Some sleep drugs do more than make you sleep

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has ordered companies to place strong new warnings on thirteen drugs that treat sleep disorders. It also ordered the makers of the sleeping pills to provide information for patients explaining how to safely use the drugs.
Last Wednesday, the FDA announced that some of these drugs can have unexpected and dangerous effects. These include the risk of life-threatening allergic reactions. They also include rare incidents of strange behavior. These include people cooking food, eating and even driving while asleep. The patients later had no memory of doing these activities while asleep.
Last year, a member of the United States Congress said he had a sleep-driving incident. Patrick Kennedy, a representative from Rhode Island, crashed his car into a security barrier near the building where lawmakers meet. The accident happened in the middle of the night and no one was hurt. Mr. Kennedy said he had earlier taken a sleep medicine. He said he was also being treated with a stomach sickness drug that can cause sleepiness.
The Food and Drug Administration did not say in its announcement how many cases of sleep-driving it has documented. However, the New York Times reported last year about people who said they had strange sleep events after taking the drug Ambien. Some reported sleep-driving and sleep-walking. Others said they found evidence after waking in the morning that they had cooked food or eaten in their sleep. But they had no memory of carrying out the activities.
A Food and Drug Administration official says that these serious side effects of sleep disorder drugs appear to be rare. But, he also said there are probably more cases than are reported. He said the agency believes the risk of such behaviors could be reduced if people take the drugs as directed and do not drink alcohol while taking the drugs. The Food and Drug Administration has advised drug companies to carry out studies to investigate the problem.
And that’s the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty Weaver. Our reports and audio links can be found at voaspecialenglish.com. You can send a health question to special@voanews.com. Please remember to include your name and country. I’m Steve Ember.

Studying agriculture in the US

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
A listener from China named Walker would like information about agricultural programs in the United States. This is our subject today in week number thirty of our Foreign Student Series.
About one hundred colleges and universities began as public agricultural colleges and continue to teach agriculture. These are called land grant schools. They began with support from the federal government. Federal aid supported the building of most major state universities.
The idea of the land grant college goes back to a law in the 19th century called the Morrill Act. A congressman named Justin Smith Morrill wrote legislation to create at least one in each state.
The name "land grant" came from the kind of aid provided by the government. The government wanted Americans to learn better ways to farm. So it gave thousands of hectares of land to each Northern state.
The idea was that the states would sell the land and use the money to establish colleges. These colleges would teach agriculture, engineering and military science.
Congress passed the law in 1862. This was during the Civil War. Southern states had rebelled against the North and withdrawn from the Union.
Another law created a center at each land grant college to develop new scientific ideas and to help farmers solve problems.
The Agricultural College of the State of Michigan was established in 1855. That was seven years before the Morrill Act. It later became the first college to officially agree to receive support under that law. The college grew into what is now Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Today, the university has more than 40,000 students. These include more than 3,500 students from 130 other countries.
Last year the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State had 336 foreign students. More than 200 of them were graduate students in the areas of agricultural economics, packaging, and crop and soil sciences.
Undergraduates majoring in agriculture can also study other related areas. These include agricultural education and food industry management.
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. We will have a link to the Michigan State Web site at voaspecialenglish.com. We also have other helpful links along with transcripts and audio files from our Foreign Student Series. I'm Steve Ember.