Indian School Principal Who Didn’t Remit Students’ Examination Fees Hangs Himself

A young school principal in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, hanged himself Friday, apparently overpowered by guilt.


Vivek Vardhan, 29, had failed to remit examination fees collected from students to the government, thus preventing them from sitting for their examinations.

When repeated knocks on his doors by the maid went unanswered, friends and staff broke in, only to find Vivek hanging from a ceiling fan. They rushed him to a nearby hospital, but he was declared brought dead.

A suicide note blaming himself for the sorry turn of events was found in the house.

He had become a father only five months ago, but was at the time alone, as his wife was away, living with her mother.

Last fortnight anxious parents of 18 of his students had sought his help as their wards had not received their hall tickets, only on production of which one can take one’s examinations.

Vivek promised them not to worry. They would get them anyway.

Days passed, still the hall tickets were not materializing. Only then the parents learned that even the students' examination application forms had not been forwarded to the relevant authorities. And of course the fees they had paid had not been remitted.

Even as they were agonizing what to do next, Vivek had ended his life, reports Times of India.

"We are all devastated. We don’t know what happened and why he didn't pay the fees. My daughter is inconsolable, not because of the uncertainty over the examinations, but due to the principal's death. He was a good teacher," said Anand, a parent.

On coming to know of Vivek’s suicide, the Karnataka State Secondary Education Board has decided to allow the defaulting students too to take their examinations, which start on March 31.

Source-Medindia
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11-year-old Girl Dies of Diabetes in US as Parents Opt to Pray and Not Take Her to Doctor

Blind faith has claimed the life of a 11-year-old girl in the state of Wisconsin in the US. Her parents chose to pray instead of taking her to hospital.


Madeline Neumann died Sunday of a treatable form of diabetes, known as diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that leaves too little insulin in the body.

The poor girl had probably been sick for about a month, with symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness, Everest Metro police Chief Dan Vergin said.

The girl’s mother, Leilani Neumann, said she and her family believed in the Bible and healing came from God alone.

But then they did not belong to an organized religion or faith nor were they fanatical about religion, she maintained. Certainly they had nothing against doctors.

She insisted her youngest child, a wiry girl known to wear her straight brown hair in a ponytail, was in good health until recently.

"We just noticed a tiredness within the past two weeks," she said Wednesday.

"And then just the day before and that day [she died], it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then."

"We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering."

Her daughter — who hadn’t seen a doctor since she had some shots as a three-year-old — had no fever and there was warmth in her body, she said.
The girl’s father, Dale Neumann, a former police officer, said he started CPR "as soon as the breath of life left" his daughter’s body.


Family members elsewhere called authorities to seek help for the girl.

"My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors," the girl’s aunt told a sheriff’s dispatcher Sunday afternoon in a call from California.

"And she called my mother-in-law today … and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith."

The dispatcher took more information from the caller and asked whether an ambulance should be sent.

"Please," the woman replied. "I mean, she’s refusing. She’s going to fight it…. We’ve been trying to get her to take her to the hospital for a week, a few days now."

The aunt called back with more information on the family’s location, emergency logs show. Family friends also made a 911 call from the home. Police and paramedics arrived within minutes and immediately called for an ambulance that took the girl to a hospital.

But less than an hour after authorities reached the home, Madeline — a bright student who left public school for home schooling this semester — was declared dead, news agency AP reports.

She is survived by her parents and three older siblings.

"We are remaining strong for our children," Leilani Neumann said. "Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time.

The Neumanns said they moved from California to a modern, middle-class home in woodsy Weston, just outside Wassau in central Wisconsin, about two years ago to open a coffee shop and be closer to other relatives.

Leilani Neumann said she and her husband are not worried about the investigation because "our lives are in God’s hands."

"We know we did not do anything criminal. We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do."

Source-Medindia
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Gene Mutation may Be Underlying Cause of Schizophrenia

Researchers at the University of Washington and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories have found a link between genetic errors and schizophrenia.


Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder in which people suffer from hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking, and are at risk for unusual or bizarre behaviours.

Researchers found that deletions and duplications of DNA are more common in Schizophrenics, and that many of those errors occur in genes related to brain development and neurological function.

As a part of the study, boffins led by Tom Walsh, Jon McClellan, and Mary-Claire King at the UW, and Shane McCarthy and Jonathan Sebat at Cold Spring Harbor, compared DNA from 150 people with schizophrenia and 268 healthy individuals.

They found rare deletions and duplications of genes present in 15 percent of those with schizophrenia, versus only 5 percent in the healthy controls.

The rate was even higher in patients whose schizophrenia first presented at a younger age, with 20 percent of those patients having a rare mutation.

Based on this, the researchers theorized that rare mutations found only in schizophrenic patients would be more likely to disrupt genes related to brain functioning and thus may cause schizophrenia.

The findings of a second research team led by Anjene Addington and Judith Rapoport at the National Institutes of Mental Health, further supported this theory by discovering a higher rate of rare duplications or deletions in patients whose schizophrenia began before age 12 years, a very rare and severe form of the disorder.
In individuals with schizophrenia, mutations were more likely to disrupt signalling genes that help organize brain development. Each mutation was different, and impacted different genes. However, several of the disrupted genes function in related neurobiological pathways.


The findings suggest that schizophrenia is caused by many different mutations in many different genes, with each mutation leading to a disruption in key pathways important to a developing brain.

Thus, for most cases of schizophrenia, the genetic causes may be different.

This observation, the researchers state, has important implications for schizophrenia research.

The findings appear in the March 27 online edition of the journal Science.

Source-ANI
VEN/M

Gene Mutation may Be Underlying Cause of Schizophrenia

Researchers at the University of Washington and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories have found a link between genetic errors and schizophrenia.


Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder in which people suffer from hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking, and are at risk for unusual or bizarre behaviours.

Researchers found that deletions and duplications of DNA are more common in Schizophrenics, and that many of those errors occur in genes related to brain development and neurological function.

As a part of the study, boffins led by Tom Walsh, Jon McClellan, and Mary-Claire King at the UW, and Shane McCarthy and Jonathan Sebat at Cold Spring Harbor, compared DNA from 150 people with schizophrenia and 268 healthy individuals.

They found rare deletions and duplications of genes present in 15 percent of those with schizophrenia, versus only 5 percent in the healthy controls.

The rate was even higher in patients whose schizophrenia first presented at a younger age, with 20 percent of those patients having a rare mutation.

Based on this, the researchers theorized that rare mutations found only in schizophrenic patients would be more likely to disrupt genes related to brain functioning and thus may cause schizophrenia.

The findings of a second research team led by Anjene Addington and Judith Rapoport at the National Institutes of Mental Health, further supported this theory by discovering a higher rate of rare duplications or deletions in patients whose schizophrenia began before age 12 years, a very rare and severe form of the disorder.
In individuals with schizophrenia, mutations were more likely to disrupt signalling genes that help organize brain development. Each mutation was different, and impacted different genes. However, several of the disrupted genes function in related neurobiological pathways.


The findings suggest that schizophrenia is caused by many different mutations in many different genes, with each mutation leading to a disruption in key pathways important to a developing brain.

Thus, for most cases of schizophrenia, the genetic causes may be different.

This observation, the researchers state, has important implications for schizophrenia research.

The findings appear in the March 27 online edition of the journal Science.

Source-ANI
VEN/M

Scientists Reveal How Dengue Virus Matures, Becomes Infectious

Biologists at Purdue University have found how the dengue virus matures and becomes infectious.


Dengue is prevalent in Southeast Asia, Central America and South America. The virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, infects more than 50 million people annually, killing about 24,000 each year, primarily in tropical regions.

The researchers found that critical changes take place as the virus is assembled and moves from the inner to the outer portions of its host cell before being secreted so that it can infect other cells.

They noted that virus particles are exposed to progressively less acidic conditions as they traverse this "secretory pathway," and this changing acidity plays a vital role in its maturation.

The study was led by Michael Rossmann, the Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, Jue Chen, an associate professor of biological sciences, and I-Mei Yu, a postdoctoral research associate working with Chen; and Long Li, a doctoral student working with Rossmann.

The dengue virus moves through compartments inside the cell called the endoplasmic reticulum and the trans-Golgi network.

While immature, virus particles are incapable of fusing with cell membranes, preventing them from infecting their own host cells and ensuring their maturation. Once mature, however, it is able to fuse to cell membranes, a trait that enables virus particles to infect new host cells.

As a virus particle matures along the pathway through the host cell, it changes the protein structure, or "conformation," in its outer shell.
Researchers mimicked the trans-Golgi network environment in test tubes, enabling them to study the virus's changing structure with increasing acidity.


They noted that the surface of each virus particle contains 180 copies of a component made of two linked proteins called precursor membrane protein and envelope protein.

The precursor membrane protein prevents the immature virus from fusing with membranes by covering an attachment site in the envelope protein.

During maturation, an enzyme called furin snips the connection between the two proteins, eventually exposing the envelope protein site and enabling the virus to fuse with membranes.

Yu learned, however, that the precursor membrane protein remains in place until the virus is ready to exit the original host cell. The researchers used a technique called cryoelectron microscopy to gain a more detailed view of the virus.

