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Health24.com | Healthy lifestyle makes for a healthy heart during menopause
Women who live a healthy lifestyle during the transition to menopause may help keep their blood vessels healthy as they age, a new study suggests.
Compared with women who had the least healthy lifestyle, those who led the healthiest lifestyle had less thickening and buildup of fatty plaque in their arteries, researchers found.
Changes that occur with menopause
“Midlife is a crucial window for women to take their cardiovascular wellness to heart and set a course for healthy ageing,” said study author Dr Ana Baylin. She’s an associate professor of nutritional health sciences and epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
The changes that often occur with menopause, especially higher cholesterol levels and blood pressure, can increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and reduced mental ability later in life, Baylin said.
“The good news is that middle-aged women can take their well-being into their own hands and make healthy lifestyle changes, such as avoiding tobacco smoke, eating a healthier diet and getting more physical activity to reduce their cardiovascular risk,” Baylin said in an American Heart Association news release.
For the study, Baylin and her colleagues collected data on more than 1 100 women between ages 42 and 52 who took part in a US National Institute of Aging study and followed them for about 15 years.
To rate the women’s lifestyle, the researchers used a special “Healthy Lifestyle Score” developed for the study. Women had an annual medical exam and completed questionnaires about their physical activity, eating habits and tobacco use. The participants also had at least one coronary artery ultrasound, which provided images of the inside of an artery leading to the heart.
Potential for lifestyle interventions
Women with the highest scores – the healthiest lifestyles – had less arterial thickening. Of the three score components – healthy diet, not smoking, and getting regular exercise – abstinence from smoking had the strongest association with clearer arteries.
Also, the report found that only about 2% of the women stuck to all three parts of the Healthy Lifestyle Score throughout the study.
“The low prevalence of a healthy lifestyle in this group of midlife women highlights the potential for lifestyle interventions aimed at this vulnerable population,” said study co-author Dongqing Wang, also from the University of Michigan.
“Our prospective analysis clearly suggests that women approaching menopause can significantly lower this risk if they adopt healthier behaviours, even if cardiovascular issues have never been on their radar,” he said.
The report was published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Image credit: iStock

Health24.com | Carb cycling: An exercise in weight loss
Trying to choose between a high-carb and a low-carb diet? There’s a third option that might suit you even better.
The concept is called carb cycling, shorthand for alternating between high- and low-carbohydrate days. There’s even a variation that lets you make every seventh day a cheat day.
Tailor-made
The idea is to mesh two theories about carbohydrates – that low-carb diets lead to more effective weight loss but that carbs are needed to maximize the effects of high-intensity exercise days. Adding in high-carb days could also be better for your metabolism than a constant low-carbohydrate diet.
Carb cycling lets you tailor carbohydrate intake to your needs. For instance, the American Council on Exercise points out that to lose weight, you might try a plan of five low-carb days and two high-carb days each week. If improving muscle mass is your goal, reverse that ratio – five high-carb days interspersed with two low-carb days, matching the high-carb days to your most intense workout days.
Carb cycling to lose weight:
- Make your low-carb days Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
- Make your high-carb days Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Carb cycling to boost muscle:
- Make your low-carb days Wednesdays and Saturdays.
- Make your high-carb days Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.
Science is just beginning to look at the value of a high-carb/low-protein diet. One eight-week study on mice found it may have the same longevity benefits as calorie restriction. While it’s too soon to make projections for people, the researchers point out that however many carbs you eat, they should be high-quality whole grains and vegetables, with moderate fruit intake to limit fructose.
Processed, packaged high-carb foods with added sugars don’t deliver good nutrition and can trigger hormonal changes that can make losing weight harder. Whenever you’re putting carbs on the menu, choose fresh or minimally processed foods that are high in fibre and have only naturally occurring sugars.
Image credit: iStock
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Health24.com | Is it dangerous to hold your poop in?
Perhaps you don’t like pooping in public bathrooms or at work, so you decide to hold back the urge to go until you’re in the comfort of your own bathroom. But, is that even a good idea? We decided to investigate.
Firstly, what is poop?
About 75% of your poop is water – the rest is made up of dead bacteria that help digest food, living bacteria, protein, undigested food, waste material from the food, fats, salts and substances released from the intestines and liver.
The amount of water in your poop will vary, and the longer the it stays in the intestine, the less water it will contain.
According to Dr Robynne Chutkan, a gastroenterologist at Georgetown Hospital and author of Gutbliss and The Microbiome Solution, “The ideal stool is a deep chocolaty colour – like melted chocolate.”
