Eating veggies shrinks the brain

Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin. The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87. When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12. Brain scans of more than 1,800 people found that people who downed 14 drinks or more a week had 1.6% more brain shrinkage than teetotallers. Women in their seventies were the most at risk. Beer does less damage than wine according to a study in Alcohol and Alcoholism. Researchers found that the hippocampus-the part of the brain that stores memories - was 10% smaller in beer drinkers than those who stuck to wine. And being overweight or obese is linked to brain loss, Swedish researchers discovered. Scans of around 300 women found that those with brain shrink had an average body mass index of 27 And for every one point increase in their BMI the loss rose by 13 to 16%.
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Eat Vegetarian food for slim waist

Do you want to know who has the slimmest waist? Meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians, or vegans? Well, well! According to a new study, vegans do. Vegans are vegetarians who not only forego eating meat, fish, or fowl but also all foods derived from animals. However, the reason vegans tend to be slimmer may lie in what they do eat: fibre. Lots of it. And that’s a habit you can easily duplicate. Fibre makes you feel full longer, and it seems to inhibit fat absorption. Broccoli pizza on whole-wheat crust, anyone? Although fibre seems to help limit fat deposits, a meat-laden diet does just the opposite - it actually can cause an increase in body fat, especially in the belly, one of the worst places for it to accumulate in terms of both your health and your self-image. In one cross-sectional study, meat-eaters had the highest body mass indexes (BMIs), the height-weight ratio that’s the gold standard for separating healthy weights from weights that are too high or too low. Fish-eaters and vegetarians had lower BMIs than people who regularly ate meat, and vegans tended to have the lowest indexes of all. One possible explanation is that high-protein diets may change the hormonal make-up of the body, altering body chemistry in a way that increases fat around the abdomen. Whatever the reason, the point is clear: You have yet another reason to up your intake of fibre-rich fruits, veggies, and whole grains — a smaller waist

Link Times of India

Tobacco plant to fight against cancer

A personalized vaccine made using tobacco plants — normally associated with causing cancer rather than helping cure it — could aid people with lymphoma in fighting the disease, US researchers said. The treatment, which would vaccinate cancer patients against their own tumour cells, is made using a new approach that turns genetically engineered tobacco plants into personalized vaccine factories. "This is the first time a plant has been used for making a protein to inject into a person," said Ron Levy of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, whose research appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This would be a way to treat cancer without side effects," Levy said in a statement on Monday. "The idea is to marshal the body's own immune system to fight cancer." Levy was working with a team of scientists from the now defunct Large Scale Biology Corp, which helped fund the study, as well as Bayer AG's Bayer HealthCare, CBR International Corp, Integrated Biomolecule Corp, The Biologics Consulting Group Inc and Holtz Biopharma Consulting. They were working on a type of cancer known as follicular B-cell lymphoma, a kind of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that attacks the immune system. The cancer makes a specific antibody that is not found in healthy cells. The technology exploits the tobacco plant's vulnerability a virus that only attacks tobacco plants, which most people associate with causing cancer, and not curing it. The researchers altered the virus, adding the specific antibody gene from a patient's cancer cells. Then, they infected the tobacco plants with the gene-carrying virus. "You scratch it on the leaves and it turns the plants into a protein-producing factory for the protein of interest," Levy said. Other approaches that use animals to make the vaccines can take months, but the plant-based approach is very fast. "A week later, you extract the protein. It's that fast." In a test of 16 patients with follicular B-cell lymphoma, 70% of people injected with a made-to-order vaccine developed an immune response, and none had any side effects. Levy said the study suggests personalized cancer vaccines could be produced efficiently and cheaply using plants. The early-stage study only focused on the safety and immune-stimulating ability of the plant-produced vaccines. Future studies will be needed to show how effective they are as a treatment.

