Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’

A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake.
It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey warned federal and state emergency officials that California's geological history shows such "superstorms" have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.
The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.

The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.
The scientists built a model that showed a storm could last for more than 40 days and dump 10 feet of water on the state. The storm would be goaded on by an "atmospheric river" that would move water "at the same rate as 50 Mississippis discharging water into the Gulf of Mexico," according to the AP. Winds could reach 125 miles per hour, and landslides could compound the damage, the report notes.
Such a superstorm is hypothetical but not improbable, climate researchers warn. "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes," Geological Survey scientist Lucy Jones said in a press release.
Federal and state emergency management officials convened a conference about emergency preparations for possible super storms last week.You can read the whole report here..

Eating Too Much Fat May Contribute To Breast Cancer

Eating Too Much Fat May Contribute To Breast Cancer

Diets High in Fat and Cholesterol Increases Breast Cancer Risk
Study finds the more cholesterol in the blood, the faster cancer tumors grow and spread
Sara Huffman - ConsumerAffairs.com

People who are at risk for developing breast cancer, especially those who are genetically predisposed, should take special care to cut fat and cholesterol out of their diets.

New research Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University shows elevated fat and cholesterol levels found in a typical American-style diet play an important role in the growth and spread of breast cancer,

The study, published in the January issue of The American Journal of Pathology, examines the role of fat and cholesterol in breast cancer development using the PyMT mouse model, which is believed to closely parallel the pathogenesis of human breast cancer.

The results show that mice fed a Western diet, and predisposed to develop mammary tumors, can develop larger tumors that are faster growing and metastasize more easily, compared to animals eating a control diet.

The research team, led by cancer biologist Philippe G. Frank, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, was interested in learning about the link between diet and breast cancer.

The incidence rate of breast cancer is five times higher in Western countries than in other developed countries.

Moreover, studies have shown an increase in breast cancer incidence in immigrant populations that relocate from a region with low incidence.

"These facts suggest strong environmental influence on breast cancer development," said Frank.
Dietary fat and cholesterol have been shown to be important risk factors in the development and progression of a number of tumor types, but diet-based studies in humans have reached contradictory conclusions.

This has led Frank to turn to animal models of human cancer to examine links between cholesterol, diet, and cancer.

Here is a link to the rest of the article:  Cholesterol does indeed seem to be an important factor in the regulation of tumor formation in several cancer types.

Why are human studies contradictory?  Reasons include a subject's inability to maintain a restricted diet over an extended period of time and study protocols that are too open ended, among others. 

Accelerated lifespans of mice allow researchers to closely monitor their responses from start to finish.  Human subjects take decades to evaluate--and our diets cannot be tightly controlled beyond the lab.

Guess common sense trumps science--at least for now.