Oppressive China's Air Pollution seriously impacting World's Weather and Health

Satellite photo shows huge air pollution clouds at far left. Japan is on the right. (Credit: JPL / NASA)

Extreme air pollution in China is impacting the world's weather and climate patterns, according to a study by Texas A&M University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers.

Yuan Wang

Yuan Wang, a former doctoral student at Texas A&M, along with Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professors Renyi Zhang and R. Saravanan, have had their findings published in the current issue of Nature Communications.

Using climate models and data collected about aerosols and meteorology over the past 30 years, the researchers found that air pollution over Asia, coming from China, is seriously impacting global air circulations.

Renyi Zhang

"The models clearly show that pollution originating from Asia has an impact on the upper atmosphere and it appears to make such storms or cyclones even stronger," Zhang explains.

"This pollution affects cloud formations, precipitation, storm intensity and other factors and eventually impacts climate."

"Most likely, pollution from Asia can have important consequences on the weather pattern here over North America."

China's booming economy during the last 30 years has led to the building of enormous manufacturing factories, industrial plants, power plants and other facilities that produce huge amounts of air pollutants.

Once emitted into the atmosphere, pollutant particles affect cloud formations and weather systems worldwide, the study shows.

Increases in coal burning and car emissions are major sources of pollution in China and other Asian countries.

Journal Reference:
Yuan Wang, Renyi Zhang, R. Saravanan. Asian pollution climatically modulates mid-latitude cyclones following hierarchical modelling and observational analysis. Nature Communications, 2014; 5 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4098

NASA's Kepler: Planet-Hunting Spacecraft Faces Serious Health Problems

Health issues are jeopardizing the planet-hunting work of NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has identified more than 2,700 potential alien worlds to date.

One of Kepler's reaction wheels positioning devices that maintain the observatory's position in space — remains balky despite mitigation attempts.

Roger Hunter

The mission team now regards the problem as unsolvable and is considering what the telescope can do after the wheel fails.

"While the wheel may still continue to operate for some time yet, the engineering team has now turned its attention to the development of contingency actions should the wheel fail sooner, rather than later," Kepler mission manager Roger Hunter, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., wrote in an update Monday (April 29).

NASA ISS Astronauts' Health: Journal of Bone and Mineral Research

NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams, Expedition 22 commander, exercises using the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station. 

Image Credit: NASA.

A new study, published in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, looked at the mineral density of specific bones as well as the entire skeleton of astronauts who used a new, stronger “weight lifting” machine.

Of course, weights don’t really “weigh” anything on the space station but resistance machines allow astronauts to get the same kind of workout.

The new Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED), installed in 2008, doubles the maximum simulated weight to as much as 600 pounds.

Researchers compared measurements from 2006 until 2008, when astronauts used a less capable workout machine.

They found that astronauts using the advanced system came home with more lean muscle and less fat, and kept more of their whole body and regional bone mineral density.

Those same astronauts also consumed sufficient calories and vitamin D, among other nutrients. These factors are known to support bone health and likely played a contributing role.

"After 51 years of human spaceflight, these data mark the first significant progress in protecting bone through diet and exercise," said Dr. Scott M. Smith, NASA nutritionist at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston and lead author of the publication.

Since the 1990s, resistance exercise has been thought to be a key method of protecting astronauts' bones.

Normal, healthy bone constantly breaks down and renews itself, a process called remodeling. As long as these processes are in balance, bone mass and density stay the same.

Earlier studies of Russian Mir space station residents found an increased rate of breakdown, but little change in the rate of regrowth, resulting in an overall loss in bone density.

In the new study, astronauts who used the ARED device still had increased bone breakdown, but their bone renewal tended to increase, likely resulting in a better balance in whole bone mineral density.

"The increase in both bone breakdown and formation suggests that the bone is being remodeled, but a key question remains as to whether this remodeled bone is as strong as the bone before flight," said Dr. Jean Sibonga, NASA bone discipline lead at Johnson and coauthor of the study.

