Shh, Our Town Is Addicted
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

The numbers

Drug overdose deaths in the United States have risen steadily since 1970. Painkillers actually kill more Americans than heroin and cocaine combined, according to the Centers for Disease Control, but heroin is still one of the No. 1 killers of illegal drug users. Only one in 10 heroin overdoses ends in death.

Overdose deaths from heroin have increased recently,and heroin use is also on the rise. In 2011, 4.2 million Americans over the age of 11 had tried heroin at least once, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

An estimaged 23% of them will become addicts. And it's addicts who die more frequently than new users, studies show.

How heroin works

Heroin is most often mixed with water and injected. Injecting it minimizes the lag time between when the drug is taken and effects are felt -- with injection, the effects are almost immediate.

It can also be smoked, snorted or eaten, but smoking or eating destroys some of the drug and mutes its effects.

When someone takes heroin there is an immediate rush. Then the body feels an extreme form of relaxation and a decreased sense of pain.

What's happening inside the body is the heroin is turning into morphine. Morphine has a chemical structure similiar to endorphins -- the chemicals your brain makes when you feel stressed out or are in pain. Endorphins inhibit your neurons from firing, so they halt pain and create a good feeling.

Morphine, acting like your endorphins, binds to molecules in your brain called opioid receptors. When those receptors are blocked, that creates a high.

Why you die

Most people die from heroin overdoses when their bodies forget to breathe.

Heroin makes someone calm and a little bit sleepy, but if you take too much then you can fall asleep, and when you are asleep your respiratory drive shuts down.

Usually when you are sleeping, your body naturally remembers to breathe. In the case of a heroin overdose, you fall asleep and essentially your body forgets."

A heroin overdose can also cause your blood pressure to dip significantly and cause your heart to fail.

Studies show intravenous heroin users are 300 times more likely to die from infectious endocarditis, an infection of the surface of the heart.

Heroin use can also cause an arrhythmia -- a problem with the rate or rhythm of the heartbeat. During an arrhythmia, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body, and lack of blood flow affects your brain, heart and other organs.

Heroin use can also cause pulmonary edema. That's when the heart can't pump blood to the body well. The blood can back up into your veins, taking that blood through your lungs and to the left side of the heart.

As pressure in the blood vessels increases and fluid goes into the alveoli, the air spaces in the lungs, this reduces the normal flow of oxygen through your lungs, making it hard to breathe. This too can give you a heart attack or lead to kidney failure.

Heroin can also come with other toxic contaminants that can harm a user -- although deaths from such instances, while not unheard of, are thought to be rare.

Studies suggest instantaneous death is unusual. One study showed such deaths, where a needle and syringe are still in place, account for only 14% of heroin-related deaths.

Heroin deaths increase when...

There are some common social characteristics in heroin deaths. Most fatalities involve men, particularly those who have struggled with other drugs or alcohol and other drugs or alcohol are often present.

While many are single, most users die in their homes and/or in the company of another person.

An addict does have a much higher chance of dying if he or she leaves treatment. The risk of death is higher for newly clean heroin addicts. A number of fatalities appear to happen after periods of reduced use. 

In fact, long-term users who die from overdoses are likely to have heroin levels no higher than those who survive.

That may be in part because those who are newly clean don't know how much of the drug to give themselves any more. They won't need the same amount to get high as when they were using more regularly.

There are also some studies that show tolerance to the respiratory depressive effects of opiates increases at a slower rate than tolerance to the euphoric and analgesic effects. As your tolerance to the drug develops, you typically need more of it to produce the high you are used to getting. This may be why long-term users are potentially at greater risk of overdose than novices.

Statistics suggest that newer heroin users aren't the ones most likely to die. One study showed only 17% of the deaths studied were in new heroin users.

However, newer users can overdose because they don't know how much drug to take, compared to experienced users. I think it is misleading to say you would not die if you only use it once or twice. To not educate your community is just wrong. For a police department and town leadership to think that you will start a buying binge on Heroin if you make the community aware, is in a word, RECKLESS.

