Showing posts with label ft1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ft1. Show all posts
Women reach orgasm with oral sex while men with vaginal intercourse
Men are more likely to orgasm when sex includes vaginal intercourse and women are more likely to orgasm when they engage in a variety of sex acts, the new study has revealed.. Read Full Story
Bad fat could decline memory
For instance, a `bad` fat such as saturated fat or trans fat, known to be damaging to cardiac health, was also linked to worse overall cognitive function and memory in women over time.
Conversely, a `good` fat or mono-unsaturated fat was lined with better overall cognitive function and memory, the journal Annals of Neurology reported.
The research team from Brigham and Women`s Hospital (BWH), analyzed data from the Women`s Health Study-comprising nearly 40,000 women, 45 years and older. They focused on data from a subset of 6,000 women, aged over 65 years.
Women who consumed the highest amounts of saturated fat, which can come from red meat and butter, compared to those who consumed the lowest amounts, had worse overall cognition and memory over the four years of testing.
Women who ate the most of the mono-unsaturated fats, found in olive oil, had better patterns of cognitive scores over time, said a university statement.
"When looking at changes in cognitive function, what we found is that the total amount of fat intake did not really matter, but the type of fat did," explained Olivia Okereke, psychiatrist from Brigham Hospital.
"Our findings have significant public health implications," said Okereke.
"Substituting in the good fat in place of the bad fat is a fairly simple dietary modification that could help prevent decline in memory," added Okereke.
And vigorous bursts of physical activity also have the effect of killing your appetite, whereas longer workouts can leave you wanting to eat more.
This means people keen to lose weight would be less likely to be tempted to snack on unhealthy treats if they ditched the gym and went for a short brisk walk. HIT sessions can include running, riding a bike or walking.
"HIT is really good at improving glucose uptake into the muscles in a very, very short time," Professor James Timmons, leading the research at Birmingham, said.
"With really intense exercise, you release hormones that can help break down fat. This may help burn that fat over time, after HIT is done. Also, we think, but don`t know, that HIT will subdue appetite, while traditional exercise will stimulate appetite. This last point is key and will be researched by our team," he stated.
Sedentary office-goers face doubled clot-risk
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| shutterstock |
ISLAMABAD: Sedentary routine of young office goers may be doubling their risk of suffering from a dangerous blood clot, according to a new survey.
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT), linked to cramped long-haul flights, can affect anyone who sits for prolonged periods without getting up to move around. DVT is a blood clot that forms in a deep vein, most commonly in your leg or pelvis.
It may cause no symptoms at all or cause swelling, redness and pain. If a clot becomes dislodged and passes through the blood vessels, it can reach the lungs. Symptoms include coughing, chest pain and breathlessness and can be fatal.
A survey of 1,000 people under 30 years found that young office-goers sat still for an average of three hours and three quarters, and ate lunch at their desk instead of taking the opportunity to move around, which would reduce their risk of a clot, the Telegraph reports.
For every hour spent sitting, the risk of a blood clot increases by 10 percent and there are around 60,000 potentially fatal blood clots recorded in Britain each year, according to research the survey conducted by lifeblood, a British charity.
Richard Beasley, director of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, said: "People know that a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease in later life."
"However, very few are aware of the fact that prolonged immobility in the workplace also poses an immediate threat, more than doubling the risk of developing a potentially fatal blood clot. It is vital that this potential risk is recognised in both the office and at home," he added.
Beverley Hunt, medical director of the thrombosis charity Lifeblood, said: "Our research has uncovered a ticking time-bomb with some nine million office workers and countless young gamers putting themselves at risk of a potentially fatal blood clot. The human body is designed for the `caveman` lifestyle; active, agile and constantly mobile. Instead, we have become increasingly sedentary."(Online news pk)
Italians snarl away a levy on cats, dogs
Italy was abuzz for hours after local media reported that a parliamentary commission had proposed a tax on domestic "animals of affection" to raise revenue for debt-strapped cities and towns.
Protests were voiced by everyone from animal rights groups - who said it would prompt more people to abandon animals - to politicians who called it everything from "grotesque" to "surreal" to "idiotic" to "shameful".
There was so much reaction - all of it incredulous - that one Italian agency ran nearly 40 news items on the proposal in less than four hours.
The proposal was withdrawn by early Friday evening however, and it seemed everyone on the commission where it was discussed was denying its paternity.
"The only thing that's left to tax are wives and children," said parliamentarian Domenico Scilipoti.
Italy, like many other countries across the euro zone, is struggling to revive its economy and reduce its public debt, a predicament that has prompted the country's lawmakers to try to dream up new revenue-raising measures. (Reuters)
Binging on sweets may make you stupid
But the good news is omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption.
“Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of integrative biology and physiology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science.
“Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage,” he said.
While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.
The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food.
“We’re not talking about naturally occurring fructose in fruits, which also contain important antioxidants. We’re concerned about high-fructose corn syrup that is added to manufactured food products as a sweetener and preservative,” explained Gomez-Pinilla, who is also a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute and Brain Injury Research Center. “”
Gomez-Pinilla and study co-author Rahul Agrawal, a UCLA visiting postdoctoral fellow from India, studied two groups of rats that each consumed a fructose solution as drinking water for six weeks. The second group also received omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which protects against damage to the synapses — the chemical connections between brain cells that enable memory and learning.
“DHA is essential for synaptic function — brain cells’ ability to transmit signals to one another. This is the mechanism that makes learning and memory possible. Our bodies can’t produce enough DHA, so it must be supplemented through our diet,” explained Gomez-Pinilla.
The animals were fed standard rat chow and trained on a maze twice daily for five days before starting the experimental diet. The UCLA team tested how well the rats were able to navigate the maze, which contained numerous holes but only one exit. The scientists placed visual landmarks in the maze to help the rats learn and remember the way.
Six weeks later, the researchers tested the rats’ ability to recall the route and escape the maze. What they saw surprised them.
“The second group of rats navigated the maze much faster than the rats that did not receive omega-3 fatty acids. The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats’ ability to think clearly and recall the route they’d learned six weeks earlier,” Gomez-Pinilla said.
The DHA-deprived rats also developed signs of resistance to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar and regulates synaptic function in the brain. A closer look at the rats’ brain tissue suggested that insulin had lost much of its power to influence the brain cells.
“Because insulin can penetrate the blood–brain barrier, the hormone may signal neurons to trigger reactions that disrupt learning and cause memory loss,” Gomez-Pinilla said.
He suspects that fructose is the culprit behind the DHA-deficient rats’ brain dysfunction. Eating too much fructose could block insulin’s ability to regulate how cells use and store sugar for the energy required for processing thoughts and emotions.
“Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning. Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new,” he said.
If you still want to indulge in a hot-fudge sundae, then also eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids, like salmon, walnuts and flaxseeds, or take a daily DHA capsule. Gomez-Pinilla recommends one gram of DHA per day.
“Our findings suggest that consuming DHA regularly protects the brain against fructose’s harmful effects. It’s like saving money in the bank. You want to build a reserve for your brain to tap when it requires extra fuel to fight off future diseases,” said Gomez-Pinilla.
The findings have been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology in its May 15 edition.(online news pk)
Japan: Fugitive penguin spotted alive
But the one-year-old Humboldt penguin has now popped up on video footage in a different part of the bay, frolicking in the water and apparently healthy.
The penguin, still too young to determine whether it is male or female and thus known only by a number, scaled a rock wall four meters (13 ft) high and squeezed through a barbed wire fence to escape its harborside aquarium in March.
"You can see it's got the same ring around its flipper and identical facial patterns," said Kazuhiro Sakamoto, deputy director of the Tokyo Sea Life Park, when shown footage of the tubby escapee taken by Japan's Coast Guard.
"It didn't look like it has gotten thinner over the past two months, or been without food. It doesn't seem to be any weaker. So it looks as if it's been living quite happily in the middle of Tokyo Bay."
Penguin 337 was filmed earlier this month near Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge.
In the days following the penguin's escape, the aquarium launched a city-wide appeal for tips on its whereabouts and sent keepers on daily penguin-hunts throughout the bay area.
They received hundreds of sighting reports, some from as far away as western Japan, but Sakamoto said most had probably mistaken cormorants for the flightless penguin. Only about 30 of the reports were thought genuine.
Tokyo Bay is a crowded and busy body of water bordering the densely-populated city, and the area around the aquarium consists of high-rise apartment buildings and concrete.
Many people had worried that the water was too dirty for the bird to stay healthy. More recently, reports of rising radiation levels in the bay have prompted concern.
"They say there's radiation in there, so I've got my fingers crossed that it can live in Tokyo Bay safely," said local resident Tateki Futagami.
The bird is probably gorging on small fish in the bay during daylight hours and returning to the shore at night to rest somewhere along the bay, keepers said.
The penguin, hatched in 2011, had shared life in a rocky outdoor enclosure at the aquarium with 135 other Humboldts and a number of other penguins prior to its escape. Sakamoto attributed its flight to a sense of adventure. (Reuters)
Shock-seekers grab new Aussie art dare
SYDNEY: Smelling excrement may not be everyone's idea of fun, but for those who like to push the boundaries, Australia's most controversial new museum may be just what they are looking for.
