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How people lose muscles as they get older

September 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sep 12 (ANI): Even the most well-built people tend to loose their muscles and develop thinner arms and legs as they get older, and researchers in Nottingham have now explained why this happens.

As age catches up, it becomes harder to keep our muscles healthy-they get smaller, which decreases strength and increases the likelihood of falls and fractures.

The researchers have already shown that when older people eat, they cannot make muscle as fast as the young, and now they have found that the suppression of muscle breakdown, which also happens during feeding, is blunted with age.

Led by Michael Rennie, the scientists and doctors at The University of Nottingham Schools of Graduate Entry Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, believe that a ‘double whammy’ affects people aged over 65.

But the team think that weight training may “rejuvenate” muscle blood flow, and help retain muscle for older people.

The study’s results may explain the ongoing loss of muscle in older people- when they eat they do not build enough muscle with the protein in food and also, the insulin (a hormone released during a meal) fails to shut down the muscle breakdown that rises between meals and overnight.

Normally, in young people, insulin acts to slow muscle breakdown.

These problems could be a result of a failure to deliver nutrients and hormones to muscle because of a poorer blood supply.

In the study, the researchers compared one group of people in their late 60s to a group of 25-year-olds, with equal numbers of men and women.

Professor Rennie said: “The results were clear. The younger people’s muscles were able to use insulin we gave to stop the muscle breakdown, which had increased during the night. The muscles in the older people could not.”

“In the course of our tests, we also noticed that the blood flow in the leg was greater in the younger people than the older ones. This set us thinking: maybe the rate of supply of nutrients and hormones is lower in the older people? This could explain the wasting we see,” he added.

Later, Beth Phillips, a PhD student working with Rennie, confirmed the blunting effect of age on leg blood flow after feeding, with and without exercise.

The team predicted that weight training would reduce this blunting.

“Indeed, she found that three sessions a week over 20 weeks ‘rejuvenated’ the leg blood flow responses of the older people. They became identical to those in the young,” said Rennie.

The study has been published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (ANI)

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Britain is no longer a Christian nation, says bishop

June 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, June 28 (ANI): A Church of England bishop has said that Britain is no longer a Christian nation.

Right Reverend Paul Richardson warned that declining church attendance and the rise in multiculturalism meant that “Christian Britain is dead”.

As one of the Church’s longest-serving bishops, the comments by the assistant Bishop of Newcastle are set to fuel the debate over its future, The Telegraph reports.

The General Synod, the Church’s parliament, will next month consider proposals to cut the number of bishops and senior clergy amid fears over the Church’s finances.

Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, Bishop Richardson said: “Many bishops prefer to turn their heads, to carry on as if nothing has changed, rather than face the reality that Britain is no longer a Christian nation.

“Many of them think that we are still living in the 1950s – a period described by historians as representing a hey day for the established church,” he added.

He said that the Church had lost more than one in ten of its regular worshippers between 1996 and 2006, with a fall from more than one million to 880,000.

“At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility,” said Bishop Richardson.

Nearly half of the population in England regard themselves as belonging to the Church of England, while seven in ten described themselves as Christian in the last census.

However, the Bishop said that the fall in church marriages and baptisms revealed that Britain was no longer a Christian nation.

Bishop Richardson said: “The church is being hit by a double whammy: on the one hand it confronts the challenge of institutional decline but on the other hand it has to face the rise of cultural and religious pluralism in Britain.”

He says that the way the Church responds to this will be “crucial in determining whether it will be able to survive as a viable organisation and make a contribution to national life”.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury has also delivered a bleak assessment of the future of Christianity in this country, claiming previously that Britain’s Churches are in such serious decline that if they were shops they would have been declared bankrupt long ago. (ANI)

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UPDATE 1-KEPCO operating loss expanding on fuel costs -govt

April 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

SEOUL, April 15 (Reuters) – State-run Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) (015760.KS) posted an estimated 1.2 trillion won ($909.4 million) operating loss in the first two months of the year due to high fuel costs, Seoul’s energy ministry said on Wednesday.

