Courts decide to outsource management of documents

From http://www.hindu.com/2007/01/31/stories/2007013104611300.htm

Registrars-General conference wants States to meet the cost of digitisation

# Vigilance cell mooted in each district
# To consider accreditation of reporters of newspapers

New Delhi: Confronted by inadequate space to store voluminous records in the context of mounting arrears of cases, the High Courts and subordinate courts have decided to outsource the management of court documents.

A decision to this effect was taken recently at a conference of Registrars-General of High Courts and Law Secretaries of various State governments. It said: ``Since space is a constraint for keeping the old records in High Courts and subordinate courts, the High Court may consider preservation and maintenance of court records by digitisation and scanning, through outsourcing, which will not only save cost but also time. The State Governments should provide funds required for digitisation and scanning of court records.'' Another drastic decision empowered the High Courts to consider outsourcing various services relating to maintenance of court buildings so as to minimise the expenditure and bring efficiency.

The process of computerisation in High Courts and district courts with emphasis on interlinking status reports of each case should be continued by the High Court concerned independent of the National Informatics Centre and E-Committee with the help of funds provided by State governments.

On streamlining of issue of copies of judgments and various orders, it was decided that a computerised endorsement about the particulars of filing of the applications was sufficient for issue of copies.

At present judges to the High Court are appointed in the ratio of two-third (of the strength of judges) from among lawyers and one-third from among the district judges. The meeting requested that in future the ratio should be 50:50 from the bar and the subordinate judiciary.

It called for conferring limited financial autonomy on the High Courts and involvement of professionals in the financial management of the High Courts and district courts. The conference decided to have a vigilance cell in each district, to be headed by a senior judicial officer to keep effective control on the court staff and to regularly monitor their activities so that the image of the courts was not tarnished in the eyes of the public.

It was resolved that the High Courts might consider accreditation of reporters from various newspapers and electronic media on the pattern of the Supreme Court so that the reporting in the media was true and accurate.

Regular, Long-term Use of Aspirin Reduces Colorectal Cancer Risk

According to a new study, regular and long-term use of aspirin and Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) cuts down the risk linked with colorectal cancer.


However, use of aspirin for chemoprevention of colorectal cancer might require using the drug at doses that are higher than recommended over a long period of time.

This might cause serious side effects including gastrointestinal bleeding.

“While the results of our study show that aspirin should not currently be recommended for the chemoprevention of colorectal cancer in a healthy population, there is a need for further studies to help identify for which patients the potential benefits outweigh the risks,” said Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH, Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study.

“We also need to improve our understanding of how aspirin works to prevent and inhibit the formation of colorectal cancer,” added Chan.

In the study, the participants were enrolled in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, a large prospective cohort study, which has provided detailed and updated information on aspirin use.

The Health Professionals Follow-up Study has been conducted on 51,529 male dentists, optometrists, osteopaths, podiatrists, pharmacists and veterinarians, who returned a mailed health questionnaire in 1986.

The questionnaire consisted of questions based on diet, aspirin use and medical diagnoses, including cancer.

The biennial questionnaires ask for updated information including cancer diagnoses and aspirin use. The participants were between 40 and 75 years of age when the study began.


The research team found that men who used aspirin regularly experienced a significantly lower risk of colorectal cancer, including distal colon cancer, proximal colon cancer and rectal cancer, even after controlling for other risk factors.


The reduction in risk was seen in both early (stage I/II) and advanced (stage III/IV) colorectal cancers.

There were 975 documented cases of colorectal cancer over 761,757 person-years, among the 47,636 eligible men. Participants who reported regular aspirin use, equal to or more than twice a week, were older, more likely to have smoked, used multivitamins and folate, and consumed slightly more alcohol.

In an average-risk population of men, results showed that the benefit of aspirin was not apparent until after more than five years of use.

The greatest reduction in risk was observed at cumulative doses of more than 14 standard tablets (325 mg) per week, which is higher than normally recommended.

The advantage of aspirin use appears to diminish less than four years after stopping use and is not evident after four to five years of discontinued use.

The study is published in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.

Source-ANI
KAR /J

Aspirin and Ibuprofen Effectively Offers Short-term Relief from Low-back Pain

Non steroidal painkillers such as aspirin and ibuprofen are effective for reducing low-back pain in the short-term, says a Cochrane Systematic Review.


