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Advani to meet PM over Bihar floods
03.09.2008 02:31
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Senior BJP leader LK Advani will meet Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh here today to seek a solution to the problem of recurrent floods in Bihar, where around 25 lakh people have been rendered homeless in the worst ever floods in the Kosi region. Advani, who made an aerial survey of flood-ravaged regions of Bihar along with State Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday, said, "Since the recurrent floods in Bihar caused by rivers originating in Nepal have international dimensions, I would meet the Prime Minister on Wednesday to seek both long and short term solutions to the problem in coordination with the government in the Himalayan country," “In today''s situation, everybody should come together to help rather than indulging in mud sledging,” Advani added. Advani who surveyed Kishanganj, Virpur, Bhimnagar, Triveniganj, Purnia, Madhepura and Supaul, called for concerted efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the flood victims. The state''s main opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) had earlier lashed out at the state administration, accusing it of laxity in providing relief to the flood victims. Nitish Kumar said he was confident of providing better help to the flood victims. "We are confident that we will send flood victims to their places and provide them better dwellings than they had in the past. I tell everybody that we have taken it as a challenge and will accomplish this task with everybody''s support," Kumar said. The flooding, the worst in 50 years, was caused after the Kosi River breached a dam in Nepal. This unleashed huge waves of water that smashed mud embankments downstream in Bihar state. The waters of Kosi gushed into the state inundating vast areas and affecting around two million people. (ANI)
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One in three Brits face undiagnosed heart risk
03.09.2008 02:30
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A major UK study has found that one in three people with a high risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) over the next 10 years have not been diagnosed. The study of more than 71,000 men and women, which was conducted by Oxford University, showed that the shortfall in identifying people at high risk is greatest when it comes to middle-aged men. "The aim of our study was to estimate how many people were likely to develop CVD over the next ten years" said lead author Professor Andrew Neil from the Division of Public Health and Primary Care. "Our findings reinforce the need for a national CVD risk assessment programme and we welcome the announcement by the Department of Health earlier this year that plans are being put in place to institute primary care checks for people aged from 40 to 74," he added. The study suggests that 7.9 million people in the UK have already been diagnosed with CVD or have a medically recognised risk of developing the disease in the next ten years. However, there are a further 2.8 million men and 900,000 women who face a high risk but have not been diagnosed. This means that they have not received the treatment and advice that could prevent them from developing CVD. For the study, Neil and his colleagues screened 71,037 people aged 18 and over in 35 towns and cities in England, Wales and Scotland. They found that overall, 20 per cent of the men and six per cent of the women had a high risk of developing CVD over the next ten years. The risk was much higher in the over 50 age group. "Our research found that 75 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women who were over 50 already had CVD or diabetes, were taking cholesterol or blood pressure drugs or were at high risk of developing CVD" said Neil. "We were reassured to discover that 60 per cent of them had already been identified by their family doctor or another primary health care professional. However, the challenge now is to identify the other 40 per cent who are at high risk of developing the disease but remain undiagnosed. "When we looked at gender differences in this age group, we found that only 47 per cent of men had been identified as having a high CVD risk, considerably lower than the 72 per cent of women identified, possibly because women are more likely to seek medical advice. "These figures suggest that there is significant unmet need in the UK and points to the need for a national assessment programme to detect those individuals who haven''t already been identified," he added. The study is published in the September issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice. (ANI)
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New method to spot a heart attack soon after it occurs
03.09.2008 02:30
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Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, have developed a new method for early detection of a heart attack – metabolite profiling. To test the method, Robert Gerszten and colleagues conducted a study, in which blood samples were collected before and after a number of patients with the heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were treated using a medical procedure that creates a small controlled heart attack. The samples were analyzed using the new method. Changes in a number of metabolites were observed only 10 minutes after the planned heart attack. The researchers observed this same signature of changes in a second series of patients undergoing the same procedure and in a number of patients spontaneously having a heart attack. According to the researchers, no other method can detect changes indicating a heart attack so soon after it has occurred, and hope that their approach can be used to improve early detection of a heart attack. (ANI)
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Brain scans can reveal best times optimal times to multi-task
03.09.2008 02:30