Stop-Motion Animated Film About the Progression of Alzheimer’s

Art, with its capacity for expressing in abstract form experiences and emotions too complex or confusing to name explicitly, has proven itself a powerful medium for exploring mental health issues — from artist Bobby Baker’s diary drawings of borderline personality disorder to children’s illustrations of what it’s like to have autism.

Now comes Undone, a beautiful and bittersweet stop-motion film by animator Hayley Morris, inspired by her grandfather, which captures with tender abstraction the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Excessive fructose may set up metabolic trouble

Co-author Lars Berglund points out that fruit juices typically feature more concentrated forms of fructose and glucose, whereas fruits and vegetables contain fiber and other good stuff. "It's healthier to eat apples than to drink apple juice," he says.

A fructose-heavy diet may contribute to the development of metabolic syndrome, which can increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

The findings, published online in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism, come from a University of California, Davis, study that investigated the relative effects of fructose or glucose consumption on 32 older, overweight or obese men and women.

Straight from the Source DOI: 10.1186/1743-7075-9-68

The study participants consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages, which provided 25 percent of their energy requirements for 10 weeks.

Consumption of fructose, but not glucose, affected various parameters associated with metabolic syndrome, including increased circulating concentrations of uric acid, which is known to be higher in people with metabolic syndrome.

In addition, fructose consumption increased GGT activity, which is an indicator of liver dysfunction, and production of a type of protein known as RBP-4, associated with increased insulin resistance.

No previous studies have investigated the effects of glucose or fructose consumption on circulating levels of RBP-4.

The study design involved three phases, including a two-week inpatient baseline period, an eight-week outpatient intervention period, and a two-week inpatient intervention period.

During baseline, subjects resided in the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center’s Clinical Research Center (CCRC) for two weeks before beginning the outpatient intervention, consuming either fructose- or glucose-sweetened beverages. They returned to the CCRC for the final two weeks of intervention.

Fasting and 24-hour blood collections were performed at baseline and following 10 weeks of intervention for measurement of plasma concentrations of uric acid, RBP-4, and liver enzyme activities.

The study’s first results, published in 2009, showed that visceral adipose volume (fat inside the abdominal cavity) was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose, along with increases in several circulating lipids and a decrease in insulin sensitivity, although both groups exhibited similar weight gain.

Stealthy Herpes virus robs years from your life

MOST of us could gain extra years of life by ridding ourselves of a virus we don't even realise we are carrying - if new efforts to tackle the stealthy parasite bear fruit.

Between 50 and 80 per cent of people living in the UK, US and Australia are infected by cytomegalovirus, or CMV - a herpes virus closely related to the one that causes chickenpox. In some African countries, the figure is thought to be even higher.

CMV can lead to brain damage and hearing loss in newborns, but was long assumed to be harmless in healthy adults, says Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Then HIV came along."

When people are infected with CMV and HIV, they can develop all sorts of nasty complications, such as CMV retinitis, which causes blindness. As researchers investigated further, they realised that the damaging effects of CMV were caused by its unique effect on the immune system.

Your body responds to any infection by training a small number of immune cells to recognise and remember the pathogen in future. CMV somehow cheats the system. 

When the virus next attacks you, the immune T-cells trained to remember the virus do not work as they should. Instead, the body trains up a fresh batch of T-cells to recognise CMV, eating into your limited supply of untrained cells. 

Over time, around 40 per cent of T-cells may be trained specifically to attack CMV, leaving fewer to tackle other possible infections.

A slew of research shows that this continual using up of untrained T-cells ages the immune system. The latest study suggests that this takes its toll on life expectancy.

For 18 years, Paul Moss at the University of Birmingham, UK, and his colleagues followed the health of more than 500 people over the age of 65. Around 70 per cent of the people were infected with CMV. 

"We saw a four-year reduction in lifespan in the CMV-positive group," says Moss, who presented the findings at the American Association of Immunologists' annual meeting in Boston, last month.