"So, the precursor membrane protein is retained on the virus surface even after the enzyme detaches the two proteins. This is a critical step because the virus is ready to mature but still is incapable of fusing with membranes until after it exits its own cell," Chen said.

The researchers also determined that the environment must be acidic before the enzyme will snip the two proteins, and they examined the structure to learn specifically why the increased acidity is needed.

Li used fruit fly cells to produce large quantities of the linked proteins so that researchers could study them with a method called X-ray crystallography. Using crystallography, the researchers were able to visualize and study the combined structure of the precursor membrane and envelope proteins.

To produce the complex of the two proteins, Li first had to replace the insoluble "transmembrane region" of the protein with a soluble segment, a step essential for using the fruit fly cells to manufacture the proteins. He also had to mutate the protein to remove sites where furin normally attaches, preventing the proteins from being snipped apart.

The precursor membrane protein is about as wide as 50 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and the envelope protein is about 3 nanometers, or nearly atomic-scale. A nanometer is about the size of 10 hydrogen atoms strung together.

The research has been funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health. Rossmann's and Chen's research laboratories are affiliated with Purdue's Markey Center for Structural Biology.

The study and its findings are published in two back-to-back research papers appearing Friday (March 28) in the journal Science.

Source-ANI
VEN/M

Restoring Rainforests is a Realistic Possibility

A new research has determined that it may be possible to restore a tropical rainforest ecosystem.


Carried out by researchers from the Boyce Thompson Institute in US, the research involved planting a sampling of local trees, native species in worn-out cattle fields in Costa Rica.

The results revealed that the newly planted native species began to move in and flourish; raising the hope that destroyed rainforests can one day be replaced.

This research was part of the Tropical Forestry Initiative, which began in 1992 in Costa Rica by Carl Leopold and his partners, who planted trees on worn-out pasture land.

The group chose local rainforest trees, collecting seeds from native trees in the community. They planted mixtures of local species, trimming away the pasture grasses until the trees could take care of themselves.

This was the opposite of what commercial companies have done for decades, planting entire fields of a single type of tree to harvest for wood or paper pulp.

The trees the group planted were fast-growing, sun-loving species. After just five years, those first trees formed a canopy of leaves, shading out the grasses underneath.

"One of the really amazing things is that our fast-growing tree species are averaging two meters of growth per year," said Leopold.

As to how could soil so long removed from a fertile rainforest support that much growth, Leopold said that may be because of mycorrhizae, microscopic fungi that form a symbiosis with tree roots.
Research at Cornell and BTI shows that without them, many plants can't grow as well. After 50 years, the fungi seem to still be alive in the soil, able to help new trees grow.


These results mean that mixed-species plantings can help to jump-start a rainforest.

According to the research, local farmers who use the same approach will control erosion of their land, while creating a forest that can be harvested sustainably, a few trees at a time.

"By restoring forests we're helping to control erosion, restore quality forests that belong there, and help the quality of life of the local people," said Leopold.

Source-ANI
LIN/M

Pammy Still 'traumatised' by Leech Attack

Leeches might have proven to be the beauty secret for Demi Moore, but they were certainly traumatising for Pamela Anderson, who was attacked by the blood-sucking organisms while swimming in a lake as a child.


Showing of her scars, the Baywatch hottie spoke up after Demi Moore revealed on The David Letterman Show that her latest beauty secret is letting leeches feast on her blood to detoxify her.

The busty bombshell was being interviewed on 'The Craig Ferguson Show' and made public her scars, which are on the same arm as her infamous barbed wire tattoo.

The blonde actress cum model was swimming near her childhood home in British Columbia, Canada when she was bitten.

"I was attacked by leeches - look at my arm. It's been there since I was nine - its very traumatic. A bunch of them jumped on me in a lake while I was swimming under the water," The Sun quoted her, as telling.

Meanwhile, Pammy finally divorced Rick Salomon this month.

Source-ANI
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S.Africa Launches TB Tracer Teams

South Africa on Friday launched a four million dollar programme to track down tuberculosis patients who have defaulted treatment, leading to resistant strains of the illness.


Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, speaking in the Northern Cape on TB Day, said all nine provinces had established TB tracer teams of nurses and community health workers to follow up on patients who had defaulted treatment. "These teams visit homes to find patients so that they can put them back on treatment. To further strengthen this programme, the national department has deployed an additional 72 teams in sub-districts which have poor TB outcomes," she said.

Tshabalala-Msimang said the 33 million rand (four million dollars / 2.5 million euros) programme hoped to improve treatment outcomes and prevent the development of drug resistant TB.

South Africa is desperately trying to curb its heavy caseload of TB. With more than 340,000 South Africans infected, patients defaulting from treatment have developed multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extreme drug resistant (XDR) TB.

Resistance to TB drugs can develop when patients fail to take their medication as prescribed, and in a minority of cases through direct transmission from person to person.

MDR-TB fails to react to the two most powerful anti-TB drugs, while XDR-TB is resistant to these and at least two others.

Nearly 400 cases of XDR-TB were diagnosed in 2007.

Tshabalala-Msimang said 400 million rand devoted by government to fighting TB was being used to improve the conditions of hospital isolation of patients.
The government decided to isolate people who have a history of defaulting treatment. Patients have broken out of hospital in frustration at the lengthy time medical care takes.


"It is in the interest of the public as well as these patients that XDR and MDR patients remain in hospital until they are discharged," the minister said.

She said TB plans had already brought defaulter rates to 8.8 percent in the first half of 2006 down from 9.7 percent in 2005, while the national cure rate went from 68.3 percent to 73.6 percent in the same period.

Source-AFP
SPH/L

Britney Undergoing Colon Cleansing Sessions to Detox

Britney Spears' is reportedly undergoing regular colon cleansing sessions in a bid to improve her messy lifestyle.


According to sources, the singer is having lingering traces of Frappucino and Cheeto flushed out of her system at a Beverly Hills clinic as part of a new health kick.

"Cleansing a few times a week gets rid of lingering stuff in the colon," the Mirror quoted a source at the clinic, as saying.

The 'Toxic' singer has had the same treatment in the past and is quite content with the results.

"Britney's had the treatment before and says it makes her feel great, more upbeat and energetic," said the source.

Source-ANI
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'Braille Mitra' Simplifies Reading for Visually Impaired

A device called `Braille Mitra' brought out for the first time in India at Pune has made reading books a lot easier for the visually impaired.


Modular InfoTech has come up with `Braille Mitra' of two sizes, one, weighing I kg while the other weighs 70 gm.

"This device named `Braille Mitra' will help the blind students, who know Braille, to read easily. A pen drive with a 1 GB memory can be fitted in this device. The content of around 1000 textbooks can be saved in the pen drive and the blind students can read the books line by line," said BR Deshpande, Director, Modular Infotech.

Visually impaired students who face difficulties in reading and carrying conventional bulky, Braille books can now heave a sigh of relief.

"This device is our friend because when we read a book it becomes our friend. When we read an autobiography or any other book, we get engrossed in the book," said Vinita, a visually challenged student.

Books in different languages can be read with the help of this device.

The price of this machine ranges from 40 thousand rupees to 60 thousand rupees.

Source-ANI
LIN/M

Key Loopholes in Breast Cancer Treatment Identified

In a comprehensive review of breast cancer research, Britain’s most influential breast cancer experts have identified the key loopholes in breast cancer treatment, warning that thousands of women die from the disease each year because current treatments are not always effective and in some cases fail to stop the disease.


The report by Breast Cancer Campaign, a UK based charity, has identified the key research gaps and priorities for the greatest potential impact on patients.

The report gas highlighted that though breast cancer treatment has improved over the past few decades and led to increased survival rates and better quality of life, over 44,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

Unfortunately, not enough is known about why treatments don’t work for some patients or why breast cancer can return, sometimes many years later, says Breast Cancer Campaign.

The researchers say that the new study, one of the largest ever carried out in the UK, is a unique insight into the current state of breast cancer research and its future challenges.

Gaps in key areas of breast cancer research such as prevention, detection, spread or recurrence of the disease, treatment, pathology, physiology, genetics and psychosocial aspects of the disease, have been identified in the report.

Breast Cancer Campaign has also put forth some recommendations for future research priorities. These are - identify new ways to predict and prevent breast cancer; predict who will develop advanced or secondary disease; determine how and why breast cancer spreads to other parts of the body; devise a suitable method to determine the effectiveness of a treatment at an early stage; understand more about the psychosocial and psychological impacts of breast cancer.
Pamela Goldberg, Chief Executive Breast Cancer Campaign said, “Breast cancer research has made considerable progress over the past two decades and vital work is still underway. But there are still significant knowledge gaps.”


“Greater attention must be paid to all stages of breast cancer. The experiences of older women and those from minority ethnic groups must be considered, particularly in light of recent research showing breast cancer develops earlier in black women and their survival rates are poorer,” she added.

The study is published by the open access journal Breast Cancer Research.

Source-ANI
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Supermodel Kate Moss Goes on 'Sex Diet'!

English supermodel Kate Moss has adopted a spanking new diet, involving lots and lots of sex.


The reason behind Kate’s high libido is her desire to have another baby.

Sources reveal that Moss, who already has five-year-old daughter Lila Grace from Jefferson Hack, wants to start a family with Hince as soon as possible.

