Page 2 September 7, 2017
Seniors
(BPT) - The news lately is full of articles
about salt and health. Everyone seems to be
getting either too much salt or not enough.
So which is it? Part of the problem is with
how we study the connection. Fortunately,
researchers on both sides of the issue are
starting to agree on how best to proceed and
may soon have a better answer for all of us.
That answer may be that for most of us, there
is no need to eat less salt than we do now.
The European Heart Journal recently published
a report by researchers from the World
Heart Federation, the European Society of
Hypertension and the European Public Health
Association that clarified that eating more
than 5 grams of sodium per day increases
the risk of heart disease, but there was little
evidence that eating less than 2 grams per day
had any health benefits. They recommended
a safe range of between 3 and 5 grams of
daily sodium. The good news is that the
average American eats about 3.4 grams of
sodium per day, an amount that has stayed
the same for the last 50 years.
Of course more research is needed, but
also better research. In the past, many studies
only looked at the effect of salt on blood
pressure. Today more doctors and scientists
are looking at the effect salt has on your
total health. The researchers agreed that your
overall diet is more important to your health
than a single nutrient. It’s true that a low-salt
diet can lower your blood pressure slightly,
Looking Up
In Quest to Reach Alpha Centauri,
Breakthrough Starshot Launches
World’s Smallest Spacecraft
A Solar Sail begins its journey, accelerated (slowly) by the solar winds. Photo Credit: Kevin Gill
Based on a Press Release from Rubenstein
Communications, Inc., Provided
by Bob Eklund
Breakthrough Starshot, a multi-faceted
program to develop and launch practical interstellar
space missions, successfully flew its
first spacecraft—the smallest ever launched.
On June 23, a number of prototype
“Sprites”—the world’s smallest fully functional
space probes, built on a single circuit
board—achieved low Earth orbit, piggybacking
on OHB System AG’s ‘Max Valier’ and
‘Venta’ satellites. The 3.5-by-3.5-centimeter
chips weigh just four grams but contain solar
panels, computers, sensors, and radios. These
vehicles are the next step of a revolution in
spacecraft miniaturization that can contribute to
the development of centimeter- and gram-scale
“StarChips” envisioned by the Breakthrough
Starshot project.
The Sprite is the brainchild of Breakthrough
Starshot’s Zac Manchester, whose 2011 Kickstarter
campaign, “KickSat,” raised the first
funds to develop the concept. The Sprites
were constructed by researchers at Cornell
University and transported into space as secondary
payloads by the Max Valier and Venta
satellites, the latter built by the Bremen-based
OHB System AG, whose generous assistance
made the mission possible.
The Sprites remain attached to the satellites.
Communications received from the mission
show the Sprite system performing as designed.
The spacecraft are in radio communication
with ground stations in California and New
York, as well as with amateur radio enthusiasts
around the world. This mission is designed to
test how well the Sprites’ electronics perform
in orbit, and demonstrates their novel radio
communication architecture.
Breakthrough Initiatives—including most notably,
Breakthrough Starshot and Breakthrough
Listen—are a set of long-term astronomical
programs exploring the universe, seeking
scientific evidence of life beyond Earth, and
encouraging public debate from a planetary
perspective.
Breakthrough Starshot, announced on April
12, 2016, by Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking,
is a $100 million research and engineering
program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept
for light-propelled spacecraft that could fly at
20 percent of light speed and, in just over 20
years after their launch, capture images and
other measurements of the exoplanet Proxima
b and other planets in our nearest star system,
Alpha Centauri.
The Starshot concept envisions launching
a “mothership” carrying about a thousand
tiny spacecraft (on the scale of centimeters)
to a high-altitude orbit and then deploying
them. A phased array of ground-based lasers
would then focus a light beam on the crafts’
solar sails to accelerate them one by one to
the target speed within 10 minutes, with an
average acceleration on the order of 100 km/
s2, and an illumination energy on the order of
1 TJ delivered to each sail, estimated to have
a surface area of 4 m × 4 m.
If an Earth-size planet is orbiting within the
Alpha Centauri system habitable zones, Breakthrough
Starshot will try to aim its spacecraft
within one astronomical unit (93 million miles)
of it. From this distance, a craft’s cameras could
potentially capture an image of high enough
quality to resolve surface features.
The fleet would have about 1000 spacecraft,
and each one would be a very small centimetersized
vehicle weighing a few grams. They would
be propelled by a square-kilometer array of
10 kW ground-based lasers with a combined
output of up to 100 GW. Each spacecraft would
transmit data back to Earth using a compact
on-board laser communications system using
its solar sail as an antenna and the propulsion
array as the receiver. •
Understanding the Link Between
Salt and Health
but it can also place stress on other parts of
your body, and that can increase the risk of
bad outcomes like diabetes.
Another way research into salt and health
is being improved is in the way the results
are collected. In the past, people whose salt
levels were being studied provided only
one urine sample, but your salt levels vary
throughout the day and from day to day.
A much more accurate way to study salt in
people is to collect multiple urine samples over
many days, not an easy task, but one that the
researchers recognized produces much more
accurate results. Fortunately, there is a captive
group of people that scientists are studying
to measure their salt intake exactly: Russian
cosmonauts living in a closed environment
as part of the “Mars” project. This research
is already yielding some surprising results,
such as more salt makes you less thirsty.
Everyone agrees that we need salt to
live and that it is an essential nutrient, but
getting the right amount is important. The
fact is that a small percentage of people are
salt sensitive and are affected by salt more
than others. These individuals may benefit
from less salt, but the rest of us may be put
at risk from that same low-salt diet. Every
person has different health needs and should
follow the advice of their doctor. Placing
the entire country on a low-salt diet, as
some have suggested, may do more harm
than good. •
Davis & DeRosa Physical Therapy, Inc.
Davis & DeRosa Physical Therapy, established in 2003,
provides a quaint boutique practice located in El Segundo,
California. The 4,000 square foot facility is a well known
practice offering its patients private, personal treatment by
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one-on-one attention for their 45-minute treatment.
THE PRACTICE SPECIALIZES IN
DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT FOR:
Chronic Neck and Back Pain
Pre and Post Surgical Rehabilitation
Sports Injuries
Work Injuries
Neurological Disorders
Foot and Ankle Disorders (including orthotics)
Osteoporosis and other Age Related Disorders
Balance and Vestibular Disorders
Injury Prevention
Troy Davis Owner, PT, DPT • Chris DeRosa Owner, PT, OCS
Leo Valenzuela, PT, DPT • Lianne Nakazaki, PT, DPT
Garret Wong, PT, DPT, OCS • Tami Chang, PT • Kim Klein, PT
William Quibell, PT, DPT • Richelle Mae Milina, PT, DPT, OCS
325 Main Street El Segundo, CA 90245 310.648.3167
www.davisandderosa.com
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