The only item bigger than this tax relief for the rich is the funding for pre-k and childcare, which comes in...

While Nancy Pelosi hopes to pass the so-called “Build Back Better” bill tonight in the House, some bad news came down the line from the CBO.Previous commitments were made by some “moderate” Democrats to vote for the bill only if the budget score came back deficit-neutral. But the preliminary numbers are out, and it looks like the CBO has completely debunked the White House’s “it costs zero dollars” talking point.At first, Democrats were cheering on social media after seeing the following post from the CBO.CBO estimates that the funding for tax enforcement activities provided by H.R. 5376, the Build Back...

CLAIM: Raising the cap on the amount of state and local taxes, known as the SALT cap, that can be deducted from income for federal tax purposes would benefit lower-income Americans. “Those with lower incomes would be able to fully write-off state and local taxes,” Whitehouse press secretary Jen Psaki said in a press conference Thursday. VERDICT: False. No low-income taxpayers will benefit from raising the cap on state and local tax deductions.

Several thousand years ago, an Iron Age salt miner took a dump in what is now the Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut area of Austria. In all likelihood, the pooper never gave their little deposit a second thought, and would be rather surprised to learn that it has now become a scientific artifact, enabling researchers to discover that Europeans ate blue cheese and drank beer 2,700 years ago. Reporting the ancient excrement in the journal Current Biology, the study authors reveal that the paleofeces has remained preserved in the region’s prehistoric salt mines over the past few millennia. Using a range of analytical techniques,...

Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-NY) said Tuesday he would not support the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill if Democrats would not increase the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which primarily benefits wealthy Democrat states.

In January 1999, the NHLBI of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened the NHLBI Workshop on Sodium and Blood Pressure... By definition, public health policy is intended to promote the health of the public. If such policy is to accomplish this goal, the policy must meet criteria established to promote public health. A public health policy recommendation can be justified only if the answers to the following questions are all “yes”: Will its implementation benefit most of the population? Will the benefit be significant across the general population? Is it the most effective means of achieving the stated goal?...

Replacing table salt with a reduced-sodium, added-potassium 'salt substitute' significantly reduces rates of stroke, heart attack and death, according to the results of one of the largest dietary intervention studies ever conducted. Presented at a 'hotline session' at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Paris on August 29, and simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the results also showed that there were no harmful effects from the salt substitute. High levels of sodium intake and low levels of potassium intake are widespread, and both are linked to high blood pressure and greater risks of stroke, heart...

Britons should eat one-third less meat, and salt and sugar must be taxed, according to a review commissioned by the government, which also recommends subsidies from the taxpayer to promote the development of “alternative proteins”, which could include lab-grown meat. The National Food Strategy also recommended that fruits and vegetables be prescribed like a medication by the National Health Service (NHS) for low-income households with perceived poor diets.

The highest earners paid a greater share of income taxes after the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts than they paid after the Democrats’ 2013 tax increase.In a speech last week introducing his proposed $6 trillion 2022 budget, President Biden claimed that the benefits of the Republican Party’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “went to the wealthiest 1% of America.” It’s not the first time he’s made this claim. In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, Biden described the TCJA as a “huge windfall” for “those at the very top.” To right that wrong, he proposes getting rid of...

States that consistently grew faster than the national average over the past ten years are in line to gain representation in Congress. Democrats will work to undermine people's vote with their feet.The U.S. Census Bureau released its once-in-a-decade national census on April 26. Most of the discussion about the census has focused on states losing or gaining seats in the U.S. House, a process known as reapportionment.For the 2022 midterms, seven states will be down one member of the House: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon each gained one...

The first documented record of salt as an ancient Maya commodity at a marketplace is depicted in a mural painted more than 2,500 years ago at Calakmul, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. In the mural that portrays daily life, a salt vendor shows what appears to be a salt cake wrapped in leaves to another person, who holds a large spoon over a basket, presumably of loose, granular salt. This is the earliest known record of salt being sold at a marketplace in the Maya region. Salt is a basic biological necessity and is...

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost it's flavor, with what will it be salted? It is then good For nothing, but to be cast out and trampled under people's feet.Matthew 5:13 NHEB Back in the day when I was on staff for two summers at Philmont National Boy Scout Ranch in New Mexico, I noticed one of the local dairy farmers in the town of Cimmaron where Philmont was located had salt blocks in his pasture for his cows. Being a curious lad, I asked him why he has these huge blocks...

I'm looking for someone that knows chemistry to let me know if there are any adverse reactions when salt and silicone are in contact for extended periods of time. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

It is this reporter's opinion that often behind a great man is the driving force of a great woman. Never was this truer than in the case of Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, the American-raised wife of the newly elected leader of the Ukraine. This tough-minded, savvy businesswoman hails from Chicago; the daughter of an electrician and a seamstress, Kateryna grew up steeped in the traditions of her ancestral homeland. She graduated from Georgetown University and became known for her commitment to freewheeling capitalism. But Ukrainian democracy was the zeal of her life. During WWII, Kateryna's parents were forced to emigrate to...

Down, down, down. In three minutes, the skip drops nearly 1,700 feet below Cleveland. Then the giant metal door swings open, and you’re deposited in an other-world, with walls, ceiling and floor made of salt. Dirty brown salt at the Cargill mine’s entrance, where the rock has absorbed diesel fumes and dust for more than 60 years. Pristine white, with glimmering flecks, at the mine’s far reaches, 3 miles north, under Lake Erie. “I look out at the water, and it’s like, man, we’re under that!” said Cargill employee Cachet Hilton, 45. Every day, the 5-mile wide mine gets a...

Two employees are still unaccounted for at the Cargill Salt Mine at Avery Island after a roof collapse in the mine early Monday morning. The facility has been shut down while rescue operations and an investigation into the incident are underway. According to a statement from the company, local rescue workers and members of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration are on site. There were 18 employees on shift at the time of the collapse. The other 16 employees have been evacuated without any reported injuries.