"Kate's really hanging out for another baby and knows that at 34, the biological clock is ticking,” News of the World quoted a source as saying.

"She also wants to look radiant for the wedding—it's done a load for her sex drive because Jamie's been smiling lots recently," the source added.



Source-ANI
SRM/C

Stem Cells from Hair Follicles may Help Engineer New Blood Vessels

Scientists at the University of Buffalo have suggested that stem cells derived from hair follicles have the potential to be formed into new blood vessels.


The study, led by Stelios T. Andreadis, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, points out that stem cells from hair follicles can be used to engineer new blood vessels and regenerate new skin tissue.

"Engineering blood vessels for bypass surgery, promoting the formation of new blood vessels or regenerating new skin tissue using stem cells obtained from the most accessible source -- hair follicles -- is a real possibility," said Andreadis, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Previous studies have shown that hair follicles contain stem cells.

During the study, UB researchers showed that stem cells isolated from sheep hair follicles contain the smooth muscle cells that grow new vasculature.

The group recently produced data showing that stem cells from human hair follicles also differentiate into contractile smooth muscle cells.

"We have demonstrated that engineered blood vessels prepared with smooth muscle progenitor cells from hair follicles are capable of dilating and constricting, critical properties that make them ideal for engineering cardiovascular tissue regeneration," said Andreadis.

Moreover, this new, accessible source of cells may make possible future treatments that allow for the regeneration of these damaged organs.

Source-ANI
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Three Children Succumb to Measles in Northern Nigeria

Measles has killed three children in northern Nigeria, a news agency reported Saturday, a day after health officials said the disease had caused the deaths of 165 in the region.Three out of some 105 children infected in Wamakko local government area of Sokoto state had died in one week, and 30 villages had been hit by the disease, the News Agency of Nigeria said.

On Friday, health officials in the northern state of Katsina said 165 children out of more than 3,000 infected had died in the past three months.

"The fatalities are unprecedented and the high rate of infection can be attributed to low immunization as 90 percent of the infected children have not been immunized against measles," Halliru Idris, director of disease control in the state’s health ministry, told AFP by phone from Katsina.

He blamed parents for failing to take their children to hospital for routine immunization.

A similar outbreak has affected another northern state, Kano, in the past months.

Health officials in northern Nigeria note that parental attitudes towards infant vaccinations in general appeared to change after a 2003-2004 campaign conducted by a handful of radical Muslim clerics who claimed that immunization was a western ploy to render Muslim girls infertile.

That theory has been debunked but parents still tend to see immunization as something their children can do without.

Measles is an air-borne viral infection among children. The symptoms include fever, sores, rashes, coughing and convulsions.

If not treated in time, it can lead to nervous disorders, conditions such as deafness and paralysis, and death.

Source-AFP
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Hackers Seek to Inflict Physical Harm on Epileptic Patients

Computer hackers have sought to bombard an epilepsy support message board and trigger headaches and even seizures in visitors.


The hackers used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation as their weapons against helpless epileptic patients, it has been reported.

The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the support message board, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security.

’We are seeing people affected,’ says Ken Lowenberg, senior director of web and print publishing at the Epilepsy Foundation. ’It’s fortunately only a handful. It’s possible that people are just not reporting yet -- people affected by it may not be coming back to the forum so fast.’

The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated graphics, says the online magazine Wired.

The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users’ browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.
Fultz says she ’locked up.’


’I don’t fall over and convulse, but it hurts,’ says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d’Alene, Ohio. ’I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak.’

After about 10 seconds, Fultz’s 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

’Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures,’ says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts. She’d lingered too long on the pages trying to determine who was responsible.

Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers, says the Wired magazine.

Griefers are the Internet equivalent of playground bullies, who find fun in pushing others around.

Fultz says the attack spawned an uncommonly bad seizure. ’It was a spike of pain in my head,’ she says. ’And the lockup, that only happens with really bad ones. I don’t think I’ve had a seizure like that in about a year.’

But she’s satisfied with the Epilepsy Foundation’s relatively fast response to the attack, about 12 hours after it began on Easter weekend. ’We all really appreciate them for giving us this forum and giving us this place to find each other,’ she says.

Epilepsy affects an estimated 50 million people worldwide, about 3 percent of whom are photosensitive, meaning flashing lights and colors can trigger seizures.

Source-Medindia
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Da Vinci, the Robot, Proves a Hit in Toronto Hospital

Da Vinci, a $4.5 million robotic system, is proving a sensation in Toronto, Canada.


It is the first advanced surgical system of its kind in the Greater Toronto Area, points out Dr. Ken Pace of the St. Michael’s Hospital.

It performs minimally invasive surgery more quickly and safely. Besides doctors hope patients who get robot-assisted surgery will recover faster and have less post-operative pain and chance of infection.

"Everybody recognizes this is the present, or the future, of surgery," urologist Pace says.

"There is no question we can do better surgery with this than we can with the traditional laparoscopic approaches and even open surgery. It’s going to push us to the next level, allow us to do better surgery for our patients, and have a better outcome."

Urologists are the first to use the robot, primarily for prostate cancer surgeries but also for kidney blockages. The robot will also be called on by gynecologists doing hysterectomies, as well as general surgeons. Cardiac specialists intend to use the robot to replace some types of heart valves, writes Megan Ogilvie in Toronto Star.

The robot was designed to push the boundaries of laparoscopic surgery, in which a surgeon operates on a patient using long instruments inserted through "keyhole" incisions in the skin.

The robot’s main advantage is that its arms act like a surgeon’s hand, beyond the scope of a simple tool, says Pace, holding out a traditional laparoscopic instrument to make his point.
"These are long sticks that kind of just open and close," he says, making the pincers on the end of the instrument snap shut. "They can’t bend, they can’t twist, so they can’t do this" – Pace swivels his wrist in rapid circles – "like the hand can."


The robot’s full range of motion helps surgeons manoeuvre the curved suture needles at tricky angles and gives them more precision during delicate procedures. The robotic instruments are electromechanically enhanced and have what are called "endo-wrists" attached to curved pincers that are roughly one centimetre in size.

Pace says they can do everything a human hand can, surgically speaking.

"It’s almost like you shrunk yourself, dropped inside the patient and are doing the surgery from the inside."

Technically, the da Vinci, a creation of California-based Intuitive Surgical, Inc., is more a remote-control system than a robot, says Pace. The surgeon sits at a console, away from the operating table, and manipulates the four robotic arms using joystick controls. The system replicates the surgeon’s movements in real time.

"It’s completely under the surgeon’s control, does nothing on its own," says Pace.

Three of the robotic arms do surgery while the fourth acts as camera operator and light source. The camera projects a view of the surgical site – in high-definition – onto flat-screen TVs arrayed in the OR to guide the surgeon at the console.

Pace says the magnified 3-D vision gives him a better view of fine-detailed surgery than if he was at the patient’s side, especially since the robot filters out tremors and translates a surgeon’s real-time movements into a smaller scale.

London Health Sciences Centre at University of Western Ontario was the first Canadian purchaser of a da Vinci system, in 2003. There are now eight up and running in this country, including two in London.

Dr. Christopher Schlachta, medical director of St. Mike’s CSTAR robotics program, says prostrate patients, in particular, prefer to have robot-assisted surgery, owing to preliminary evidence that its precision better preserves urine control and erectile function, two potential side effects.

The St. Mike’s robot was put into use for the second time yesterday when Pace and his team performed prostate cancer surgery on a 70-year-old. The first operation, also to remove a cancerous prostate, was done March 20.
As Pace sat working the console controls as head surgeon, the robot’s four arms slowly twisted and turned inside the patient’s inflated abdomen. For four hours, Pace patiently worked the pincers to nip at fat and muscle and get at the walnut-sized prostate.

John Honey, head of urology at St. Mike’s, is sold on the system.
"It makes the operation half as long, with a quicker recovery time – it gets patients home quicker and back to work," he says.

"It’s so easy to use. You could sit (at the controls) and I could give you a suture and you could tie a knot, the first time ...
"If you can tie your laces, you can use this machine."



Source-Medindia
GPL/S

Sexual Dissatisfaction Not Linked to Cardiovascular Risk in Postmenopausal Women

A new study from Boston University has revealed that decreased sexual satisfaction among postmenopausal women may not be linked to cardiovascular disease.


Female sexual dysfunction is a common condition and has been linked to a higher burden of medical illnesses that can cause cardiovascular disease.

The researchers analysed the data of sexually active postmenopausal women between 50 to 79 years, from the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study and followed up for 8-12 years.

The participants were then categorized into sexually satisfied or dissatisfied and cardiovascular disease was the baseline for the analysis.

During the study, cardiovascular disease was defined as a self-reported history of acute myocardial infarction, stroke, or coronary revascularization procedure. They also examined congestive heart failure, peripheral arterial disease and angina.

The team found that there was a modest link between being dissatisfied with sexual activity and having peripheral arterial disease, and angina was decreased among those dissatisfied with sexual activity.

However, there was no association between sexual dissatisfaction and the presence of any other form of cardiovascular disease including heart attack or stroke.

"Our study of sexually active postmenopausal women found dissatisfaction with sexual activity was not predictive of incident cardiovascular disease which may be due to physiological differences in sexual functioning between men and women, or to difficulty measuring sexual dysfunction in women," said Dr Jennifer McCall-Hosenfeld, lead author, a fellow in the Department of General Internal Medicine at BMC and Women's Health at BUSM.

