If you take pride in your home, you could be one of the many people who spend up to ?200 per year on household cleaning products. If you were to take a look under your sink now, how many products would you find that have not been used in months?? Products such as drain cleaner are among the most wasted of household goods, with many bought for one use then stowed in the back of the cupboard.?
Before you buy a separate kitchen and bathroom cleaner, think, there are many products already around your home that can easily manage these jobs. By putting some of the natural cleaning products to work in your home, you can save money in a way that your nan would be proud of.
Lemons Lemon Juice is acidic and acts as a natural bleach. By cutting a lemon in half you can create a cleaning pad for kitchen and bathroom surfaces. The citric acid will break down many deposits while the natural bleaches remove stains. By mixing one part lemon juice with two parts olive oil you can make an ideal furniture polish. The only drawback? with lemon is that the bleaches may mark some surfaces.
Baking Soda Baking soda acts as a very strong, non-abrasive, cleaner that can replace a wide range of the cleaners in your cupboard. Leaving baking soda in an empty washing machine or dishwasher will clean them out, remove limescale and keep your drains flowing freely.? By adding lemon juice to baking soda you can make a thick paste that can be left on most surfaces. Baked-on food on pans or limescale on taps are an ideal job for this.
Vinegar White vinegar is very acidic and, mixed in equal parts with water, makes an all-purpose household cleaner. Correctly used, this solution can be used as a surface cleaner, oven cleaner, bathroom scrub, glass cleaner, mop detergent, weed killer, brass polish, rust remover and fabric softener. Don?t be put off by the smell as this will disappear when it the vinegar dries. Make sure to use plenty of water when cleaning tiles because, if not properly diluted, vinegar will dissolve grout and discolour marble.
Rice Rice acts as a very effective sponge that can reach into the most awkward places, coffee grinders and waste disposals can be scrubbed out by passing rice through them. It is also very good at water displacement, if you have dropped your phone in the bath, leaving it in a bowl of rice will help draw out any water.
The chemicals in most household cleaning products can be picked up by sewerage treatment works , so the majority can be safely washed down the sink.? They can, however, have a negative environmental impact if not disposed of properly. There is no danger of this happening with the above natural products. The examples given are only a small sample of the uses these products have so, by doing a bit of experimenting, there are many ways in which you can save money? and make your home that little bit greener.
Author Bio: Joe is a blogger for Force8 doors and windows who writes about property, home improvement, interior design and green living
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) ? Skylar Diggins and the Notre Dame women's team have a whole week to talk about playing Connecticut again.
After a near-flawless performance in the second half lifted the Fighting Irish to an 87-76 victory over Duke on Tuesday night, earning them their third straight trip to the Final Four, Diggins and her teammates wanted to drink it in.
"We're enjoying the moment right now," the senior said with teammates Natalie Achonwa and Kayla McBride seated beside her and nodding their approval. "We'll talk about that later."
Coach Muffet McGraw wasn't biting, either.
"Not tonight," she said with a smile when asked to look ahead to another game against the Huskies.
The Irish had plenty to celebrate at Old Dominion's Constant Center.
Diggins, the flashy left-hander named an All-American for the second year in a row earlier in the day, shook off early foul trouble to score 24 points and the Fighting Irish rallied and rolled past Duke.
They shot 62 percent after halftime and finished the night with 25 assists on 29 baskets.
"That is a pretty amazing number," McGraw said.
The Irish have lost in the past two national championship games but will arrive in New Orleans with a coach hoping to see her flashy point guard cut down the nets, and with Diggins wanting it just as badly for her coach.
"I want to win a championship for coach (Muffet) McGraw bad," said Diggins, one of just two seniors on the roster. "When you have a coach who believes in you so much, I'd do anything for her."
And she clearly doesn't have to do it alone.
Kayla McBride added 18 points, while Jewell Loyd and Natalie Achonwa had 17 each as the Fighting Irish (35-1) won their school-record 30th game in a row, earning a fourth meeting with the Huskies this season.
It's also the third straight time the teams will meet in the national semifinals. The Irish won both of those and have dominated the series lately, winning seven of the past eight meetings. Notre Dame swept UConn in all three meetings this season in thrilling fashion, winning in overtime and by margins of one and two points in the other two games.
The Irish had to rally past Duke to earn the right to get there again.
Trailing by six at the half and looking disjointed without Diggins on the court, Notre Dame got back to playing up-tempo, transitional basketball after the break and took control with a 15-2 run early in the second half.
