FUN! THE MODERATELY OVERWEIGHT ARE WINNERS AGAIN!

Male drivers who are involved in a car crash are more likely to die if they are obese, a US study suggests. The Milwaukee team says this may be due to the driver's greater momentum in a crash and because of the effect obesity has on the body's ability to recover. But the bodies of moderately overweight men appear to cushion the blow, reports the American Journal of Public Health. The authors said their findings, based on crash data involving 22,000 people, had implications for vehicle design.

The team from the Injury Research Centre of the Medical College of Wisconsin looked at information on 22,000 people from a nationwide crash data collection programme sponsored by the US Department of Transportation. The fatality rate for motor vehicle crashes was 0.87% for male drivers and 0.43% for women drivers.

The team found that male drivers who had a body mass index that was either higher than 35 or lower than 22 had a "significantly increased risk of death" compared to those with an intermediate body mass index (BMI). BMI is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in metres and is a standard way of assessing whether a person is underweight, overweight or within a healthy weight range.

Lead author Professor Shankuan Zhu said: "The increased risk for death due to motor vehicle crashes associated with a high BMI may be caused by some combination of momentum effects, comorbidities (side effects) of obesity, and emergency post-operative treatment problems among the obese. "Furthermore, obesity imparts anatomical and physiological changes that may either protect or interfere with the body's response to injury."

He said the increased risk for those with a BMI lower than 25 may be because they lack some fat which could provide a cushion effect and absorb some of the energy of the crash. "It may also be because the reason they are thin is because they have some underlying disease," he added.

But there was no significant link between BMI and women drivers' risk of death, the researchers found. They suggest the reasons for gender difference in BMI and motor vehicle fatality might be due in part to the different male and female body shapes.

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Tough women have boys: "Tough, confident females may be more likely to give birth to sons than women with less pushy personalities, researchers have found. Scientists have established that eggs taken from female mammals have varying levels of testosterone and that those with the highest levels are more likely to develop into male embryos. Testosterone in women has been linked to more dominant character traits. The discovery of the "queen bee" syndrome in mammals is the latest in a growing body of work that challenges the traditional view that a baby's sex is determined by chance. Valerie Grant, author of the study, said the sex of offspring might be due to more than just whether "male" Y chromosomes or "female" X chromosomes prevailed when sperm fertilised an egg. Grant, a behavioural science lecturer at Auckland University in New Zealand, said her latest research, conducted on cows, suggested that a female mammal's testosterone level might predispose her eggs to accept "male" sperm"


Rewired brain: "A Young woman confined to a wheelchair for seven years is not just walking again but singing and dancing in amateur shows, after a "miracle" cure using electrical implants in the brain. Amy Westall, 20, is the most dramatic example of the experimental treatment developed by doctors to tackle Parkinson's disease, depression and even paralysis. The "rewiring" of the brain involves guiding electrodes to areas known to govern specific functions. A small current is delivered from a battery implanted beneath the collar bone and connected by wires to the electrodes in the brain itself. Westall, from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, suffered from a genetic form of a condition called dystonia, in which fierce, uncontrollable muscle spasms force victims into painful contortions, making walking impossible. She underwent a lengthy experimental procedure by Marwan Hariz, professor of functional neurosurgery at the Institute of Neurology in London. Tiny filaments, thinner than a human hair, were implanted in her brain to carry electrical current that would interrupt the signals sending her muscles into spasm. They produced miraculous results."

Bad marriages bad for your heart in more ways than one: "Stormy relationships are bad for your heart, research suggests. Psychologists in the US found that women who become hostile when they argue with their husbands are more likely to suffer from a hardening of the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks. And men are more likely to get the condition if their wives - or they - act in a controlling manner. A team from the University of Utah took 150 healthy married couples who were mostly in their 60s and asked them to pick a topic - such as money, in-laws or chores - that caused disagreements. Their discussions on the subjects were monitored and rated for hostility and controlling behaviour. Two days later, each had a CT scan to measure calcification or hardening of the arteries. In cases where both sides had been hostile in the discussion, particularly high levels of calcification were found. Professor Tim Smith, who led the research and presented its findings at the American Psychosomatic Society, said: "A low-quality relationship is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease."