The study appears in the April 2008 issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

Source-ANI
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Early Marriage may Be a Productive Option for Some Young Adults

While people argue about the ideal marriageable age for youngsters, a new study has suggested that getting married or living together and having children is beneficial for some young adults.


The study, led by Alan Booth, distinguished professor of sociology, human development and demography, conflicts people’s tendency to encourage youngsters to complete their education and postpone marriage and children to achieve more rewarding lifestyles.

"In industrial countries, young people age 18 to 25 are expected to explore their identity, work and love by delaying marriage and parenthood. It is believed that those individuals who fail to postpone these family transitions miss out on better career opportunities, make poor choices on partners, and may experience problems,” said Booth.

“However, our research has shown that early family choices may be a productive option for many young adults, especially those who are disadvantaged with respect to family income, parental education and structure, mother-child relationship, verbal ability, school attachment and delinquent behaviour," he added.

For the study, the researchers examined the family and personal characteristics of more than 8,000 young adults who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

They observed that over a five-year period half of the sample made an early family transition and half did not. Later they compared the depressive symptoms of those who made a transition with those who did not, and found very few differences in depressive symptoms between the two groups.
"The only exception was women who experienced a breakup of their live-in relationship. They were more likely to see an increase in depression compared to women who did not break up with the live-in partner or did not make a transition," noted Booth.


However, just 14 percent of those who made a transition belonged to this category. The researchers selected depressive symptoms as a measure of wellbeing because they are linked to many types of adversity such as poor physical health, unemployment and harsh family relationships, and apply to males and females and people of all ages.

"The findings are even more remarkable when we take into account that young adults who transitioned into early families were more likely to come from low-income families, had parents with lower levels of education and likely lived in a household with one or no biological parents," said Booth.

In families with low-income, teens may experience a disruptive home environment and parents with poor parenting skills. The study stated that if they leave to live together, marry or have children, it might provide an opportunity to escape from an unloving home and create a more positive family.

Booth added that the difference between men and women on early family transitions and protective family factors requires more study.

"Most research on emerging adulthood has been on college students. Our study highlights the importance of study early family transitions in context, in light of the range of opportunities open to a person. Post-high school experiences of young adults are more diverse than popular belief, and early co-habitation or marriage and parenting may be productive for many young people, at least over the short haul,” he said.

The team's findings were published in a recent (February) issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Source-ANI
SRM/S

Pussycat Dolls' Penalized for Being too Sexy

American pop and R&B quintet girls group the ‘Pussycat Dolls’ has been fined 3400 dollars for displaying much more than their singing talent during a concert in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last July.


The group caused quite a stir with a few wardrobe malfunctions, which started off with Carmit Bachar exposing a breast, and Ashley Roberts revealing her private parts after her tiny pair of shorts left little to the imagination.

Absolute Entertainment who were the Promoters for the concert were fined for allowing the group to perform sexually suggestive routines in the strict Muslim country.

The council, which manages the Kuala Lumpur suburb where the event took place, imposed the penalty.

The band was slapped with fine after Malaysia’s culture minister Rais Yatim complained that the group’s concert featured ‘scantily dressed performers’ and ‘sensuous elements’.

"I believe the way the ‘Pussycat Dolls’ behaved on stage amounted to gross indecency," News.com.au quoted Yatim, as saying.

According to the country’s Muslim laws, a female performer must be dressed from her shoulders to her knees.

Besides this, jumping, shouting or throwing of objects onstage or at the audience are all also banned.

Source-ANI
SRM/C

Study Shed Light on Origins of April Fools' Day

For an average person, April Fools' Day might be a date to play pranks, but for some experts the day has more to it than just the fun element.


April Fools' Day is believed to be several hundred years old. However, experts say that its origins are still shrouded in mystery.

According to the most popular theory, France changed its calendar in the 1500s so that the New Year would begin in January to match the Roman calendar instead of the start of spring in late March or early April.

However word of the change traveled slowly, and many people in rural areas continued to celebrate the New Year in the spring.

These country dwellers became known as 'April fools'.

Alex Boese, curator of the Museum of Hoaxes in San Diego, California Boese, who has studied the holiday's origin, however, disagrees with this interpretation.

"[The French] theory is completely wrong, because the day that the French celebrated the beginning of the year legally was Easter day, so it never really was associated with April first," National Geographic quoted him, as saying.

"Traditionally it was only a legal start to the year-people in France did actually celebrate [the New Year] on January first for as long as anybody could remember," he added.

Instead, Boese believes that April Fools' Day simply grew out of age-old European spring festivals of renewal, in which pranks and camouflaging one's identity are common.


Joseph Boskin, professor emeritus of American humor at Boston University, has offered his own interpretation of the holiday's roots -as a prank.


In 1983, Boskin said that the April Fools' Day idea came from Roman jesters during the time of Constantine I in the third and fourth centuries A.D. As the story goes, jesters successfully petitioned the ruler to allow one of their elected members to be king for a day.

So, on April first, Constantine handed over the reins of the Roman Empire for one day to King Kugel, his jester. Kugel decreed that the day forever would be a day of absurdity. Incidentally, Kugel is an Eastern European dish that one of Boskin's friends had been craving.

Source-ANI
SRM/S

Surfing the Net Between Office Hours Improves Concentration, Productivity

For many people, taking a break from work means getting away from the computer screen. However, a new study by a leading human-response research group has shown that working at your comp and surfing the internet for a few minutes each working day can actually boost concentration and allow a person to be more productive.


According to many people, using computer during a break from work could prove more stressful.

But the new study has shown that using the web is as good as the office tea break.

"Many people think that using a computer just means stress and more work, but what we found was the converse," the Scotsman quoted Mind Lab scientist Duncan Smith, as saying.

For the study, the researchers recruited women from seven European countries, and asked them to complete difficult computer-based intelligence tests to increase their stress levels.

After a period of crunching numbers and working out intellectual puzzles at speed, the researchers gave the test subjects a 10-minute break to relax by doing whatever they wanted online. Then they got back to the tests.

With the help of sensors, the researchers monitored the brain activity of the participants and found that after a break the women were not only more relaxed, but also more productive.

The effects were regardless of the activity the women participated in.

"Whether they just go and have a look at photos, chat with people or even just play an internet game, we've found that that really made a difference," Smith said.

Source-ANI
SRM/L

Men are Blind to the Subtle Seduction Techniques of Women

The flutter of eyelashes, the sparkling smile, the chuckle after a lame joke – nothing will help you entice the attention of the man you desire, not because you’re doing it wrongly, but because your male interest can’t understand the signals.


According to a new research, men are blind to the subtle seduction techniques of the opposite sex.

The study suggests that apart from pouncing on the object of her lust, a woman's non-verbal signals of sexual interest often prove sadly lost on the young male brain.

In the study of nearly 300 undergraduates of both sexes, researchers at Indiana University tested students' abilities to spot a come-on.

The students were asked to view images of women and categorize them as friendly, sexually interested, sad or rejecting.

Each undergraduate reported on 280 photographs, which had been sorted into the four categories based on surveys by different groups of students.

Male students scored worse for accuracy than females - and they were particularly confused by amiability and amorousness. The men commonly mistook women's sexual signals as merely friendly and were prone to see friendliness as a blatant advance.

According to the researchers, rather than going through life thinking: "She wants me", men often find themselves trying to navigate a foreign world of social signals without a phrasebook.

"Women are fluent in body language, men just have the gift of the grab,” the Telegraph quoted Kathy Lette, the best-selling author, as saying.


"It is really confusing for women. The average bloke either doesn't realise that we fancy them until we are giving birth to their children in the labour ward; or he presumes all women fancy him all the time.


"God was playing some kind of prank when he developed two sexes,” she added.

But the research does not mean that women might as well ditch the lipstick. Not all flirting gets lost in translation.

"These are average differences. Some men are very skilled in reading clues,” said Coreen Ferris, the lead researcher.

The study is published in Psychological Science.

Source-ANI
SRM/C

The Success of 'Tele-learning' in Remote Amazon Schools

In some parts of the world, a television in the classroom might be a diversion for students.


But in remote areas of the immense Amazon jungle in Brazil, it's an educational lifeline, a key tool for learning that helps break the tyranny of distance.

Some 2,500 primary school pupils in rural parts of the vast northern Acre state depend on video courses shown on small televisions in viewing rooms to keep up with their urban counterparts who have greater access to teachers, cultural excursions and libraries.

"Tele-learning" started five years ago, when authorities decided to put into practice ideas first formulated by Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, who died in 1997, to counter an obvious shortfall in basic education.

Acre's governor, Jorge Vianna, described how a visit to a remote school in the forest rammed home the need to improve teaching methods.

"I remember visiting a school and meeting a girl of 19 years who was doing third grade for the fifth time. She told me she had already passed third grade, but as there were no more options or grades to go on to, she had to keep going back to the same level," he told AFP.

An agreement with the Roberto Marinho Foundation, named after the founder of Brazil's biggest private media group O Globo, opened the way for the introduction of video courses based on Sunday morning educational television shows.


Vilma Guimaraes, the head of the foundation's educational projects unit, and a former disciple of Freire, personally visits each of the schools in the program.