Link Reuters

Scientists identify obesity gene

British and French scientists have identified several variants of a single gene that boost the risk of obesity, according to a study published Sunday in the British journal Nature. Previous research had shown that an extremely rare mutation in the same PCSK1 gene can, all by itself, lead to huge gains in weight, making it the only known source of so-called "monogenetic" obesity.
But a team led by Philippe Froguel of Imperial College London wanted to find out if PCSK1 might lead, in combination with other genetic factors, to more complex and widespread forms of obesity as well.
When they compared the genomes of 13,000 obese individuals of European ancestry to those of a normal control group, the researchers found three mutations in the gene that were far more common among those coping with excess weight.
These same variants were also linked to increased risk of childhood obesity, as well as less extreme weight gain, the study found.
The benchmark for obesity is the body-mass index (BMI), defined as one's weight in kilograms divided by the square of one's height in meters.
A BMI from 18.5 to 25 is considered in the healthy range, from 25 to 30 is overweight, and 30 or higher is obese.
PCSK1 produces an enzyme, called proconvertase 1, that plays a critical role in converting inactive forms of hormones that control appetite and regulate energy metabolism into active forms.
These hormones include insulin and glucagon, involved in the metabolism of sugar and carbohydrates, as well as a third molecule that signals to the brain that one has eaten enough.

Link Agence France Presse

Device to 'zap' away migraine

People suffering from migraine can now heave a sigh of relief — thanks to scientists who've developed a portable electronic device that can "zap" away the debilitating pain before it starts. In their study, a team at the Ohio State University has found that the experimental device is safe and effective in eliminating headaches when administered during the onset of the migraine. According to lead scientist Yousef Mohammad, the results of the study are promising given that only 50 to 60% of migraine patients respond to traditional migraine drug treatments. The noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) device interrupts the aura phase of the migraine, described as electrical storms in the brain, before they lead to headaches.

Migraine sufferers often describe "seeing" showers of shooting stars, zigzagging lines and flashing lights, and experiencing loss of vision, weakness, tingling or confusion, followed by intense throbbing head pain, nausea and vomiting. Previous studies, conducted at Ohio State University, using a heavy and bulky TMS device, reduced headache pain. To expedite treatment at home, this portable hand-held device was developed and tested. "Stimulation with magnetic pulses from the portable TMS device proved effective for the migraine patients," Mohammad said

Link PTI

Global CEOs Call on Government to Halve Climate Emissions by 2050

A high-powered group of international CEOs is asking G8 leaders to agree on an ambitious 50% cut in global climate emissions by 2050.The so-called Gleneagles CEO Statement (PDF), signed by a who's who of the international business community, urges G8 leaders to take a stronger leadership stance on climate once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
"We urge governments to seek consensus on a long-term goal of at least halving global emissions against current levels by 2050," the statement reads. "We seek leadership from the G8 to agree to deep cuts by 2050."
In place of government-to-government, top-down emission reduction commitments (as in Kyoto), the CEO statement recommends a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches, including public-private collaboration to set carbon-reduction strategy and create new financing mechanisms to support research into low-carbon technologies.
This isn't the first time international business leaders have called on policymakers to take more aggressive action on climate - and to assign a greater role to the private sector in developing emissions-reduction strategy. In November, a business group calling itself Combat Climate Change (3C) released its own plan for tackling climate change. Also in November, 150 of the biggest companies in the world signed the so-called Bali Communique, calling for a "comprehensive, legally binding" United Nations framework to tackle climate change.
U.N. leaders met in Bali the following month, agreeing to a roadmap of next steps toward an international climate pact to pick up where the Kyoto Protocol leaves off.

Link Sustainable life media

Hormone to help keep weight off

Falling levels of a hormone called leptin that helps the brain resist tempting foods may explain why people who lose weight often have a hard time keeping it off, US researchers said. Restoring leptin to pre-diet levels may reverse this problem, they said, offering a way for weary dieters to finally win the weight battle. "When you lose weight you've created about the perfect storm for regaining weight," said Michael Rosenbaum of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, whose research appears in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. After weight loss Rosenbaum said the metabolism not only becomes more efficient, so the body needs fewer calories, but the brain becomes more vulnerable to tasty-looking treats. "Areas of your brain involved in telling you not to eat seem to be less active. You are more responsive to food and you are less in control of it," he said. Leptin is a natural appetite suppressant secreted by fat cells in the body. Its discovery created a stir in the 1990s when researchers found leptin caused mice to eat less and lose weight. This rarely happens in humans.