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While the significance of multi-tasking is increasing day by day, researchers at the University of New Hampshire say that it is possible to predict when a person will prove to be an efficient multi-tasker. The researchers say that they scanned some people’s brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and were able to predict when the subjects would be poor multi-taskers and optimal multi-taskers. "We typically sacrifice efficiency when we multitask. However, there are times when we''re quite good at it. Unfortunately, not much has been known about how to predict when these periods of time will occur," said Andrew Leber, assistant professor of Psychology. In their study report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers say that the changes in performance were more dramatically preceded by changes in the participants'' brain activity patterns. Higher levels of activity in brain regions such as the basal ganglia, anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, and parietal cortex corresponded to better multi-tasking performance. "What is so striking about this result is that brain activity predicted multitasking performance before participants even knew whether they would be asked to switch or repeat tasks," Leber said. Although these findings indicate that brain imaging may be useful for maximizing productivity in people’s daily lives, the researchers agree that they do not provide a truly practical solution quite yet. "Obviously, the average person can''t bring an fMRI scanner to work. It may take more time before our research translates to real-world benefits for each of us," Leber said. However, the researchers insist that their study may inform scientists'' understanding of neurological disorders like Parkinson''s disease, which is marked by degeneration of the basal ganglia. While it is commonly known that Parkinson''s patients experience deficits in controlling movement, multi-tasking also is adversely affected. "We''ve known that multitasking suffers when the physical makeup of the basal ganglia degenerates over time, as in Parkinson''s disease. However, the current study shows that even in healthy adults, short-term changes in the basal ganglia also impact multitasking," Leber said The researchers say that this observation opens new potential avenues in studying normal brain functioning to help provide a more complete picture of the disordered functioning in Parkinson''s disease. (ANI)
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Analysis begins on Phoenix Lander’s deepest soil sample
03.09.2008 02:30
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Scientists have begun to analyze a sample of soil delivered to NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander’s wet chemistry experiment from the deepest trench dug so far in the Martian arctic plains. The Lander’s robotic arm on Sunday sprinkled a small fraction of the estimated 50 cubic centimeters of soil that had been scooped up from the informally named “Stone Soup” trench on Saturday, the 95th day of the mission. The Stone Soup trench, in the left portion of the Lander’s active workspace, is approximately 18 centimeters (7 inches) deep. “This is pretty exciting stuff and we are anxious to find out what makes this deeper soil cloddier than the other samples,” said Doug Ming, a Phoenix science team member from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston. The surface of the vast arctic plain where Phoenix landed on May 25 bears a pattern of polygon-shaped small hummocks, similar to some permafrost terrain on Earth. Scientists are particularly interested in the new sample because it is the first delivered to an analytical instrument from a trench on the margin between two of the polygons, where different material may collect than what has been analyzed from near the center of a polygon. Seen inside Phoenix’s scoop, the sample material from the bottom of the trench displayed clumping characteristics somewhat different from other cloddy soil samples that have been collected and examined. A series of images of fresh soil dug and discarded from Stone Soup trench have given some clues to the composition of the sample. While spectral observations have not produced any sign of water-ice, bigger clumps of soil have shown a texture that could be consistent with elevated concentration of salts in the soil from deep in the trench. The Lander’s wet chemistry laboratory can identify soluble salts in the soil. (ANI)
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Gene behind stroke-inducing vascular malformations uncovered
03.09.2008 02:30
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Scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UNSF) say that irregularities in a constantly active Notch gene in endothelial brain cells may cause a vascular disorder that causes stroke. The researchers say that their experiments on mice are the first to provide information on both the progression and regression of the brain disorder BAVM, in which arteries and veins get connected directly rather than through capillaries. The direct connection produces enlarged, tangled masses of vessels that are prone to hemorrhagic rupture, bleeding, and stroke. During the study, the researchers used genetic tools to “turn on” the Notch gene, which induced BAVM. When the researchers turned the gene off, the mice exhibited full recovery from the disease’s progression. “This was exciting. The activated Notch gene caused BAVM in all of the mice, making it an unprecedented, potent molecular lesion in the induction of the pathology. Furthermore, we found that repression of the gene in already-ill mice led to their recovery,” said Rong Wang, senior author on the study, associate professor and director of the Laboratory for Accelerated Vascular Research and Mildred V. Strouss Endowed Chair in Vascular Surgery at UCSF. Patrick A. Murphy, lead author on the paper and a graduate student from the UCSF Biomedical Science Program, added: “Our study offers hope for future treatments because even the effects of stroke such as paralysis and ataxia, or loss of muscle coordination, were reversed once we turned off Notch. This pathway has not yet been implicated in human disease, so these findings prompted our ongoing research into Notch signaling and allow us to examine the cellular and molecular mechanisms of BAVM.” The researchers believe that the knowledge gained about the development of BAVM may also be helpful in understanding the process of blood vessel disease in other organs like the lung and liver. "In the future, we may be able to inhibit or even reverse the disease process," said Tyson Kim, co-author on the paper and a bioengineering graduate student from the UCSF MD/PhD combined program, working with Wang. The researchers now consider Notch a strong candidate as a key regulator of human BAVM, and are undertaking additional research to find the disease’s cause. Besides studying disease progression and regression in mouse models, the researchers are also looking at the gene’s role in human AVMs by examining levels of Notch signalling pathway molecules in surgical tissue samples. “Although more work needs to be done to determine whether the research can be applied to clinical practice and whether up-regulation of Notch causes BAVM and stroke in humans, identifying the role of this pathway offers hope for developing treatments for this and other related diseases,” Wang said. The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)
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