 

More Photos from Boxing Weekend
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

PHOTOS FROM TODAY's 5K and 20K run at the Boxing Hall of Fame
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

International Boxing Hall Of Fame Induction Weekend
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

 

By Tammy Duffy

 

 

 

The International Boxing Hall of Fame, in Canastota, NY honored their new class of inductees this weekend.  The living inductees include, heavyweight champion Riddick "Big Daddy" Bowe, featherweight champion "Prince"  Naseem Hamed and lightweight champion Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini in the Modern category, light flyweight champion Yoko Gushiken in the old-timer category, booking agent/manager Rafael Mendoza and referee Steve Smoger in the Non-participant category, and editor journalist Nigel Collins and broadcaster Jim Lampley in the Observer category.

 

Upon receiving the news that they would be inducted, Ray Mancini said," Wow, I'm humbled and I'm honored.  To be in the International Boxing Hall of Fame with so many of my friends and heroes is overwhelming."  Jim Lampley said,"  I am surprised and delighted to learn of my election to the IBHOF."

 

The Hall of Fame also released names of posthumous honorees: Massao Ohba and Ken Overlin in the Old-timer category, and publicist John F. X. Condon in the Non Participant category.  Inductees were voted in by members of the Boxing Writers Association and a panel of international boxing historians.

 

The events of the 4 day weekend included: a cocktail reception, banquet, golf tournament, all-boxing collectors show, 5K race, ringside lecture, parade and the official boxing greats of yesterday and today on site for boxing enthusiasts.

 

The Hall of Fame Museum offers unique and exciting exhibits of memorabilia including fist castings, robes, boxing shoes, championship belts, statues, the Hall of Fame wall and audio/visual stations highlighting classic boxing matches.  The world famous Madison Square Garden boxing ring, where Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazer fought in the "fight of the century" on March 5, 1971, is on permanent display in the museum.

 

Michael Spinx was swarmed by fans outside of the Days Inn. The men in the crowd were having Michael sign at times 10 to 15 photographs at a time. In a swarm of 75 men this little blonde female reporter (who was way in the back of the pack) shouted out elegantly," I am the only woman here so I should be allowed to the front of the pack." Michael looked up, his security guard looked up, the men in the crowd turned around. Then the most interesting thing happened. The crowd parted as if Moses had just parted the sea once again. Michael Spinx and some of the men in the crowd said," Bring the lady to the front."  So to the front she went beaming.  I will remember this day forever and the glove Michael Spinx signed for me. For it was I who bellowed from the back of the pack of 75 men to get her gloved signed by the champion, Michael Spinx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FREE INTERNET FROM SPACE IS HERE
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

 

 

There are inflection points that change the course of humanity.  Access to the internet is an example of one such event.  A new device, called the LANTERN, manufactured by a NY- based company, Outernet, has the potential to change the world.  Their device has the ability to continuously receive radio waves broadcasted by outernets in space and turn them into digital files.  When you want to get onto the internet, one would just turn on your device and enable your wifi enabled device. It is that easy.  It works like an offline version of the internet that updates constantly. 

 

Outernet takes the best of the web and broadcasts it from space for every human on Earth. The content that they broadcast is determined by anyone who chooses to vote on the most important things to share with humanity. Outernet repurposes broadcast satellite TV equipment and we offer instructions on how to build a DIY-receiver. Once a receiver is configured, Outernet’s content can be accessed by any WiFi-enabled device.

 

 

 

 

This new device, the Lantern, will allow us to response faster and more efficiently during the next natural or man made disaster. When cell towers go down and cell towers are compromised, you will not longer be compromised. You will be able to get your news anywhere in the world, even the countries with strong censorship rules. You will never have a huge cell phone bill again during your oversea travels, use your Lantern.

 

The world will be able to create their own digital library. Parents can control what their kids see. The Outernet will have courses available to build literacy in parts of the world where literacy is compromised. This makes education and learning truly universal.

 

Outernet is working with IREX in Namibia and the World Bank in Sudan to turn on Lanterns in those countries. This is just the beginning. Lantern is broadcasting from space, so if you have a government that says you can’t watch this or see that, Lantern lights the path to override this censorship.  Everything a user consumes is anonymous. 

 

Everyone on Earth can use the Lantern. You will be able to use the Lantern to download news, weather, books, videos and audio for FREE. You will have access to information, freedom from censorship and consume Internet content anonymously. You will even be able to charge your phone with Lantern. 