Link Times of India

Exercise 'to cut cancer death risk'

You can cut your cancer death risk with just 30 minutes of walking daily, for a new study has revealed that physically fit people are less likely to die from the disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden have found that people who do at least half-an-hour of exercise everyday have a 34 per cent lower chance of being killed by cancer than those who do not. "The study shows, for the first time, the effect that very simple and basic daily exercise such as walking or cycling has in reducing cancer death risk in middle-aged and elderly men," lead researcher Prof Alicja Wolk said. They monitored the health and exercise levels of over 40,000 men, aged between 45 and 79, for seven years to reach the conclusion, the British Journal of Cancer has reported. During that time, 3,714 of the participants developed cancer and 1,153 died from their disease. The findings showed that exercise had a significant influence on cancer survival and a smaller impact on incidence. In fact, men who walked or cycled at least 30 minutes a day were 34 per cent less likely to die from cancer than men who exercised less or not at all. The same activities led to only a five per cent reduction in cancer rates, a result which could be due to chance. However, a more intensive programme of walking and cycling for between an hour and an hour-and-a-half a day was associated with a 16 per cent lower cancer incidence, the study found. "This study gives us a clear indication that men who exercise are less likely to die from cancer," The Daily Telegraph quoted Dr Lesley Walker of Cancer Research UK, which publishes the journal, as saying.
Link Times of India

Smart clothes that track your health
Scientists in Europe are in the final stages of devising smart fabrics that can provide an assessment of wearer's health. Embedded within the fabric are numerous sensors, constantly monitoring your vital signs. If danger signs are detected, the garment is programmed to contact your doctor and send a text message telling you to take corrective measures, the ScienceDaily said. Miniaturised biosensors in a textile patch can now analyse body fluids, even a tiny drop of sweat, and provide a much better assessment of someone's health, the report said. A cluster of EU research projects (SFIT Group) is supporting this burgeoning field of smart fabrics, interactive textiles and flexible wearable systems. "One of the most obvious applications for smart fabrics is in the medical field," said Jean Luprano, a researcher at the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), who coordinates the BIOTEX project. Garments that can measure a wearer's body temperature or trace their heart activity are just entering the market, but the European project BIOTEX weaves new functions into smart textiles. One of the main achievements of the project has been the development of a suite of prototype ionic biosensors, capable of measuring sodium, potassium and chloride in sweat samples.
Link Times of India

Brain has sixth sense for calories
The brain has a way of sensing calories in food, independent of the taste mechanism, according to a new study. The discovery that the brain's reward system is switched on by this "sixth sense" machinery could have implications for understanding the causes of obesity. For example, the findings suggest why high-fructose corn syrup, widely used as a sweetener in foods, might contribute to obesity. Findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the journal Neuron. Ivan de Araujo and his research colleagues genetically altered mice to make them "sweet-blind", or lacking a key component of taste receptor cells that enabled them to detect the sweet taste. The researchers next performed behavioural tests in which they compared normal and sweet-blind mice in their preference for sugar solutions and those containing the non-caloric sweetener sucralose. In those tests, the sweet-blind mice showed a preference for calorie containing sugar water that did not depend on their ability to taste, but on the calorie content. In analysing the brains of the sweet-blind mice, researchers showed that the animals' reward circuitry was switched on by caloric intake, independent of the animals' ability to taste. Those analyses showed that levels of the brain chemical dopamine, known to be central to activating the reward circuitry, increased with caloric intake. Also, electrophysiological studies showed that neurons in the food-reward region, called the nucleus accumbens, were activated by caloric intake, independent of taste.
Link Times of India