She adds that it should be easy to pass – “almost effortless” – and should take the shape of a continuous log or two, with a diameter roughly the size of a circle you can make with your index finger and thumb. Healthy poop should sink – floating poop can be a sign of poor nutrient absorption or excessive gas.
Why it’s not a good idea to hold it in
Ignoring the urge to go can result in constipation. Gastroenterologist Dr Sarina Pasricha told Fatherly, “If people continue to ignore the urgency to go to the bathroom they can develop constipation. The nerves in the rectum can become damaged and respond inappropriately to stool in the rectum. In essence, your brain stops responding to the urge.”
She says a common risk associated with holding your poop in is rectal hyposensitivity, which causes your rectum to become desensitised and requires more poop before it lets your brain know it’s time to go. “The anal muscles tighten up instead of relaxing when you try to have a bowel movement,” Dr Pasricha says. In severe cases this can cause problems with urination and painful sex for women.
Rebecca Lee, a registered nurse, agrees. “When you hold in your poop, these same muscles send a signal to your brain to stop responding and can lead to slower emptying of the colon in the future.”
“Holding your poop can result in distended bowels and problems with normal stooling in the near future,” Dr Spencer Nadolsky, a family physician told Greatist. He added that the bowels can reshape over time. Another problem with holding your poop in – when your muscles send a signal to your brain not to poop, it can cause a slower emptying of the colon when you are ready.
And farts? “Holding farts in isn’t as bad, because it is air that needs to be released,” says Alison Chen, ND (Naturopathic Doctor) and author of What Your Poo Says About You. “But it is still pressure that is building up inside,” which we all know can be pretty uncomfortable.
What happens to your body
A few hours
At first you may feel some abdominal pressure. “Some people describe it as abdominal cramping, whereas some people have more urgency,” Dr Niket Sonpal, assistant clinical professor at Tuoro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York, told Women’s Health.
Six hours later
At this point, your body starts to impact your poop, which is not good – your body absorbs more water from the stool, which makes it harder to expel. Dr Sonpal says you may lose the urgency to go but don’t think it’s magically disappeared from your body – you’re actually on your way to becoming constipated.
12 hours later
“The longer the stool stays in, the harder it gets,” says Dr Sonpal. By now your belly might look distended – as hard as you try, you cannot keep it flat due to the pressure buildup. When you do finally make it to the bathroom, Dr Sonpal says it’s going to be an uncomfortable experience that may include straining, bleeding or even small tears around your anus.
12 or more hours later
“I’ve never heard of anyone dying from holding poop, but in adults, voluntarily holding it in is just going lead to impaction where the stool is rock hard,” says Dr Sonpal. If it gets impacted enough, your options include laxatives or a manual removal… “Go to the bathroom when your body is telling you,” Dr Sonpal says. If you can’t get to a bathroom right away, definitely make it a priority in the first few hours.”
The good news
Fortunately, if you only hold your poop in occasionally (when you can only find a dirty public bathroom, for example), you won’t cause any lasting problems. It’s when you do it repeatedly that it can causes issues like constipation. “Holding it is OK once in a while, but should definitely not become habit or a regular occurrence,” says Dr Pasricha. “People may not realise it is a problem until they start to develop damage to their muscles and nerves.”
The bottom line is we all need to poop, so don’t be embarrassed if the urge hits you after your second cup of coffee at the office.
Image credit: iStock

Parking firm urged to stop pursuing staff at Glasgow hospital
The health secretary asks the company managing parking at Glasgow Royal Infirmary to stop pursuing staff over fines.
Spinal surgery for unborn babies to be available on NHS
The procedure can reduce the likelihood of illnesses later in life and improve walking ability.
Holiday asteroid imaged with NASA radar
The December 2018 close approach by the large, near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 has provided astronomers an outstanding opportunity to obtain detailed radar images of the surface and shape of the object and to improve the understanding of its orbit.
The asteroid will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of about 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers). This will be the asteroid’s closest approach in more than 400 years and the closest until 2070, when the asteroid will safely approach Earth slightly closer.
The radar images reveal an asteroid with a length of at least one mile (1.6 kilometers) and a shape similar to that of the exposed portion of a hippopotamus wading in a river. They were obtained Dec. 15-17 by coordinating the observations with NASA’s 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California, the National Science Foundation’s 330-foot (100-meter) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Arecibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot (305-meter) antenna in Puerto Rico.