Kiss OK after all: "A 15-Year-old girl with a peanut allergy did not die from kissing her boyfriend after he ate peanut butter but from another cause, a coroner has ruled. But coroner Michel Miron would not reveal what caused Christina Desforges's death, saying he simply wanted to speak out before her case was cited by the food allergies association. "The [association] intended to use the Desforges case to launch an education campaign," Mr Miron said. "I had to tell them the cause of death was different than first believed." At the time of Desforges's death last November, officials said doctors had been unable to treat her allergic reaction to the kiss. Thinking she was having an asthma attack, Desforges had desperately searched for medicine. Friends called an ambulance as her breathing grew laboured but she collapsed. She died four days later in a Quebec hospital".

British schools to ban those incorrect fizzy drinks and chocolate

Dame Suzi Leather sounds like a harsh mistress. She is also soft in the head. If you look at the approved food, you will see that "fromage frais" gets a stamp of approval time after time. Yet that is a cheese-based yoghurt which would be EXTREMELY calorific! It's total calories that make you fat -- not where they come from



Schools will be banned from selling junk food and told to give pupils seeds and yoghurt drinks in moves to tackle child obesity. Parents will also be issued with guidelines on food high in fat and sugar which should not be included in their children's packed lunches.

Nuts, seeds and yoghurt drinks will replace crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks in tuck shops, after-school clubs and vending machines, say the draft guidelines issued yesterday by the government-appointed School Food Trust (SFT). The laws to wean children off sweets and chocolate will be among the toughest in the world and will take fizzy sugary drinks off the menu, as well as diet and sport drinks and flavoured waters.They come just days after the Audit Commission attacked the Government for its indecision and lack of leadership over the implementation of measures to curb child obesity.

Children will be allowed to have milk, yoghurt drinks, water and fruit juices as well as tea, coffee and low-calorie hot chocolate. Crisps will be banned at all times, but cakes and biscuits will be allowed at lunch and in after-school clubs. Dame Suzi Leather, chairman of the SFT, said the rules, to be introduced from September, were necessary because children were eating too much sugar, fat and salt with "little or no nutritional value".

"They [the new rules] cannot succeed if pupils are surrounded with chocolate, crisps and drinks that fill them up with sugar and fat during the school day," she said. "Anecdotal evidence suggests that when these products are removed, behaviour improves and this could also have implications for better learning." The SFT said that about a quarter of children were obese or overweight and 53 per cent of the 4-18 age group had dental decay.

The food and soft drinks industry is estimated to make 45 million pounds a year from school vending machines. Schools are believed to make 2,500 pounds a year per vending machine.

A spokesman for the Automatic Vending Association, whose machines are only in secondary schools, said: "We think educated choice would have been better than outright prohibition." Masterfoods, which supplies Mars and Snickers bars, said it was "disappointed with the SFT's simplistic approach. Banning certain foodstuffs will not work. Young people need to understand how to enjoy a balanced diet and active lifestyle."

Dame Suzi said that the SFT would also be strengthening lunchbox guidelines, and would expect schools to advise parents of what should be included in a healthy diet. The SFT guidance is out for consultation until May. The Education and Inspections Bill, which was published this week, requires governing bodies and local authorities to comply with healthy eating regulations in the provision of "all food and drink provided on the premises" of state schools. It gives ministers power to ban specific types of food and drink from schools and states that the rules will apply "to food or drink provided by contractors under arrangements made with LEAs or governing bodies

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UK: Lords fight to save Stilton from food watchdog: "Below the gilded ceiling and the statues of the Magna Carta barons, the peers on the red benches of the House of Lords turn today from matters of state to a more exalted subject: Stilton. Like the aristocratic families whose descendants are still in the second chamber, the 'king of cheese' has ruled for hundreds of years, its blue veins a sign of its gastronomic lineage.Yet all is not well deep in the Stilton-producing counties of Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Now the 21st century has arrived and a plan to reduce the saltiness of this most aristocratic of foods has caused a whiff of scandal in the Lords. ... At the centre of The Great Stilton Controversy is a proposal by officials in the Government's Food Standards Agency to reduce the cheese's saltiness from 2.3 per cent to 1.9 per cent. The Stilton Cheese Makers Association says the move would ruin the quality of Stilton, cause many batches to go off and occasionally lead to harmful bacteria being produced. Salt in Stilton is not just a matter of taste, the cheese-makers and their friends in high places say -- it is a vital ingredient."