Probiotic hope for kidney stones

Treating patients with bacteria may be an effective way of reducing their risk of repeatedly developing painful kidney stones, a study suggests.
People naturally carrying the bacterium Oxalobacter formigenes were found to be 70% less likely to have problems.
Researchers at Boston University, in the US, are now investigating the possibility of using the bacteria as a "probiotic" treatment.
The study features in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Kidney stones are small, hard lumps formed of waste products contained in the urine.
They normally range in size from a grain of sand to a pearl. They can be smooth or jagged, and are usually yellow or brown.
Once a kidney stone has formed in a kidney it may travel down through the other parts of the urinary system, where they can slow the flow of urine, cause infection, severe pain and even lead to kidney failure.
About three in 20 men and one in 20 women in the UK will develop a kidney stone at some point in their lifetime.
They are most likely to occur in people aged 20 to 40.
Up to 80% of kidney stones are predominately composed of a compound called calcium oxalate.
O. formigenes breaks down oxalate in the intestinal tract and is present in a large proportion of the normal adult population.
The Boston team compared 247 patients with recurrent calcium oxalate kidney stones with 259 people with no history of the condition.
They found just 17% of the kidney stones group were colonised with O. formigenes, compared with 38% of healthy group.
Researcher Professor David Kaufman: "Our findings are of potential clinical importance.
"The possibility of using the bacterium as a probiotic is currently in the early stages of investigation."
Promising avenue
Derek Machin, clinical director of urology at University Hospital, Aintree, said an effective treatment for recurrent kidney stones would be a significant step forward.
He said bigger kidney stones were currently treated by using shock waves to break them up, but this was not always completely effective.
Passing a stone in the urine intact can be extremely painful, and even getting rid of the smaller pieces created by shock treatment could cause significant pain.
"For some people kidney stones can be an on-going lifelong problem," he said.
"And in some cases a stone can destroy kidney function before it is even identified."
However, Mr Machin warned that there was much work to be done before clinical trials of a probiotic could be considered.
He said kidney stones had been linked to dehydration and were more common in countries such as Saudi Arabia where the climate is hot and dry.
In instances they may be linked to an unusually high rate of calcium excretion.
However, he said in many cases there was no obvious cause for the condition. It is a particular problem for airline pilots, who are not allowed to fly if they have a stone.

Link BBC News

Healthy signs of growth

Kerala’s booming Ayurveda industry is opening up employment opportunities for many women.

