MARRIAGE BETWEEN FIRST COUSINS UPS RISK OF HAVING BABY WITH BIRTH DEFECTS

London: The opportunities of having a kid with probably life-threatening starting issues improves in situation of `first comparative marriages`, a analysis has revealed.

From a example of nearly 11,000 births between 2007 and 2011, more than 2,000 children were designed to first comparative parents- mainly from the city`s huge Pakistani population, the Individual revealed.

Researchers from the University of Bradford and the University of Leeds discovered that the children of such perform execute perform perform work labor unions had a six % probability of having a got issue, in evaluation to a common 3 % chance.

The new "Born in Bradford" analysis suggested that children designed to moms and dads who were not near near family members but were effectively appropriate also had an enhanced risk.

The analysis was already launched in The Lancet. 

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VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES DON'T MAKE USERS UNFRIENDLY

Washington: Violent video games have no measurable effect on how helpful someone is after playing, a new study has suggested.

Participants in the research played one of four video games for 20 minutes. At the end of the test, a researcher pretended to drop some pens and assessed how many players helped pick them up.

Regardless of the game played, only about 40-60 percent of participants helped pick up pens at the end of the study. In a second test, they found that participants were more likely to exhibit the helpful behaviour when pens were dropped half-way through the experiment rather than at the end of the exercise.

75 percent of people helped pick up pens if they were dropped during the task, compared to only 31 percent who helped if the pen-drop exercise occurred at the end of the experiment. Again, the type of video game did not influence the number of participants that helped pick up pens.

Based on these results, Morgan Tear and Mark Nielsen from the University of Queensland, Australia, suggest that contextual differences in the design of this experiment could change the baseline rates of helpfulness observed, but they did not find a correlation between violent or anti-social video game play and helpful behavior. The paper concludes, "We fail to substantiate conjecture that playing contemporary violent video games will lead to diminished prosocial behavior."

Tear adds, "Historically, failures to replicate in the field violent video game research have struggled for exposure. These studies highlight not only that intuitions about violent video games don`t hold, but also that using the exact same procedures of past research doesn`t reveal the same results."

The study was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE. 

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WHY PEOPLE FIND IT HARD TO FOLLOW "SUGAR-FAT SEESAW" DIET GUIDELINE

Washington: A new research shows why people find it hard to follow Government guidelines to cut their fat and sugars intake at the same time - a phenomenon known as the sugar-fat seesaw.

The review looked at 53 scientific papers and found a strong and consistent inverse association in the percentage of energy coming from fats and sugars.

People with diets low in sugars were likely to be high in fat, and vice-versa. Nutritionists have labelled this the "sugar-fat seesaw."

Dr Michele Sadler, who led the research team, said, "A key reason that we see this sugar-fat seesaw is likely to be because sources of sugars such as fruit, breakfast cereals and juices are low in fat, while sources of fat such as oils and meat products are low in sugar."

In the UK dietary guidelines are set and described as a percentage of daily energy intakes.

Therefore, the researchers suggest that people may find it difficult to follow advice to reduce the sugars and fats contribution to energy intakes at the same time, something recommended by the Government.

The research is published in the journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition.

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ARTS BASED ACTIVITIES MAY BOOST TODDLERS SKILLS

London: Parents taking part in interactive and arts-related activities with their toddlers could boost their kids` happiness and everyday skills, a new study has found.

Researchers at Oxford University and The Open University found that child happiness, as reported by their parents, was linked to how frequently the children were engaged in activities such as reading, storytelling, shopping, painting and doing arts and crafts.

In contrast, passive activities like looking at picture books or watching television brought no discernible benefits.

Watching television appeared, in this analysis, to have a negative impact on child happiness that was statistically significant.

The results also suggested that more active activities may boost the development of a child`s motor and social skills.

For example, painting or engaging in arts and crafts could promote the development of movement skills, while reading, telling stories and singing had a significant impact on both talking ability and social skills.

More passive activities did not appear to contribute to the development of these skills.

The researchers applied economic models to data drawn from the German Household Survey in the years 2007 to 2010.

The data included responses from over 800 German parents about the happiness and wellbeing of their two and three-year-olds, the activities they took part in and their development of talking, movement, and social skills.

"We applied standard economic tools to analyse children`s wellbeing and development at a very early age. An economic study of very young children is relatively novel, but if our findings are replicated in other research, they could have significant implications for parenting education," Professor Paul Anand of The Open University said.

"It should allow us to reassess the role of arts in the development of skills and human potential," Anand said.

"Our results suggest that parents may face difficult trade-offs with regard to time spent actively engaging with their children, versus providing for them materially via the labour market," said Dr Laurence Roope of the Health Economics Research Centre at Oxford University.

