Scratching Ankle Found to be More Satisfactory Than Scratching Back

Ankle has replaced your back as producing the most satisfying sensation when scratched, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Dermatology.
Researchers from the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina conducted an experiment on a group of male and female volunteers aged between 22 to 59 years. The volunteers were then rubbed with a cowhage, a plant with tiny hairs that irritate the skin, on the back, forearm and the ankle to produce an itching effect. The volunteers were prohibited from scratching the areas for five minutes.
The researchers then used as laboratory brush to scratch the affected areas themselves in order to produce as consistent technique on all the areas and recorded the reaction of the volunteers who were asked how pleasurable the sensation was.
The researchers found that scratching the ankle produced the highest intensity and the longest period of satisfaction while scratching the forearm produced a briefer and lower intensity pleasure sensation.
Commenting on the findings, one of the researchers who took part in the study, Professor Francis McGlone said, “It was interesting that the ankle was the itchiest site and that the most pleasure came from scratching it, because the back has been well-known as a preferred site for scratching.”

Asia Welcomes the Year of the Dragon

A cacophony of fireworks was set off to welcome the Year of the Dragon in Asia on Monday with the continent hoping the mightiest sign in the Chinese zodiac will usher in the wealth and power it represents.From Malaysia to South Korea, millions of people travelled huge distances to reunite with their families for Lunar New Year -- the most important holiday of the year for many in Asia -- indulging in feasts or watching dragon dances.
As the clock hit midnight, Beijing's skyline lit up with colour as families across the Chinese capital set off boxes and boxes of fireworks to ward off evil spirits in the new year -- a scene repeated across the country.
Those living in the Philippines, meanwhile, were able to sleep in on Monday after the Lunar New Year became an official holiday for the first time, despite objections from some in the business community.
The dragon is the most favourable and revered sign in the 12-year Chinese zodiac -- a symbol of royalty, fortune and power that is also used in other cultures that see in the Lunar New Year, such as in Vietnam.
As such, hospitals across China and in Chinese communities are bracing for a baby boom as couples try to have a child this year.
Nannies in Beijing and neighbouring Tianjin are charging more in 2012, and the beds in the capital's Maternity Hospital are all booked up until August, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong even took advantage of the Dragon to call on the country's residents to boost a stubbornly low birth rate, in an attempt to reduce the government's heavy reliance on foreign workers.
"I fervently hope that this year will be a big Dragon Year for babies... This is critical to preserve a Singapore core in our society," he said in his new year message.
But in Hong Kong, where tens of thousands of pregnant mainlanders come to give birth every year to gain residency rights for their babies, the Dragon may not prove such a boon as it could exacerbate problems such as limited beds and soaring delivery costs.
And according to some astrologers and geomancers, the Dragon may bring natural disasters and financial volatility to an already destabilised world.
Hong Kong feng shui master Anthony Cheng warned a "scandalous corruption case" would rock China in the second half of 2012, and also said high-ranking Chinese officials would be forced to step down, thrown behind bars or even die.
But people across Asia disregarded the doomsday predictions over the holiday, preferring to feast and celebrate with their families, and pray at temples or pagodas.
Highways in Malaysia, where 25 percent of the population is ethnic Chinese, were clogged at the weekend while the capital Kuala Lumpur became almost deserted as people travelled home.
In South Korea, which also celebrates the Lunar New Year, more than half of the entire population -- or some 31 million people -- took to roads, railways and planes for the holiday.
But stores in the capital Seoul -- normally quiet at this time of year -- bustled with activity as tens of thousands of tourists from China swamped major shopping areas to spend an expected 100 billion won ($88 million) in January.
"I feel like I'm walking on the street in China. There are so many of them," Park Eun-Yong, a South Korean college student, told AFP.
Source-AFP

