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Anyone who has experienced chronic lower back pain knows that there are many treatments to try, but it may be difficult to find one that works for your specific problem.

Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS) is technique that many doctors and physiotherapists have been using to treat pain, including lower back pain. It’s a painless procedure that uses electrical currents to try to interrupt the pain signals from reaching the brain.

Electrodes from the TENS machine are placed around or on the painful area and the machine is then turned on. Electrical currents are sent through the electrodes and into the body tissue. The currents don’t cause any pain, but some people do feel a bit uncomfortable.

Now, new guidelines, published at the end of December 2009 in the journal Neurology say that TENS is not suitable for treating chronic lower back pain – that is pain that has lasted three months or longer. The researchers caution that this is not pertinent to acute back pain, new pain.

Many studies have looked at the effectiveness of TENS and lower back pain, and according to this article, the only pain that can definitively be helped by TENS is diabetic neuropathy, pain in the nerve endings that develops as a result of progressing diabetes.

“The strongest evidence showed that there is no benefit for people using TENS for chronic low-back pain,” said guideline author Richard M. Dubinsky, MD, MPH, of Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. “Doctors should use clinical judgment regarding TENS use for chronic low-back pain. People who are currently using TENS for their low-back pain should discuss these findings with their doctors.”

Have you used TENS for pain management?

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Image: iStock.com

Post from: Blisstree

TENS Not Recommended for Chronic Back Pain

While you get a gander behind the scenes of this famous movie studio, you may possibly also enjoy a sighting of the showman — even if that sighting is just a pretty picture of the Adam Lambert performance someone posted at Paramount Studios as a memory of how the New Year started with a big bang on this iconic film lot.

Meanwhile, to get an idea of Adam Lambert in action, take a look at the photos of this showman in performance during this year’s American Music Awards, pictured below.

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Article Tags: CO2 Level, Headline Story

In contradiction to perceived wisdom, the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide hasn’t increased during the last five decades, or, indeed, for the last 150 years, claims new research

The findings suggest that estimates of mankind’s impact on the environment are more than 80 percent higher than they should be.

To assess whether atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol has re-analyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850, reports Science Daily.

Says Knorr: “Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started loosing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This is an important claim, because so far only about 40 percent of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change.

Source: tgdaily.com

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Eco Factor: MicroCSP solar thermal plant to generate 2MW of renewable electricity.

Sopogy Inc has inaugurated the world’s first MicroCSP solar thermal plant at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii. The 2MW thermal energy project spans 3.8 acres in the hot Kona desert and makes use of 1000 Sopogy MicroCSP solar panels.

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by David Roberts

In response (I think) to my post on efficiency and economists, Matt Yglesias cautions against abandoning the presumption of rationality just because people don’t consistently maximize profit. It may be rational in some circumstances to sacrifice profit for gains in time and attention. There’s more to personal welfare than money.

Anyone who advocates efficiency runs across this point. Maybe people walk by some/all of these alleged $5 bills on the sidewalk because they have better things to do than watch the sidewalk all the time and bend over every few blocks. I agree, but I think the point ultimately works the other way than Matt intends it—it weakens, not strengthens, the presumption of rationality.

If welfare is some admixture of wealth, time, and attention, it’s many more things as well: physical health, familial and social ties,  health/car/life insurance, mobility, freedom of speech and association, etc. These are complex and murky issues about which people make dozens of small decisions a day. Some small fraction of those decisions is part of a conscious weighing of options and planning; most are reflexive. Why would we assume individuals have   reliable   insight about what best serves their own welfare? Self-destructive behavior is as human as desire, impulse, and limited information. We see through a glass, darkly.

Wealth—GDP at the national level, net assets at the individual level—is often used as a proxy for welfare, but this is problematic for any number of reasons. (Over a certain base level, wealth doesn’t track satisfaction.) Money is often used as a proxy for value:  what people will pay (or forego profit) for is what they value, their “revealed preferences.” But this way of looking at things verges on tautology. If rationality is satisfying preferences and preferences are reflected in what people do, then what is rational is what people do. That makes economics easier but it doesn’t really tell us what we want to know.

