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Why today's kids do not sleep well?

Too many fizzy drinks and not enough bedtime stories are reasons why younger generation does not sleep as well as their grandparents, according to a new study.

Research by the Sleep Council found that today's seven to 14-year-old children go to bed almost 40 minutes later than their grandparents.

They are also much more likely to snack on crisps and fizzy drinks before bedtime while their grandparents enjoyed cocoa or hot milky drinks such as Horlicks.

Around 54 per cent of the older generation either had a story read to them or had a quiet time to read independently - whereas only 27 per cent of today's youngsters read before bedtime and 58 per cent watch television.

If parents ditched the bad habits, bedtime would be less stressful and their offspring would sleep better, experts claimed.

According to the survey - which asked 1,006 grandparents with grandchildren aged seven to 14, to compare their early lifestyle with that of their grandchildren - 21 per cent spent more than three hours each day playing outside.

That compares to the 28 per cent who said their grandchildren now spend less than 30 minutes playing outside on a school day.

Seventy per cent of grandparents ate dinner before 6pm but only 38 per cent of youngsters do so now. Just over half, 51 per cent, eat between 6pm and 7.30pm.

For 95 per cent of the older generation, the evening meal was home cooked but now a quarter of children eat ready-made meals.

"Seven to 14-year-olds still need a good nine or 10 hours sleep a night," the Daily Express quoted Jessica Alexander, of The Sleep Council, as saying.

"Not eating too close to bedtime and avoiding caffeine-fuelled fizzy pop is also important, as is a well balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables," she suggested.

Source: http://www.indiatimes.com

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How alcohol can boost the risk of cancer

Nearly 30 years after discovery of a link between alcohol consumption and certain forms of cancer, scientists now have the first evidence from research on humans that explains how the popular beverage may be carcinogenic.
The results also suggested that people of Asian descent, Native Americans and native Alaskans are more prone to cancer risk from alcohol consumption.

Silvia Balbo, Ph.D., who led the study, explained that the human body breaks down, or metabolizes, the alcohol in beer, wine and hard liquor. One of the substances formed in that breakdown is acetaldehyde, a substance with a chemical backbone that resembles formaldehyde.

Formaldehyde is a known human carcinogen. Scientists also have known from laboratory experiments that acetaldehyde can cause DNA damage, trigger chromosomal abnormalities in cell cultures and act as an animal carcinogen.
“We now have the first evidence from living human volunteers that acetaldehyde formed after alcohol consumption damages DNA dramatically,” said Balbo, a research associate in the laboratory of Stephen Hecht, Ph.D., a noted authority on cancer prevention at the University of Minnesota.

“Acetaldehyde attaches to DNA in humans to the genetic material that makes up genes in a way that results in the formation of a ‘DNA adduct.’ It’s acetaldehyde that latches onto DNA and interferes with DNA activity in a way linked to an increased risk of cancer,” she explained.

Balbo pointed out that people have a highly effective natural repair mechanism for correcting the damage from DNA adducts.

Most people thus are unlikely to develop cancer from social drinking, although alcohol is associated with a risk of other health problems and accidents. In addition, most people have an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, which quickly converts acetaldehyde to acetate, a relatively harmless substance.

However, about 30 percent of people of Asian descent have a variant of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene and are unable to metabolize alcohol to acetate. That genetic variant results in an elevated risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol drinking. Native Americans and native Alaskans have a deficiency in the production of that same enzyme.

The results were reported at the 244th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

Source: Indiatimes.com

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Green tea eradicates 40% of skin cancer

Scientists hope that a powerful new anti-cancer drugs based on green tea could soon be developed after they found that an extract from the beverage could make almost half of tumours vanish.

The University of Strathclyde team made 40 per cent of human skin cancer tumours disappear using the compound, called epigallocatechin gallate, in a laboratory study.

Green tea has long been suspected of having anti-cancer properties and the extract has been investigated before. However, this is the first time researchers have managed to make it effective at shrinking tumours.

Previous attempts to capitalise on its cancer-fighting properties have failed because scientists used intravenous drips, which failed to deliver enough of the extract to the tumours themselves.

So, the Strathclyde team devised a “targeted delivery system”, piggy-backing the extract on proteins that carry iron molecules, which cancer tumours Hoover up.

The lab test on one type of human skin cancer showed 40 per cent of tumours disappeared after a month of treatment, while an additional 30 per cent shrank.

“These are very encouraging results which we hope could pave the way for new and effective cancer treatments,” said Dr Christine Dufes, a senior lecturer at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, who led the research.