Dubbed "the subversive adult Disneyland", the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is located in Tasmania and features around 400 works of art from Egyptian mummies to Young British Artists including Chris Ofili and Jenny Saville.
But the most talked-about piece is the Cloaca Professional, labeled the "poo-machine." It was built by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye to mimic the actions of the human digestive system.
A series of glass receptacles hang in a row with the machine being "fed" twice a day on one end. The food is ground up "naturally," the way it is in the human body, and the device produces feces on the clock at 2 pm at the other end.
The smell is so powerful that not many visitors can take it.
"It put me off because of the overwhelming assault on the senses," said Diane Malnic, a Sydney-based accountant.
Yet this was her second visit in five months, following a family holiday in Tasmania earlier in the year. This time, she flew without her husband and children just to have another look at the collection, interested in Delvoye's other pieces.
She took great care to avoid the "smelly" parts and still talked vividly about the "vomit room" which was part of an earlier exhibit no longer on display.
"I wouldn't go back to see them," she said, laughing.
The Cloaca is part of a series of at least five similar machines built by the artist, another of which will soon be exhibited at the Louvre. It is the most hated piece in the museum but also the most visited.
The museum, which opened in January 2011, is owned by eccentric and philanthropist David Walsh, who made his fortune as a professional gambler, and features one of the largest private art collections in the world with an estimated value of around A$100 million.
Its motto is to shock, offend, inform and entertain.
"It definitely challenges your interpretation of what art is," said Malnic.
Pieces include Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary, which features elephant dung and porn-magazine cutouts of genitals. It caused controversy in 1996, with then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani reportedly describing Ofili's work as "sick".
Another much-talked-about piece is the Matrix by Jenny Saville, a full-frontal large painting of a naked transgender man with his modified genitals exposed.
"It's confronting," said Margarita Silva, a Melbourne-based dentist making during her third trip to the MONA.
Detractors argue that some of the pieces don't belong to a museum, which is also what Malnic initially thought. But upon reflection, she said the Cloaca machine opened her mind and argued that perhaps it was the future of art.
For Silva, her favorites were a soundproof room of 30 Madonna fans who were individually filmed singing a capella the artist's Immaculate Collection album. The other was a waterfall with droplets spelling out a series of words.
Keeping with the MONA's sensibility, none of its art work is grouped or chronological, leaving viewers to walk at random.
"Overall, it's a fantastic experience," said Silva. (Reuters)
Eating in front of TV drives snacking
ISLAMABAD: Eating while watching TV can cause you to gorge on more snacks.The findings suggest that having formal meals at a table rather than grabbing food while on the run or in front of a TV could help dieters to cut down on unhealthy snacking.
Suzanne Higgs, psychologist who led the research at the University of Birmingham, said focusing on the flavour and texture of food while eating seemed to be the best way to decrease snacking.
"We think it is linked to memory and the way it influences our food intake. When we are making decisions about what we are going to eat, we are unconsciously factoring in information from our memories about what our last meal was," said Higgs, according to the Telegraph.
"The reason why people ate more later after watching television was because it impaired the encoding of that meal into their memory," said Higgs.
Volunteers were asked to eat a sandwich and crisps for lunch before being offered biscuits in a tasting session later in the afternoon.
One group was asked to think about the flavour, texture and smell of the food as they ate while another group were given an article about food to read. The third group were left to eat their food without any tasks.
Members of the group who were left to eat without instructions and those who had been reading ate around two and a half more biscuits on average than those who were asked to concentrate on the taste of their lunch.(Online News pk)
Gene harms brain decades before Alzheimer's outbreak
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| Photo: iStockphoto.com. |
In 1993, researchers discovered a gene known as ApoE4 -- carried by about a quarter of us -- that triples the risk for getting Alzheimer's.
In 2009, three more risky genes were discovered, and one of them, called clusterin or CLU, was found to up the risk of getting Alzheimer's by 16 percent.
Now, University of California Los Angeles researchers say that CLU begins to damage your brain a full 50 years before Alzheimer's shows up, the Journal of Neuroscience reports.
Paul Thompson, professor of neurology and his colleagues at California report that the C-allele of the CLU gene (one of two or more forms of a gene), impairs the development of myelin, the protective covering around the neuron's (brain cell) axons, making it more vulnerable to the onset of Alzheimer's much later in life.
Researchers scanned the brains of 398 healthy adults ranging from 20 to 30 years using a newer type of MRI that maps the brain's connections, according to a California statement.