The Green Bank Telescope was the receiver for the powerful microwave signals transmitted by either Goldstone or the NASA-funded Arecibo planetary radar in what is known as a “bistatic radar configuration.” Using one telescope to transmit and another to receive can yield considerably more detail than would one telescope, and it is an invaluable technique to obtain radar images of closely approaching, slowly rotating asteroids like this one.
“The radar images achieve an unprecedented level of detail and are comparable to those obtained from a spacecraft flyby,” said Lance Benner of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the scientist leading the observations from Goldstone. “The most conspicuous surface feature is a prominent ridge that appears to wrap partway around the asteroid near one end. The ridge extends about 330 feet [100 meters] above the surrounding terrain. Numerous small bright spots are visible in the data and may be reflections from boulders. The images also show a cluster of dark, circular features near the right edge that may be craters.”
The images confirm what was seen in earlier “light curve” measurements of sunlight reflected from the asteroid and from earlier radar images by Arecibo: 2003 SD220 has an extremely slow rotation period of roughly 12 days. It also has what seems to be a complex rotation somewhat analogous to a poorly thrown football. Known as “non-principal axis” rotation, it is uncommon among near-Earth asteroids, most of which spin about their shortest axis.
With resolutions as fine as 12 feet (3.7 meters) per pixel, the detail of these images is 20 times finer than that obtained during the asteroid’s previous close approach to Earth three years ago, which was at a greater distance. The new radar data will provide important constraints on the density distribution of the asteroid’s interior — information that is available on very few near-Earth asteroids.
“This year, with our knowledge about 2003 SD220’s slow rotation, we were able to plan out a great sequence of radar images using the largest single-dish radio telescopes in the nation,” said Patrick Taylor, senior scientist with Universities Space Research Association (USRA) at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston.
“The new details we’ve uncovered, all the way down to 2003 SD220’s geology, will let us reconstruct its shape and rotation state, as was done with Bennu, target of the OSIRIS-REx mission,” said Edgard Rivera-Valentín, USRA scientist at LPI. “Detailed shape reconstruction lets us better understand how these small bodies formed and evolved over time.”
Patrick Taylor led the bistatic radar observations with Green Bank Observatory, home of the Green Bank Telescope, the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. Rivera-Valentín will be leading the shape reconstruction of 2003 SD220 and led the Arecibo Observatory observations.
Asteroid 2003 SD220 was discovered on Sept. 29, 2003, by astronomers at the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) in Flagstaff, Arizona — an early Near-Earth Object (NEO) survey project supported by NASA that is no longer in operation. It is classified as being a “potentially hazardous asteroid” because of its size and close approaches to Earth’s orbit. However, these radar measurements further refine the understanding of 2003 SD220’s orbit, confirming that it does not pose a future impact threat to Earth.
The Arecibo, Goldstone and USRA planetary radar projects are funded through NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program within the Planetary Defense Coordination Office(PDCO), which manages the Agency’s Planetary Defense Program. The Arecibo Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by the University of Central Florida, Yang Enterprises and Universidad Metropolitana. GBO is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under a cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
JPL hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program.
More information about CNEOS, asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch
For more information about NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense
More information about the National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory can be found at:
For asteroid and comet news and updates, follow AsteroidWatch on Twitter:

The coolest experiment in the universe
What’s the coldest place you can think of? Temperatures on a winter day in Antarctica dip as low as -120ºF (-85ºC). On the dark side of the Moon, they hit -280ºF (-173ºC). But inside NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory on the International Space Station, scientists are creating something even colder.
The Cold Atom Lab (CAL) is the first facility in orbit to produce clouds of “ultracold” atoms, which can reach a fraction of a degree above absolute zero: -459ºF (-273ºC), the absolute coldest temperature that matter can reach. Nothing in nature is known to hit the temperatures achieved in laboratories like CAL, which means the orbiting facility is regularly the coldest known spot in the universe.
NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory on the International Space Station is regularly the coldest known spot in the universe. But why are scientists producing clouds of atoms a fraction of a degree above absolute zero? And why do they need to do it in space? Quantum physics, of course.
Seven months after its May 21, 2018, launch to the space station from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, CAL is producing ultracold atoms daily. Five teams of scientists will carry out experiments on CAL during its first year, and three experiments are already underway.
Why cool atoms to such an extreme low? Room-temperature atoms typically zip around like hyperactive hummingbirds, but ultracold atoms move much slower than even a snail. Specifics vary, but ultracold atoms can be more than 200,000 times slower than room-temperature atoms. This opens up new ways to study atoms as well as new ways to use them for investigations of other physical phenomena. CAL’s primary science objective is to conduct fundamental physics research — to try to understand the workings of nature at the most fundamental levels.