Even as more and more people are looking at Ayurveda for holistic healing, the popular ancient Indian system of medicine is offering a remedy in the area of gender development. In Kerala, the booming industry has been instrumental in the empowerment of women by engaging them in all aspects of the trade — from cattle rearing and tending herb gardens to contractual work as herb collectors and sifters to contributing as doctors, masseuses and packagers.
Every morning, serpentine queues form outside Vaidyaratnam Oushadhasala, an Ayurveda centre in Trichur district. Women from the nearby Thykattussery village supply fresh milk to the centre, which is used for manufacturing medicines. Over 200 women in the village have invested in milk cows. “The milk required by the Oushadhasala has to be of very good quality so we have invested in cows. I started with one cow, now I have three. I supply milk to the centre the year round. The cows are fed properly and kept in clean surroundings. They also undergo regular veterinary check-ups. The Oushadhasala is a confirmed customer and we make good money,” says Girija, 40, whose mother and sisters have joined her in the venture. After testing the milk for purity, the Oushadhasala buys around 700 litres daily at a competitive rate of Rs 11 per litre.Source of income
Before they started deriving economic benefit from the Ayurveda centre, most women in Thykattussery either worked as domestic help or farm labourers. However, now the milk business gives them a steady income. Girija’s sister, Rati, 26, says, “We took a loan from the lady of the house where Girija used to work as a domestic help to buy our first cow. But the next two cows were bought from the profits made by selling the milk.”
Centres like the Vaidyaratnam Oushadhasala play a huge role in the economic development of the area and thousands of women are piggy-backing this wave of prosperity. Doctors, nurses and masseuses head the list of qualified professionals that have found favour with the industry. Massage training
Dr Ambika Rahulan, 56, joint owner of Aswathy Bhavan Vaidyasala in Tiruvalla, says that while doctors and nurses require relevant degrees, masseuses can enrol for a six-month training course the centre offers, during which they are paid a stipend. “After completing the course, the women are qualified to start a massage unit of their own or join any centre or hotel as masseuses.”
“Besides those qualified to work in this sector, there is a large section of marginally educated women who take home a decent pay packet.” About 500 rural women, living mostly in forest and hill regions like Amdallur, Velikulangara and Peachy, are involved in collecting herbs for our pharmaceutical wing,” says T. Unnikrishnan, General Manager, Vaidyaratnam Oushadhashala.
“We impart preliminary knowledge to the women on the herbs we need at the lab. While some are natural, having lived amidst these plants throughout their lives, others are taught.” “We collect herbs like tulsi, kuruntoti and ketakamuladi , which are easily available. Depending on the herb, we are paid Rs 15 per kg. For example, a kg of Kuruntoti would fetch Rs 40. Many of us also have herb gardens where we plant the common herbs and then sell them,” says Thallur-based Lalita Srinivasan. Women look for herbs in the fields, forests and farms. At times, they even offer landowners a nominal fee for permission to collect herbs. They begin work early in the morning and sell the herbs to the Ayurveda centres by 4 p.m. every day.
“I studied only till Class IV. There were no job opportunities for me. My husband is a heart patient and is unable to work. I have two children. I earn about Rs 2,000 every month collecting and selling herbs like unnginver and chanakayanga ,” says Lalitha. High returns
Kanakamma, 28, from Marathakkara, cautions, “One has to be a regular to make good money. My mother did it for 30 years and now I am doing it. I have planted a herb garden near my house with an investment of Rs 5,000 and it has given me excellent returns.”
Other than those collecting herbs, there are women who sift and clean the collection for a daily wage of about Rs 70 to Rs 100. Susheela, 34, from Cherp, works as a contractual labourer and manages to earn around Rs 1,800 per month. “Some herbs take more time and effort to clean. We are paid more for such difficult tasks. Chuk or dry ginger is easier to clean so we do it in large quantities to make more money. This is the kind of work where the lack of education does not matter. I have only studied till Class III. Where else would I find work? My husband doesn’t work. I have to feed my children.”
Packaging units, where medicines and other products are made market-ready, are also popular avenues of employment. A.M. Sreedevi, 54, who has studied till class 10, works at the Oushadhasala’s packaging unit as a permanent employee. “It was unheard of in my family for women to work. However, when we were faced with financial difficulties, I started looking for work. The Ayurveda drugs packaging unit here was perfect. I joined in 1973. It is a comfortable working environment and there is no physical toil. I get basic pay, dearness allowance, washing allowance and incentives,” she says.
Shanta, 51, who joined in 1993, adds, “We work in shifts and the pay is good. We also get overtime. With an education up to Class III only, what more could I have expected? I am earning about Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 every month.”

Link Business Line

Junk food with less health risks soon!

Hamburgers and drinks may soon come to be marketed with reduced risk of heart disease and deep-vein thrombosis as their USP.

The Australian research body CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) is developing some of such "super-foods", which they claim have medical benefits.

The functional foods will come up for discussion at an international food safety conference, to be held this month in Sydney.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), a governmental body responsible for developing food standards for Australia and New Zealand, will next year seek to have high-level health claims strictly regulated and legalised

The standards body will detail its plans at the second Food Safety Conference, New Directions 2007, to be held on September 19-21.

Lydia Buchtmann, the spokeswoman for FSANZ, admits that it is illegal to make any "high-level" health claims of food, such as its reducing the risk of cancer or heart disease. She, however, claims that many products are "sailing pretty close to the wind" with general health claims.

She says that the only exception to the laws is folic acid, which is proven to decrease the risk of having a baby with spina bifida.

"Functional foods are moving from food that fills you up and are good for you to something that will prevent cancer and urinary tract infection (for example)," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Buchtmann as saying.

She says that foods claimed to be low in saturated and tarns fats, or fruits and vegetables said to decrease the risk of heart disease, are likely to get the legal nod. But, she adds, any association between eating fruit and vegetables and reduction in the risk of cancer will not be approved because it lacks evidence.

According to Buchtmann, general health claims like sugarless products promoting dental health or cranberry juice assisting recovery from urinary tract infection or calcium intake improving bone strength may be legalised.