To put that figure in perspective, Aiello says: "Smoking and drinking can take that much time off your life."

Those infected with CMV were more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, says Moss. The virus has also been linked to accelerated cognitive decline and poorer physical health generally - and it may leave the body more susceptible to other infections, such as flu.

Now the good news: Moss's team reckons that long-term treatment with antiviral drugs could help claw back those years.

His team infected 6-week-old mice with CMV and, once the rodents were 6 months old and the virus was established, they treated some of them with a drug used to treat herpes viruses. 

While the number of untrained immune cells dwindled in the untreated mice, numbers remained high in the mice given antivirals. 

"We were able to completely reverse this particular effect of CMV," says Moss. What's more, the treated mice appeared more resilient to being infected with flu further down the line, and lost less weight during that infection than their untreated counterparts. Moss presented this study in Boston, too.

He will soon begin trialling the antivirals in people over 65. "If we can strengthen the immune systems of older people, we will hopefully see a reduction in the incidence of flu infection, as well as reduced morbidity and mortality," he says.

Any treatment, however, might require people to take the drugs for months, if not years. What would be better, says Phil Stevenson at the University of Cambridge, would be to prevent infection in the first place by developing a vaccine.

"For CMV, the thing you want to stop is the primary infection," he says. Finding a way to block the entry of the virus will be tricky, though, partly because no one is sure exactly how CMV infects people.

The same problem applies to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) - a related virus that can cause glandular fever and cancer. 

A 30-year-long research programme to generate a vaccine for it failed, says Stevenson, because it began with an assumption that EBV first infects the body through the immune system's B-cells. This was where the virus was spotted in people presenting with symptoms.

To investigate whether the virus may be infecting other cells first, Stevenson's team turned to a mouse model. 

They were able to make the virus glow by adding a gene for a light-emitting protein found in fireflies. 

When Stevenson studied the mice a day after they had been infected, he found that the cells in their noses were the ones glowing (Journal of General Virology, DOI: 10.1099/vir.0.006569-0).

Depression: SPARX Game As Effective As Traditional Treatment

An innovative computer-based intervention for depressed young people, developed by researchers from The University of Auckland, has been shown to be at least as effective as standard treatments mainly comprising face-to-face therapy.

A research team led by Associate Professor Sally Merry developed and trialled the intervention called SPARX with the aim of giving young people easier, lower cost access to treatment.

In a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) they assessed the effectiveness of SPARX in 24 sites around New Zealand, including youth clinics, schools and general practices. Half of the young people participating used the new game and half received standard treatment through their doctor, school counsellor or other provider. SPARX was shown to be at least as good as the standard treatments.

SPARX uses CD-Rom based computer gaming to teach self-help for depression. It includes an interactive 3D fantasy game to teach young people the skills they need to cope with challenges and manage their mood. In contrast to many other e-therapies, SPARX has been designed to help young people learn through action in a virtual world. It is based on cognitive behavioural therapy, a proven therapeutic approach.

“Using computer technology that young people are comfortable with is one way of making therapy more accessible, practical, and hopefully more fun,” says Dr Merry. It has been designed to be easily accessed by young people directly or to be delivered easily in primary care settings.

In 2011, SPARX won a UN World Summit Award recognising creativity and innovation in e-health interventions.



Depression is common among young people internationally and accessing help can be difficult. One in five New Zealanders will have experienced clinical depression by their eighteenth birthday. Three quarters of young people with depression never receive treatment. “We want to intervene earlier and more effectively,” says Dr Merry.

SPARX was initiated by researchers, clinicians, and learning technologists at the University’s Werry Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the Department of Psychological Medicine. It was developed with input from Māori, Pacific people, and other cultural groups in New Zealand.

The programme was created with the assistance of a local game development company, Metia Interactive. A number of actors, musicians and artists have generously donated their time and skills to the project.

The work was funded by the NZ Ministry of Health as part of the Primary Health Care Strategy to build and strengthen the capacity of the primary care sector to respond to mental health needs, and in this case adolescent depression

More information on SPARX is available on www.sparx.org.nz.