Low back pain is a major health problem in western industrialised countries and Non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin are the most frequently prescribed medication.

In order to evaluate the efficacy of these drugs, Cochrane Researchers reviewed data from 65 trials that involved a total of 11,237 people.

They found that NSAIDs were more effective at reducing pain than placebos. However, the effects were only seen in the short-term and the drugs were associated with more adverse effects.

They also found that different types of NSAID appeared to be equally effective.

The researchers noted that the short-term use of selective COX-2 inhibitors had fewer (gastrointestinal) side effects than the other NSAIDs.

As a part of the review, the boffins also compared the effects of NSAIDs and paracetamol, another drug used by people with low back pain.

Based on their findings they concluded that both drugs were equally effective at relieving acute low back pain, but paracetamol had fewer side effects.

“Physicians and patients with acute low back pain therefore have a choice about whether to use a NSAID or paracetamol, and the decision should be driven by individual clinical circumstances,” says lead author Pepijn Roelofs who works in the Department of general Practice at Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

“Most of these results came from studies of people who did not have sciatica, so we now need studies that look at whether NSAIDs have a role in helping those people as well,” says Roelofs.

Source-ANI
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Most Britons Say Okay for Sex Before Marriage

Britons are taking a more liberal attitude toward sex and marriage, but retain traditional views on how best to raise children, an annual report said Wednesday.


A majority now think there is nothing wrong with sex before marriage and society is increasingly comfortable with gay relationships, according to the 24th annual report by the National Centre for Social Research.

Entitled "New Families? Tradition and Change in Modern Relationships," the study found that men's views about marriage and parenting tend to be more traditional than women's.

The survey follows major changes in British family life, the study's authors say. The number of single-person households and cohabitation is on the rise, while marriage rates are at their lowest since 1986.

Meanwhile civil partnerships -- dubbed "gay marriages" -- which give homosexual couples similar rights to wedded heterosexual couples, have been legal in Britain since December 2005.

The random survey of 3,000 people found that 70 percent think sex before marriage is fine, compared with 48 percent in 1984.

Two-thirds of those polled (66 percent) think there is little difference socially between being married and living together, while 54 percent believe that couples do not need to live together to enjoy a strong relationship.

Sixty-nine percent believe it is not necessary to have a partner to live a happy and fulfilled life, and just 10 percent think that people who choose to live alone are not good at relationships.


Meanwhile, some 61 percent think single women should be allowed to use donor sperm to become pregnant.


"The heterosexual married couple is no longer central as a social norm. But views are more traditional when it comes to bringing up children," said Simon Duncan, professor of comparative social policy at the University of Bradford in northern England, who co-authored the report.

On another subject -- homosexuality -- 18 percent of those surveyed consider gay relationships are always wrong, while 32 percent see homosexual sex as always or mostly wrong.

Moreover, four in 10 people (42 percent) think gay male couples are not as capable of being good parents as heterosexual ones -- although three in 10 (31 percent) believe they are.

The survey revealed conflicting sentiments about single parents, with only four in 10 (42 percent) polled believing one parent can raise a child as well as two. But almost the same number, 41 percent, disagreed.

"Children seem to hold a particular position in people's attitudes to family life. When they are involved, alternative family arrangements are seen as less acceptable," Duncan said.

Source-AFP
SRM /J

One Fourth of Brits Blames Sex Addiction for Bankruptcy

One in four people in debt in the UK blame their financial woes on spending money on sex.


The finding is based on data from The UK Insolvency Helpline that stated that spending money on sex was the third most common reasons for people to go bankrupt.

The leading causes were alcohol, drugs, and a shopping addiction.

According to the helpline, out of all its clients, 10,251 - the equivalent of one in four people - who called in between January and September 2007, admitted they had paid through their pockets to watch porn, visit a lap dancing club or a brothel.

The clients were aged between 25 and 49, with the average age being 42.

UK Insolvency Helpline said that sex addiction can take a toll on their professional lives, with people losing their jobs or getting into debt as a result of having to pay legal bills relating to sexual harassment.

The problems can also lead to divorce or separation and their associated financial probles.

