You can receive Featurettes by e-mail daily, weekly or monthly by request. We can e-mail by your choice of topic or all stories as you may prefer. To make it even more convenient for editors to use our stories, NAPS has added an RSS syndication feed to our Web site. Simply hit the RSS button on our site for automated updates on available content. Please contact us to arrange to receive Featurettes in the format that works best for you at (800) 222-5551 or e-mail your request to us at printmedia@napsnet.com. We can provide Featurettes on CD-ROM or you can download it online at www.napsnet.com. Gary Lipton Media Relations Manager Phone: 1-(800)-222-5551 Fax: 1-(800)-990-4329 Web site: www. napsnet .com e-mail: printmedia@napsnet.com #2439 Recycling Helps Communities The Subject Is Roses (NAPSA)—It’s never been easier to make everything come up roses in your own backyard. Often, all it takes to make a rose garden is a little planning, a little time and a little maintenance. Bayer Advanced ™ Garden Expert Lance Walheim, author of “Roses for Dummies,” who has a beautiful rose garden at his home, says plant your new roses at the beginning of the season. Planting early is important since roses need to have their roots well-established for fuller blooms. Be prepared to water and watch them carefully. There are three elements that all roses need to thrive. Make sure when choosing your location that: 1. The roses receive at least 6 hours of sunlight a day. 2. The soil drains well. 3. It has good air circulation. Once you have chosen the right location for your garden, do some research to find the best roses for you. Not all roses grow well everywhere. Some varieties are more susceptible to insects or disease. “With the vast varieties of roses available, you can choose any theme to add a personal touch to your rose garden,” says Walheim. “You can use all roses of one color or color-coordinate them with your favorite sports team or only use roses that are named after celebrities. The possibilities are endless. Just use your imagination.” If you’ve been promising yourself a rose garden, you may be glad to know creating one can be easier than you imagined. The key is caring for your roses so they are around for a long time. Bayer Advanced All-In-One Rose & Flower Care can help in three important ways. It protects roses from destructive insects and diseases, and feeds the flowers as well—all without messy spraying. Just mix with water and pour around the base of the plant. Your roses are protected for up to six weeks. Always read and follow label instructions. You can learn more by visiting www.bayeradvanced.com or by calling (877) BAYERAG. (NAPSA)—Recycled aluminum saves billions of dollars annually in energy costs, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by millions of tons, conserves national resources and helps save landfill space. Need more reasons to recycle? It also pays for many municipal recycling programs, creates thousands of jobs and generates tax dollars in the collecting and processing industries. Many people recycle aluminum cans but forget about the more than 8 billion aluminum foil containers such as foil pie pans, roasters, TV dinner containers and bakery pans sold annually in North America. All you have to do is rinse and place used foil containers in a recycling bin or take them to a recycling outlet. Aluminum is the only packaging material that more than covers its recycling cost and is so economical it subsidizes the recycling of other materials such as plastic and glass. Recycling even helps support such projects as Habitat for Humanity. Now may be a good time to start recycling your aluminum foil containers. For more information, visit the Aluminum Foil Container Manufacturers Association at www.afcma.org or phone (501) 922-7425. Get a Test, Stop a Killer? (NAPSA)—Can routine, lowcost lab tests—like the kind that doctors use to check your blood sugar or your cholesterol level— stop a killer? The answer is yes. In fact, they can stop many killers. Although most of us think of lab tests as just, well, tests, laboratory medicine has become a key part of bringing some of the most dangerous diseases under control, including cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular diseases. It hasn’t cured them, of course. But it has given physicians new power to prevent them and control their effects. For example: • Diabetes can cause blindness, kidney failure, stroke, and death. But a $13 lab test can tell if a patient has high blood sugar levels that signal diabetes. With this information, doctors can prescribe dietary changes, exercise, medications, or insulin to keep blood sugar within the normal range. When it stays in that range, patients can gain, on average, five more years of life, eight more years of eyesight, and six more years of freedom from kidney disease. • When patients discover chronic kidney disease, it is often too late—they already face kidney failure or death. But two inexpensive lab tests that evaluate kidney functioning can alert physicians to the problem, allowing them to select treatments than can halt the disease for Lab tests provide physicians with information that helps them diagnose a medical condition and decide how best to treat it. many patients, and prevent it altogether in others. Early diagnosis, in fact, can delay kidney failure for two years or more even if the patient’s kidneys have already declined by 25 percent. • The death rate from cervical cancer over the past 50 years has dropped by about 75 percent—in large part because of the Pap test. These tests play such a powerful role because they provide a kind of early-warning system for cervical cancer. They detect pre-cancerous cells, thereby allowing physicians to stop cancer even before it starts. If cancer is already present, the tests are able to detect it in its early stages, when treatment is most successful. For more information about how laboratory medicine is helping control serious diseases, go to www.labresultsforlife.org.