Scottish Lustre Pure Light acne treatment - YouTube

Introducing Lustre Pure Light - a blue light treatment for acne which allows you to beat spots while carrying on with your life. More information at LustrePureLight.com

Many patients find that their skin improves and their spots seem better when they have been out in the sunshine (ref 1).

However sunlight also contains ultraviolet (UVA-UVB) light which can damage skin and even cause skin cancer.

Scientists have found that visible blue light at a wavelength of 420 nm does not cause damage to the skin but is effective in killing P. acnes, the bacteria which causes acne.

Blue light has been used by dermatologists for many years to treat acne.

A Hormone that can mimic a good workout

No sweat required. A hormone that surges during exercise may confer some of the benefits of a workout, when levels are artificially boosted.

The hormone is identical in mice and humans and promotes the development of a type of energy-burning fat - a discovery that could be key to treating obesity and diabetes.

A protein known as PGC1-alpha mediates many of the benefits of exercise, such as resistance to metabolic diseases.

To find out more, a team from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, analysed factors secreted by muscle and regulated by PGC1-alpha.

One of these factors turned out to be a new hormone which had gone unnoticed because it is hidden within a complex molecule.

Further study showed that levels of that hormone jumped in mice and humans after bouts of exercise.

When the hormone was added to mouse subcutaneous white fat cells at an early stage of development, it made the cells more likely to become "beige" fat cells. These, like brown fat, are equipped to burn body fuel to generate heat.

"The hormone carries a message from muscle to fat tissue," says lead author Pontus Bostrom. Bruce Spiegelman, director of the lab, named the hormone irisin after the Greek messenger goddess Iris.

Mice eating a high-fat diet that were given the gene for irisin burned more energy and had lower body weight than mice receiving a placebo (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10777).

AND if that doesn't work, here's a workout video for you!


See more at www.women-workout-routines.com/

Bug-Free! A keyboard that cleans itself

It’s not uncommon for keyboards to become the breeding grounds for bacteria and germs. And in a hospital, where doctors and nurses alternate between tending to patients and typing up medical records, the germy computer can be particularly troublesome.

Now, however, health care professionals won’t need to worry about going home sick. In a recent press release, medical technology company Vioguard announced that it has received FDA approval for its first product—a self-sanitizing keyboard.

The keyboard, which is to be used in hospitals, automatically cleans itself by employing the germ-killing properties of ultraviolet light (UV-C). It is able to target microbes (a.k.a. germs) due to their ability to be broken down with just the right amount of ultraviolet light.


Taking on the appearance of any other keyboard, the self-sanitizing version works by automatically retracting into its own light-tight enclosure after use.

Then the UV-C light gets to work—flooding the case and killing any germs that may have been left behind. A quick hand-wave in front of the motion sensor and the keyboard drawer opens, ready for use once again.

Initial testing has shown that the germicidal light was successful in eradicating 99.99 percent of the germs and bacteria that had been lurking on the keyboard.

The system may come as a relief to health care workers who sometimes worry about their own physical conditions—health care associated infections (HAIs) are a real concern in the medical world.

“Conventional computer keyboards have been identified as a key point of transmission of viruses and bacteria, especially within the medical setting,” says Larry Ranta, president and CEO of Vioguard, in the press release. “The Vioguard keyboard takes the guesswork out of sanitization efforts, reduces labour costs, and helps fight the spread of harmful and often deadly superbugs.”

NASA ISS Crew: Living and Working in Orbit

Commander Dan Burbank (right) and Flight Engineer Anton Shkaplerov work in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

The International Space Station’s Expedition 30 crew – Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin – performed science experiments and participated in an emergency drill Tuesday.

Burbank, a NASA astronaut, began his workday almost immediately after the crew’s regular 1 a.m. EST wakeup time as he conducted the Reaction Self Test.

