3 babies per day hooked on heroin in UK

LONDON: Three babies a day born in the UK are addicted to heroin, crack cocaine and other drugs, a new study claims.

Figures show over the past five years in Britain, more than 5,500 babies have been born hooked on the drugs because of their mother's own addictions.

Statistics from the department of health show that all of the newborn babies were showing " neonatal withdrawal symptoms" within the first few hours of drawing breath, the Daily Mail said.

This can see the babies - who need specialist care to cope with fever, severe vomiting and diarrhea and are so addicted they fit within the first few hours of life - given opiates to "wean them off" heroin.

The figures, revealed by Conservative MP for Enfield North Nick de Bois, show the highest rate of addicted baby births is in the North West Strategic Health Authority, which covers Liverpool and Manchester.

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'California Almonds' keep energy levels high, Clinical nutritionist Ishi Khosla says

CHANDIGARH: Scientific research shows that eating a handful of almonds a day may help lower bad cholesterol levels, protect against heart disease and other lifestyle diseases. Moreover, almonds are a great source of Vitamin 'E' and fiber.

Amongst dry fruits, almonds are one of the highest on protein which make them an excellent supplement for vegetarians. Pop-in a few 'California Almonds' every 2-3 hours to keep hunger pangs away and energy levels high, suggests clinical nutritionist Ishi Khosla.

Clinical nutritionist who is also director of Centre for Dietary Counseling said, "During festival season, it always becomes difficult to stick to your usual healthy diet and exercise regime. The secret to looking and feeling great, while attending all those back-to-back parties, is smart snacking to ensure you keep your energy levels up. Go for nuts including almonds, walnuts, cashewnuts, seeds, etc, fresh fruits, dry-fruits. Due to their richness in fiber, protein and high quality of fat, almonds make a high nutrient and high satiety food for weight watchers. California almonds can also be an auspicious gift in festivals."

Consumers all over the world enjoy California Almonds as a natural, wholesome and quality food product, making almonds California's leading agricultural export in terms of value. The Almond Board of California promotes almonds through its research-based approach to all aspects of marketing, farming and production on behalf of the more than 6,000 California Almond growers and processors, many of whom are multi-generational family operations.

Established in 1950 and based in Modesto, California, the Almond Board of California is a non-profit organization that administers a grower-enacted Federal Marketing Order under the supervision of the US Department of Agriculture.

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Bengaluru connection with 2012 Physics Nobel Prize

BANGALORE: American physicist David J Wineland, who along with French scientist Serge Haroche won the 2012 Nobel Prize for his works in quantum physics, has a Bangalore connection who contributed significantly to his works that eventually got the scientist with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the coveted prize.

Dr Bhanu Pratap Das, the top boss of the city's Indian Institute of Astrophysics, has known Dr Wineland since 1984, when both were involved in academic works in Colorado, USA. The scientists kept in touch even after Das left his job in the US and moved back to India few years later. In 2010, Wineland asked Das to contribute in a project that eventually got him the Nobel Prize in 2012. The latter's work was published at a journal in March 2011.

Meanwhile, two of the major applications of 'ground-breaking experimental methods which enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems' that got the 2012 Physics Nobel Prize are building a new type of super computer based on quantum physics and the construction of extremely precise clocks that could become the future basis for the new standard of time.

Das who has had keen interest in the construction of extremely precise clocks and has some work to his credit in this field, said, Cesium ions had been used to measure time accurately until scientists like Wineland started using Aluminum ions which got better results.

"The time taken by a Cesium ion to give out a frequency of 9192631770 Hz was considered the most accurate calculation for a second," he said. "Until scientists started to experiment with aluminum ions."

Das says that Wineland asked him to reduce the error.

"He was not very sure whether the black body radiation figures were correct or not," he said.

Blackbody radiation refers to an object or system which absorbs all radiation incidents upon it and re-radiates energy which is characteristic of this radiating system only, not dependent upon the type of radiation which is incident upon it.

Das, along with two of his former students, HS Nataraj and BK Sahoo and two foreign research collaborators, Lucas Visscher and Mihaly Kallay, were able to conclude their theoretical experiments in less than a year.

"Our Blackbody Radiation Shift calculation had improved the systematic error by about 28 percent," said Das.