Even Small Amounts Of Alcohol Doubles Life Span

A study has found found that even very small amounts of ethanol, the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, can more than double the life span of a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans.The worms normally live for about 15 days and can survive with nothing to eat for roughly 10 to 12 days. But it survive 20 to 40 days when treated with tiny amounts of ethanol.
"This finding floored us - it's shocking," said Steven Clarke, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry and the senior author of the study.
And if the worms are given much higher concentrations of ethanol, they experience harmful neurological effects and die, other research has discovered.
"We used far lower levels, where it may be beneficial," said Clarke, who studies the biochemistry of aging.
The worms, which grow from an egg to an adult in just a few days, are found throughout the world in soil, where they eat bacteria. Clarke's research team studied thousands of these worms during the first hours of their lives, while they were still in a larval stage.
"Our finding is that tiny amounts of ethanol can make them survive 20 to 40 days," Clarke said.
The scientists fed the worms cholesterol, and the worms lived longer, apparently due to the cholesterol. They had dissolved the cholesterol in ethanol, often used as a solvent, which they diluted 1,000-fold.
"It's just a solvent, but it turns out the solvent was having the longevity effect," Clarke said.
"The cholesterol did nothing. We found that not only does ethanol work at a 1-to-1,000 dilution, it works at a 1-to-20,000 dilution. That tiny bit shouldn't have made any difference, but it turns out it can be so beneficial.
"The concentrations correspond to a tablespoon of ethanol in a bathtub full of water or the alcohol in one beer diluted into a hundred gallons of water," Clarke explained.
But the team could not explain why would such little ethanol have such an effect on longevity.
"We don't know all the answers," Clarke acknowledged. It's possible there is a trivial explanation, but I don't think that's the case. We know that if we increase the ethanol concentration, they do not live longer. This extremely low level is the maximum that is beneficial for them," he added.
In follow-up research, Clarke's laboratory is trying to identify the mechanism that extends the worms' life span.
About half the genes in the worms have human counterparts, Clarke said, so if the researchers can identify a gene that extends the life of the worm, that may have implications for human aging.
The study has been published Jan. 18 in the online journal PLoS ONE, a publication of the Public Library of Science.
Source-ANI

The Art of Listening to Your Body – Fitness Workshop

In recent years, the interest Indians have started showing in health and fitness is a clear indicator that Indians are starting to take their body and their physical well being seriously. In this respect, the seminar organized in Chennai on Saturday by Maverick Fitness Studio on the ‘Art of Listening to Our Body’ can surely be seen as a step forward in the right direction.Mrs. Gita Krishna Raj conducted the whole seminar and the diverse audience who attended the seminar, comprised of men and women from all age groups. The seminar started off by explaining the importance of a balanced diet and how a healthy lifestyle, and not just taking health supplements, can ensure lasting health. The seminar touched upon the importance of meditation and yoga along with the practical demonstration of a few simple exercises.
The seminar sought to educate people on a holistic way of looking at the human body, backed by some scientific explanation. The whole event was made lively with the audience given an opportunity to actually perform a few of the exercises under the supervision of health experts. Events such as these focusing on health and fitness are bound to be a healthy treat for all health buffs in Chennai.
Source-Medindia

Study: Stem cells may aid vision in blind people

Two legally blind women appeared to gain some vision after receiving an experimental treatment using embryonic stem cells, scientists reported Monday.
While embryonic stem cells were first isolated more than a decade ago, most of the research has been done in lab animals. The new results come from the first tests in humans for a vision problem. Researchers caution the work is still very preliminary.
"This study provides reason for encouragement, but plans to now get such a treatment would be premature," said stem cell expert Paul Knoepfler of the University of California, Davis, who had no role in the research.
Last summer, each patient was injected in one eye with cells derived from embryonic stem cells at the University of California, Los Angeles. One patient had the "dry" form of age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness. The other had a rare disorder known as Stargardt disease that causes serious vision loss. There's no cure for either eye problem.
After four months, both showed some improvement in reading progressively smaller letters on an eye chart. The Stargardt patient, a graphic artist in Los Angeles, went from seeing no letters at all to being able to read five of the largest letters.
However, experts said the improvement of the macular degeneration patient might be mostly psychological, because the vision in her untreated eye appeared to get better too.
Both patients remain legally blind despite their improvements, said experts not connected with the study.
"One must be very careful not to overinterpret the visual benefit," said Vanderbilt University retina specialist Dr. Paul Sternberg, who is also the president-elect of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
The findings were published online Monday by the journal Lancet. This early test was meant to study whether the stem cell therapy was safe in people and not whether it would improve vision.
Scientists at UCLA and Advanced Cell Technology, which funded the work, said they were pleased that there have been no signs of rejection or abnormal growth months after the procedure.
Embryonic stem cells can transform into any cell of the body. Scientists are hoping to harness embryonic stem cells to create a variety of replacement tissues for transplant, but their use has been controversial because human embryos have to be destroyed to harvest the cells.
The latest news comes two months after Geron Corp. halted its stem cell-based experiment for spinal cord injuries, saying it planned to focus instead on two experimental cancer drugs.
Meanwhile, ACT is pushing ahead with its blindness study. The company said Monday that surgeons in London injected a patient with Stargardt disease last week.
Source:AP