Manufacturers must have scientific proof, and the food's ingredients will be put through a computerised "nutrient profiler" to measure good and bad ingredients.

Dr. Bruce Lee, the director of CSIRO Food Futures who will speak at the conference, said that scientists were working on developing a glycoprotein with a "satiating effect" and potential to control weight.

Other additives with a health benefit above nutrition include an "anti-thrombic" ingredient to help prevent deep-vein thrombosis, a glucosamine/chondroitin-like compound to help prevent arthritis, and an antioxidant from Australian native fruits to combat the effects of ageing, he said.

He also said that scientists were researching how to make tasty, healthy, high-energy foods.

"It would be to take a hamburger that tastes like a hamburger, will give you the same eating experience, but doesn't give you all the calories we hope that this will happen in the next five years," he said.

Dr. Lee said that scientists could achieve their object by using "fat replacers" such as a modified protein, perceived to have the same taste properties as saturated fat but without any harmful effects.

Link Timesof India

Drink water for good health
Ways to increase and maintain the quantity of the drinking water.
Keep a Log This can be as simple as a little piece of paper on the fridge, or a page in your day planner. Just make a little checkmark, or dash on the piece of paper every time you drink a glass of water. The log will help you keep track of how much water you have had in any given day. You'll also be surprised at how motivating it is to try to get those eight little checkmarks on there every day. Another idea would be to use little stickers instead. Add Some lemon juice One tends to get bored with drinking just water after a few days. Change things up and add a little flavour by adding a teaspoon or less of lemon to your water. You can also try some other fruit juices. Carry a water bottle It's much easier to drink water when you have it readily available. Carry a bottle of water around with you in the car, at work, while running errands, in the yard, and even while you are working around the house. You'll be sipping away the water without even noticing it. Your body will thank you for it in the long run.

Link times of india

Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years

Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer. Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life". "It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict," Mark added. That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it. "Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said, adding, "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role." And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste. Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life: A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply; A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes; A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy. One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step — creating a cell membrane — is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort. Szostak is also optimistic about the next step — getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system. His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over. “We aren’t smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened,” Szostak said. In Gainesville, Florida, Steve Benner, a biological chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution is attacking that problem by going outside of natural genetics. Normal DNA consists of four bases — adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine (known as A,C,G,T) — molecules that spell out the genetic code in pairs. Benner is trying to add eight new bases to the genetic alphabet. Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem. "When these things are created, they’re going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen," he added.
Link timesofindia

Introverts prone to heart problems

Are you an introvert? Do you find it difficult to express your feelings? You better step out of your cocoon and start to socialise more. According to a 30-year-study, men and women who bottle up their emotions are 50% more likely to die from a heart disease or stroke. Researchers from Chicago's Northwestern University followed 2,000 men over three decades and recorded all possible health changes they underwent. At the beginning of the study, the men, aged 40-55 years, filled in questionnaires designed to gauge their levels of sociability. By the end of the study, almost 1,000 had died of heart problems and 412 from other causes. Heart deaths included 404 from coronary heart disease such as heart attacks and strokes and 541 from cardiovascular diseases, which include other heart and circulation illnesses. Scientists then tabulated the accumulated data over the 30-year period keeping in mind other factors like high cholesterol, diet and smoking and found a direct link between shyness and onset of heart disease. The conclusion was that sociable men have healthier hearts than their more reserved friends. The researchers, who announced their research in the journal 'Annals of Epidemiology', however, failed to explain why unsociable men should have more heart problems. According to them, one reason could be that introverts lead more sheltered lives and so find new situations more stressful. Alternatively, the part of the brain that controls the day-to-day running of the heart may also be involved in setting personality traits. According to cardiologist K K Aggarwal, humans have three types of emotions — suppressive emotion when one keeps things to themselves, expressive emotion like throwing tantrums and showing anger and neutralising emotion in which a person balances the situation and expresses anger or sadness at the appropriate time.