The current systematic error in blackbody radiation shift, after Dr Das's work, stands at nine in a billion instances.

Wineland in his Nobel acceptance lecture talked to the audience at the Stockholm City Hall, comprising of a large number of scientists, about atomic clocks and other aspects of quantum physics, in a language that's barely understandable to anyone without a master's degree in physics.

"His main interest is to develop far more accurate clocks than we have today," said Das.

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‘Lucy’ walked on ground, could climb trees too

LONDON: Researchers believe they have solved one of the biggest puzzles in anthropology — whether Lucy, one of our famous ancestors, who existed 3.2 million years ago, lived in the trees or on the ground.

Australopithecus Afarensis better known as Lucy is believed to have walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago in Africa, and scientists based their model on a skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

Researchers have long argued over when our ancestors 'came down out of the trees' , with arguments centering around Lucy, and whether her feet allowed her to climb as well as walk. Now, scientists studying the feet of Ugandan hunters who climb for honey say they believe Lucy may have spent time in both the trees and on the ground, the Daily Mail reported.

Many researchers view terrestrial bipedalism, the ability to walk on two legs on the ground, as the hallmark of 'humanness' as most of our living primate relatives — the great apes, specifically — still spend their time in the trees.

The fossil record shows that our predecessors lived in trees — until Lucy arrived on the scene — and it was her knee joint that led to the discovery that Lucy was one of the first bipeds.

"Australopithecus afarensis possessed a rigid ankle and an arched, nongrasping foot," wrote Nathaniel Dominy and his co-authors in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "These traits are widely interpreted as being functionally incompatible with climbing and thus definitive markers of terrestriality ," said Dominy, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth.

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Bone of contention among couples: Smelly dogs

LONDON: More than one in 20 dog owners blame their smelly pets for ruining relationships with partners or friends.

Almost a third of owners admitted that their pets' bad habits had prevented friends and family from coming to their homes, the Daily Mail reported. More than half said they had not been invited to other people's houses for fear that they would bring their dog, according to the survey by UK-based hygiene firm, Byotrol.

The most offensive bad odour was said to come from animals who had rolled in something nasty outdoors. Other passion-killers included the smell of wet dog, flatulence and musty ears, the paper said. Disgruntled friends and relatives objected to both the smell and the unpleasantness of stray hair on sofas and carpets.

As many as 110 out of 2,000 dog lovers said arguments over the smell of their beloved furry companion had forced them to say goodbye to a loved-one for good.

Animal behaviourists believe dogs roll in faeces or decomposing material to 'scent camouflage' themselves and avoid being detected by their prey.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar - for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal - even though they contain the same amount of calories - because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues - it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk - and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher - Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

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Earth's twin may be found in 2013: Astronomers

NEW YORK: The first truly Earth-like alien planet is likely to be spotted next year, scientists claim, saying the epic discovery would cause humanity to reassess its place in the universe.

Astronomers may have found a number of exoplanets over the last few years that share one or two key traits with our planet - such as size or inferred surface temperature - they have yet to bag a bona fide "alien Earth".

However, scientists say that should change in 2013, Space.com reported. "I'm very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year," said Abel Mendez, who runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995. Since then, they have spotted over 800 worlds beyond our solar system, and many more await confirmation by follow-up observations.

Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope, for instance, has flagged more than 2,300 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. Only 100 or so have been confirmed to date, but mission scientists estimate that at least 80% will end up being the real deal.

"The first planet with a measured size, orbit and incident stellar flux that is suitable for life is likely to be announced in 2013," said Geoff Marcy, a veteran planet hunter at the University of California

Mendez and Marcy think this watershed find will be made by Kepler, which spots planets by flagging the telltale brightness dips caused when they pass in front of their parent stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler needs to witness three of these "transits" to detect a planet, so its early discoveries were tilted toward close-orbiting worlds (which transit more frequently). Over time, the telescope has been spotting more and more distantly orbiting planets - including some in the habitable zone.

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Earth to be closest to Sun on Wednesday

NEW DELHI: Stargazers will get a celestial treat on New Year with Sun coming nearest to our planet on Wednesday.