 

 

There are projects with similar goals, like Project Loon from Google and Internet.org from Facebook.   These are very different from Outernet’s Lantern.  Both of these alternatives will only provide two-way Internet to everyone. That is a commendable goal, but it will also be a fee-based service. Facebook’s (internet.org) is a partnership between social networking service company FACEBOOK and six mobile phone companies: Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera Software, and Qualcomm) that aims to bring affordable Internet access to everybody by increasing affordability, increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access. 

 

Google’s Project Loon is a research and development project.  Its mission is to provide Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 32 km to create an aerial wireless network with up to3G-like speeds. The balloons are maneuvered by adjusting their altitude to float to a wind layer after identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Users of the service connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider, then onto the global Internet. This balloon project I suspect will deflate quickly, although a cool concept.

 

Outernet's signal is free to receive. There are no balloons or slick corporate maneuvers involved. There are also sovereign air space issues with Internet devices, like balloons and drones, inside the atmosphere. Breaking censorship will be difficult in places where a free Internet is unwanted this these approaches. You also encounter enormous spectrum regulation when the user device goes from being a receiver to a transmitter (it talks back). So you can see they are not competing services, as we are solving a problem for a different segment of the market. 

 

Outernet is directly hooking into the satellite operator’s infrastructure. Their uplink bandwidth is really not measured. Their download speeds, however, range from 100 kbps to 25 Mbps. Technically, they are able to burst to download speeds of 80 Mbps, but they prefer to make content available to small-sized antenna, so we will likely limit download speeds to 25 Mbps. A 25 Mbps downlink can deliver 10 GB of data over the course of an hour.

 

Is this a new era, no censorship? Outernet works so that if one frequency is jammed, they simply move to an alternative--and can do this across 5 difference channels (or more). Since Outernet is a broadcast solution, the monitoring stations are actually irrelevant, since the reception of broadcast content ensures the anonymity of consumption. Since they use existing spectrum licenses, their anti-censorship plan is all perfectly legal and abides by all restrictions of local jurisdictions. But since they are broadcasting data in a multi-channel, multi-speed, and super duplicated manner, it just makes it hard to selectively censor specific works that we distribute. Of course, a government is always able to continuously jam all of our frequencies (this is a little more difficult for certain bands), but which government wants to be the one that is publicly known for disrupting humanity's public library?

 

Outernet currently resides on two satellites, Galaxy 19 and the Hotbird in space.  This covers NE, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  Outernet plans on broadcasting from 5 additional satellites in the near future.  They will be able to broadcast to the entire world, for free once this implementation takes effect.

 Outernet takes the best of the web and broadcasts it from space for every human on Earth. The content they broadcast is determined by anyone who chooses to vote on the most important things to share with humanity. Outernet repurposes broadcast satellite tv equipment and they offer instructions on how to build a DIY-receiver. Once a receiver is configured, Outernet’s content can be accessed by any WiFi-enabled device.

Oh, and Outernet is free to use, always.

 

$2 Heroin Is Targeting Your Middle School Kids
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

 

Deadly $2 Heroin Aimed at Young Teens

 

 

Yesterday brought another death in the City of Trenton from a Heroin overdose. A rapid deployment of Narcan could not save a young man's life.  The past six weeks has brought 6 additional deployments of Narcan in Hamilton, Mercer County. A Hamilton parent moved their child to North Carolina in efforts to save their life and remove them from the Big H.  This valiant move by this parent was in vain, their child died in North Carolina.  A youth also died in Bordentown at the tender age of 23 from a heroin overdose. These stories keep compounding. The leadership in the town of Hamilton has been radio silent on this issue. Why is that?  The leadership should be watching the trends and developing plans that are proactive for our residents and youth. However, they react in silence in Hamilton, where the highest deployment of Narcan has been recorded.

 

Parents and their children need to be educated on what is happening as it pertains to heroin. Here is your weekly education on this deadly epidemic. 

 

A cheap highly addictive drug known as "cheese heroin" has killed 21 teenagers in the Dallas area over two years, and authorities say they are hoping they can stop the fad before it spreads across the nation.

 

 

By Tammy Duffy

 

 

 

Alina Bliach is a Cuban born artist who resides in West Windsor, New Jersey.  She is a registered pharmacist. She grew up having a passion for photography. Her parents, being immigrants to the United States always wanted Alina to get study pharmacy, her mother is a pharmacist as well.