They compared those carrying a C-allele variant of the CLU gene with those who had a different variant.
They found that young, healthy carriers of the CLU-C gene risk variant showed a distinct profile of a kind of white matter that may increase susceptibility to developing the Alzheimer's disease later in life.(Online news pk)
Know Various Types of Breast Lumps
2. Fibroadenomas - Are firm rubbery tumors that are commonly experienced by women aging 20s to 30s. The condition is benign and considered a common type of breast lump that appears as pre-menopausal signs. The tumors are easy to identify due to they easily move underneath the skins once they are touched. They are does not cause pain to sufferers. 3. Lipomas - They are fatty tumors situated between the muscle and skin below the breast part. These are slow growing tumors that are usually experienced by older and middle aged women. The lumps are soft and moving underneath the skin once they are touched. These are also another kind of breast lump that do not require treatment but once removed gives hurting feeling. 4. Mastitis - This is a breast tissue virus causing redness, swelling and pain. The lumps are common to women who just gave birth and breastfed. The condition is triggered by bacteria passing through a certain cut within the breast part. Even if the lumps appear serious, but the truth is that the condition vanishes rapidly once it is cured by oral antibiotics. These are the non-cancerous types of breast lumps. Even if most of the time lumps are not consider as life threatening still, it is very important to ask the help of a doctor, once there are breast lumps observed. Women should keep in mind that breast lumps could also result to malignant tumors resulting to curable by life frightening disease called breast cancer. So, as early as possible, visit the expert during the fist occurrence of the lumps.
Source: Base Articles
Author:Peter Naruka
A safer, effective option to treat brain cancer
ISLAMABAD: Scientists have developed a new way to avoid virus, potential complications in gene therapy—by using nanoparticles that can be freeze-dried and stored for up to three months prior to use."Most nonviral gene therapy methods have very low efficacy," says Jordan Green, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins.
"Nanoparticle-based gene therapy has the potential to be both safer and more effective than conventional chemical therapies for the treatment of cancer."
To develop the nanoparticle, Green''s team started with store-bought small molecules and systematically mixed combinations together to generate chemical reactions that resulted in different polymers.
They then mixed DNA that encodes a glowing protein with each different polymer to allow the DNA to bind to the polymers and form nanoparticles.
Each different sample was added to human brain tumor cells and human brain tumor stem cells.
After 48 hours, the team examined and counted how many cells glowed from having taken up the nanoparticles and made the glowing protein encoded by the introduced DNA. The team rated success by counting how many cells survived and what percentage of those cells glowed.
Of the many combinations they tested, the researchers found that one particular formulation of so-called poly(beta-amino ester) nanoparticles did particularly well at getting into both glioblastoma and brain tumor stem cells.
The researchers then freeze-dried these nanoparticles and stored them at different temperatures (freezer, refrigerator and room temperature) for different lengths of time (one, two and up to three months), and then retested their ability to get into cells.
According to Green, after six months storage, the effectiveness dropped by about half, but they found that up to three months storage at room temperature there was virtually no change in effectiveness.
Furthermore, the team found that certain nanoparticles had a particular affinity for brain tumor cells over healthy brain cells.
The study will be published in the journal(Online news pk)
A glass of milk could contain painkillers
ISLAMABAD: Scientists have found that a glass of milk may contain up to 20 painkillers, antibiotics and growth hormones.
Through a highly sensitive test, scientists found a host of chemicals used to treat illnesses in animals and people in samples of cow, goat and human breast milk, Daily Mail reported.
Though the doses of drugs were far too little to create an effect on anyone drinking them, the results highlight how man-made chemicals were now found throughout the food chain.
The highest quantities of medicines were found in cow's milk.
Researchers believe some of the drugs and growth promoters were given to the cattle, or got into milk through cattle feed or contamination on the farm.
A Spanish-Moroccan team analysed 20 samples of cow's milk bought in Spain and Morocco, along with samples of goat and breast milk.
Their breakdown, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, revealed that cow's milk contained traces of anti-inflammatory drugs niflumic acid, mefenamic acid and ketoprofen - commonly used as painkillers in animals and people.
It also contained the hormone 17-beta-estradiol, a form of the sex hormone oestrogen.
The researchers claim their new 30-minute test is the most sensitive of its kind. If the findings are true for Spanish and Moroccan milk, they could equally be true for milk produced in Britain and northern Europe
Bikini Hockey League with comparisons to Lingerie Football League
The first sign that the Bikini Hockey League is going to offer excellent competition and players with extraordinary skill is that it's being created for a reality television program. Read Full story
Breastfeeding Mom On 'TIME Magazine' Cover
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