"We feel that as computer, satellite porn and prostitution becomes more widespread it will give more men unrealistic expectations of their love lives and threaten couples' relationships," the Sun quoted Richard Sorsky, social policy co-ordinator at The UK Insolvency Helpline, as saying.

"This has become apparent due to the number of men admitting to using prostitutes and our referrals to divorce or marriage counselling organisations."

According to the helpline, three-quarters of the people who called in were single men, with the rest either married men or women or single or separated women.

Source-ANI
KAR/M

Breast Infections Alarmingly High After Reconstruction Using Implants

According to recent research, more than one in 20 patients undergoing breast surgery later develop infections at incision sites. The study also found that breast cancer patients are twice as likely to suffer an infection at the surgery site if they receive an implant instead of their own tissue.


The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts down the infection rate following breast removal surgery at 2 percent, though other studies show it to be anywhere between 1 percent and 28 percent.

A two-year study published in the Archives of Surgery, gives that 5.3 percent, or 50, of nearly 950 patients developed infections within a year of their procedures, either inside and outside of the hospital. The average time between surgery and infection was stated to be 47 days.

"The surgical site infection rates following breast surgery seem to be much greater than the nationally reported incidence of 2 percent and much higher than what is expected for clean surgical procedures,” reports lead author Margaret Olsen of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

It was also seen that these infections rose in a little more than 12 percent of mastectomies where breast reconstruction involved an implant, as against just over 6 percent of mastectomies where the reconstruction involved the patient's own abdominal tissue. "The bottom line is that implants are associated with an increased risk of infection in breast cancer patients. The question is what factors contribute to this increased risk and what can be done to prevent it?” ask Olsen.
According to Dr. Stephen R. Colen, chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, any time a foreign body is introduced during surgery it provides a surface on which bacteria can grow. Yet, Colen also stresses that reconstruction using abdominal tissue has its own risks. These procedures take several hours longer than implant reconstructions and boost patients' odds for blood clots and lung embolisms. This is not all, in 2 percent of cases, the transplanted tissue dies, necessitating more surgeries.

Olsen has also urged hospitals take greater care by making sure preventive antibiotics are administered correctly before surgery, maintaining meticulous hand hygiene and ensuring timely removal of wound drains.

The cost of follow-up medical care was given as around $4,000 per patient, sealing the need for prevention of such infections. Infections have taken on fresh urgency as drug-resistant staph infections rise.


Source-Medindia
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Gregarious People are Generally Obese: Study

A study has shown that sociable and outgoing people tend to be overweight while anxious and worried ones are usually thinner.


Masako Kakizaki of Tohoku University and colleagues questioned 30,000 people, aged between 40 and 64, in northeastern Japan about their height and weight. The participants were also given a personality test.

The researchers found that extroverts had a greater chance than other people to have a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25, a commonly used definition of overweight.

After controlling for other factors, such as smoking, men in the most outgoing group were 1.73 times more likely to be obese than their most introvert counterparts.

Meanwhile sociable women were 1.53 times as likely to be obese.

On the contrary, those who had the most anxious personalities were twice as likely as the least anxious to be underweight, or have a BMI of less than 18.5, the researchers said.

"These results may provide clues to devising more effective measures for preventing overweight, obesity or underweight," News.com.au quoted the researchers, as saying.

The study is published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research.

Source-ANI
KAR/M

Music Therapy Offers Hope for People to Get Rid Depression

Music therapy may help in combating depression and improve, restore and maintain patients’ health, says a new study.


It is often seen that people under depression have a disturbed appetite, sleep patterns and overall functioning as well as low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness and guilt. According to the statistics around 121 million people are globally suffering from depression.

Drugs and psychotherapy are common treatments for depression but a systematic review from the Cochrane Library found that music therapy might offer a hope for people to get out of depression.

The team examined international literature and identified five studies that met their criteria.

They found that four out of five studies accounted for greater decrease in symptoms of depression among people treated with music therapy.

Anna Maratos, lead author and an Arts Therapist in Central and Northwest London Foundation NHS Trust, London, UK said that the area was worth investigation and find out which forms have greatest effect.