The power monopoly has suffered a double whammy since last year with prices of imported feedstocks such as coal, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fuel oil jumping to record highs in July. Prices have nearly halved since the peak, but the local won currency has dropped more than 40 percent against the dollar since last year, making imports still expensive for KEPCO.

“KEPCO’s profit loss is expanding (1.2 trillion won in January and February) as fuel costs increase without an adjustment in power costs,” the ministry said.

“There is more pressure (now) to increase the electricity rates.”

South Korea held off raising tariff hikes for nearly two years to ease inflation pressures before raising electricity rates by a modest 4.5 percent on average in November.

KEPCO says it needs at least a 20 percent price increase in 2009 to cover its fuel costs. Seoul’s Energy Minister Lee Youn-ho also said last month that a price hike would be necessary as soon as economy recovers.

South Korea’s consumption of commercial electricity in March fell by the slowest annual pace of 2.8 percent in five months, a fresh indication of recovery in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, [ID:nSEV000685]

In 2008, KEPCO posted a bigger-than-expected net loss of 2.95 trillion won. The power supplier said import costs for coal rose 87.7 percent compared to year ago in March and liquefied natural gas (LNG) costs grew 37.2 percent.

Shares in KEPCO lost 3.1 percent as of 0234 GMT, underperforming the wider market’s 0.82 percent fall.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)

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Allocation for watershed works doubled to Rs 12,000/hectare

April 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

To make the most of the country’s watershed programme which is aimed at checking the diminishing productivity of wastelands and utilise these land towards agricultural activities, the government has decided to double the financial allocation for taking up watershed works from the current Rs 6,000 per hectare to Rs 12,000 per hectare.

The Cabinet nod to hike the allocation for the watershed works was cleared recently just prior to announcement of the model code of conduct for the forthcoming general elections. Under the new measure which would be formally affective after the new government takes charge at the Centre, even the allocation for the watershed works to be taken up in the hilly areas has been increased from Rs 15,000 per hectare at present to Rs 18,000 per hectare.

After the hike in allocation for the watershed works, the allocation under the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) will have to be hiked to Rs 2,400 crore for 2009-10 from the current allocation of Rs 1,825 crore for 2008-9.

The department of land resources (DLR) under the ministry of rural development administers IWMP across states for conservation of rainwater, which eventually helps productivity of land, brings in additional area under agriculture and creates employment opportunities in the rural areas. The Centre allocates 90% of fund while states share the rest.

“As we have already spent allocation for the current year, the rise in allocation for watershed works would be also for the pending projects,” said DLR secretary Rita Sinha.

The rise in allocation for the watershed works follows recommendations of various committees including Hanumatha Rao (2000), S Parthasarathy (2006) and inputs from the state governments that through watershed works, the potential of around 85 million hectare of agricultural land in rainfed areas out of the 142 million hectare of net cultivated areas, can be harnessed for increasing agricultural yield. Till last year three watershed programmes namely Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP), Desert Development Programme (DDP) and Integrated Wasteland Development Programme (IWDP) used to run concurrently for checking the diminishing productivity of wasteland and loss of natural resources. However, to ensure optimum use of resources and integrated planning, the Planning Commission had decided to merge all the three programmes into a single programme titled IWMP from April 2008.

Recently, in a major move to decentralise planning process to the grassroots level and prevent delays in clearance of projects, the government has already decided that all new centrally funded watershed projects would be henceforth finalised and approved at the state level. This has been done to cut down bureaucratic delay and also take up watershed works on the basis of local needs.

Under the new guideline approved by the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), a nodal agency to monitor watershed projects, the states have been empowered to sanction and oversee the implementation of watershed projects supported by the government.

Earlier as many five ministries -rural development, agriculture, environment and forest, water resources and panchayati raj usually used to sanction and implement watershed projects as per their own guidelines and had separate accounts.

Double whammy

and#149; Even the allocation for the watershed works to be taken up in the hilly areas has been increased from Rs 15,000 per hectare at present to Rs 18,000 per hectare

and#149; The allocation under the Integrated Watershed Management Programme will have to be hiked to Rs 2,400 crore for 2009-10 from the current Rs 1,825 crore for 2008-9

and#149; The Centre allocates 90% of fund while states share the rest

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Why insomnia leads to weight gain

March 26, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 26 (ANI): Insomnia has previously been linked to poor health, including weight gain. Now, a new study has revealed why.

