Month: November 2007
Take success and failure in the right spirit
Take success and failure in the right spirit
Mr Hasan Abdul Kader
Mr Hasan Abdul Kader is the Managing Director of CCS Infotech Ltd. A BE (Computer Science) from National Institute of Technology (formerly Regional Engineering College), Tiruchi, he has more than 18 years of experience in management, public relations, product branding and overseas marketing. Here’s his take on four questions from Business Line.
Two things that my education/training taught me:
Improved analysing and decision-making abilities.
Believe in social responsibilities.
Two things I learnt from my work/real life:
Success and failure have to be taken in the right spirit.
Broad vision coupled with strategic effort will yield results.
One quality I look for the most in a new recruit: The ability to take/see every opportunity as a commitment and challenge.
A book that I read recently:
The Argumentative Indian, by Amartya Sen.
New treatment for back and neck pain
New treatment for back and neck pain
PTI
KOCHI: A centre for the treatment of back and neck pain here has introduced a new ‘painless treatment without surgery and spinal injection’.
Speaking to reporters here on Thursday, Dr Sasikumar, Physical Medicine Consultant at the Kumar International Back Pain Centre said this treatment was expected to boost medical tourism as the cost here would be around one-fifth compared to western countries.
The modern medical treatment being introduced here is for the treatment of back ailments specially for people suffering from disc-related problems, he said adding “the uniqueness of this painless treatment is that it is done without surgery and spinal injection”.
Latest advancements in physical medicine for the management of back and neck pain including IDD Therapay (USA), Electroceutical therapy (Germany), Class 4 laser (Italy) are combined with specific exercises and yoga and are brought under one roof for the first time in India, he said.
Former Medical Director of NMC Hospital, Dubai, Dr Sasikumar said this treatment has been 80 to 85 per cent effective in reducing pain from disc prolapse and spondylitis.
On the treatment, he said IDD machine distract precisely the affected disc thereby reducing the pressure and pain of nerves travelling to the arms and legs. Class 4 laser delivers energy and rejuvenates the damaged tissues and nerves.
While electroceutical tone signalling device that produces small pricking currents helps to relieve long standing pain due to blocking, he said.
He said plans are there to open similar non-surgical back and neck pain centres in other parts of Kerala, metro cities and also in Gulf countries.
Talking boosts your memory
Talking boosts your memory
NEW YORK: A friend or a neighbour may help you stay sharp just as much as a daily crossword — you only need to talk to him for ten minutes every day.
Researchers in the United States have carried out a study and found that spending ten minutes talking to another person helps improve the memory, the ‘ScienceDaily’ reported here on Friday.
“In our study, socialising was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance,”lead researcher Oscar Ybarra at the University of Michigan was quoted as saying.
In fact, the researchers came to the conclusion after conducting a test on 76 college students, aged 18 to 21.
After controlling for a wide range of demographic variables, including age, education, race/ethnicity, gender, marital status and income, as well as for physical health and depression, the researchers looked at the connection between frequency of social contact and level of mental function on the mini-mental exam.
Each student was assigned to one of three groups. Those in the social interaction group engaged in a discussion of a social issue for 10 minutes before taking the tests.
Those in the intellectual activities group completed three tasks before taking the tests. These tasks included a reading comprehension exercise and a crossword puzzle.
Those in a control group watched a 10-minute clip of ‘Seinfeld’. Then all participants completed two different tests of intellectual performance that measured their mental processing speed and working memory.
Ybarra said, “We found that short-term social interaction lasting for just 10 minutes boosted participants’ intellectual performance as much as engaging in so-called ‘intellectual’ activities for the same amount of time.
The higher the level of participants’ social interaction, researchers found, the better their cognitive functioning. This relationship was reliable for all age groups, from the youngest through the oldest.
“To our knowledge, this experiment represents the only causal evidence showing that social interaction directly affects memory and mental performance in a positive way.”
The findings also suggest that social isolation may have a negative effect on intellectual abilities as well as emotional well-being. And for a society characterized by increasing levels of social isolation the effects could be far-reaching.
Breasts don’t sag by breastfeeding
Breasts don’t sag by breastfeeding
Breastfeeding won’t make a new mom’s breasts sag, but having more babies might, a new study indicates.
“A lot of times, if a woman comes in for a breast lift or a breast augmentation, she’ll say ‘I want to fix what breastfeeding did to my breasts’,” University of Kentucky plastic surgeon Brian Rinker told Livescience. So he decided to study any possible connection. Rinker and his colleagues interviewed 132 women who came in for breast lifts or augmentation between 1998 and 2006. On average, the women were 39 years old, and 93% had experienced at least one pregnancy. Among the mothers, 58% had breastfed at least one of their children. The average duration of breastfeeding was nine months.