“While the evidence came from a few small studies, it suggests that this is an area that is well worth further investigation and, if the use of music therapy is supported by future trials, we need to find out which forms have greatest effect,” said Maratos.

“The current studies indicate that music therapy may be able to improve mood and has low drop-out rates.

“It is important to note that at the moment there are only a small number of relatively low quality studies in this area, and we will only be confident about the effectiveness of music therapy once some high quality trials have been conducted,” she added.

Source-ANI
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Men too Go in for Breast Implants

Breast implants don’t seem to be the territory of women any more in the US. Men too have begun to go for them more and more.


When weightlifting or dieting doesn’t help, people of course go for steroids and human growth hormone. But when such strategies fail, they seem to opt for plastic surgery. It is a culture that enshrines physical perfection after all.

'Location is everything,' says Bill Hayes, a lifelong bodybuilder and writer on health and medical issues ('The Anatomist'). 'And in the landscape of the body, the chest is prime territory. Think about it: It's at the top of the trunk; it protects and covers the heart and lungs. It's a great spot for a head to rest on.'

Pectoral implants, although still a niche product, are growing in popularity: 409 procedures were performed in 2006, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, a 99 percent increase over the year before.

There's a stigma attached to them - the feeling that men who go that route are lazy or excessively vain - but those who buy the implants contend that the psychological benefits are substantial, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

'It's such a confidence booster,' says one San Francisco massage therapist who got the implants two years ago as a 40th birthday gift to himself. 'I walk a little taller now. And of course you want to buy every tight white T-shirt. It's crazy!'


Anthony Durante, a San Francisco personal trainer for 25 years, says well-defined pecs project 'power, strength, health, virility.


'A guy with a great chest looks like a warrior, wearing armor for battle. Nothing can penetrate that hull.'

Among his clients, Durante says, 'the chest is usually their first concern.' 'Every time a man looks in a mirror,' adds Hayes, 'whether shaving or at the gym, he sees his chest. So naturally it becomes a focus of his attention or even obsession - as opposed to back muscles, which generally go unseen and are often ignored entirely.'

For most of the 20th century, weightlifting and the '300' body ideal were marginalized, regarded as fetishy by mainstream standards. Consider 1940s movie stars like Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant, or '60s icons Steve McQueen and Paul Newman: They had looks and charisma; they were trim. But none had the Vin Diesel superhero physique or overdeveloped chest of today's cultural ideal.

'It was sometime in the '80s when it sort of all began for men,' says Edisol W. Dotson, author 'Behold the Man: The Hype and Selling of Male Beauty in Media and Culture' (Haworth Press, 1999). 'You saw it in the 'Terminator' films and big action adventures. The early Batman films.'

Pec implant surgery starts at about $7,000. Beverly Hills surgeon Adrien Aiache, who performs about three dozen procedures per year, says he charges $9,000.

Pec implants were introduced 20 years ago, Dr. James J. Romano, a San Francisco plastic surgeon who performs 35 to 40 pec implant surgeries per year.

'It's a cult following, almost, although it's growing because of the media and the Internet.' For the most part it's cosmetic, but in some cases men seek implants because of congenital deformities: They're missing ribs or a pectoral muscle on one side, or there's a natural concavity they want to correct.

During the operation, Romano says, 'I make an incision high up in the armpit in the hair-bearing region. It's about three fingers wide. Then the space is made under the muscle in what we call a 'free area' in surgery: free of nerves, free of blood vessels.'

Romano folds the implant in half and positions it between the pectoral muscles, sews up the incision and then repeats the process on the other side of the chest. Recovery is 'mostly quite comfortable,' Romano says, 'and is mostly complete within two weeks.'

Romano says he screens patients carefully to make sure their expectations are realistic.

'Some men come in and ask for it, and either don't have the anatomy that will allow me to do it and look good, or they want something that is too big or out of proportion. I don't take all comers.'

The risks of the procedure include a possible migration. '(The implant) can move a little bit. I tell the patients, 'You're going to feel the edges sometimes when you're lifting or involved in the extreme ranges of motion or other activities. It's never going to be like your God-given chest.' But that's the art and science of putting in pectoral implants. You've got to match them to the body.'