This 5-minute test helps crew members objectively identify any impacts to their performance caused by sleep loss, fatigue and disruptions to circadian rhythms.

Following the crew’s daily planning conference with flight control centers around the world, Burbank spent his morning setting up equipment for the Integrated Cardiovascular experiment and participating as its test subject.

Investigators use the data from these tests to measure the atrophy of the heart muscle that appears to develop during long-duration spaceflight and to develop countermeasures to mitigate those effects.

Experiments like this one are crucial to understanding and maintaining crew health as NASA moves towards space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, Shkaplerov participated in a Russian cardiovascular study known as Pneumocard and later performed routine maintenance on the life-support system in the Russian segment of the orbiting complex.

His fellow cosmonaut, Ivanishin, conducted preventative maintenance on the ventilation system of the Zvezda service module.

After a break for lunch, all three Expedition 30 crew members teamed up for an emergency egress drill to remain familiar with the location of emergency equipment and hatches as well as the evacuation route.

In cooperation with the mission control centers around the world, the crew worked through the response procedures as if there were an actual emergency requiring a rapid departure and tagged up with flight controllers afterward to review the results.

Beet-It! Drinking beetroot juice increases stamina

First it was spinach, then coconut water… and now the humble beetroot has been hailed THE superfood to watch out for.

Hardly surprising considering its track record - it's proven to improve cardiovascular health, keep illness and infection at bay and enhance sporting performance.

Breakthrough research by the University of Exeter, published in the journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that competitive-level cyclists who drank beetroot juice were able to cut down the time it took to ride a given distance.

Researchers studied nine club-level male cyclists, who drank half a litre of beetroot juice before competing in two separate time trials.

The cyclists consumed real beetroot juice before the first trial and, unbeknown to the cyclists, a 'placebo' beetroot juice before the second trial.

A critical ingredient, nitrate, had been removed from the 'placebo' beetroot juice.

Results showed that the riders who consumed the real beetroot juice were an average of 11 seconds quicker over 4 kilometres and 45 seconds quicker over 16.1 kilometres.

The study, which used British brand BEET IT beetroot juice, concluded that the cyclists could attribute their increased stamina to the naturally high levels of Nitric Oxide (NO) found in beetroot.

Firstly, the Nitric Oxide triggers a chemical reaction which leads to the dilation of blood vessels to increase blood flow.

Secondly, it affects muscle tissue, reducing the amount of oxygen required by muscles during physical exertion. Combined, beetroot juice is the perfect all-natural energy hit to ensure peak performance at any sporting level.

To read more about the benefits of beetroot check on the Beet-it website.

SAD: Take your light therapy, and stick it in your ear

Many readers in the Northern Hemisphere are likely already starting to experience seasonal affective disorder, appropriately enough known as SAD.

For those people fortunate enough not to be familiar with it, SAD is a mood disorder that is brought on by the shorter day-length experienced in winter - less sunlight results in gloomier people.

One of the most common treatments involves regular exposure to bright artificial lights, that appear to psychologically serve the same purpose as sunlight.

Now, one might assume that such light therapy would require that people see the light. According to the Finnish designers of the Valkee device, however, light also does the trick if you shine it up your ears.

The invention is based around the assertion that not only are our visual systems photosensitive, but so are our brains themselves.

More specifically, there are apparently 18 sites in our brains, where OPN3 photoreceptor proteins are located. These regions will supposedly react favourably to exposure to light, even when that light is filtered through tissue and bone.

The Valkee itself looks a lot like a personal music player, complete with earbuds. Instead of emitting music, however, these buds contain fiber optic lights.

By turning the device on and sticking the glowing fibers in your ears for about ten minutes a day, it is claimed that your brain will receive enough light to send the SAD packing.

Does it sound like quackery? A great deal of people would certainly say so.

Not among those people, however, would be a group of scientists from Finland's University of Oulu.

In two clinical trials, they had people with severe SAD use the device daily, for 8 to 12 minutes a day.