What we’d like to know is whether there can be a science of human welfare. Can we develop a reliable enough understanding of the conditions that lead to human flourishing to redirect public policy toward that broader goal rather than the narrow goal of maximizing GDP? Can policy improve upon spontaneous, distributed decisionmaking? Obviously efforts in the 20th century to plan entire economies proved disastrous, but it’s a long way from there to the laissez faire attitude of neoliberal economics. A better understanding of human behavior couid lead to policy that’s less intrusive but more efficacious (a la Nudge).

As I see it, the strong case against Gayer-style economics involves three claims:

Human welfare can be understood and measured, if not fully then enough to inform policy.
Systemic market and behavioral failures impede welfare in ways that can be understood and predicted.
These failures can be partially meliorated by public policy,  increasing individual and social welfare relative to the BAU case.

No. 3’s the sticky wicket. It’s one thing to say people don’t do what’s best for them, it’s another entirely to say that public policy— “government bureaucrats,” in teabag parlance—can improve on their decisionmaking. But we can’t get to a serious discussion of No. 3 until we get past 1 and 2, which are contentious in their own right. If people reliably understand and pursue what serves their own welfare, there ought to be a presumptive bias against active, progressive policymaking. If people are, in Dan Ariely’s words, “predictably irrational,” then public policy based on sound understanding of human behavior can increase welfare.

(By the way: Happy New Year! to all you Grist readers.)

Related Links:

Economics as pathology, part two

Economics as pathology

Is the ‘climate debt’ discussion helpful?

Article Tags: ClimateGate, Joanna Nova

Here’s a Spectacular Poster of ClimateGate Covering 3 Decades

You have to see this to believe it. Look up close and admire the detail while you despair at how long science has been going off the rails. To better appreciate the past and what was exposed by the CRU emails, the Timeline chart consolidates and chronologically organizes the information uncovered and published about the CRU emails by many researchers along with some related contextual events. That the chart exists at all is yet another example of how skilled experts are flocking in to the skeptics’ position and dedicating hours of time pro bono because they are passionately motivated to fight against those who try to deceive us.

Download The PDF (788k)

Source: joannenova.com.au

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Eco Factor: Low-emission car powered by a hybrid engine.

Details of Honda’s upcoming green ride, the new CR-Z, have scant but some Japanese websites have managed to get their hands on a sales brochure, revealing the car’s design and some technical specification as well. The production car which is expected to be launched at next month’s Detroit motor show will be powered by a hybrid engine for a low-emission drive.

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Article Tags: Web Article

The continuing battle between climate realists and alarmists in 2009 will be most remembered for the leaked UEA CRU ‘Climategate’ emails, which provided an insight into the climate science ‘gate-keeping’ perpetrated by around 20 to 30 dominant, influential IPCC activist scientists. The unmasking of the ‘consensus’ where uncertainty is presented as certainty undoubtedly helped increase public scepticism about the computer modelled scare of a future CO2 driven climate catastrophe, which can supposedly be averted via more taxation and restrictions enforced by a global carbon dictatorship.

Fortunately, the Copenhagen orgy of climate alarmism, vested financial interests, environmental extremism, rich celebrity hypocrites, and politicians out of touch with reality and voters, failed to produce a meaningful agreement or legally binding treaty. Common sense would suggest that this marks the end of climate policy lacking a sound scientific basis and political feasibility. However, the global warming industry gravy train has so many passengers that the climate summit circus can’t afford to be diverted by reality. Meanwhile, the alarmist mainstream media, such as the BBC, continued to bombard the public with predictions of climate doom, which intensified in the run up to the Copenhagen Summit.

Source: climateresearchnews.com

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Eco Factor: Mixed-use energy-saving development.

Wilkinson Eyre Architects have unveiled their proposal for the redevelopment of the 20 Blackfriars Road in the city of London. The sustainable mixed-use development will combine a 23-story building containing 18,000sqm of commercial and a 42-story tower with 286 unit residential building and a new public square.

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The new 2010 Volvo S60 is featured in a new YouTube video where we get a closer look at what is a very attractive design for the new sedan. The official S60 presentation will take place at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show in March, with production starting early this coming summer.

A statement from Volvo reads: “We will ensure that this is the first car video on YouTube in 2010. It will be released on Volvo Car’s channel on YouTube a few seconds after we have entered the new year,” says Senior Vice President, Public Affairs, Olle Axelson.