Colour vision is for seeing you blush: "Primates may have evolved colour vision not to find the ripest, tastiest fruit but to detect that tell-tale blush on someone else's cheek, US researchers have reported . The cone structures in the eye that help detect colour seem exquisitely tuned to skin tones, the team at the California Institute of Technology reports. "For a hundred years, we've thought that color vision was for finding the right fruit to eat when it was ripe," Mark Changizi, a theoretical neurobiologist and postdoctoral researcher at Caltech who led the study, said. "But if you look at the variety of diets of all the primates having trichromat (three-color) vision, the evidence is not overwhelming." Instead, Dr Changizi and colleagues report in the latest issue of the journal Biology Letters, the system seems adapted especially to find the colours prevalent in primate skins - notably changes due to how much oxygenated haemoglobin is in the blood... The clincher - Dr Changizi said old-world primates that had the three-cone vision were also all bare-faced and bare-butted. "There's no sense in being able to see the slight colour variations in skin if you can't see the skin," Dr Changizi said".


Yukky Chinese restaurant: "The menu at Beijing's latest venue for its growing army of gourmets is eye-watering rather than mouth-watering. China's cuisine is renowned for being "in your face" - from the skinned dogs at food markets to scorpion kebabs in street stalls - and there is no polite way of describing Guolizhuang. Situated in an elegantly restored house beside Beijing's West Lake, it is China's first speciality penis restaurant. Here, businessmen and government officials can sample the organs of yaks, donkeys, oxen and even seals. In fact, they have to, since they form part of every dish - except for those containing testicles. "This is my third visit," said one customer, Liu Qiang. "Of course, there are other restaurants that serve the bian [penis] of individual animals. But this is the first that brings them all together." Since it set up in November, a booking comes with a trained waitress and a nutritionist to explain the menu and its medicinal virtues. In China, you are what you eat. Nutritionist Zhu Yan said the clients were mainly men eager to improve their yang, or virility. Women could benefit, too, she added, although she told a female photographer: "I wouldn't recommend the testicles. The testosterone might interfere in fertility. But many women say bian is good for the skin.""

Fake acupuncture works too: "Belief may be more important than medication in treating pain, according to a study which found migraine sufferers who get fake acupuncture treatment recover as quickly as people who take painkillers. A German study of more than 1200 people found medication, real acupuncture and fake acupuncture were equally successfully in reducing the number of days in which patients suffered from migraine. Researchers from the University of Essen were at a loss to explain why the fake treatment was so effective. Lead researcher Hans-Christoph Diener said it was unclear whether the bogus treatment - which involved inserting needles into non-acupuncture points - had a physical or psychological effect. "Needling at non-acupuncture points could exert biological effects similar to ones achieved when needling specific acupuncture points," Dr Diener said. "Another possible explanation of the mode of action of acupuncture is a powerful placebo effect. Placebo treatments exert powerful effects on pain modulating brain structures."

Be optimistic, Damn you!: "Optimism is good for the heart, a study said on Monday. The most optimistic among a group of 545 Dutch men age 64 to 84 had a roughly 50 percent lower risk of cardiovascular death over 15 years of follow-up, according to the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Previous research has suggested being optimistic boosts overall physical health and lowers the risk of death from all causes. A positive attitude also has been shown to help patients who suffer from heart disease caused by narrowed arteries. The new study measured participants' level of optimism about their lives by having them respond to statements such as "I do not look forward to what lies ahead for me in the years to come" and "My days seem to be passing by slowly," or "I am still full of plans.".... Higher scores were associated with being younger, being better educated, living with others, having better health, and doing more physical activity. "It is yet to be established whether interventions aimed at improving an older individual's level of optimism may reduce the risk of cardiovascular mortality," he added.

Pro-Test: supporting animal testing

A new campaign by Oxford students makes the case for scientific progress and medical research

In recent months, medical research and animal testing has become an increasingly inflammatory topic in Oxford, England. The media interest has so far been in student fears and grievances, and the violent methods and intimidation of the animal rights protesters.

All acts of violence on the part of animal rights protesters should be denounced, and there are laws in place for this. Yet SPEAK, the non-violent animal rights group, is fully within its right to protest and make its case, however noisily.

There is little merit in being drawn into a debate about the methods of animal rights groups. This shifts the attention away from the key issues, which concern science, and our understanding of the role played by medical research in the advancement of human knowledge and welfare. Animal experimentation is an integral and necessary component of such research, and should be defended for these reasons.