If the hard slog of travelling hours or days over pitted dirt roads and along jungle paths weighs on her 60-plus years, it doesn't show. She may turn up at the schools covered in dust or mud, but also with her lipstick firmly applied.

-- 'In five years, 11,000 students have graduated' --

"In five years, this system has allowed nearly 11,000 students to graduate in Acre," she said with pride.

According to Brazil's education ministry, Acre state came last in a 1999 ranking of all the country's 27 states in terms of primary school results.

Since the program has been implemented, it has leapt to 11th place, 2005 figures show. "We want Acre to be in the top 10 this year," Vianna said.

The success of the scheme is all the more striking when put in the context of the huge disadvantages suffered by pupils in the sparsely populated state.

For instance, to get to the Sao Pedro school in the Bomlevar catchment, a reserve where latex is extracted from plants, it is a bone-jarring three-hour journey by truck along a rutted dirt road from the nearest town of Xapuri.

Then comes an hour-long trek through dense Amazonian rainforest.

The school's teacher, Lisandro Augusto, is a former trucker who switched professions when he saw the educational difficulties faced by his son.

He receives a dozen students, many of whom sleep at the school during the week because their family homes are too far for a daily commute.

Such distances also preclude laying electrical cables to power the classroom television set, so a solar panel is used.

On this day, the panel was not working properly, and the screen got only a few minutes of play.

"But for the kids, that's enough, because the discussion that comes afterwards is the what interests them most," Augusto said.

The students have well-defined tasks at the school. While some clean the building in the morning, others prepare the papers for the day's exercises or revision texts.

Half-way between the school and Xapuri is another school, in Tupa county. There, teacher Antonia Lima also stays during the week to watch over her boarding students, on whose families she depends.

"The parents of some of the students send me food, and I return to Xapuri only on weekends," she said.

Among the students in her school's sole classroom sat an adolescent with long hair, Marcia Valeria Leite, trying to divide her attention between the lesson and her one-year-old baby.

"I have to bring him, because there's no-one to leave him with at home," she said. "He likes playing here at school."

Outside, Maria Neucilene Lopes, another teacher who is also a regional school coordinator, said the relative isolation she faces was in no way intimidating.

"I arrived at this school in 2006. I came from Xapuri on a motorbike, and when I arrived I just stopped and cried. But today, I wouldn't change these schools for anything," she said.

Source-AFP
SRM/C

Teenagers' Brains are Different from Those of Children and Adults: Study

A new study has confirmed what many parents have believed till now - that their teenage offspring's brain is very much different from those of children and adults.


According to a new research, which used MRI to examine the brains of volunteers, natural changes in adolescents' brains affect their cognition, emotion and behaviour.

The researchers found that brain gray matter increases in volume until the early teens, then decreases until old age.

The data for the research was based on the NIMH Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project, which began in 1989.

Participants visit the NIMH at approximately two-year intervals for brain imaging, neuropsychological and behavioral assessment and collection of DNA.

As of September 2007, approximately 5000 scans from 2000 subjects have been acquired. Of these, 387 subjects, aged 3 to 27 years, have remained free of any psychopathology and served as the models for typical brain development.

From the analysis, three themes emerged. The first is functional and structural increases in connectivity and integrative processing as distributed brain modules become more and more integrated.

Using a literary metaphor, maturation would not be the addition of new letters but rather of combining earlier formed letters into words, and then words into sentences and then sentences into paragraphs.

The second is a general pattern of childhood peaks of gray matter (frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe and occipital lobe) followed by adolescent declines. As parts of the brain are overdeveloped and then discarded, the structure of the brain becomes more refined.


The third theme is a changing balance between limbic/subcortical and frontal lobe functions that extends well into young adulthood as different cognitive and emotional systems mature at different rates.


The cognitive and behavioral changes taking place during adolescence may be understood from the perspective of increased "executive" functioning, a term encompassing a broad array of abilities, including attention, response inhibition, regulation of emotion, organization and long-range planning.

"Adolescence is a time of substantial neurobiological and behavioral change, but the teen brain is not a broken or defective adult brain. The adaptive potential of the overproduction/selective elimination process, increased connectivity and integration of disparate brain functions, changing reward systems and frontal/limbic balance, and the accompanying behaviors of separation from family of origin, increased risk taking, and increased sensation seeking have been highly adaptive in our past and may be so in our future," said Dr. Jay N. Giedd, MD of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

"These changes and the enormous plasticity of the teen brain make adolescence a time of great risk and great opportunity," he added.

The study 'The Teen Brain: Insights from Neuroimaging' is published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Source-ANI
SRM/S

Brain can Detect Calorie Content Even When One Doesn’t Taste the Food

Brain can detect calorie content even when one doesn’t taste the food, new study seems to suggest.


Researchers at the Duke University Center in Durham, North Carolina first genetically altered the brains of mice, making them unable to taste "sweet."

They then had the sweet-blind mice undergo tests in which they were given a choice of a sugar solution and one sweetened with the non-caloric sweetener sucralose.

They found the mice showed a decided preference for the higher-calorie sugar solution — indicating that the calorie content — not the taste — likely governed their decision.

The researchers also discovered that the reward response in the brains of the mice triggered the release of dopamine, a brain chemical associated with pleasure.

The preference for the sugar developed after ten minutes of an hour-long feeding session, they found.

The study shows that even in the absence of taste, physiologic changes in the body let the brain know a high-calorie food has been ingested. "Our findings suggest that calorie-rich nutrients can directly influence brain reward circuits that control food intake independently of palatability or functional taste transduction," the authors write.

They say this finding could change how obesity is tackled, viewing the consumption of foods as a process that is driven not only by taste but also by caloric training of the brain.

This means that if a person is dieting and consuming lower-calorie foods, the body will still sense that it isn't getting enough calories.

The study is published in the March 27 issue of the journal Neuron.

Source-Medindia
GPL/S

New Non-invasive Method Helps to Detect Cancer Early

Early detection of cancer could soon be possible with the help of a new non-invasive instrument, called a P-scan, developed by a scientist at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.


The instrument, developed by Dr. Yinfa Ma, Curators' Teaching Professor of chemistry at Missouri ST, will provide pre-cancer screening that not only detects cancer in the body, but is also capable of predicting the cancer's type and severity using a group of biomarkers.

"Cancer is the second-highest cause of death among all diseases. Early diagnosis of cancer is crucial, but not many people want to go to the hospital to undergo costly, invasive cancer screening," said Ma.

This study comes in line with the existing knowledge of pteridines, compounds found within the body that serve as important cofactors to regulate the metabolism of cells.

In the course of this study, Ma discovered that six pteridine derivatives can be detected in urine samples, and that levels for some pteridines increase significantly if there is a tumour inside the body.

Essentially, it was found that one molecule, called oncopterin, exists only in the urine of cancer patients, but not in healthy human subjects. However, further testing for oncopterin, using different techniques is still required.

Ma developed a prototype of a P-scan, and can be used to screen urine for oncopterine and the six other pteridine biomarkers. The oncopterin level in urine can be used to find out if cancer is going to develop, and varying levels of the six pteridines can actually provide a "fingerprint" of the type of cancer.
Ma hopes to develop the P-scan for commercial use in clinical laboratories for non-invasive early cancer screening.


"I won't give up. I will continue to work on this project until we have succeeded and can market the instrument to save people's lives," said Ma.

Source-ANI
SRM/S

Indian Origin Doctor can Be Sacked for Unethical Tests on Mentally Ill Patients

Dr. Tanmoy Sharma, a former senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, is expected to be sacked this weekend after being found guilty of conducting unethical drug tests on mentally ill patients.


The General Medical Council has found that Dr. Sharma had wrongly recruited patients in unsolicited telephone calls without contacting their nurses or carers.

On a number of occasions, Dr. Sharma failed to obtain approval from proper ethical committees before testing drugs on patients.

After being paid to conduct the tests by drug companies, he failed to seek proper approval from medical bodies and then misled the companies about his methods, The Times reported.

The paper said that Dr. Sharma not only lied about his academic credentials, but was also instrumental in being the leader of a global research fraud in the pharmaceutical sector involving theft of pharmaceutical drug on Schizophrenic patients.

The General Medical Council ruling, which examined Dr. Sharma's research over 10 years, could force the pharmaceutical industry to re-examine the way in which research on psychiatric drugs is commissioned and conducted.

A report by the GMC's Fitness To Practise panel concluded this week that Dr Sharma had put mentally unwell patients at risk and ethical rules had been wilfully flouted.

Dr. Sharma (42), who trained in India, was a prominent psychiatrist who often appeared on the BBC and wrote books on mental illness.
Leading drug companies such as Novartis and Sanofi paid him from 1996 to conduct trials of anti-psychotic drugs on patients with schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease.


He worked as a consultant psychiatrist for the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust and recruited patients in Kent and parts of the capital for the research, according to reports.

His position at the institute helped him to secure funding, said to be almost one million pounds, from five drug companies. Most of the money was channelled through a private company that he had set up called Psychmed.

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry asked the GMC to examine his conduct two years ago after concerns that he had failed to obtain proper approval from ethical committees to conduct the tests.

These approvals are vital in any trial to protect the patients taking part.