"Of course parents can`t engage their young children in these activities every hour of the day, but it is encouraging that time spent reading books to them, painting or joining in with a nursery rhyme could help their development.

"It will be interesting to see whether similar results emerge for slightly older children and using other datasets," Roope said. 

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WORLD'S FIRST "HUMAN LIVER" CREATED FROM STEM CELLS

London: Scientists in Japan have used stem cells to grow tiny functioning livers in the laboratory.

The team at the Yokohama City University is hoping that liver failure could be reversed by transplanting thousands of liver buds.

They were trying to reproduce the earliest stages of liver development, which is similar to that in an embryo and for that they mixed 3 types of cells - two types of stem cells and material taken from the umbilical cord.

However, to their surprise the cells started to organise themselves and started curling to form a liver bud.

And when these buds were transplanted into mice, they hooked themselves up with the blood supply and began functioning as little livers, the BBC reported.

The transplants raided the lifespan of mice with liver failure.

However, turning this process into a treatment is still a distant thought, as the buds are 4-5mm long, however, researchers say that they will need to develop buds which are much minuscule and could be injected into the blood.

Though the buds will not grow into a whole new liver, but will embed themselves in the one which is failing and help restore it.

The findings have been published in Nature. 

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COJOINED TWINS SEPERATED, ONLY ONE CHILD SAVED

Kozhikode: A team of doctors separated two-week-old conjoined twins at the Medical College Hospital here but could save only one child, hospital sources said on Thursday.

A 22-year-old woman from Malapppuram district had given birth to conjoined twins, one a normal child and the other with many anomalies at Manjeri general hospital in Malappuram district on June 21.

They were later shifted to the hospital here and after extensive consultation and investigation the surgery was carried out, Dr S Pratap, Paediatric surgeon at Kozhikode Medical College hospital, said.

The infants had their abdomen and pelvic regions joined together, a condition known in medical parlance as "omphalo ischio pagus", he said.

The normal child, a female, was saved after the surgery yesterday which lasted nearly six hours, he said.

Delaying surgery would have affected the normal child as the other one had a lot of anomalies including its heart, the doctor said.

The baby girl, which was put on ventilator yesterday, was removed from it and the infant has started opening its eyes, he said.

This is said to be the state`s first successful operation to separate conjoined twins. 

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NANO-FIBER MESH DEVELOPED TO TREAT CANCER

Tokyo: Scientists have developed a nanofiber mesh that can efficiently induce natural death (apoptosis) of epithelial cancer cells, says a study.

Developed by the researchers at International Centre of Material Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), Japan, the nanofiber mesh is capable of simultaneously realising thermotherapy (hyperthermia) and chemotherapy (treatment with anti-cancer drugs) of tumours, which until now was difficult to achieve, reports online bulletin of journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is an epithelial malignant tumour which is found in many tissues. SCC is thought to account for more than 90 percent of esophageal cancers, more than 80 percent of the cervical cancers, and more than 30 percent of lung cancers.

Although surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are three main therapeutic methods according to the stages of cancers, in addition to these methods, thermotherapy has also attracted great attention in recent years, according to researchers.

The nonofiber mesh developed by the MANA researchers is applied directly to the affected part. Its hybrid material combines a temperature-responsive polymer, magnetic nanoparticles, and anti-cancer drugs.

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OBESE PATIENTS FACE HIGHER RISK OF MULTIPLE DISEASES

Washington: Patients, who are obese, face a higher risk of multiple other diseases, according to researchers.

Jessica Bartfield, MD, bariatrician at the Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery and Bariatric Care, said that now it is known that excess adipose (fat) tissue is active rather than inert.

She said that it alters hormones, releases cytokines and inflammatory factors, all of which cause metabolic derangements.

She asserted that for the obese patient, even if the excess weigh is not causing any current medical problems, that patient faces a higher risk of multiple other disease.

"Although lifestyle and behaviors highly influence a person`s weight, research continues to find multiple other factors including genetics, environment, hormonal balances and sleep patterns which underscore the complexity of this disease," Bartfield said. 

"Obesity often acts as the common denominator for all other medical conditions a patient may suffer, including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, osteoarthritis or sleep apnea," she added. 

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FEELING ANGRY OR SAD? BRAIN SCANS CAN TELL

Washington: Scientists have for the first time used brain scans to identify emotions such as happiness, anger, sadness or even envy that a person may be experiencing.

The study combines functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and machine learning to measure brain signals to accurately read emotions in individuals.

The findings by Carnegie Mellon University illustrate how the brain categorises feelings, giving researchers the first reliable process to analyse emotions.

"This research introduces a new method with potential to identify emotions without relying on people`s ability to self-report," said Karim Kassam, assistant professor of social and decision sciences and lead author of the study.

"It could be used to assess an individual`s emotional response to almost any kind of stimulus, for example, a flag, a brand name or a political candidate," said Kassam.