 

Since she was a child she always carried a camera with her. After raising her children here in the United States she went back to school and obtained an AFA in photography from MCCC. She is currently finishing up her MFA in photography at Savannah College of Art and Design.

 

A special photography exhibit featuring Mercer County Community College (MCCC) alumna Alina Bliach ('06) will to the Gallery at Mercer June 13 to June 24.  The exhibition is entitled “A Voyage of Many.”   In this exhibition, Bliach’s includes images and stories of 50 Cuban immigrants over the past half century in their new American homeland.  Her uncle who was an  artist inspired her to do this body of work.  Each photograph is accompanied by a printed excerpt from interviews Bliach conducted of the immigrant.  The photos and narratives tell stories of forced exile, escape, loss, hope, and triumph.

 

A public reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, June 13 from 6 to 8 p.m.  The MCCC Gallery is located on the second floor of the Communications Building on the college’s West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road.  Gallery hours for this show are Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

In 1968, Bliach came to the United States from Cuba.  She was 8 years old.  Her family was split up as they traveled to the United States. Her father and two older sisters came first to the United States via Spain. They wanted to leave as a family, but the Cuban government only allowed three members of a family to leave at a time.

When children turn 15 in Cuba they are sent to the manual labor camps to work in the fields. In these camps the young girls could be raped and abused. Her parents not wanting that to happen to the girls so they chose to leave Cuba. Bliach, her mother, and two younger sisters stayed behind.  They did not know if they would ever see each other again when her father and two older sisters left. Several months later the rest of the family left Cuba and came to the United States where the family finally then reunited.

When you schedule to leave Cuba, the government takes everything from you. They want to make it as hard for you as they can to not succeed in the United States. The military came to Bliach's home at 2am and told everyone to leave the house with literally just the clothing on their backs and a very small suitcase with essential items. They had to leave and they went to live with an Aunt for a few months until they could leave Cuba.  She remembers this day vividly.

 

For this exhibition, Bliach interviewed 50 immigrants. She started interviewing her family members and others that they found by word of mouth.  This will be an amazing exhibition that demonstrates what each immigrant experienced. The forced exile, escape, loss, hope, and triumph they all had to live through.

 

There were many ways that the Cuban immigrants entered the United States. One such way was via Operation Peter Pan. This was an exodus of children during the 1960s from Cuba when Cuban parents feared indoctrination and that the Cuban government would take away their parental authority. What is now known as Operation Pedro Pan was the largest recorded exodus of Unaccompanied minors in the Western Hemisphere. It was supposedly through the works of Operation Pedro Pan Group, Inc. that the name Operation Pedro Pan became known throughout the US and the world. Approximately, half of the minors were reunited with relatives or friends at the airport. More than half were cared for by the Catholic Welfare Bureau, directed by a 30-year-old Irish priest, Bryan O. Walsh. The children from the Cuban Refugee Children's Program were placed in temporary shelters in Miami and relocated throughout 30 States in the United States. Many of the parents never got to meet up with their children. They were either adopted or place into the CWB.

 

Another way of entry was via the Camarioca boatlifts in 1965. Soon after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in January, 1959, a steady stream of refugees began making the dangerous passage to Florida in a myriad of small boats and craft.  The first Coast Guard rescue of these refugees occurred on 22 July 1959 when a group of nine were picked up in a small boat off the Dry Tortugas near Key West.  By June 1, 1965, the Coast Guard had rescued or assisted 6,862 Cuban attempting to make the journey to freedom by sea.

On the night of 29 September 1965 at the Plaza De La Revolution in Havana Fidel Castro made the surprising announcement that beginning on 10 October 1965, the port of Camarioca would be opened so that any Cubans desiring to leave for "the Yankee paradise" could do so.  Any boats of Cuban exiles that wished to return to Cuba to evacuate relatives would be permitted into Camarioca.  The Cubans who wished to depart Cuba had to submit an application to the Ministry of the Interior.  They would also forfeit any land or property they had in order to leave.

 

Camarioca remained open until 15 November 1965.  A total of  2,979 Cubans took advantage of Castro's offer during the time the port remained open.  Those migrants who were still at the port, numbering in the thousands, were ultimately taken by officially chartered passenger vessels to Florida.  Soon thereafter, the U.S. and Cuban governments negotiated what became known as "Freedom Flights" using commercial aircraft to transport those Cubans who wished to immigrate to the U.S. safely.