“With CAL we’re starting to get a really thorough understanding of how the atoms behave in microgravity, how to manipulate them, how the system is different than the ones we use on Earth,” said Rob Thompson, a cold atom physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the mission scientist for CAL. “This is all knowledge that is going to build a foundation for what I hope is a long future of cold atom science in space.”
Laboratories on Earth can produce ultracold atoms, but on the ground, gravity pulls on the chilled atom clouds and they fall quickly, giving scientists only fractions of a second to observe them. Magnetic fields can be used to “trap” the atoms and hold them still, but that restricts their natural movement. In microgravity, the cold atom clouds float for much longer, giving scientists an extended view of their behavior.
The process to create the cold atom clouds starts with lasers that begin to lower the temperature by slowing the atoms down. Radio waves cut away the warmest members of the group, further lowering the average temperature. Finally, the atoms are released from a magnetic trap and allowed to expand. This causes a drop in pressure that, in turn, naturally causes another drop in the cloud’s temperature (the same phenomenon that causes a can of compressed air to feel cold after use). In space, the cloud has longer to expand and thus reach even lower temperatures than what can be achieved on Earth — down to about one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero, perhaps even lower.
Ultracold atom facilities on Earth typically occupy an entire room, and in most, the hardware is left exposed so that scientists can adjust the apparatus if need be. Building a cold atom laboratory for space posed several design challenges, some of which change the fundamental nature of these facilities. First, there was the matter of size: CAL flew to the station in two pieces — a metal box a little larger than a minifridge and a second one about the size of a carry-on suitcase. Second, CAL was designed to be operated remotely from Earth, so it was built as a fully enclosed facility.
CAL also features a number of technologies that have never been flown in space before, such as specialized vacuum cells that contain the atoms, which have to be sealed so tightly that almost no stray atoms can leak in. The lab needed to be able to withstand the shaking of launch and extreme forces experienced during the flight to the space station. It took the teams several years to develop unique hardware that could meet the precise needs for cooling atoms in space.
“Several parts of the system required redesigning, and some parts broke in ways we’d never seen before,” said Robert Shotwell, chief engineer for JPL’s Astronomy, Physics and Space Technology Directorate and CAL project manager. “The facility had to be completely torn apart and reassembled three times.”
All the hard work and problem solving since the mission’s inception in 2012 turned the CAL team’s vision into reality this past May. CAL team members talked via live video with astronauts Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel aboard the International Space Station for the installation of the Cold Atom Laboratory, the second ultracold atom facility ever operated in space, the first to reach Earth orbit and the first to remain in space for more than a few minutes. Along the way, CAL has also met the minimum requirements NASA set to deem the mission a success and is providing a unique tool for probing nature’s mysteries.
Designed and built at JPL, CAL is sponsored by the International Space Station Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications (SLPSRA) Division of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA’s InSight places first instrument on Mars
NASA’s InSight lander has deployed its first instrument onto the surface of Mars, completing a major mission milestone. New images from the lander show the seismometer on the ground, its copper-colored covering faintly illuminated in the Martian dusk. It looks as if all is calm and all is bright for InSight, heading into the end of the year.
“InSight’s timetable of activities on Mars has gone better than we hoped,” said InSight Project Manager Tom Hoffman, who is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “Getting the seismometer safely on the ground is an awesome Christmas present.”
The InSight team has been working carefully toward deploying its two dedicated science instruments onto Martian soil since landing on Mars on Nov. 26. Meanwhile, the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), which does not have its own separate instrument, has already begun using InSight’s radio connection with Earth to collect preliminary data on the planet’s core. Not enough time has elapsed for scientists to deduce what they want to know — scientists estimate they might have some results starting in about a year.
To deploy the seismometer (also known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, or SEIS) and the heat probe (also known as the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe, or HP3), engineers first had to verify the robotic arm that picks up and places InSight’s instruments onto the Martian surface was working properly. Engineers tested the commands for the lander, making sure a model in the test bed at JPL deployed the instruments exactly as intended. Scientists also had to analyze images of the Martian terrain around the lander to figure out the best places to deploy the instruments.
On Tuesday, Dec. 18, InSight engineers sent up the commands to the spacecraft. On Wednesday, Dec. 19, the seismometer was gently placed onto the ground directly in front of the lander, about as far away as the arm can reach — 5.367 feet, or 1.636 meters, away).
“Seismometer deployment is as important as landing InSight on Mars,” said InSight Principal Investigator Bruce Banerdt, also based at JPL. “The seismometer is the highest-priority instrument on InSight: We need it in order to complete about three-quarters of our science objectives.”