To see the video, go to Volvo’s YouTube channel at: www.youtube.com/user/VolvoCarsNews, or see after the jump. Here’s hoping that 2010 is a brighter year for Volvo, with this lovely sports sedan bringing some spark to the company.

Update: Video added after the jump.

Engadget now available for Pre and Pixi: the first webOS app of 2010 (and 1000th in the Catalog)! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 03:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve long said that wireless video streaming direct from a laptop is one of our dream gadgets, and while most of the gear we’ve seen is based on Wireless USB, it looks like Netgear’s trying something a little different: this PTV1000 Push 2 TV Adapter just hit the FCC database, and it looks to send video from your laptop to your TV over WiFi. It’s apparently built on an upcoming Intel standard called Wireless Display that requires a Core i3, i5, or i7 processor with integrated GMA graphics and Windows 7, but nothing’s been officially announced yet — and what little info we have isn’t great, as the docs warn users that Wireless Display is unsecured and won’t play all DVDs or Blu-rays. That’s not a huge problem, we suppose — all we want to do is beam a Hulu window to our TV simply and easily. We’re assuming we’ll find out a lot more at CES next week, stay tuned.

Netgear PTV1000 Push 2 TV WiFi video card hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 03:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sam Kennedy

“My resolution is to finally turn on my Wii again and see why the hell it’s been blinking at me for the past few months. I feel like I completely neglected the system in 2009 — of course, New Super Mario Bros aside, Nintendo hasn’t given me many reasons to even bother. Here’s hoping Zelda, Metroid, and Pikmin will do the trick this year.”

Matt Leone

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Happy New Year! Taking a time out from fireworks and festivities, Palm has cleared an arbitrary numerical milestone: one thousand apps are now available in the (U.S.) webOS App Catalog. Not a bad number at all, especially considering that webOS devices have only been available to the public for six months. And, of course, that’s not counting the numerous homebrew applications out there in the unofficial distribution channels…

So what was that thousandth app? No less than Engadget’s new webOS app, a well-crafted little piece of software that lets you browse through the popular gadget blog with a flick and a swipe in a very mobile-friendly format.

Congratulations Palm – here’s to thousands more apps in 2010!

Tiny, glitter-sized solar cells have been developed by the Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories. It might turn out to be the perfect alternative energy preference for the holiday season. This project is funded by the American government. The dimensions of the snowflake sized crystalline-silicon photovoltaic cells are merely 14-20 micrometers thick and […]
Posted in: Future Energy, PhotoVoltaics, Solar Power

Filed under: Advice, Health, Fitness, Fit Family Guy

The Pot-Smoking Hippie’s Guide to Your New Year’s Fitness Resolution

Continue reading Learning to Love Exercise: How to Adopt a Permanent Lifestyle Change

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We know it’s the holiday season and we should only talk about Santa, good deeds and other pleasant things, but we can’t help but report you a terrible thing that happened at Ford’s Truck Plant in Kentucky. Ronald S. Cassady, 54, dies while cutting down an I-beam with a torch during the past weekend. According to the Detroit Free Press, the beam fell on hid head and neck and, even if he was transported to the University Hospital, he was declared dead shortly after the accident.

Unf… (read more)

While the articles that drove the most clicks this year were a combo of lists and FAQs, we know our loyal readers came back on a daily basis to check out our solid reporting, our trend-spotting, our startup profiles and our scoops. We worked hard in 2009 to cover the entrepreneurs and innovators of green […]

I wanted to wish all of you loyal readers a very happy New Year. I hope you are all not too hung over to read this. Anyway, 2009 was a pretty good year for Bauer-Power. We have steadily increased our RSS Subscribers, and we steadily have about 50-60,000 visitors per month. Not bad for something I try to do in my spare time!

We hope to bring you even more techy goodness in 2010. In the mean-time, I thought I would show you a funny video my buddy sent me. It is a spoof on Andy Samberg’s “I’m on a Boat” video. It is called, I’m on a Mac! Check it out:

What did you think? Hilarious right? How many of you are switching to Mac for the new year? I’m not, but want to know if any of you are. Hit me up in the comments. Let me know why you are making the switch or not.