For the study, 10 drama actors were scanned while viewing the words of nine emotions: anger, disgust, envy, fear, happiness, lust, pride, sadness and shame.

While inside the fMRI scanner, the actors were instructed to enter each of these emotional states multiple times, in random order.

The computer model, constructed from using statistical information to analyse the fMRI activation patterns gathered for 18 emotional words, had learned the emotion patterns from self-induced emotions.

It was able to correctly identify the emotional content of photos being viewed using the brain activity of the viewers.

To identify emotions within the brain, the researchers first used the participants` neural activation patterns in early scans to identify the emotions experienced by the same participants in later scans.

The team took the machine learning analysis of the self-induced emotions to guess which emotion the subjects were experiencing when they were exposed to the disgusting photographs.

The computer model achieved a rank accuracy of 0.91. With nine emotions to choose from, the model listed disgust as the most likely emotion 60 per cent of the time and as one of its top two guesses 80 per cent of the time.

Finally, they applied machine learning analysis of neural activation patterns from all but one of the participants to predict the emotions experienced by the hold-out participant.

"Despite manifest differences between people`s psychology, different people tend to neurally encode emotions in remarkably similar ways," noted Amanda Markey, a graduate student in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences.

A surprising finding from the research was that almost equivalent accuracy levels could be achieved even when the computer model made use of activation patterns in only one of a number of different subsections of the human brain. 

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DNA FOLDING INFLUENCES GENE ACTIVATION

Washington: Scientists have made a medical breakthrough which may help bring new insights on how genes are activated.

Roughly 3 metres of DNA is tightly folded into the nucleus of every cell in our body. This folding allows some genes to be `expressed`, or activated, while excluding others.

Dr Tim Mercer and Professor John Mattick from Sydney`s Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Professor John Stamatoyannopoulos from Seattle`s University of Washington analysed the genome`s 3D structure, at high resolution.

Genes are made up of `exons` and `introns` - the former being the sequences that code for protein and are expressed, and the latter being stretches of noncoding DNA in-between.

As the genes are copied, or `transcribed`, from DNA into RNA, the intron sequences are cut or `spliced` out and the remaining exons are strung together to form a sequence that encodes a protein. Depending on which exons are strung together, the same gene can generate different proteins.

Using vast amounts of data from the ENCODE project, Dr Tim Mercer and colleagues have inferred the folding of the genome, finding that even within a gene, selected exons are easily exposed.

Mercer said that imagine a long and immensely convoluted grape vine, its twisted branches presenting some grapes to be plucked easily, while concealing others beyond reach.

He said that at the same time imagine a lazy fruit picker only picking the grapes within easy reach, asserting the same principle applies in the genome. Specific genes and even specific exons, are placed within easy reach by folding.

Mercer asserted that their study has provides the first indication that the three-dimensional structure of the genome can influence the splicing of genes.

He added that they can infer that the genome is folded in such a way that the promoter region - the sequence that initiates transcription of a gene - is located alongside exons, and they are all presented to transcription machinery.

Their findings have been published online in Nature Genetics. 

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EXPOSURE TO LOUD NOISE CAN DAMAGE HEARING

Washington: An Indian-origin audiologist in the US has warned about the impending dangers to hearing because of loud noise.

Jyoti Bhayani, a certified audiologist at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital, part of Loyola University Health System, said that once hearing is damaged, it cannot be repaired.

Bhayani said that hearing loss because of excessive noise is totally preventable, unlike hearing loss due to old age or a medical condition.

Three small bones in the middle ear help transfer sound vibrations to the inner ear where they become nerve impulses that the brain interprets as sound.

Bhayani explained that when noise is too loud, it begins to kill the hair cells and nerve endings in the inner ear.

Bhayani added the louder a noise, the longer the exposure, and the closer the person is to the noise source, the more damaging it is to their nerve endings, or their hearing. 

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KEY RISK FACTOR FOR DISTRESS IN EMPLOYEES REVEALED

Washington: Workers, who face high emotional demand and conflicting roles, are more likely to report psychological distress, a new study has revealed.

Hakon A Johannessen, PhD, and colleagues of the Norwegian National Institute of Occupational Health, Oslo, used nationwide survey data to look at how the psychosocial work environment affects employees ` levels of psychological distress.

It was found that 16 percent of workers said that they were at least slightly bothered by psychological distress- including symptoms of depression and anxiety- over the past month.

The study focused on two main risk factors: role conflict, such as being given work tasks without enough resources to complete them and receiving contradictory requests from different people; and emotional demands, defined as "dealing with strong feelings such as sorrow, anger, desperation, and frustration" at work.

The research suggested that perceived role conflict and emotional demands were "the most important and most consistent risk factors" for psychological distress.

The study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM). 

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