Simple Technique to Map Proteins

Penn State University researchers have developed a novel method to map the proteins that read and regulate chromosomes. The specific order in which these proteins attach DNA-containing nucleosomes along the chromosome determines whether a brain cell, a liver cell, or a cancer cell is formed. Until now, it has been exceedingly difficult to determine exactly where such proteins bind to the chromosome, and therefore how they work. The new technique precisely pinpoints their location, and has the potential to take high-resolution snapshots of proteins as they regulate or miss-regulate an entire genome. The research will be published on 18 January 2012 as an Advance Online Publication in the journal Nature . Related research by the Penn State scientists recently was published in the journal Cell.The research process, lead by Willaman Professor of Molecular Biology B. Franklin Pugh with Graduate Student Ho Sung Rhee, began by their using a molecular tool called an exonuclease to remove DNA that is not bound by one of the gene-regulating proteins. They then determined the nucleotide sequence for each of the remaining protein-bound DNA bundles -- the sequence of the four major component bases of DNA, labeled A, T, C, and G. "The advantage over other techniques of this technique, called ChIP-exo, is its ability to narrow down any binding location across millions and billions of nucleotide genomes to a certainty of about one nucleotide," Pugh said. "This improvement is roughly analogous to going from a low-resolution 240p television to a high-definition 1080p home-theater system. It provides an unprecedented view into how genes are regulated."
The ChIP-exo technique also removes a substantial amount of noise in the detection system that plagues other methods. The lower-noise technique reveals 2-to-5 times more binding locations, providing a much-more-complete picture of which genes are regulated by a particular protein, as well as a broader understanding of their structural organization across genomes. Having a more-complete picture allows scientists to understand in more detail how gene pathways work in normal human development, or fail to work in disease.
Source-Eurekalert

Kiwis big believers in homeopathy

Most Kiwis believe homeopathy is scientifically proven but probably do not even know what it is, according to new research.
A study by research company UMR, released to the Sunday Star-Times, shows that 51 per cent of New Zealanders believe that homeopathy has been scientifically proven.
Tauranga medical professional Dr Shaun Holt said homeopathy was based on "nonsensical" theories. It is grounded in tenets created by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796 who essentially believed that diluting something and shaking it vigorously would create a potent substance. The water molecules would then "remember" the original substance, Holt said.
He said natural products, which had some medical benefit, could be diluted in homeopathic practise but this could also venture into the bizarre including the dilution and shaking of mobile phone radiation, whale song and dog testes.
"It's absolute nonsense."
The research results came as a surprise to Christchurch homeopath Elizabeth Fink who thought that negative connotations of homeopathy in the media had damaged its reputation.
"We constantly get that it's never been proven and it's not working but that is not true. I am surprised that many people out there are better informed."
She said people could now get their information on the internet and do their own research.
The New Zealand Council of Homeopaths claims that homeopathy can help with mental illness, fertility and behavioural issues. It points to accounts from the 1918 influenza epidemic and cases of success in homeopathic hospitals. It also had an account from New Zealand homeopath Julia Schiller who told of a woman who could not get pregnant after her first child. Schiller gave her a homeopathic remedy. A few weeks later the woman had a positive pregnancy test.
The research showed 59% of women and 59% of people living in rural areas believed homeopathy was scientifically proven. Under 30-year-olds (37%) and Asians (35%) were less inclined to believe that this was the case.
UMR Research Director Gavin White said it seemed likely that many New Zealanders understood the term "homeopathy" to include a much broader range of natural remedies.
Holt agreed with this explanation.
"In general people don't know what it is. They get it confused with naturopathy. It's not just members of the public it's doctors as well."
Holt estimated the vast majority of the public got their information on the treatment from friends or other homeopaths."Homeopaths can sound very convincing to someone who is not an expert."
There had never been one high quality scientific paper done proving the benefits of homeopathy, he said.
There were perfectly natural explanations to explain people getting better without hailing homeopathy as a cure-all. Unless an illness or disease was deadly, people and animals naturally got better over time. He also said if one was sick they would generally take better care of themselves which allowed time for the body to heal.
However, Holt would fall short of banning homeopathy. Holt said homeopaths often had long consultations with patients which made them feel good.
Courtesy:Stuff.co.nz