“When we used our method, the green tea extract reduced the size of many of the tumours every day, in some cases removing them altogether.

“This research could open doors to new treatments for what is still one of the biggest killer diseases in many countries,” she added.

According to her, when the extract is administered intravenously, it goes everywhere in the body, so when it gets to the tumours it’s too diluted.

“With the targeted delivery system, it’s taken straight to the tumours without any effect on normal tissue,” she explained.

The “ultimate objective” was a clinical trial in humans - but Dr Dufes said that was some way off.

The results have been published in the journal Nanomedicine.

 Source: http://www.indiatimes.com

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Stress can shrink your brain: Study

 Don't take stress or depression lightly, they can actually shrink the brain and contribute to both emotional and mental degradation, according to a US study.

Now researchers have discovered one reason why this occurs - a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models.

The findings show that the genetic switch known as a transcription factor represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells, which in turn could contribute to loss of brain mass, the journal Nature Medicine reports.

"We wanted to test the idea that stress causes a loss of brain synapses (junctions of nerve cells) in humans," said senior study author Ronald Duman, professor of psychiatry, neurobiology and pharmacology at Yale University.

"We show that circuits normally involved in emotion, as well as cognition, are disrupted when this single transcription factor is activated," he added.

The research team analysed tissue of depressed and non-depressed patients donated from a brain bank and looked for different patterns of gene activation, according to a statement from Yale.

The brains of patients who had been depressed exhibited lower levels of expression in genes that are required for the function and structure of brain synapses.

Source: www.indiatimes.com

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Clinton faces China balancing act amid tensions and transitions

JAKARTA: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to take a strong message to Beijing this week on the need to calm regional tensions over maritime disputes that have raised broader fears of military friction between the two major Pacific powers.
The last time Clinton visited Beijing, plans to highlight improving U.S.-China ties were derailed by a blind Chinese dissident whose dramatic flight to the U.S. embassy exposed the deeply uneasy relationship between Beijing and Washington.
This time, the irritants are disputes over tiny islets and craggy outcrops in oil- and gas-rich areas of the South and East China Seas that have set China against U.S. regional allies.
As Clinton prepares to travel back to Beijing on Tuesday, U.S. officials say the message is once again one of cooperation and partnership -- and an important chance to compare notes during a tricky year of political transition.
But the unease remains, sharpened by disputes in the South and East China Seas that have rattled nerves across the region and led to testy exchanges with Washington just as the Obama administration "pivots" to the Asia-Pacific region following years of military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both governments, too, are preoccupied with politics at home, with the Obama administration fighting for re-election in November and China's ruling Communist Party preparing for a once-in-a-decade leadership change.
"WITHOUT COERCION"
In Jakarta on Monday, Clinton urged China and its Southeast Asian neighbors to move quickly on a code of conduct for the South China Sea and stressed that disputes should be resolved "without coercion, without intimidation, without threats and certainly without the use of force".
But progress has been thwarted in recent months by China's increasingly assertive posture in the region, which has included establishing a garrison on a disputed island and stepping up patrols of contested waters.
That suggests Beijing has no intention of backing down on its unilateral claim to sovereignty over a huge stretch of ocean and potentially equally large energy reserves.
Political analysts say Clinton faces a balancing act, pushing on the territorial disputes while keeping cooperation on track on other issues including reining in the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, the Syria crisis and economic disputes that have long bedeviled the two countries.
"One of the challenges before us is to demonstrate how we deal with areas in which we have different perceptions and where we face challenging issues on the ground, or in this case on the water," one senior U.S. official said.
Beijing, for its part, is likely to repeat its opposition to a multilateral approach during Clinton's visit.
Asked about the issue on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters that "countries outside the region should respect the choices of the countries concerned regarding the South China Sea issue".
Some Chinese media have been blunter still. The Global Times, a popular, nationalist tabloid, accused Clinton on Tuesday of "deeply intensifying mutual suspicion between China and the U.S."
"Many Chinese people dislike Hillary Clinton," it said in an editorial. "She has brought new and extremely profound mutual distrust between the mainstream societies of the two countries, and removing that will not be easy."
WHAT NEXT?
Clinton's meetings on Wednesday will include outgoing President Hu Jintao as well as Vice President Xi Jinping, the man who will likely succeed him as China's paramount leader following a Communist Party congress this year.
Xi visited the United States in February on a get-acquainted tour and U.S. officials expect him to be a steady-handed leader.
But concerns over China's fast-expanding influence and its belligerent tone in regional disputes have Washington scrambling to assess how Beijing's political stars are lining up.
China, too, has its concerns and has pushed back against U.S. attempts to referee the South China Sea dispute and insert itself into similar rows between China, Japan and South Korea over islands in the East China Sea.
While Washington has stressed that it takes no position on the competing claims and simply wants to see a mechanism established to resolve them, its forceful calls on China to play along have had a cool reception in Beijing.
Mark Valencia, a Hawaii-based expert on Asia-Pacific maritime disputes, said the recent exchanges left "no doubt that the U.S. is siding with ASEAN -- not necessarily saying that their claim is correct, but that the bases of their claims have more merit than those of China".
During Clinton's last China visit in April, dissident Chen Guangcheng stole the headlines with his made-for-TV escape from house arrest, flight to the U.S. embassy, and eventual decision to take a U.S.-brokered deal to travel to New York.
U.S. officials are hoping for no such surprises during Clinton's 24-hour visit in Beijing this week, saying this is a moment for stability, not stirring the waters.
"I think the secretary intends very clearly to underscore our continuing interest in maintaining a strong, positive relationship," the senior U.S. official said. – AGENCIES