Source-ANI
SRM/S

People With Diabetes Experience Faster Loss of Lung Capacity

A new study has cited that people with diabetes experience a faster loss of lung capacity as compared to those who do not have the disease, a finding that may have further implications for the potential use of inhaled insulin.


The lung research was essentially a part of a larger investigation known as the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, which confirmed previous indications that the lung is a target organ for diabetic injury and that lung abnormalities speed up once diabetes takes hold.

In an earlier study led by Dr. Fred Brancati, researchers established that decreased lung capacity precedes and may predict a diagnosis of diabetes. The new study also suggests that diminished lung function may contribute to diabetes morbidity and mortality.

In particular, the study discovered that people with type 2 diabetes encountered a more rapid decline in forced vital capacity, the measure of how well the lungs fill with air, than people who did not have diabetes. Although everyone experiences a decline in forced vital capacity with age, people with diabetes undergo a more rapid loss that shows before the diabetes diagnosis and accelerates after the disease sets in.

The researchers explained the reason behind this saying that it may be because high blood sugar levels harden the lung tissue or that the fat tissue in the chest and abdomen may confine the lungs more in people with diabetes.
Finally, they concluded the study with advice to clinicians to "pay heightened attention to pulmonary function in their patients with type 2 diabetes."


"Think of the lung as a crime victim who unwittingly abets the perpetrator to hasten the demise of the host," wrote Dr. Connie Hsia, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center's Department of Internal Medicine.

She suggested that the loss of pulmonary function could add to diabetic morbidity and mortality, and raised concerns about the potential use of inhaled insulin, since it may "trigger or exacerbate pulmonary dysfunction."

Of late, makers of inhaled insulin have pulled their products from the market owing to of poor sales or halted product investigations, though several companies continue to explore this type of insulin delivery.

"Manufacturers of inhaled insulin should find these data useful as they study potential long-term effects of their product on lung functionThe results suggest that doctors and patients should keep an eye on the literature about diabetes and the lung down the road, since there's a stronger connection than we previously thought," said Brancati.

The study is appearing in the latest issue of Diabetes Care.

Source-ANI
SRM/L

Bitter Melon Offers Sweet News to Diabetics

Bitter melon, a vegetable and traditional Chinese medicine, contains a powerful treatment for Type 2 diabetes, Sydney-based researchers have found.


The research team from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica pulped roughly a tonne of fresh bitter melon and extracted four very promising bioactive components.

These four compounds all appear to activate the enzyme AMPK, a protein well known for regulating fuel metabolism and enabling glucose uptake.

"We can now understand at a molecular level why bitter melon works as a treatment for diabetes," said Professor David James, Director of the Diabetes and Obesity Program at Garvan. "By isolating the compounds we believe to be therapeutic, we can investigate how they work together in our cells."

People with Type 2 diabetes have an impaired ability to convert the sugar in their blood into energy in their muscles. This is partly because they don’t produce enough insulin, and partly because their fat and muscle cells don’t use insulin effectively, a phenomenon known as ’insulin resistance’.

Exercise activates AMPK in muscle, which in turn mediates the movement of glucose transporters to the cell surface, a very important step in the uptake of glucose from the circulation into tissues in the body. This is a major reason that exercise is recommended as part of the normal treatment program for someone with Type 2 diabetes.

The four compounds isolated in bitter melon perform a very similar action to that of exercise, in that they activate AMPK.
Researchers Drs Jiming Ye and Nigel Turner both stress that while there are well known diabetes drugs on the market that also activate AMPK, they can have side effects.


"The advantage of bitter melon is that there are no known side effects. Practitioners of Chinese medicine have used it for hundreds of years to good effect," Ye said.

Professor Yang Ye, from the Shanghai Institute and a specialist in natural products chemistry, isolated the different fractions from bitter melon and identified the compounds of interest.

"Bitter melon was described as ’bitter in taste, non-toxic, expelling evil heat, relieving fatigue and illuminating’ in the famous Compendium of Materia Medica by Li Shizhen (1518-1593), one of the greatest physicians, pharmacologists and naturalists in China’s history," said Professor Ye.

"It is interesting, now that we have the technology, to analyse why it has been so effective," she added.

The study is published in the international journal Chemistry and Biology.

Source-ANI
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People With Schizophrenia Have Unique Genetic Mutations: Study

People with schizophrenia have high rates of rare genetic mutations which appear to disrupt the developing brain, according to a study released Thursday.


Individuals with the devastating mental condition have three and sometimes four times the number of rare genetic abnormalities that healthy individuals do, and more of them affect genes regulating brain function.

The abnormalities consist of duplicated or deleted strands of DNA and differ from person to person, so much so that the genetic fingerprint of the disease is unique for every individual.

"We speculate that most people with schizophrenia have a different genetic cause," said Mary-Claire King, professor of genome sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, who collaborated on the study.

"The mutations are individually rare, but share consequences downstream."

Schizophrenia is a chronic psychiatric disorder that afflicts about one percent of the population. People with the illness suffer from hallucinations, delusions, feelings of persecution and disorganized thinking.

Some of the symptoms can be managed with anti-psychotic medications, but there is no cure.

Prior to the publication of this study in Science, it was assumed that genetic studies like this one would trace the origins of the illness back to a cluster of common, or high frequency, genetic mutations.

But this paper suggests the genetic signature of schizophrenia, much like autism, is more complicated than that, involving dozens or even hundreds of genes, whose function has been disrupted by duplications or deletions of DNA.
For this paper, the researchers from University of Washington, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and the National Institutes of Health studied a relatively modest number of people: 150 individuals with schizophrenia and 268 healthy patients.


The study implicated 24 different genes in the disease, and yet virtually every single mutation or copy number variation was different, which suggests that studies of larger populations will implicate even larger number of genes.

Many copy number variations are benign, but the researchers looked only at rare abnormalities, and not only were they much more abundant in the people with the disorder, but a preponderance of them were in genes that affect communication between brain cells.

Specifically, 15 percent of schizophrenia patients who developed the illness as adults had these rare DNA errors versus just five percent of healthy controls.

The rate jumped to 20 percent among patients who had a more severe form of the illness that began in childhood or adolescence.

"This is an important new finding in the genetics of schizophrenia," said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

"Identifying genes prone to harbouring these mutations in brain development pathways holds promise for treatment and prevention of schizophrenia, as well as a wide range of other neurodevelopmental brain disorders."

Source-AFP
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Are E-mails and Text Messages Your Obsessions? You may Be Mentally Ill!

If you are one of those who send excessive emails and text messages, then chances are that you are suffering from a mental illness, according to a new research.


The new research suggests that people who leave office, only to log on to their PCs as soon as they reach home, could be suffering from another form of mental illness.

The article, by Dr Jerald Block, said there were four symptoms: suffering from feelings of withdrawal when a computer cannot be accessed; an increased need for better equipment; need for more time to use it; and experiencing the negative repercussions of their addiction.

Block said that although text messaging was not directly linked to the Internet, it was a form of instant messaging and needed to be included among the criteria.

"The chief reasons I see to consider it are motor vehicle accidents that are caused by cell phone instant messaging, stalking and harassment via instant messaging, and instant messaging at social, educational, (and) work functions where it creates problems," News.com.au quoted him, as saying.

"It should be a pervasive and problematic pattern, though, not isolated incidents," Block added.

The study is published in American Journal of Psychiatry.

Source-ANI
SPH/M

Breech Deliveries may Be Hereditary: Study

A baby is twice as likely to be born bottom-first if either or both of its parents themselves were also "breech" deliveries, according to a paper released on Friday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).


Fewer than five percent of births are breech delivery, which carries higher risks of mortality and health problems for the infant than for head-first births.

The known risk factors for breech births include if the baby is the mother's first child or if the mother has a contracted pelvis, is of high maternal age or has a uterine abnormality. What has been unclear, though, is whether there could be a genetic link.

Investigators from the University of Bergen in Norway pored over data for all the births in Norway between 1967 and 2004 and compared this with all the information available on men and women and their first-born children.

Pooled together, the datasets amounted to 232,000 mother-child comparisons and 154,000 father-chld comparisons.

The researchers found that men and men and women who had been breech-delivered ran more than twice the risk of breech delivery in their own first pregnancies. The risk was the same for men and women alike.

In addition, babies that had been delivered naturally, rather than by caesarean, were at the biggest risk of a breech delivery.

In an editorial, the BMJ said the research was interesting. But, it cautioned, more evidence was needed of a genetic link before doctors warned mothers of a higher risk of breech delivery if their parents had also been born bottom-first.

Source-AFP
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Viagra: Pros and Cons

Ten-years ago, on March 27,1998 to be precise, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first approved of Viagra, the blue pill that gave a new lease of life to men with erectile dysfunction.


There has been no looking back since then as Viagra went on to become part of “popular culture” and raked in millions for Pfizer, the company that introduced it.

In the first month of its release Viagra was prescribed 500,000 times.

An estimated 30 million men have been prescribed the drug so far and statistics show that millions more have taken it without a prescription.

Other companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer came up with Levitra and El Lilly while ICOS came up with Cialis.

None of these drugs have come close to even match the record sale of Viagra, leave alone beating it.

According to health experts normal people should not take the drug just for sexual pleasure.