Afterward, when those people completed a BDI-21 questionnaire (a standard for assessing depression), it was found that 92 percent of the subjects in the first trial had completely recovered.

The information presented by the company is definitely somewhat difficult to sort out, although it appears that the results of the second trial were similarly encouraging.

A placebo group was included in at least one of the trials, to ensure that people weren't feeling better merely because they expected to.

To read more about the Valkee device visit their website

Novel and potent natural antioxidant occurring in tomato plants.

Tomato plants. Researchers have identified a novel and potent natural antioxidant occurring in tomato plants. It is a phenolic substance that is synthesised by the tomato plant when it is subjected to biotic stress. (Credit: © Stanisaw Tokarski / Fotolia)

A team of researchers from the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMCP) -a joint centre of the Universitat Politècnica de València and CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council- have identified a novel and potent natural antioxidant occurring in tomato plants.

It is a phenolic substance that is synthesised by the tomato plant when it is subjected to biotic stress. Until now, it was completely unknown.

The UPV and CSIC have registered the national and international patents of the new antioxidant and the laboratory procedures used to isolate and synthesise it chemically.

The finding was recently published in the journal Environmental and Experimental Botany.
IBMCP researchers point out that the antioxidant power of the new compound is much higher -14 times higher, to be precise- than, for example, that of resveratrol, a well-known antioxidant, found in red wine, which can delay cellular aging. In addition, it is 4.5 times more potent than vitamin E and 10 times more potent than vitamin C.

This substance could have multiple applications. For example, in the food industry it could be used as a preservative in food for human consumption and in animal fodder, because of its action as a retarder of lipid oxidation.

This powerful antioxidant would prevent changes such as fats and oils becoming rancid, which strongly diminishes food quality. It could also be used as a supplement in certain products after careful processing.

It should also be noted that antioxidants have beneficial health properties, such as helping to prevent coronary heart disease and cancer; therefore, the compound could have major applications in the pharmaceutical industry.

Resveratrol: The Chemical in Red wine that improves your heart's health

It may soon be possible to receive the heart protecting abilities of red wine without having to drink a glass every day.

This is thanks to the synthesis of chemicals derived from resveratrol, the molecule believed to give wine its protective powers. The chemicals have the potential to fight many diseases, including cancer.

Plants make a huge variety of chemicals, called polyphenols, from resveratrol to protect themselves against invaders, particularly fungi but they only make tiny amounts of each chemical, making it extremely difficult for scientists to isolate and utilise them. 

The unstable nature of resveratrol has also hindered attempts at building new compounds from the chemical itself.

Scott Snyder at Columbia University in New York and his team have found a way around this: building polyphenols from compounds that resemble, but are subtly different to, resveratrol.

These differences make the process much easier. Using these alternative starting materials, they have made dozens of natural polyphenols, including vaticanol C, which is known to kill cancer cells (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10197).

"It's like a recipe book for the whole resveratrol family," says Snyder. "We've opened up a whole casket of nature's goodies."

Hot dog! Ready-to-eat meat contains few cancerous compounds

If given the choice between eating a hot dog or enjoying some rotisserie chicken, consider the hot dog.

That’s because hot dogs, as well as pepperoni and deli meats, are relatively free of carcinogenic compounds, according to Kansas State University research. But it’s a not-so-happy ending for bacon and rotisserie chicken — especially chicken skin — because both have higher levels of cancerous material.

J. Scott Smith, professor of food chemistry, and a K-State research team have been looking at such ready-to-eat meat products to determine their levels of heterocyclic amines, or HCAs.

These are carcinogenic compounds found in meat that is fried, grilled or cooked at high temperatures. Studies have shown that humans who consume large amounts of HCAs in meat products have increased risk of stomach, colon and breast cancers.

Ready-to-eat meat products are meat or poultry products that come in edible forms and don’t need additional preparation or cooking. Smith has already researched HCA levels in cooked meat and found that adding certain spices and marinades before cooking can reduce HCA content in the meat.