The Earth will be at its nearest point from the Sun at 10:10am on Wednesday at a distance of 147 million km, Planetary Society of India general secretary N Sri Raghunandan Kumar said today.

Every January, the Earth is at perihelion, the closest from the Sun for the year, and in July it is at aphelion, the farthest to the Sun for the year, he said.

This year the earth will be at aphelion on July 5. The word perihelion comes from the Greek words "peri" (meaning "near") and " helios" (meaning "sun").

All planets, comets and asteroids in our solar system have elliptical orbits. Thus, they all have a closest and a farthest point from the Sun - a perihelion and an aphelion, he said.

Explaining the reason why the temperature does not rise on Perihelion Day even when the sunlight is more, Kumar said, "There are many reasons for it. Blame it on the tilt of the Earth's axis. Actually, our seasons are determined by the tilt of the Earth and not by how close the Earth is to the Sun."

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Panda's blood may help combat superbugs: Scientists

LONDON: Giant pandas may be the latest weapon against superbugs after scientists have discovered a powerful antibiotic - that can destroy fungi and bacteria - in the blood of the endangered furry creatures.

Scientists found that the cuddly animals, of which there are around 1,600 in the wild in China, produce a powerful antibiotic in their blood stream that could be used to create potent new treatments against drug resistant superbugs and other diseases.

Researchers discovered the compound, known as cathelicidin-AM, after analysing the panda's DNA.

The antibiotic is thought to be released by the bear's immune system to protect them infections when they are living in the wild, The Telegraph reported.

The researchers found that the cathelicidin-AM was found to kill bacteria in less than an hour while other well known antibiotics took more than six hours.

They hope to develop the substance either as a new drug to tackle superbugs or as an antiseptic for cleaning surfaces and utensils.

Fortunately, scientists will not need to depend upon the animal's notoriously unreliable breeding capacity to harvest the new antibiotic as they have been able to synthesis it artificially in the lab by decoding the genes to produce a small molecule known as a peptide.

"It showed potential antimicrobial activities against wide spectrum of microorganisms including bacteria and fungi, both standard and drug-resistant strains," Dr Xiuwen Yan, who led the research at the Life Sciences College of Nanjing Agricultural University in China, said.

"Under the pressure of increasing microorganisms with drug resistance against conventional antibiotics, there is urgent need to develop new type of antimicrobial agents," Yan said.

"Gene-encoded antimicrobial peptides play an important role in innate immunity against noxious microorganisms. They cause much less drug resistance of microbes than conventional antibiotics," Yan added.

Pandas have dwindled considerably as their bamboo forest habitat in China and south east Asia has been destroyed.

They are notoriously poor at breeding, even in the wild, as the females only come into season once a year.

Despite millions of pounds being spent using expensive artificial breeding techniques, their numbers have increased little.

The discovery that they produce powerful compounds that can be used to make new drugs will almost certainly strengthen the case to conserve the endangered creatures.

Yan and his colleagues also believe there may be other potential drugs hidden within the panda genome.

They have found other powerful antimicrobial compounds in the mucus produced by snails and in some amphibians.

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Kind children are popular in classrooms: Study

Do you fret about your child not eating enough at school because he shares his lunch with others? There is no need to worry because your child is possibly topping the popularity charts because of his sharing ways. An experiment performed among 400 children in the nine to 11 age group in Canada showed that children who are kind are happier and popular in their schools.

As part of the experiment, the researchers from University of California asked children to perform three acts of kindness per week over a course of four weeks. Another group of children was asked to visit three pleasant places per week. While kind acts could mean the child "gave someone some of my lunch" or "gave my mom a hug when she was stressed by her job", places visited could include shopping centres or a grandparent's house.

At the end of four weeks, both groups of children were found to have an increased sense of well-being from the activities, said the paper that was published in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) journal. But the group that had performed kind acts had gained something extra-they had found easy acceptance among their peers. The authors are excited about their study because they feel they have hit the key to managing troubled teens. "Increasing peer acceptance is a critical goal related to a variety of important academic and social outcomes, including reduced likelihood of being bullied,""they said. Their recommendation to teachers is to introduce regular pro-social activities into classrooms for pre-teens. In other words, get children to spread the cheer.

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