The seismometer allows scientists to peer into the Martian interior by studying ground motion — also known as marsquakes. Each marsquake acts as a kind of flashbulb that illuminates the structure of the planet’s interior. By analyzing how seismic waves pass through the layers of the planet, scientists can deduce the depth and composition of these layers.
“Having the seismometer on the ground is like holding a phone up to your ear,” said Philippe Lognonné, principal investigator of SEIS from Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) and Paris Diderot University. “We’re thrilled that we’re now in the best position to listen to all the seismic waves from below Mars’ surface and from its deep interior.”
In the coming days, the InSight team will work on leveling the seismometer, which is sitting on ground that is tilted 2 to 3 degrees. The first seismometer science data should begin to flow back to Earth after the seismometer is in the right position.
But engineers and scientists at JPL, the French national space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and other institutions affiliated with the SEIS team will need several additional weeks to make sure the returned data are as clear as possible. For one thing, they will check and possibly adjust the seismometer’s long, wire-lined tether to minimize noise that could travel along it to the seismometer. Then, in early January, engineers expect to command the robotic arm to place the Wind and Thermal Shield over the seismometer to stabilize the environment around the sensors.
Assuming that there are no unexpected issues, the InSight team plans to deploy the heat probe onto the Martian surface by late January. HP3 will be on the east side of the lander’s work space, roughly the same distance away from the lander as the seismometer.
For now, though, the team is focusing on getting those first bits of seismic data (however noisy) back from the Martian surface.
“We look forward to popping some Champagne when we start to get data from InSight’s seismometer on the ground,” Banerdt added. “I have a bottle ready for the occasion.”
JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including CNES and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), support the InSight mission. CNES provided SEIS to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP. Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología supplied the wind sensors.
For more information about InSight, visit:

Camera trap study reveals the hidden lives of island carnivores
Researchers placed 160 cameras on 19 of the 22 Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin to see which carnivores were living there. After taking more than 200,000 photos over a period of three years, the team discovered that several mammalian predators are living on various islands in this remote archipelago in Lake Superior.
Reported in the journal Community Ecology, the study reveals a thriving community of carnivores, with some doing better than others on islands that differ in size and proximity to the mainland.
The researchers put motion-activated cameras on each of the islands studied, at a density of one camera per square kilometer. Over time, the camera traps recorded 10 of 12 Wisconsin land carnivores, including American martens, black bears, bobcats, coyotes, fishers, gray foxes, gray wolves, raccoons, red foxes and weasels. The cameras also captured images of semiaquatic carnivores mink and river otters, as well as raptors, small rodents, squirrels, songbirds and waterfowl.
“This is one of the first studies to focus on the carnivore community in an island system,” said Illinois Natural History Survey wildlife ecologist Max Allen, who led the new research with Morgan Farmer and Tim Van Deelen at the University of Wisconsin, and Erik Olson from Northland College. “The area is remote and difficult to access, with rough water in summer and variable ice conditions in winter, so the carnivore community had never been studied.”
The INHS is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The research offers new insights into a phenomenon known as island biogeography, which describes the distribution and diversity of species in territories with distinct boundaries that can act as obstacles to inward and outward migration.
“Most research on island biogeography has been conducted in tropical marine systems that have innately high levels of biodiversity and few carnivores,” Allen said. The new study is unique in that it examines carnivores in a remote island system in a temperate locale, he said.
“We were surprised to find an intact carnivore community — including gray wolves and American martens — on these islands,” Allen said. “We found more carnivore species on islands that were larger and/or closer to the mainland.”
Black bears were found on 13 of the islands examined. They appeared to prefer bigger islands that were closer to other islands. Gray wolves, however, were seen only on one of the 19 islands studied. These differences may have to do with the animals’ diets and habits. Bears tend to be solitary and eat a variety of foods, while wolves are social, with more specialized diets. The latter tend to prey on ungulates like deer.
The researchers were surprised to find that some smaller carnivores, such as weasels and American martens, appeared to prefer life on islands further from the mainland.
The carnivores may swim from island to island or use ice bridges that form in winter between the islands. Documented declines in the duration of lake ice as a result of climate change may hinder the movement of carnivores between islands and to and from the mainland, Allen said.
“The study offers a first glimpse of the top predators making a living on the Apostle Islands,” Allen said. “It’s pretty exciting to be the first to document species in an area, especially a wild and remote piece of land in the National Park Service.”
Story Source:
Materials provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Original written by Diana Yates. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.