Diggins started the run with her fourth 3-pointer of the game and followed quickly with a no-look feed to Achonwa for a layup that drew an impressed roar from the crowd. Diggins added a steal and a layup, and McBride finished the burst with another 3-pointer.
Duke trailed by as many as 16 before closing the gap slightly in the desperate final minutes, and saw its season end in a regional final for the fourth straight year.
"It bothers me a little bit that we had to fight so hard at the end. It was like, 'Where's that been?'" Duke coach Joanne P. McCallie said. "You've got to play 40 minutes at this level."
The Blue Devils also hurt their cause with 21 turnovers that led to 23 points for Notre Dame.
In the first half, the game developed better than Duke (33-3) could have hoped.
Diggins was whistled for two fouls in the first 4:10 and went to the bench, and after McBride hit a pair of jumpers, the Fighting Irish looked out of sorts. They extended their lead to 17-13 on a 3-pointer by Kaila Turner and two free throws by Ariel Braker before going more than seven minutes without scoring.
A free throw by Elizabeth Williams ignited a 13-0 run by Duke that took up over six of those minutes. Tricia Liston, who led the Blue Devils with 19 points, scored eight in the burst and Chloe Wells finished it with a 12-foot jumper, giving Duke a 26-17 lead with five minutes to play in the half.
"I think they were outworking us," Diggins said. "I've never seen that from my team. They were getting hustle scrap points. I couldn't wait to get in that locker room. We had to light a fire. We set the tone on defense and got some stops and played our game."
Getting their leader back with the foul trouble behind her helped greatly.
"Sky's the best point guard in the country and she changes the game in everything she does," Achonwa said. "Her being off the court for 20 seconds changes the game."
Diggins returned with about 8 minutes to go in the half and, while playing passively on defense to avoid a third foul, hit three 3-pointers in a span of 2:16, cutting a nine-point deficit to 32-31 with 1:07 left. A basket by Williams and Wells' 3 just before the half gave Duke a 37-31 advantage.
The weekend was a homecoming for Williams, a Virginia Beach native, but Duke's scoring leader missed several shots from in close. She finished 3 for 9 and scored eight points, roughly half her average.
"It's really hard. We felt like we deserved to be here but we didn't play a full game," Williams said.
Haley Peters added 15 points and 10 rebounds for Duke and Richa Jackson scored 12.
___
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The housing numbers are all heading in the right direction. Home prices up, foreclosures down and, perhaps the most important, consumer confidence in housing swelling. Even as sales of new and existing homes bounce up and down month to month, the desire to buy is growing. The percentage of Americans who say owning a home is an essential part of the American dream has hit a three-year high at 79 percent, and the percentage who say it is better to own than rent grew by four points to 69 percent, according to the CNBC All-America Economic Survey. Perhaps the biggest surprise in the survey is that despite a raging, record-high stock market, more Americans believe a home is a better long-term investment than stocks.
The gains can partially be attributed to a slowly recovering first-time homebuyer cohort. First-time buyers have been lagging the recovery until now, making up barely a third of home buyers in February, compared to the historical norm of 40 percent. First-time buyers accounted for 34.5 percent of home purchase transactions in February, according to a new survey from Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance. Even more encouraging is that traffic of these buyers is rising as well, hitting a four-year high on the same survey.
"First-time homebuyers are the wildcard in the upcoming spring-summer home buying season," said Thomas Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys. "We see strong first-time homebuyer traffic, but it's still not clear that the traffic will translate into increased purchases, because first-time homebuyers are dependent on low down-payment financing, such as FHA mortgages."
While first-timers are getting more interested, current homeowners are getting less interested, according to the Campbell survey. Meanwhile, investor interest in housing rose to a four-month high, accompanied by a rise in sales of distressed properties. Investors, who largely buy all in cash, have been the main competition for regular homebuyers, and as big hedge funds and private equity purchase lower-end, distressed homes in bulk, that pushes prices drastically higher. Witness a 23 percent jump in Phoenix home prices in January, according to the latest reading from S&P/Case-Shiller.
While the number of distressed homes is falling, the remnants of the housing crash are still weighing on the recovery. There are still 5.1 million properties where the owner is either delinquent on the mortgage or the home is already in the foreclosure process, according to a new report from Lender Processing Services. As banks ramp up the foreclosure process, following delays due to processing fraud over the past few years, more distressed properties will come to the market. That may ease some of the price gains, although investors, still reaping rental rewards, seem ready for all of it.
What remains to be seen is for how long those rents will stay strong? With more Americans looking to buy and souring on renting, rent rates could start to come down. In addition, new supply of rental apartment buildings will be hitting the market in force over the next two years, as developers have been increasing multi-family housing construction.