The ready-to-eat product project was a collaboration with several other K-State researchers, including Terry Houser, assistant professor of meat science; Melvin Hunt, professor of animal sciences and industry; Kanithaporn Puangsombat, December 2010 doctoral graduate in food science, Bangkok, Thailand; and Priyadarshini Gadgil, a K-State graduate who now works as a research scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Grain and Animal Health Research in Manhattan. Their research appears in a recent issue of Meat Science, the journal of the American Meat Science Association.

The study focuses on eight types of ready-to-eat meat products: beef hot dogs, beef-pork-turkey hot dogs, deli roast beef, deli ham, deli turkey, fully cooked bacon, pepperoni and rotisserie chicken.

“These are the most common types of ready-to-eat products, and their use has increased in recent years because of convenience,” Smith said. “For this research, we took each of these products and prepared them as a consumer would.”

The researchers heated up the hot dogs and bacon in a microwave, cooked the pepperoni on a pizza either in the oven or a microwave and used the chicken and deli meat as obtained. After doing so, they studied the meat to determine whether it contained five different types of HCAs according to nanograms per gram, ng/g.

Pepperoni had the least HCA content, 0.05 ng/g, followed by hot dogs and deli meat, 0.5 ng/g). Such amounts are low, and the researchers concluded that consuming such ready-to-eat meat products contributes very little to HCA intake.

Fully cooked bacon, with 1.1 ng/g, and rotisserie chicken meat, with 1.9 ng/g, contained all five types of HCAs tested. Rotisserie chicken skin had significantly higher HCA levels, with 16.3 ng/g. This is because chicken skin contains more fat and protein and less moisture, and HCA levels tend to increase as moisture decreases, Smith said.

“Based on this research, HCA consumption can be reduced by not eating chicken skin,” he said.

The reasons for lower HCA content in some of the other ready-to-eat products may be because of the higher water content in the ready-to-eat products. More moisture prevents many HCAs from forming. Ready-to-eat products are often enhanced products, meaning they have a water solution with flavoring added to them.

“Hot dogs and deli meat may have low HCA levels because they are manufactured at low temperatures,” Smith said. “The low HCA levels may also be from ingredients that are added to the meat and prevent HCAs from forming while the meat is cooking.”

The Buteyko method for Asthma treatment - revisited

Normally, during an asthma attack, people panic and breathe quickly and as deeply as they can, exhaling more and more carbon dioxide. The breathing rate is controlled not by the amount of oxygen in the blood but by the amount of carbon dioxide, the gas that regulates the acid-base level of the blood.

Dr. Buteyko concluded that hyperventilation — breathing too fast and too deeply — could be the underlying cause of asthma, making it worse by lowering the level of carbon dioxide in the blood so much that the airways constrict to conserve it.

This technique may seem counterintuitive: when short of breath or overly stressed, instead of taking a deep breath, the Buteyko method instructs people to breathe shallowly and slowly through the nose, breaking the vicious cycle of rapid, gasping breaths, airway constriction and increased wheezing.

Benefits to swimmers
Swimmers have to stop to catch their breath after a few lengths of the pool because they take long deep breaths with every other stroke, whereas if you take in small puffs of air after several strokes, you can swim for longer, almost indefinitely, without becoming winded.

Health - Canadian research alters view of breast tumours

CBC News - Health - B.C. research alters view of breast tumours

Not all cells in a breast cancer tumour contain the same mutations, researchers in British Columbia have found.

The finding that changes occur in tumours over time could change how scientists think about developing new breast cancer drugs and deciding which patients would benefit most from treatments.

In Wednesday's issue of the journal Nature, Samuel Aparicio and his colleagues at the BC Cancer Agency charted the genetic mutations that occurred in the 3 billion letters of the DNA sequence from an estrogen-receptor-alpha-positive breast tumour.

"The impact is going to be in the way that cancer researchers look at developing therapies and applying therapies in the short term," said Aparicio, chair of breast cancer research at the BC Cancer Agency and Canada research chair in molecular oncology.