Also people who are already on nitrates, the drugs prescribed to lower the blood pressure, should not take Viagra because there are chances of their blood pressure dropping drastically.

Viagra is known to trigger side effects like headaches, facial flushing, stomach disorder, bluish vision, blurred vision and sometimes sensitivity to light.

According to statistics provided by Pfizer, an average of about three Viagra tablets were dispensed each second between its launch and the end of last year.

The drug was tested in over 120 clinical trials involving more than 16,000 men.

Viagra was also tested in roughly 3,000 women as a potential treatment for sexual arousal disorders. These trials were "inconclusive," and in 2004, Pfizer announced that it had stopped them.

Source-Medindia
THK/L

Are TV Quiz Shows a Bad Influence On Kids?

TV quiz shows might be keeping you at the edge of your couch but they're a bad influence on kids and are fuelling bullying in schools, warn UK teachers.




Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of England's National Union of Teachers (NUT), said that he was stunned by some of the 'cruel" insults celebrities dished out to each other on the TV shows.

He warned that kids ape the abusive behaviour of celebs they see on programmes like - 'Never Mind The Buzzcocks' and 'They Think It's All Over' and, use 'grossly offensive and sexist' language in the playground.

"We've drawn attention to the appalling language of some young people which is often directed at each other and their teachers," The Scotsman quoted Sinnott, as saying.

"This language is too often grossly offensive and sexist," he added.

Sinnott accused television shows for allowing bad language to be broadcast and encouraging pupils to bully each other over their size.

"Too often such cruel behaviour can be seen on television programmes like Never Mind The Buzzcocks. When I watch that programme, I am quite shocked at the personal nature of some of the attacks by celebrities on other celebrities.

"We are promoting a type of speaking to each other that diminishes other people.

"I think it's being picked up by other youngsters who are developing it and are, I think, exceeding norms of decency," he added.

Source-ANI
SPH/L

Are Fat Women Discriminated?

Discrimination against fat people, particularly women, is as common as racial bias, says a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.


According to study's lead author, Rebecca Puhl, the study shows the need to treat weight discrimination as a legitimate form of prejudice, comparable to other characteristics like race or gender that already receive legal protection.

"These results show the need to treat weight discrimination as a legitimate form of prejudice, comparable to other characteristics like race or gender that already receive legal protection," said Puhl.

The study documented the prevalence of self-reported weight discrimination and compared it to experiences of discrimination based on race and gender among a nationally representative sample of adults aged 25- to 74-years-old.

For the research, the data was obtained from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States.

The study also revealed that women are twice as likely as men to report weight discrimination and that weight discrimination in the workplace and interpersonal mistreatment due to obesity is common.

The researchers found that men are not at serious risk for weight bias until their body mass index (BMI) reaches 35 or higher, while women begin experiencing a notable increase in weight discrimination risk at a BMI level of 27.

BMI (Body Mass Index) is the measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Co-author Tatiana Andreyava of Yale said weight discrimination is more prevalent than discrimination based on sexual orientation, nationality/ethnicity, physical disability, and religious beliefs.


"However, despite its high prevalence, it continues to remain socially acceptable," she said.

The study is published in International Journal of Obesity.

Source-ANI
SPH/M

Cabinet Approves Establishment of Ayurveda, Homeopathy Institute in Shillong

The Union Cabinet today approved the establishment of the North Eastern Institute of Ayurveda and Homoeopathy in Shillong as an autonomous organization under the Department of AYUSH at a cost of Rs. 67.51 crore.


The decision will facilitate promotion of Ayurveda and Homoeopathy, the expansion of health care, improvement in the doctor-population ratio and R and D on bio-resources in the North East.

There are a total of 225 Ayurveda colleges and 181 Homoeopathy colleges in the country, out of which only one Ayurvedic College in Assam and three Homoeopathy colleges in Assam and Arunachal pradesh are in the North East.

There are no teaching institutions in other States of the North East, even though there is considerable demand for Ayurveda and Homoeopathic systems in North Eastern States.

Shillong is a central place in the north East where students and patients from the other North Eastern states can avail the facilities of Ayurveda and Homoeopathy in the proposed institute.

Source-ANI
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Indian School Student Thrashed by Teacher Dies

A 15-year-old school student, thrashed by her teacher, died in New Delhi on Wednesday.


Rinki Kaushik, a student of class X had been battling her injuries for more than three months.

Doctors said, "She had been suffering from a major complication in the brain which was aggravated due to the assault. We operated on her to treat the problem. For some time, she even responded. However, the prolonged illness left her immune system weak and she developed major chest complications while at the hospital. She was on ventilator from February 26."

Rinki’s father Naresh Kumar has charged that Dheerendra, a teacher in the Dinkar National Model School in the Indian capital had thrashed her mercilessly for not taking tuition from him. He is also the son of the school principal.

“Rinki initially took private tuitions from Dheerendra, who taught Mathematics and English for Rs 400. We discontinued the tuition since he was not good,” said Kumar.

Thereafter Dheerendra constantly snubbed the girl, according to the First Information Report (FIR) lodged with the police.

The situation took an ugly turn on November 3. “When she raised a doubt in the class, Dheerendra taunted her saying that she could consult her private tuition teacher and Rinki retorted saying he had better answer because she was paying the school fees,” said Kumar.

An enraged Dheerendra slapped the girl and hit her with a stick repeatedly. She fell unconscious when she received blows on her head.
“Seeing her collapse, Dheerendra asked the other students to go home and the school was closed abruptly. My daughter was locked inside the classroom till she regained consciousness,” said Kumar.


Dheerendra and the school principal then allegedly threatened to ruin the girl’s career if she discussed the incident with anyone.

The girl initially told her parents that she was down with fever. Her condition deteriorated within a week, and her parents took her to a private hospital where tests revealed that a vein in her brain had been damaged, leading to a clot.

“We admitted her in Maharaja Agrasen Hospital where she underwent an operation on January 7,” said Kumar. She was in the ICU ever since.

Kumar leased his house to raise money for her treatment. He lodged a police complaint and even wrote to the state Education Minister and the Joint Commissioner of Police, following which only a case was registered, a month after the incident.
Dheerendra has since then been absconding.

The school though claims that that the girl has died of an old injury received in an accident.

Source-Medindia
GPL/L

Biologists Shed Light on How Deadly Virus Becomes Infectious

Biologists have mapped how a deadly class of viruses including dengue, West Nile, yellow fever and encephalitis become infectious in a pair of studies published in the journal Science.


"This is possibly the most detailed understanding of how any virus matures," said study author Michael Rossmann of Purdue University in Indiana.

Rossmann and his colleagues detailed critical structural changes that take place as the dengue virus moves from the inner to the outer portions of its host cell.

The findings pertain to all viruses in the family of flaviviruses which are carried by mosquitoes and ticks.

They found that a protein which coats the genome of the virus particle undergoes large changes in its structure so that it becomes capable of fusing with cell membranes.

This structural change, which occurs as the virus is being secreted from its host, allows the protein to infect other cells rather than attaching itself to its host.

"It's like a bird being pushed out of the nest and suddenly being able to fly," Rossmann said in a telephone interview.

This transformation occurs as the virus is exposed to progressively less acidic conditions which change the protein structure in its outer shell.

"This change in acidity was already known, but its impact on the maturation process was not known until these new findings," Rossmann said.

This discovery could help researchers develop an antiviral treatment for dengue fever, which infects more than 50 million people and kills about 24,000 each year.


"There are a number of places where small drug compounds might interfere with the changes which we describe," he told AFP.


A vaccine has not yet been developed for dengue fever because multiple exposures can actually increase the risk of developing the more deadly dengue dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Source-AFP
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Genetic Variant That Predisposes People to Tuberculosis Identified

A genetic variant that predisposes people to developing a lethal form of tuberculosis (TB), tuberculous meningitis, if they are infected with a strain of TB known as the Beijing strain has been identified by the researchers working in Vietnam.


The research underlines the importance of studying both sides of the complex host-pathogen interaction and its role in susceptibility to disease.

TB, which kills over 2 million people each year, is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is estimated that well over 2 million people are infected with M. tuberculosis, though the majority will never show symptoms.

Some will develop a latent infection, with symptoms only showing if they become sick or immunocompromised, for example through HIV infection.

A small number will develop an active TB infection, usually in their lungs, occasionally progressing to "disseminated TB" - a condition in which failure of the immune system to control the infection allows its spread to other parts of the body.

Some of the risk factors that determine whether individuals develop active TB following exposure are well known; these include HIV infection, malnutrition and smoking.

In the study, Caws and her colleagues have shown that the predisposition to developing TB meningitis appears to be strongest in people who carry the variant of TLR2 and who are infected with the specific Beijing strain of TB.

"We are seeing an increasing number of cases of the Beijing strain worldwide, a strain that is becoming more and more resistant to drugs," said Dr Caws.


"Our findings are important because they show that we need to look at both the patient's susceptibility to the disease and the genetics of the pathogen that is infecting them at the same time. Many studies have shown a genetic association with disease in one population but the finding has not been repeated in different populations. This might be not only because of ethnic differences in the population, but also because the pathogen populations are different.


"Understanding the mechanisms that influence our susceptibility to infectious diseases may allow us to develop more sophisticated and targeted treatments and vaccines. This is particularly important in this era of emerging 'untreatable' bacterial infections due to antibiotic resistance," she added.

