Free Republic

SEATTLE — A state legislator started a firestorm by claiming bicyclists add to greenhouse gas emissions by breathing heavily as they ride. Bike shop owner Dale Carlson said he was so concerned about a proposal to tax bicycle sales that he wrote to state legislators. The email he received back from the transportation committee’s ranking Republican, Ed Orcutt of Kalama, made an unusual claim. “He talked about the effect on global warming we have from breathing hard,” said Carlson. Orcutt refuted the idea that cycling is environmentally friendly by explaining that cyclists have “an increased heart rate and respiration.” Orcutt...

Surgeons at Tucson's University Medical Center removed Rep. Gabrielle Giffords from a ventilator Saturday and inserted a tracheotomy tube into her neck to assist her breathing, according to the center. Removing her from the ventilator, which means she is now breathing on her own, allows the medical team to assess her ability to speak and is another step toward stabilizing her condition so that she can leave the intensive care unit and be moved to a regular hospital room. The tracheotomy tube in her throat provides a passageway for free movement of air and, if she begins to have trouble...

NASA readied the launch early Tuesday of a satellite that will produce the first complete map of the Earth's human and natural sources of carbon dioxide, CO2, the gas most closely linked to climate change. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory, or OCO, was scheduled to be launched at 0951 GMT (1:51 am) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on board the Taurus XL rocket built by Orbital Science Corp., NASA said in a statement posted Monday on its website. It would be the first time NASA has used a Taurus rocket. NASA said the observatory would map the geographic distribution...

OMAHA, Neb. -- An Omaha, Neb., man saved his own life by performing a tracheotomy on himself with a steak knife.One night last week, Steve Wilder woke up and couldn't breathe -- his air passage had swollen shut. "It just blocked all the way and I just got up and I panicked," Wilder said. He didn't think he had time to call and wait for help, so he made an unimaginable choice. "I got a knife and located it and pushed in and blood went gush," Wilder said. Blood was gushing out, but air was rushing in. Wilder was successful...

Breathing Easier with Vitamin D Janet Raloff Most people associate vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, with strong bones. But studies in the past few years have linked this essential nutrient to a bonanza of additional benefits—from fighting cancer and diabetes to strengthening muscles. Physicians in New Zealand have now linked the vitamin to yet one more apparent advantage: improved lung function. Peter N. Black is a University of Auckland internist with a research interest in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)—a category including diseases most people know as emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Classic signs of COPD are holes in lung tissue...

Breathing Underwater Without Oxygen Tanks IsraCast is a Jerusalem-based multimedia network and one of its reporters just wrote an article about a dream come true, "Like a Fish: Revolutionary Underwater Breathing System." An Israeli inventor, Alan-Izhar Bodner, "has developed a breathing apparatus that will allow breathing underwater without the assistance of oxygen tanks." This invention is based on how fish are breathing, picking the air which is dissolved in the water. Right now, a prototype has been built which uses rechargeable batteries and which will allow for one hour of diving time. But don't run to your diving store...

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, ailing with thyroid cancer, went to a hospital over the weekend with breathing problems but returned to the bench Monday. Rehnquist, 80, was taken by ambulance Sunday to Arlington Hospital in suburban Virginia after developing a problem with the tracheotomy tube that helps him breathe. He was treated as an outpatient, said Ed Turner, the court's deputy spokesman. Officials provided no other details. Rehnquist disclosed in October that he has thyroid cancer and underwent a tracheotomy. The procedure involves inserting a tube to aid breathing. He returned to the bench last week after a five-month absence,...

Here’s everything you wanted to know about sleep disorders but were too tired to askBy Cheryl Sherry Post-Crescent staff writerWayne Winistorfer never had a problem falling asleep. Staying awake was another story. The 47-year-old Oshkosh man had a long history of snoring, headaches upon awakening and extreme sleepiness despite what he thought was a decent night’s rest. It runs in his family, he said. “The women that married into my family always joked about the family that could fall asleep at the table. It’s just the way several of us are. It’s the family pattern,” Winistorfer said. He is far...