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Iran could strike US bases if Israel attacks: Hezbollah

BEIRUT: Iran could hit U.S. bases in the Middle East in response to any Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities even if American forces played no role in the attack, the leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah has said.
"A decision has been taken to respond and the response will be very great," Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen television.
"The response will not be just inside the Israeli entity - American bases in the whole region could be Iranian targets," he said, citing information he said was from Iranian officials. "If Israel targets Iran, America bears responsibility."
Heightened Israeli rhetoric about Tehran's nuclear facilities, which the West says could be part of a weapons programme, has stoked speculation that it may attack Iran before U.S. elections in November.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged world powers on Sunday to set a "clear red line" to convince Iran they would prevent it from obtaining nuclear arms.
Israel, thought to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, views Iran's nuclear programme as a threat to its regional dominance and to its very existence. Tehran says the atomic work is for peaceful purposes only.
But Netanyahu's cabinet is divided over the wisdom of attacking Iran, and Israeli officials have dropped heavy hints of a climbdown strategy, under which Netanyahu would shelve threats of an attack now in return for a stronger public pledge from President Barack Obama on conditions that would provoke U.S. action in future.
Nasrallah said there were divisions in Israel over attacking Iran. "Personally I do not expect the Israeli enemy - at least in the coming months or foreseeable future - (to wage) an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.
Nasrallah pointed to the fragile global economy, which would be weakened further by any sharp rise in crude oil prices stemming from conflict in the Gulf, and to likely Israeli casualties in any war with Iran.
"Netanyahu and (Defence Minister Ehud) Barak inflate the benefit and play down the cost," he said, referring to Barak's estimates that Israel could suffer up to 500 fatalities in any conflict aimed at wiping out Iran's nuclear facilities.
Hezbollah guerrillas fought a 34-day war with Israel six years ago in which 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 people in Israel, mostly soldiers, were killed.
War with Iran would be more deadly, Nasrallah said. "We don't know what will happen in the region."
NO CHEMICAL WEAPONS
He repeated a warning he made last month that Hezbollah could cause widespread destruction if it came into conflict with Israel again, but denied that the Shi'ite Islamist guerrilla and political movement would ever use chemical weapons.
"We do not have chemical weapons and we will not use chemical weapons," Nasrallah said. "The use of chemical weapons is forbidden - for us that is absolute.
Unrest in neighbouring Syria, which acknowledged for the first time in July that it possessed chemical or biological weapons, has led to Western fears that those weapons might fall into the hands of Islamist groups including Hezbollah.
"I do not need chemical weapons - regardless of the religious or practical position," Nasrallah said, addressing Israel. "You have factories, and you have bases, and compounds, and I have rockets."
Israel had several "weak points" which could be targeted, including "economic, industrial, electrical, chemical and nuclear" sites, the Hezbollah leader said.
Even if Israel launched a first strike attack on Lebanon, destroying a large part of Hezbollah's missile arsenal, the militant group would retain the capacity to hit back with deadly force, he added.
Two weeks ago Nasrallah said Hezbollah could kill tens of thousands of Israelis by hitting targets with what he described as precision-guided missiles.
"Hitting these targets with a small number of rockets will turn ... the lives of hundreds of thousands of Zionists to real hell," he said at the time. – AGENCIES

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