Adult smoking rate edges down slightly: CDC data

CHICAGO  (AP) _ Fewer U.S. adults are smoking and those who do light up are smoking fewer cigarettes each day, but the trend is weaker than the government had hoped.According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Tuesday, 19.3 percent of adults said they smoked last ye

Sept. 8, 2011

Weaker prices dent Korea’s IT exports

South Korea’s exports of information technology products shrank from a year earlier for the second straight month in August largely on lower global prices, the government said Wednesday.The country exported $13.06 billion worth of IT products last month, down 2.4 percent from $13.39 billion in the s

Sept. 7, 2011

LCD prices hit record low on oversupply, weak demand

Prices of liquid crystal display panels, a key export item for South Korea’s technology firms, plunged to all-time lows on oversupply and weak demand, industry data showed Wednesday. The latest data compiled by DisplaySearch showed that not only the prices of large-size LCD panels for TVs, but also

Sept. 7, 2011

iphone 5 would be thinner and wider

Rumor has it that Apple’s iPhone 5 will be wider, longer, and thinner than its predecessor.Italian blog MacityNet recently posted set of new photos of iPhone cases and claimed that these cases will fit the next generation of Apple’s smartphones. Case manufacturers become frequent sources for Apple r

Sept. 5, 2011

CDC: 2 children sickened by novel swine flu strain

A new strain of swine flu has shown up in two children in Pennsylvania and Indiana who had direct or indirect contact with pigs. The virus includes a gene from the 2009 pandemic strain that might let it spread more easily than pig viruses normally do.So far, there's no sign that the virus has spread

Sept. 5, 2011

Scientists develop optical film to produce 3D images

South Korean scientists said Friday that they have developed an optical film that enables ordinary displays to show images in three dimensions (3D).The Seoul National University (SNU) team said the special film uses the Lucius prism array principle to get an effect similar to the one created by view

Sept. 2, 2011

Teen vaccinations against cervical cancer lagging

ATLANTA (AP) ― Only about half of the teenage girls in the U.S. have rolled up their sleeves for a controversial vaccine against cervical cancer - a rate well below those for two other vaccinations aimed at adolescents.The vaccine hit the market in 2006. By last year, just 49 percent of girls had go

Sept. 1, 2011

Middle-aged women and herpes zoster

About one out of every four herpes zoster (shingles) patients are women 50 or older. According to the Mayo clinic’s definition, herpes zoster is a viral infection that causes a painful rash. Although shingles can occur anywhere on the body, it most often appears as a band of blisters that wraps from

Sept. 1, 2011

‘Hair loss not as hereditary as believed’

Heredity has been blamed as one of the main causes of hair loss but a recent study found that, for about half of those going bald, genes have nothing to do with it. The Korean Hair Research Society traced the family records of 1,220 people suffering from hair loss and found that only 41.8 percent of

Sept. 1, 2011

Cervical cancer vaccine approved for men

The Gardasil vaccine, given to women to help prevent infection of four types of the human papillomavirus, the main cause of cervical cancer, got the green light from the Food and Drug Administration of the European Union for men as well. The decision came after the Committee for Medicinal Products f

Sept. 1, 2011

Doctors’ advice for healthy, merry Chuseok

Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving Day which falls on Aug. 15 in the lunar calendar every year and Sept. 12 in this year’s solar calendar, is one of the two most important holidays in Korea. During the three-day Chuseok holiday, family members scattered across the country gather to talk and eat togeth

Sept. 1, 2011