"Over the long term, we hope that being able to decode the sequence of tumours on a routine basis will eventually lead us to being able to better predict which combinations of medicines to use when treating a cancer. We're not quite at that point yet."

The team found 32 mutations after it had spread, nine years after the original biopsy of the lobular breast cancer, which accounts for eight to 15 per cent of all breast cancers, Aparicio said.


Shared via AddThis

Questions: When is the best time to go under the Knife?

Questions

1. Is it safer to have elective surgery first thing in the morning rather than in late afternoon, when doctors and nurses might be tired?



2. For the same reason, is it smarter to schedule surgery earlier in the workweek than later?



3. Is it better to avoid having elective surgery in July and August, when a new crop of residents has just started training?



4. Also, is it foolish to have elective surgery when the moon is full and, tradition has it, people can go a little off-kilter?

Answers

No, no, no and no, according to a Cleveland Clinic study that found timing isn't anything, at least when it comes to elective coronary bypass surgery.

The authors of the study, published today in the journal Anesthesiology, write that they decided to focus on elective heart bypass surgery because, thanks to "well-established protocols (for bypass surgery), there is much less variability than with other procedures." Plus, they write, "hospitals closely track morbidity and mortality for this operation", which is very encouraging. I am presuming that this is in an attempte to reduce it.

Daniel Sessler, an anesthesiologist who chairs the Cleveland Clinic's department of outcomes research, says he and his co-authors hope to examine whether timing affects other types of elective surgery, but they expect to find the same thing.

The researchers analysed the results of 18,597 elective bypass surgeries at the Cleveland Clinic from 1993 to 2006. Most were performed between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. None of the time factors — hour, day, month or phase of moon — made any difference in the outcomes of the operations.

"Fatigue is well-known to impair performance," Sessler says, citing its role in plane and car crashes. "It's highly plausible that fatigue would impair the performance of medical personnel."

But, he says, just because doctors or nurses are fatigued and make mistakes doesn't necessarily mean patients suffer. "Hospitals have extensive systems in place to minimize the consequences of any error," he says.

I hope this has answered some of your questions but I suspect it may have raised a few more!

Zinc Poisoning: Overuse of Zinc in denture cream

When he began getting weak, 61-year-old Ronald Beaver, from Miami in the US, figured he might just be feeling his age. Eventually his problem was traced to a serious blood disorder caused by low levels of copper.

It wasn't until several weeks later that Beaver's doctor mentioned that getting too much zinc can trigger loss of copper. The only source of that much zinc they surmised was the tubes of PoliGrip denture cream he had been grossly overusing for a decade.

Now Beaver, who said he never fully recovered, and hundreds of other people claiming similar problems are suing consumer products giants Procter & Gamble Co., which makes Fixodent, and GlaxoSmithKline, maker of PoliGrip.

At least 25 lawsuits from 11 US states have been consolidated for pretrial hearings before a federal judge in Miami, who will decide if they go to trial or not. Another hearing is planned for next month.

The companies say denture cream containing zinc is safe when used as directed and the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates denture adhesives, has never issued any warnings about the products.

Indeed, the amount of zinc found in the recommended application of denture cream is similar to the amount found in a 6-ounce hamburger, and the overwhelming majority of users have no problems. The zinc improves adhesive power.

The legal action followed a 2008 report in the medical journal Neurology about a possible link between denture cream zinc and nerve damage. Doctors at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas described four patients who all used excessive amounts of denture cream and had various nerve-related disorders.

The researchers said their report did not prove denture cream caused the problems, but concluded the issue warranted further study. The human body needs both zinc and copper in the proper amounts, and zinc is commonly found in many foods, vitamin supplements and even cold lozenges. Too much zinc, though, can purge the body of copper.

A copper deficiency can cause nerve damage, resulting in symptoms such as weakness and numbness in arms and legs; difficulty walking and loss of balance; and even cognitive or memory impairment, according to the National Institutes of Health.