With this in mind, a 16-year-old student set up Pro-Test, with the idea of defending the construction of the new Oxford animal facility. Pro-Test began with a small-scale counter-demonstration on 28 January 2006 with the slogan 'Support Progress: Build the Oxford Animal Lab'. In reaction to the positive response from Oxford students, local business owners and other people on the day, a website was launched: www.Pro-Test.org.uk. Today, Pro-Test consists of a group of students who are concerned above all with the promotion of science, medical research, reasoned debate, and human welfare. The goal of Pro-Test is to make the case for animal testing. It is generally well known that vaccines, antibiotics, transplant surgeries, medical devices such as pacemakers, and other developments would not be here today if animal testing had not been used. But animal rights activists want to stop all current and future animal testing.

Challenging this through a defence of scientific experimentation should not be just the particular concern of Oxford students, or of scientists. It is an issue that concerns society as a whole, and goes to the heart of how we understand ourselves, and what vision we have of humanity and the capacity for bettering human welfare through the pursuit of scientific research. Life as we know it would not be possible without experimenting on animals.

Animal rights activists often demonise scientists, pretending that they are sadists who enjoy torturing animals just for the sake of it. There are countless examples of the lengths to which scientists go to minimise the suffering of animals. But the simple point is that scientists are not sadists: they act in the way that they see fit, according to principles that they share with the rest of us.

Animal research takes place not because of the laziness of scientists, or because it is just the cheapest option foisted on to scientists by pharmaceutical companies that put profits before anything else. They take place because they are a necessary component of scientific research. At the early stages of biomedical research, alternatives to animal testing exist, which is why the majority of research devoted to finding new treatments is done through chemical, biochemical, biological and pharmacological assays involving DNA, RNA, proteins, and mammalian cells.

But in the end, drugs must be tested in an animal model in order to see the effects of a compound in the entire body, not just in a cellular environment. Testing drugs in animals before doing so in humans helps researchers find potential toxic side effects, as well as understand the metabolism of drug compounds and consequent effects seen throughout the body. This cannot be replicated in cellular assays.

As in all fields of human activity, errors have been made. Animal rights activists use isolated cases as reasons for stopping animal testing. In fact, looking more closely at such cases suggests the opposite conclusion: not less but more testing.

A famous example often cited by animal rights groups is thalidomide. Thalidomide was introduced in 1956 and marketed as a sedative. Within several years, its use had spread around the world and women began taking it to help combat the nausea associated with pregnancy. In 1961, several physicians linked thalidomide with birth defects they observed in cases of female patients who had been taking it. Very quickly, these results were confirmed worldwide, and thalidomide was taken off the market.

Thalidomide did initially pass safety tests in animals because the proper tests - namely, testing thalidomide in pregnant animals - were not performed. If a thorough battery of tests had been performed in animals, the birth defects would have been detected. Animal rights groups confuse an error resulting from an absence of testing with one resulting from conducting tests on animals. They claim, quite erroneously, that thalidomide did not cause birth defects in animals, only humans. Once the drug was pulled off the market, additional tests in animals were done, and it was found that mice, rats, hamsters, marmosets and baboons all suffered similar effects as observed in humans....

In contemporary debate, animal rights groups dominate the agenda. Those who oppose animal rights groups often concede on the principle, and argue only with the methods of animal rights activists. Yet the only way to challenge the climate of fear that currently surrounds the debate on animal testing is to win the argument. Confidence in the strength of their ideas will give people the will to stand up to the threats and intimidation. This can only come through a defence of animal research as a necessary component of scientific experimentation.

Pro-Test stands by the belief that the value of human life is such that these drugs should be tested on animals before they are tested on any human beings.

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Women clone a prostate! "An all-woman team of Australian scientists has achieved a breakthrough for the world's males, by creating the first "man-made" prostate. The team from Melbourne's Monash Institute of Medical Research (MIMR) - comprising scientists Prue Cowin, Professor Gail Risbridger and Dr Renea Taylor - are claiming a world first by growing a human prostate in a mouse using embryonic stem cells. The medical breakthrough came after three years of research, backed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Australian financial company Perpetual, which between them provided $1 million funding. Professor Risbridger said the discovery would have a significant impact on research into cancer of the prostate, the walnut-shaped gland that surrounds the urethra at the neck of the male bladder. "We will have the opportunity to study the transition of healthy prostate tissue to cancer," Prof Risbridger said".