The study has been published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

Source-ANI
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Does the Human Nose Sniff Lurking Danger?

Your nose is a quick learner when it comes to the thousands of scents it encounters in its daily travels. Now, researchers have found that emotion plays a huge part when it comes to differentiating between similar smells.


Northwestern University researchers proved the surprising connection by giving volunteers electric shocks while they sniffed novel odours.

The study shows that a single negative experience linked to an odour rapidly teaches us to identify that odour and discriminate it from similar ones.

"It's evolutionary. This helps us to have a very sensitive ability to detect something that is important to our survival from an ocean of environmental information. It warns us that it's dangerous and we have to pay attention to it," said Wen Li, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at the Feinberg School.

In the study, subjects were exposed to a pair of grassy smells which were nearly identical in their chemical makeup and perceptually indistinguishable.

The subjects received an electrical shock when they were exposed to one scent, but not when they were exposed to the other similar one.

After being shocked, the subjects learned to discriminate between the two similar smells. This illustrates the tremendous power of the human sense of smell to learn from emotional experience.

Odours that once were impossible to tell apart became easy to identify when followed by an aversive event.


The research team also found specific changes in how odour information is stored in "primitive" olfactory regions of the brain, enhancing perceptual sensitivity for smells that have a high biological relevance.


The study is published in the journal Science.

Source-ANI
SPH/M

B Vitamin Folate can Help Blunt Damaging Effects of Heart Stroke

Eating leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts not only keeps the heart healthy but the B vitamin folate found in them also help blunt the damaging effects of heart stroke, says a new study.


According to the study, the B vitamin folate was found to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals.

In the new study, which was conducted by an international team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere, rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements.

On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth.

Lead investigator An Moens, M.D., suggests that folate acts as an energy reserve in the heart, “providing much needed energy for muscle contraction, in the form of ATP, at the same time the heart is being starved for oxygen-carrying blood by a blocked artery.”

According to Moens, a postdoctoral cardiology research fellow at Johns Hopkins, study results showed that high-energy phosphate levels went down 43 percent in the blood of treated rats, but levels dropped by one-third more in untreated rats.

“With more fuel, the heart kept pumping even though its blood flow was reduced. The smaller heart attacks seemed related to this better energy balance in the heart produced by the folate,” Moens said.


In the study, heart function was monitored by more than two dozen key tests, such as echocardiogram and magnetic resonance imaging, as well as by blood analysis before, during and after the heart attack, when blood flow was allowed to resume in the coronary artery that had been blocked.


Among the research team’s other findings that backed up the protective effects of folate on the heart were mild, slight dips in systolic blood pressure during heart attack in treated rats, while pressure fell in untreated animals by 25 percent.

Similarly, blood flow was stable in the treated group, but dropped by 40 percent in untreated animals. Post-heart attack buildup of dangerous chemicals, known as reactive oxygen species, was halved in treated rats. And fatal arrhythmias, unstable heartbeats that can immediately follow a heart attack, also went down from 36.7 percent to 8.3 percent in the supplement-fed group.

“We want to emphasize that it is premature for people to begin taking high doses of folic acid,” said senior study investigator David Kass, M.D., a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute.

“Folic acid is already well known to be safe to consume in high doses in the short term, and it is very inexpensive, costing pennies per milligram, so its prospects look promising. But if human studies prove equally effective, then high-dose folate could be given to high-risk groups to guard against possible heart attack or to people while they are having one,” said Kass.

The more likely and most practical advantage to ingesting supplements, he said, lies in folic acid’s potential to act as a short-term buffer for people who may be having a heart attack and who rush to their local emergency room complaining of chest pain.

He cautioned, “we do not yet know if folate is safe to consume in this high a dose, or how much or how little of it is needed to be effective,” citing 25 milligrams per day as the highest dose previously tested safe to consume in adults as.

Kass said that such large amount of folate may also yield unpredictable side effects.

The study is published in the journal Circulation.

Source-ANI
SRM/L

Two Brazil Nuts a Day may Protect You from Wide Range of Diseases

Otago University scientists say that eating two Brazil nuts everyday may help reduce the risk of a wide range of conditions, including cancer and heart disease.


Professor Christine Thomson says that Brazil nuts may provide such beneficial health effects by helping maintain the levels of selenium, a trace mineral essential for producing antioxidant enzymes and other proteins that protect cells from damage.

The researcher, who led the first ever research into how much of the essential micronutrient people can obtain from Brazil nuts, pointed out that people in New Zealand generally had "marginal" selenium levels because the soil was deficient in selenium.

"There is mounting evidence that a marginal selenium status can lead to an increased risk for a range of conditions, including cancer and cardiovascular disease," stuff.co.nz quoted her as saying.

During the study, described in the American Clinical Journal of Nutrition, 60 volunteers were divided into three groups - one ate two Brazil nuts a day, one received a 100 microgram selenium supplement, and one was given a placebo.

After 12 weeks, the researchers observed a 64.2 per cent increase in the blood selenium concentrations among participants who ate Brazil nuts, compared with 61 per cent in the selenium supplement group.

Upon measuring the activity levels of a key antioxidant, the researchers noted that the Brazil nut eaters' levels went up by 13.2 per cent, compared with 5.3 per cent in the supplement group.


The study report says that research is underway to investigate the link between low selenium levels and higher rates of cancer and heart disease.


"Kiwi farmers have been feeding selenium supplements to their cattle for years ... but it's only in the past few years that people have cottoned on to the fact it might be good for them too," Wellington Nut Store co-owner David Upchurch said.

Source-ANI
SRM/L

French Disfigured Woman Died After Taking Barbiturates Overdose: Prosecutor

A severely disfigured French woman, found dead this month after a court rejected her request for euthanasia, took a lethal overdose of barbiturates, a prosecutor said on Thursday.


Former schoolteacher Chantal Sebire, 52, asked for the right to die to alleviate the suffering caused by a rare and incurable tumour, which deformed her face, causing her to lose her eyesight and the senses of smell and taste.

Her body was found at her home in eastern France on March 19, two days after a high court decided current French law did not allow her doctor to prescribe her lethal drugs.

"We can say that Mrs Sebire did not die of natural causes, as shown by the autopsy, but from absorbing a lethal dose of barbiturate," prosecutor Jean-Pierre Alacchi told reporters in the eastern city of Dijon.

Post-mortem tests revealed "the presence in the blood of a toxic concentration of barbiturate, Pentobarbital... (at) three times the lethal level for this product," he said.

Pentobarbital is commonly used for animal euthanasia and can be legally prescribed for assisted human suicide in Switzerland, Belgium and the US state of Oregon.

Investigators were trying to establish how Sebire obtained the drug, which is not delivered by French pharmacies, to establish whether her death was a case of suicide or assisted suicide.

Chantal Sebire's lawyer Gilles Antonowicz said she "put an end to her own suffering, she delivered herself, but I do not want to talk of suicide, because that was not Mrs Sebire's intention."


Sebire's case prompted doctors, politicians and intellectuals to call for a national debate on a change to French law to allow assisted suicide or euthanasia in exceptional cases.


In her request to the high court, Sebire had said she wanted to put an end to "atrocious suffering" and an irreversible worsening of her condition, called an esthesioneuroblastoma.

The mother-of-three had said she would not appeal the decision and that she would find life-terminating drugs through other means.

Before-and-after pictures of Sebire, along with her account of frightened children who ran away at the sight of her, attracted a strong outpouring of sympathy in France.

French legislation adopted in 2005 allows families to request that life-support equipment for a terminally-ill patient be switched off, but does not allow a doctor to take action to end a patient's life.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are the only European Union countries that currently allow active euthanasia.

Source-AFP
SRM/L

Pregnancies Over Summer Could Lead to Healthier Babies: Japanese Study

A Kyoto University Hospital studied more than 1100 newborns in Japanese hospitals and observed that pregnancies over winter could lead to problems in babies.


Dr Tohru Yorifuji who led the research team said, “Craniotabes, the softening of skull bones, in otherwise normal newborns has largely been regarded as a physiological condition without the need for treatment.”

“Our findings, however, show that this untreated condition may be the result of a potentially dangerous vitamin D deficiency.”

The researchers found that 22 per cent of babies studied had craniotabes. It was also observed that the incidence of craniotabes was highest in babies born in April-May. Since these babies were carried in the womb in the winter months it is possible that their mothers lacked enough vitamin D, which is absorbed from sunlight.

Babies born in November had the lowest incidence of craniotabes, possibly because their mothers had a steady supply of vitamin D in the summer months when they carried the babies in their wombs.

“Otherwise, the incidence of craniotabes was not significantly related with the maternal age, number of pregnancies, birth weight, or weeks of pregnancies,” said the researchers.

Dr Yorifuji said mothers should take care to ensure that their babies get sufficient vitamin D while feeding.

“Until more research is done on the effects of perinatal vitamin D deficiency, we suggest treating breast-fed infants with craniotabes with vitamin D, or preferably, treating all pregnant women with vitamin D,” Dr Yorifuji said.

According to the research paper to be published in the May edition of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, persistent vitamin D deficiency can lead to skeletal problems, as well as to higher risks of diabetes and colon cancer.

Source-Medindia
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