link times of india

Diets just don’t work in the long run

Asian News international

Writes
No matter how much weight you loose dieting, it will always come back, warn researchers.
And, to make matters worse for people who keep going on diets to get rid of those extra pounds, the researchers also warn that when the weight comes back, it’s highly likely that you will be a few kilos heavier that you were before you went on the diet.
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology.
Mann insisted that though dieting could see a persons weight drop by 5 to 10 percent, the loss was not sustainable in most cases.
"You can initially lose 5 to 10 per cent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more," she said.
"Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people," Mann added.
The researchers, whose findings are based on an analysis of 31 long-term diet studies, found that while people on diets typically lose 5 to 10 percent of their starting weight in the first six months, at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they lost within four or five years, and the true number may well be significantly higher.
"Although the findings reported give a bleak picture of the effectiveness of diets, there are reasons why the actual effectiveness of diets is even worse," Mann said.
The researchers also noted that certain factors biased the diet studies to make them appear more effective than they really were. For one, many participants self-reported their weight by phone or mail rather than having their weight measured on a scale by an impartial source.
Also, the studies have very low follow-up rates — eight of the studies had follow-up rates lower than 50 percent, and those who responded may not have been representative of the entire group, since people who gain back large amounts of weight are generally unlikely to show up for follow-up tests.
"Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain," said Janet Tomiyama, a UCLA graduate student of psychology and co-author of the study.
One study, which examined a variety of lifestyle factors and their relationship to changes in weight in more than 19,000 healthy older men over a four-year period, found that "one of the best predictors of weight gain over the four years was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started," Tomiyama said.
So if dieting doesn't work, then the question becomes - what does? The answer is eating in moderation and getting regular exercise.
"Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise. That is not what we looked at in this study. Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss.
Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss," Mann said.
Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function.
The researchers now recommend that more research be conducted on the health effects of losing and gaining weight, noting that scientists do not fully understand how such weight cycling leads to adverse health effects.

World first spinal transplant carried out

Daily mail writes

Victims of chronic back pain were offered fresh hope with news of successful”spinal transplant”surgery. Spinal discs from accident victims were transplated into patients with disc degeneration in the cervical spine,the area nearest the neck. All reported improvements in their mobility and areduction in symptoms such as weakness of legs and bladder.

A report in Lancent says the pioneering treatment carried out in China offers hope for thousands of sufferers of severe disc problems particularly young people.

The disc transplantation was carried out by doctors at the Navy General Hospital, Beijing and the University of Hongkong. Although disc transplants have been carried out in primates, it is first time doctors have reported such surgery in humans. The Chinese doctors used 13 discs, which were frozen and thawed out prior to transplant. With in three months, the donor discs had successfully bedded in with existing spinal disc tissue.

Link Daily Mail

SOON BLOOD MAY SHED ITS GROUPISM

Danish team converts A, B and AB into type O

Times of India April 3, 2007writes

The blood group barrier set to come down. In a break through that can make all humans universal donars. Danish scientists have successfully converted A,B and AB blood type into type O, the universal donar blood which can begiven to any one in need of a transfusion.

The inexpensive and efficient technique involves isolating bacterial glycosidase enzymes the safely remove sugar molecules from red blood cells(RBC).RBCs havecomplex sugars on their surfaces that determine the blood type.

Link Times of India.com

Workout and dodge the pain of arthritis

India Times writes

ANI
Washington: A new research has revealed that women in their 70s who keep active could escape painful arthritis symptoms. The research was conducted by Kristiann Heesch and colleagues at the University of Queensland, Australia. As part of the research data on middle-aged (48-55) and older (72-79) women was collected using surveys over three years as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. Women who reported arthritis symptoms at the beginning of the study were excluded, and the authors examined those who began reporting stiff or painful joints 'often' and the amount of exercise they undertook. Researchers found that for women in the older age bracket, a little over an hour of moderate physical activity each week will lessen the chances of developing frequent arthritis symptoms in the next three years. Pushing that up to 2 ½ hours per week is even more likely to prevent arthritis symptoms appearing. These results were not seen for the middle-aged group. Exercising into old age could ensure movement without stiffness and pain for longer, and could reduce the burden of arthritis on the healthcare system. The research was published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.
Link India times