Even today, men form a tiny minority of plastic surgery patients. In 2006, there were 11.5 million cosmetic procedures performed in the United States, 1 million of which were on men. Nose reshaping was the most popular procedure for men in 2006, followed by eyelid surgery, liposuction, hair transplant and gynecoplastia - the removal of breast tissue caused by an estrogen imbalance.

So why, given the obsession for the perfect chest, haven't pec implants been more popular? One reason is that pectoral muscles are large, and with diligent workouts they can usually be developed. Women, by contrast, don't have that option when larger breasts are the goal.

Aiache of Beverly Hills thinks homophobia is also a factor.

'A lot of people with pectoral implants are gay, and many physicians don't want to take care of the gay population in general,' he says. In his own practice, Aiache says, 80 percent of pectoral implant recipients are gay.

'Pec implants have much more shame attached to them than, say, breast implants,' says Durante. 'Breast implants are so widely known that even though they are 'spotted' or 'suspected,' they are part of the cultural landscape. There is also a vanity attached to pec implants: They may be considered a character flaw (in the man). He's seen as weak.'

San Francisco plastic surgeon James Anthony doesn't perform pec implants surgery, in part because of the risks. 'It's possible to have malpositioning of the implant, where it's in the wrong spot and one's a little higher than the other. It also has a chance of infection, but any foreign body has a chance of infection. And then the other thing you have to be careful of is not to damage the nerve that goes to the nipple. Because otherwise you get numbness, which is a consideration for some men.'

Opinions differ on the attractiveness of pec implants. Durante says the majority look obvious 'because they don't match their shoulder and arm development - not unlike a woman whose breast implants are too big.' Hayes said he finds implants 'rigid and plasticky.'

Maura Armstrong Morgan, an echocardiographer with Golden Gate Radiology in San Francisco, has her own problem with implants, pectoral or breast alike. 'You can't see through them with sonar. They block the sound waves, so you're unable to obtain useable images,'she said. 'Normally, you shoot between the ribs and get this wonderful image of a beating heart.'

With implants, 'you get this big, egg-shaped void. ... So I have to shoot obliquely. I had one patient doing everything but standing on their head to get a picture of their heart.'

Source-Medindia
GPL/M

Cranberry Juice may Prevent Recurrent Urinary Infections in Women

Cranberry juice not only makes a tasty drink, but as it turns out, it may also help reduce recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) in women, says a Cochrane Systematic Review.


UTIs are one of the most common reasons why people seek outpatient medical treatment.

Cranberries, and particularly cranberry juice, have been used for decades as a means of preventing or treating UTIs.

Although the mechanism of action is unsure, one theory states that molecules in the juice may make it harder for bacteria such as E. coli to stick to surfaces, and therefore make it difficult for an infection to build up.

As a part of the study a team of Cochrane Researchers reviewed 10 studies that included a total of 1,049 participants. The trials of these chosen researches compared various combinations of cranberry products, placebos and water.

The researchers noted that there was some proof that cranberry juice and capsules could prevent recurrent infections in women.

However, no such proof of benefit was seen in elderly men or elderly women as well as people using catheters.

“It’s worth noting that many people in the trials stopped drinking the juice, suggesting that it may not suit everyone’s taste, or it may be too burdensome and costly to drink the two recommended glasses a day,” says lead researcher Ruth Jepson who works at the Department of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Stirling, UK.

“We now need to discover how much a person needs to drink, and how long it needs to be used before the juice starts to have an effect,” says Jepson.

Source-ANI
KAR/M

Breast Cancer in China on an Upward Swing

A growing number of Chinese women contract breast cancer as a result of a more Westernised diet and more stressful lifestyles, state media reported Tuesday.


Out of China's 630 million women, 200,000 get the disease every year, and 40,000 eventually lose their lives, the China Daily said, citing the Chinese Anti-Cancer Association and the Breast Cancer Prevention Fund.

The rising trend is particularly pronounced in China's largest city Shanghai, where 60 out of every 100,000 women now have the disease, up from 17 per 100,000 in 1972, the paper said.

Although nutrition for millions of Chinese has improved as incomes have risen, diet-related health problems also have spiked due to increasingly sedentary lifestyles and growing consumption of western-style fatty foods.

Source-AFP
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