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BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) ? A rebel leader who proclaimed himself president of the Central African Republic after his fighters invaded the capital has appointed a new cabinet.
New minister of information Christophe Gazam Betty announced the makeup of the new government on national radio late Sunday. It includes both rebels and civilians.
The Seleka rebel movement began its advance on the capital in December before agreeing to peace talks with the government of President Francois Bozize. The deal signed in January allowed Bozize to finish his term in return for a number of concessions.
The deal was broken this month when rebel leader Michel Djotodia led fighters into Bangui, forcing Bozize to flee.
Djotodia named himself president despite an international outcry.
Contact: Toni Baker tbaker@gru.edu 706-721-4421 Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University
AUGUSTA, Ga. A new study will help determine if an antibiotic is a partial antidote for the poisonous effect blood has on the brain following a hemorrhagic stroke, researchers say.
They want to know if minocycline, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, can reduce high rates of disability from this comparatively rare stroke type characterized by spontaneous bleeds into the brain, said Dr. Jeffrey A. Switzer, stroke specialist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.
"We hope that, given early, minocycline can help reduce the damage of a type of stroke for which there is currently no proven therapy," Switzer said. He is principal investigator on an American Heart Association grant funding a trial enrolling 24 patients over two years, half of whom will get minocycline.
Dr. David Hess, Chair of the MCG Department of Neurology, and Dr. Susan C. Fagan, Assistant Dean of the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy, have shown minocycline is safe and potentially effective at combating some collateral damage of the more common clot-based strokes.
In a follow-up analysis, minocycline also appeared to reduce the inflammation that follows the initial stroke as well as levels of matrix metalloproteinases, or MMPs, a family of enzymes that destroys the basement membrane of blood vessels, making rupture more likely.
Elevated levels of MMPs and inflammatory cells have been found in the blood of both kinds of stroke patients and high levels correlate with poor outcomes. Minocycline also is known as a powerful collector of iron, a vital blood component that helps transport oxygen inside blood vessels but poisons brain tissue upon direct contact.
Switzer hopes minocycline will reduce levels of all three in hemorrhagic stroke, reducing bleeding and the size and impact of the stroke. Nearly 40 percent of hemorrhagic strokes increase in size during the first 24 hours. Most of the growth occurs within the first few hours, so timely intervention could reduce brain tissue loss, he said.
In fact, if minocycline proves safe in hemorrhagic strokes, the researchers believe the best place to give it would be in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Minocycline may be able to expand the window during which the clot buster tPA can be given to ischemic stroke patients. Switzer and his colleagues have first-hand experience that the earlier the better with stroke intervention. "If we could give something in the field before we can confirm the type of stroke because we know it's safe for both, that would be a novel strategy to help patients," he said.
For the study, they will use computerized tomography, or CT, to confirm a hemorrhagic stroke then get baseline assessments of blood levels of agents of interest, such as MMPs, as well as the patient's cognitive and physical abilities before giving the first dose of minocycline intravenously. Subsequent doses will be given orally, if the patient can swallow, over the next four days. Measures of outcomes and biomarkers will be reassessed at 24 hours, seven days or at time of hospital discharge and again at 90 days post-stroke.
They hope that decreasing blood levels of MMPs will serve as an indicator of how well the therapy works.
Risk factors for hemorrhagic stroke include uncontrolled hypertension; use of older blood thinners commonly prescribed for conditions such as heart disease and clots in the legs; and amyloid angiopathy, a deposit of Alzheimer's-like plaque that weakens the walls of blood vessels on the brain surface, typically in older individuals.
In addition to the substances in the blood that do harm, the physical mass created by bleeding causes damage. "It's tearing and pushing on structures in the brain and can cause a shifting of tissue that can be fatal in the closed chamber of the skull," Switzer said. "However, for those with smaller bleeds, better treatments, such as perhaps minocycline, are needed to combat the toxic effects of blood on brain tissue."
###
For more information, contact Clinical Research Assistant Brian Close at 706-721-2675.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Toni Baker tbaker@gru.edu 706-721-4421 Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University
AUGUSTA, Ga. A new study will help determine if an antibiotic is a partial antidote for the poisonous effect blood has on the brain following a hemorrhagic stroke, researchers say.
They want to know if minocycline, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, can reduce high rates of disability from this comparatively rare stroke type characterized by spontaneous bleeds into the brain, said Dr. Jeffrey A. Switzer, stroke specialist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University.
"We hope that, given early, minocycline can help reduce the damage of a type of stroke for which there is currently no proven therapy," Switzer said. He is principal investigator on an American Heart Association grant funding a trial enrolling 24 patients over two years, half of whom will get minocycline.