Sarosh Motivala, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and colleagues looked at two hormones that are primarily responsible for regulating the body’s energy balance, telling the body when it is hungry and when it is full.

They found that chronic insomnia disrupts one of these two hormones.

Till date, no study has evaluated nocturnal levels of the two hormones, ghrelin and leptin, in primary insomnia patients.

Ghrelin, a peptide secreted by the stomach, stimulates appetite and increases before meals.

Leptin, which affects body weight and is secreted primarily by fat cells, signals the hypothalamus regarding the degree of fat storage in the body; decreased leptin tells the body there is a calorie shortage and promotes hunger, while increased levels promote energy expenditure.

For the study, researchers compared healthy sleepers with those suffering from chronic insomnia and measured the levels of the two hormones at various times throughout the night.

They found that while leptin levels averaged out over the night to be roughly the same between the two groups, levels of ghrelin were 30 percent lower in insomnia sufferers.

On the face of it, a decreased level of ghrelin would seem to inhibit weight gain; it is an increase in ghrelin, after all, that stimulates appetite.

But Motivala compared his findings with other, earlier studies on sleep deprivation and speculates that a switch may occur during the day: Sleep loss leads to increased ghrelin and decreased leptin, a “double whammy” that stimulates appetite. Motivala is currently working on a study to examine this switch.

“The current study shows that insomnia patients have a dysregulation in energy balance that could explain why these patients gain weight over time,” said Motivala, who is also a member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA.

The study is to be published in the May issue of the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology and is currently available online by subscription. (ANI)

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2009 sees Friday the 13th occurring in two months in a row after 11yrs

March 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 13 (ANI): For the first time in 11 years, 2009 registered Friday the 13th falling in two consecutive months-February and March.

And what’s more, the double whammy can only occur in certain non-leap years and only in a February-March combination.

In fact, one can look for another of the Friday the 13th combo in 2015.f this wasn’t enough, the double threat isn’t the only Friday the 13th claim to infamy for 2009, a particularly tough year for superstitious minds.

The ominous date falls on three Fridays this year: February 13; this Friday, March 13; and again on November 13.

However, three Friday the 13ths in one year is the maximum it can get, at least until we follow the Gregorian calendar, which Pope Gregory XIII ordered the Catholic Church to adopt in 1582.

“You can’t have any [years] with none and you can’t have any with four because of our funny calendar,” National Geographic News quoted Underwood Dudley, a professor emeritus of mathematics at DePauw University in Greencastle, as saying.

The calendar works just as its predecessor the Julian calendar did, with a leap year every four years.

But the Gregorian calendar skips leap year on century years except those divisible by 400.

For example, there was no leap year in 1900 but one was observed in 2000. This trick keeps the calendar in tune with the seasons.

Thus, Dudley noted that we have an ordering of days and dates that repeats itself every 400 years.

And in this order, some years such as 2009 appear with three Friday the 13ths. Other years have two or one.

“It’s just that curious way our calendar is constructed, with 28 days in February and all those 30s and 31s,” said Dudley.

And there’s one more revelation with the 400-year order in practice: The 13th falls on Friday more often than any other day of the week.

“It’s just a funny coincidence,” said Dudley.

Richard Beveridge, a mathematics instructor at Clatsop Community College in Oregon, authored a 2003 paper in the journal Mathematical Connections on the mathematics of Friday the 13th.

He noted the 400-year cycle is further broken down into periods of either 28 or 40 years.

“At the end of every cycle you get a year with three Friday the 13ths the year before the last year in the cycle … and you also get one on the tenth year of all the cycles,” he said.

Two thousand nine is the tenth year of the cycle that started in 2000. (ANI)

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Britain is no longer a Christian nation, says bishop

UPDATE 1-KEPCO operating loss expanding on fuel costs -govt

Allocation for watershed works doubled to Rs 12,000/hectare

Why insomnia leads to weight gain

2009 sees Friday the 13th occurring in two months in a row after 11yrs

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