The researchers evaluated the study particpants’ medical history, body mass index, pre-pregnancy bra cup size and smoking status.
The results of the study, presented this week at a conference of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, showed no difference in the degree of breast ptosis (or sagging) between women who breastfed and those who didn’t. The main factors that did affect sagging were age, smoking status and the number of pregnancies.
Rinker noted that the smoking connection made sense because “smoking breaks down a protein in the skin called elastin, which gives youthful skin its elastic appearance and supports the breast”.
Pregnancy also “has a very strong contribution to breast ptosis (sagging)”, Rinker said. “In fact, our study showed that those negative effects increase with each pregnancy.”
Rinker says this finding should alleviate the fears of new mothers over what nursing their child might do to their breasts in the long run and will encourage them to breastfeed because of the health benefits to their infant. “Women may be reluctant to breastfeed because of this unfounded myth that doing so means the end of youthful breasts,” Rinker said. “Now, expectant mothers can relax knowing breastfeeding does not sacrifice the appearance of their breasts.”
First 3 hours after stroke crucial
First 3 hours after stroke crucial
WASHINGTON: A new study has found that the first three hours at the start of a stroke are crucial for the treatment of the victim.
The study found that rhe damage caused by stroke can be reduced by giving tPA treatment, the only approved treatment for stroke caused by blood clots in the brain, to the patient. If given intravenously within the first three hours of the start of a stroke, or injected directly into the brain within six hours, tPA can break up clots and stop or slow the damage caused by strokes. The analysis showed that delay kept many patients away from receiving tPA.
“Efforts to speed up patients’ arrival at the hospital are absolutely crucial. We have very effective treatments; we just need to get patients to the hospital as fast as possible,” said Lewis Morgenstern, professor of neurology, emergency medicine and neurosurgery at the U-M Medical School. Morgenstern added a person experiencing a stroke really needed to get to a hospital within two hours of the start of a stroke to have the best chance of receiving tPA.
Cause of rheumatoid arthritis found
Cause of rheumatoid arthritis found
LONDON: Researchers at the University of Manchester have identified a gene variant which leads to rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the most inflammatory arthritis among common inflammatory arthritis.
Rheumatoid arthritis affects up to 1 percent of the adult population and is a chronic inflammatory disease that attacks almost all joints in the body, mainly the hands and feet.
The patients of this disease often undergo lung problems. In addition to this they are also prone to from cardiovascular disease and some cancers which can be fatal. With a very few god responses to the medication, most of the patients take the pain of life span disability.
According to Professor Jane Worthington and her team at the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) Epidemiology unit, there were 9 genetic regions known as potentially harbouring DNA variants that decide the susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis.
Even though the DNA variant is not located in a gene, scientists have recommended that it may control the behaviour of a nearby gene like the tumour necrosis factor associated protein (TNFAIP3) as it is a gene that is involved in inflammatory processes.
Till now only two other genes were known to explain 50 percent of genetically determined susceptibility. Now the Manchester researchers are working to understand how the variation within the chromosome 6q region influences the development of RA, the course of the disease and the response to treatment.
“This is a very exciting result; the validation of this association takes us one step closer to understanding the genetic risk factors behind what is a debilitating disease for sufferers and an expensive disease for the NHS,” Nature quoted Worthington, as saying.
“We are indebted to the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) for their longstanding support of this research and for recognising the importance of establishing large well characterized cohorts of RA patients.
“This study was made possible by the fantastic collaboration of scientists from five other groups around the UK who helped us to assemble an impressive cohort of over 5,000 samples from RA patients for this experiment. Their continued collaboration will be significant in ensuring the continued progress of this research,” she added.
Dr Anne Barton, a clinician on the team, said: “RA is a complex, heterogeneous disease with some people suffering inflammation of the hands and feet which comes and goes whilst others develop a progressive form which can quite rapidly result in marked disability. We believe the genetic marker we have found may determine who develops RA or how severe the disease becomes.”
The study is published in the latest issue of Nature Genetics .
Dandruff may soon be history
Dandruff may soon be history
LONDON: Scientists conducting a research for Proctor and Gamble have decoded the complete DNA of a natural fungus responsible for dandruff, a genetic breakthrough that may lead to the elimination of the problem of the flaky skin condition.