Dr. David Hess, Chair of the MCG Department of Neurology, and Dr. Susan C. Fagan, Assistant Dean of the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy, have shown minocycline is safe and potentially effective at combating some collateral damage of the more common clot-based strokes.
In a follow-up analysis, minocycline also appeared to reduce the inflammation that follows the initial stroke as well as levels of matrix metalloproteinases, or MMPs, a family of enzymes that destroys the basement membrane of blood vessels, making rupture more likely.
Elevated levels of MMPs and inflammatory cells have been found in the blood of both kinds of stroke patients and high levels correlate with poor outcomes. Minocycline also is known as a powerful collector of iron, a vital blood component that helps transport oxygen inside blood vessels but poisons brain tissue upon direct contact.
Switzer hopes minocycline will reduce levels of all three in hemorrhagic stroke, reducing bleeding and the size and impact of the stroke. Nearly 40 percent of hemorrhagic strokes increase in size during the first 24 hours. Most of the growth occurs within the first few hours, so timely intervention could reduce brain tissue loss, he said.
In fact, if minocycline proves safe in hemorrhagic strokes, the researchers believe the best place to give it would be in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Minocycline may be able to expand the window during which the clot buster tPA can be given to ischemic stroke patients. Switzer and his colleagues have first-hand experience that the earlier the better with stroke intervention. "If we could give something in the field before we can confirm the type of stroke because we know it's safe for both, that would be a novel strategy to help patients," he said.
For the study, they will use computerized tomography, or CT, to confirm a hemorrhagic stroke then get baseline assessments of blood levels of agents of interest, such as MMPs, as well as the patient's cognitive and physical abilities before giving the first dose of minocycline intravenously. Subsequent doses will be given orally, if the patient can swallow, over the next four days. Measures of outcomes and biomarkers will be reassessed at 24 hours, seven days or at time of hospital discharge and again at 90 days post-stroke.
They hope that decreasing blood levels of MMPs will serve as an indicator of how well the therapy works.
Risk factors for hemorrhagic stroke include uncontrolled hypertension; use of older blood thinners commonly prescribed for conditions such as heart disease and clots in the legs; and amyloid angiopathy, a deposit of Alzheimer's-like plaque that weakens the walls of blood vessels on the brain surface, typically in older individuals.
In addition to the substances in the blood that do harm, the physical mass created by bleeding causes damage. "It's tearing and pushing on structures in the brain and can cause a shifting of tissue that can be fatal in the closed chamber of the skull," Switzer said. "However, for those with smaller bleeds, better treatments, such as perhaps minocycline, are needed to combat the toxic effects of blood on brain tissue."
###
For more information, contact Clinical Research Assistant Brian Close at 706-721-2675.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
When the Renaissance physician and expert dissector Andreas Vesalius first published "De humani corporis fabrica" in 1543, he provided the most detailed look inside the human body of his time.
A previously unknown copy of the impressive anatomy textbook resurfaced a few years ago, and it apparently contains more than a thousand hand-written notes and corrections by the author himself. The annotations reveal that Vesalius was meticulously planning a third edition of the book that never made it to print, researchers say.
"This book is his work bench as much as the dissecting table," Vivian Nutton, a University College London professor emeritus, writes in a recently published analysis of the text in the journal Medical History.
Some edits show that Vesalius wanted to correct mistakes of grammar and syntax and to make his Latin more elegant. Other markings show that he wanted to draw attention to misshapen or illegible letters for his block-cutter. Vesalius also intended to add new information to the text as he learned more about the human body, including what may be one of the oldest references to the practice of female genital mutilation.
In his discussion of circumcision, Vesalius scrawled at the bottom of the page that Ethiopians "cut off the fleshy processes from new born girls in accordance with their religion in the same way as they remove the foreskins of boys, 'although in their religious ceremonies they are otherwise generally similar to those of us Christians,'" Nutton writes. "This is arguably the first reference in a medical text to female genital mutilation for non-medical purposes."
The copy of the book, on loan from an unnamed German collector, is currently available for study at the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.
"He is seen constantly attempting to improve his text both scientifically, and stylistically, and to make it clearer and more accessible to his readers," Philip Oldfield, science and medicine librarian at the University of Toronto, said in a statement this week. "All the evidence points to the conclusion that Vesalius was preparing a new edition of De fabrica that unfortunately never materialized."
The book will be featured as part of an exhibition next year in Toronto to mark the 500th anniversary of Vesalius's birth.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
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