 

The Camarioca boatlift was the first instance of a mass migration event the Coast Guard had experienced and it was not to be the last.  Since that time the interdiction of waves of migrants crossing the sea in overcrowded and sometimes unseaworthy craft has become an important, and recurring, mission for the service.

 

Bliach always assumed that when people came to the United States she thought everyone was able to come with their degrees and use these degrees to get work. As she interviewed people for this exhibition she learned that this was not the case. During the Camarioca departure the one interviewee stated that he experienced something quite compelling. As he crossed the field to get onto the boat, he saw that the entire field was riddled with professional diplomas. They were on the ground like garbage. The Cuban government wanted to make it difficult for the professionals who were leaving. They also make it impossible for them to obtain a copy of  their degrees from Cuba. They had to start over when they came to America. Her Mother was able to get her diploma out via a connection at the Spanish embassy. This allowed her to make an easier transition for her family as they entered the United States.

 

The Freedom Flights also transported Cubans to Miami twice daily, five times per week from 1965 to 1973. Its budget was about $12 million and it brought an estimated 300,000 refugees, making it the "largest airborne refugee operation in American history". The Freedom Flights were an important and unusual chapter of cooperation in the history of Cuban-American foreign relations, which is otherwise characterized by Cuban distrust of the United States. The program changed Miami race dynamics and secured the establishment of a Cuban-American enclave still seen today in Little Havana. This enclave, started by earlier waves of immigration but firmly entrenched by Freedom Flights Cubans, aided Cuban-American socio-economic development.

 

The Mariel boatlift was another mass emigration of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980.The event was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban  economy which led to internal tensions on the island and a bid by up to 10,000 Cubans to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy.  The Cuban government subsequently announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, and an exodus by boat started shortly afterward. The exodus was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The exodus started to have negative political implications for U.S. President Jimmy Carter when it was discovered that a number of the exiles had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments involved in October 1980. By that point, as many as 125,000 Cubans had made the journey to Florida.

 

Then there were the Balseros.  They were the people who emigrated illegally in self-constructed or precarious vessels from Cuba to neighboring states including the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and, most commonly, the United States. The Cuban Rafters, almost always disagree with communism and the Cuban government of the Castro Family.  This mass  Cuban emigration to the United States is seen as having had four waves. The first wave before the  Cuban Missile Crisis ended travel. The second wave was 1965-1973. The 1980 Mariel Boatlift was the third wave.

 

Some scholars regard the August 1994 Cuban Rafters Crisis as the fourth wave of Cuban immigration.  The 1994 Balseros Crisis was ended by the agreement of the wet feet, dry feet policy between  Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro.  There was also an Immigration Visa Lottery that allowed Cuban immigrants to enter the USA.

 

Bliach's portraits are rich in detail that connects their subjects to their Cuban heritage. "Forced to leave their homeland, their love for family, art, religion, and music is often apparent throughout their homes.  Photographs of loved ones, brightly colored art and religious relics are proudly displayed ...More than decorations, these objects reveal the deep relationship between these immigrants’ cultural background and the new lives they built for themselves in America," she said.

 

Bliach has won numerous awards and honors: as a finalist in Best of Photography 2013; First and Second Prize honors in the Pollux Awards; Merit Awards in the Professional Photographers of America International competitions; PPA Loan Collection honor; Hasselblad Photographer of the Month; and several International Photography Honorable Mentions. Her work has been exhibited at the Borges Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina; The Room in SoHo, NY; Arts Council of Princeton in Princeton; Grounds for Sculpture; Phillips Mill in New Hope, PA; Artworks in Trenton, NJ; and Art Along the Fence in Hoboken, NJ.

 

$34 tool mimics $18,000 Lab equipment
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

$34 Diagnostic Tool for STDs Plugs into Smartphone, Rivals $18,000 Lab Equipment

 

Photo: Tassaneewan Laksanasopin

Small Hearts Big Challenges
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST

Small Hearts. Big Challenges

by Mark F. on Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Be an Archaeologist at the Trent House Museum
Topic: COMMUNITY INTEREST