Dr Thomas Dawson, who led the five-year study, believes that his team’s work may pave the way for more effective shampoos, lotions, and medicines to provide people respite from the problem of dandruff.
“We have been able to see how the fungus interacts with the skin, and that opens up all sorts of new targets for medication,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.
According to the researchers, nearly all skin conditions are associated with yeast called Malassezia globosa, which lives on human skin.
They say that by feeding off natural oils in the skin, and by releasing a toxic by-product that can irritate the scalp, the fungus causes itchiness and clumps of dead skin that are noticeable on hair and clothes.
While medicated shampoos are available to deal with fungal infections, they are not 100 per cent reliable.
It was about five years ago that researchers found that Malassezia globosa was associated with the problem of dandruff. The genome for the dandruff yeast has just 4,285 genes written in nine million chemical ‘letters’ of DNA, tiny compared to that for humans.
During the study, the researchers grew ten litres of the yeast in a tank, froze it in liquid nitrogen before extracting its DNA, and then smashed it up into fragments.
The researchers read the DNA sequences of the pieces, and fed them into a powerful computer.
The results of the study have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Frequent fliers run risk of blood clots
Frequent fliers run risk of blood clots
WASHINGTON: Researchers in The Netherlands have confirmed that business travellers who fly frequently are at an increased risk of developing life-threatening blood clots.
Life-threatening blood clots and flying have been linked for more than 50 years, but this is the first study to confirm this association.
“There is some evidence that the low air pressure in a plane affects the complex coagulation system of the blood,” the International Herald Tribune quoted Frits Rosendaal of Leiden University Medical Center as saying.
A blood clot that forms within large, deep veins of the body, usually in the leg, is called a deep vein thrombosis or DVT. If left untreated, part of the clot may break off and travel to the lungs, where it can cause a pulmonary embolism, a potentially fatal condition.
“We now know out of 4,500 people who fly, one will get a DVT within 8 weeks after travel. It’s not really a huge amount,” said another researcher Suzanne Cannegieter, but the risk increases with the duration of a flight and the number of flights in a short period.
The researchers tracked almost 9,000 employees of large international companies and organizations for four to five years.
Published in the online Journal PLoS Medicine, the study showed that obesity, extremes of height (shorter than 5’4″ and taller than 6’4″), oral contraceptive use, hormone replacement therapy and inherited blood clotting disorders could also increase the risk of life-threatening blood clots.
Rosendaal said that a combination of such factors might lead to a 20 to 50-fold increase in the risk.
Rob Donnelly, vice president of health for The Hague-based Royal Dutch Shell that participated in the study, said that the company had started to use a Web-based tracking system that helped identify employees who were at risk, allowing the company to take additional measures if necessary.
He revealed that the employees logged on to the company’s intranet for training about risks, symptoms and preventive measurers for DVT and other diseases.
“This is a manageable risk for the vast majority of people,” the International Herald Tribune quoted him as Donnelly as saying.
Rochelle Broome, corporate medical director of primary care for CHD Meridian Heathcare, suggests that employees resort to walking and frequent seat exercises so that their blood circulation may increase.
“You don’t have to take a pill. There’s no shot. It’s easy,” said Broome, who experienced several serious DVTs herself.
Keeping well hydrated by drinking a lot of water, limiting alcohol and coffee, and wearing loose-fitting clothing have been referred to as some of the common preventive measures in the report.
Breastfed babies have higher IQ
Breastfed babies have higher IQ
CHICAGO: Scientists have identified a gene which leads children to have higher IQs if they are breastfed, a study said.
The study, released on Monday, took a bite out of the nature versus nurture debate by showing that intellectual development is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors.
“There has been some criticism of earlier studies about breastfeeding and IQ that they didn’t control for socioeconomic status, or the mother’s IQ or other factors,” said study co-author Terrie Moffitt, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Duke University and King’s College in London.
“Our findings take an end-run around those arguments by showing the physiological mechanism that accounts for the difference.”
Researchers examined more than 3,000 breast-fed infants in Britain and New Zealand and found that the child’s IQ was an average of 6.8 points higher if the child had a particular version of a gene called FADS2.
This difference remained after researchers were able to rule out the influence of socioeconomic status, the IQ scores of the mother, birth weight and gestational age as factors.
“The argument about intelligence has been about nature versus nurture for at least a century,” Moffitt said. “We’re finding that nature and nurture work together.”
Ninety per cent of the children had at least one copy of version of the gene which yielded higher IQ if they were breast-fed.
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