Electric kick might assistance cadence victims swallow

Frederik Joelving Wed Feb 24, 2010 3:15pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Tiny electric shocks to the throat may help stroke victims overcome disabling swallowing difficulties, a small British study suggests.

Health

Up to three-fourths of people suffering strokes are left drooling or choking on foods and drinks because brain areas involved in swallowing have been wiped out. Many never recover, and some require a feeding tube.

"Improving swallowing in patients with stroke is likely to have one of the highest impacts on their quality of life," Dr. Shaheen Hamdy of the University of Manchester, who led the new research, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Hamdy is studying whether stimulating nerves in the throat with small electrical jolts can somehow jump-start the areas of the brain damaged by the stroke.

In his new report, published in the journal Gastroenterology, he tested the idea both in stroke victims with swallowing difficulties and in healthy people who had their brains stimulated with a magnetic field to mimic a stroke.

First, the 28 stroke patients had a small tube inserted into their throats. Hamdy"s team then randomly assigned half of the patients to receive electrical shocks--mild enough that they weren"t uncomfortable--for 10 minutes on three consecutive days. The other half had the tube inserted with no current.

A few days later the researchers used X-rays to track how liquid went down the patients" throats as they swallowed.

About two-thirds of the patients choked on the liquid before getting shocked. After the electric stimulation, that percentage fell to about a quarter. There was no improvement among those who didn"t get shocked.

Swallowing also became easier after stimulation, and the patients left the hospital an average of five days earlier.

However, Hamdy emphasized that the study was small and preliminary, and that not all patients improved. "This is not a panacea," he said.

But he added that if the findings are confirmed in the larger study he is currently working on, the treatment could benefit a lot of patients.

"The technology is fairly easy to deliver, quick to apply and requires little or no compliance from the patient," he said. "This makes it eminently suited to stroke patients."

Today, most treatment consists of modifying a stroke victim"s diet or teaching the patient different ways of chewing. But only a minority of patients benefit from such exercises, experts say. Those who don"t end up with a high risk of developing pneumonia, because foreign particles fall into their lungs when they choke.

While the new technology might potentially benefit these patients, some experts say it faces significant hurdles.

"In terms of practicality, I can"t see this being something you run out and do on patients," said Giselle Mann, who has worked with swallowing disorders and rehabilitation for some 25 years.

Mann, of the University of Florida, said she had been a research subject herself in one trial and thought the insertion of the throat tube was uncomfortable, if not exactly painful. Frail, elderly people -- or their families -- may not be ready to embrace such an invasive treatment after going through the ordeals of a stroke.

"Swallowing a 3.2-millimeter catheter is no mean feat for anyone," Mann said, adding that the small number of people in the study also warrants caution.

Still, she found the prospect of expediting the brain"s recovery after a stroke fascinating. "He might be onto something really exciting here," she said, referring to Hamdy"s research.

How the process speeds recovery is still murky. In an attempt to understand it better, Hamdy and colleagues produced a virtual "stroke" in 13 healthy people by turning on a magnetic coil placed over their skulls.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS as this technique is better known, messes with the electrical activity of brain cells and can be used to turn them on or off; although it sounds dramatic, it has no known side effects when used briefly in the lab.

With the magnet, Hamdy"s team slowed the activity in brain areas controlling throat muscles, thus mimicking the effects of a stroke. They found a corresponding decrease in throat muscle activity and in the number of correctly timed swallows. But if the subjects were stimulated electrically with the throat tube, these effects were completely abolished.

Electric stimulation of the throat "seems to act by increasing the size of the regions in the brain controlling swallowing, which might actually be how stroke patients spontaneously recover swallowing anyway," said Hamdy. "We seem to be accelerating this brain "plasticity" process, with effects in both the damaged and undamaged sides of the brain."

So far, Hamdy has found no negative side effects of the treatment. His university continues to develop the technology, which it plans to market within two years.

SOURCE: Gastroenterology, online February 4, 2010.

Health

WINTER OLYMPICS 2010: The key events to watch out for in Week Two at Vancouver Games

Sunday February 21:5.30pm Men"s Super Combined

Can the golf-playing Swiss architect Didier Defago turn his surprise gold medal in thedownhill into another win here, where he must also complete a slalom? Helter skelter ski cross also makes its Olympic debut, while all of Canada will be cheering on their ice hockey team against the USA.

Monday February 22:12.15am Ice Dance

Brother and sister duo John and Sinead Kerr are the nearest thing Britain has had to Torvill and Dean. After T&Ds famous Bolero 26 years ago, the Scots will needto put in an impressive showing to their favoured Linkin Park soundtrack to geton to the podium for the finish early on Tuesday morning.

It"s a family affair: Sinead and John Kerr will hope for reasons to celebrate in the ice dance competition

Tuesday February 23: 5.30pm Men"s Giant Slalom

Snow super-power Austria will be desperate for defending champion Benjamin Raich to hold off the American challenge.

Wednesday February 24:1.00am Women"s Bobsleigh

Big day for world champions Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke as they start theircampaign at the Whistler Sliding Centre (two final runs on Thursday 2.10am). USAstar Lindsey Vonn has another shot at gold in the giant slalom (6pm).

Thursday February 255.00pm Women"s Curling

Let"s hope its all about Eve and 19-year-old skip Eve Muirhead is leading theBritish - well, Scottish - team in the semi-finals.

Has she Scot wat it takes: Great Britain"s curling skip Eve Muirhead

Friday February 261.00am Women"s Free Skating

There will be tears if Kim Yu-Na, the 19-year-old who is one of South Koreas bestknown and richest athletes, does not take home gold.

Sunday February 28Closing ceremony

The eyes of the world will be on Vancouver once again as athletes and fans say farewell to the Games. Next stop London in 2012.

More...WINTER OLYMPICS 2010: Britain"s new Olympic champion Amy Williams reveals: I thought that I"d finished thirdWINTER OLYMPICS 2010: No snow and no track, but still Britain rules the skeleton bob

Darwins speculation of expansion enclosed matrimony to his initial cousin

Frances Gibb, Legal Editor & , : {}

Marriages in in in in in in in between relatives and children, brothers and sisters, are not usually taboo, they are unlawful.

Despite the prolonged line of family relations criminialized in English law, however, matrimony in in in in in in in between initial cousins is not one of them.

Famous first-cousin marriages embody that of Charles Darwin who marry his initial cousin Emma Wedgwood, of the china production family. They had ten young kids with a bad jot down of presence and health: 3 died in childhood or at bieing innate and five were ill or disabled.

He was not exceptional: Albert Einstein tied together his cousin, Elsa Lowenthal; Queen Victoria tied together her initial cousin, Prince Albert. Of their 9 children, one had haemophilia and died at 31; dual some-more were carriers and upheld it on to their children.

Related LinksI dont have to understanding with a mother-in-lawCousins marrying "risks children"s health

Farther behind in history, Isaac tied together Rebekah, his initial cousin once removed, according to Genesis; and Jacob tied together dual of his initial cousins, Rachel and Leah.

According to Baroness Deech, it is usual use via the world, solely in the West.

Between twenty and 50 per cent of all Muslim marriages are pronounced to be consanguineous and 8.5 per cent of all births are to relatives associated by blood. Religions change as to what they allow. The Koran prohibits uncle-niece marriages, even though these are available by Jews and Hindus. Yet uncle-niece marrages engage the same volume of inbreeding as marriages in in in in in in in between cousins with 12.5 per cent of genes being identical.

The 1981 Marriage Law in China bans cousins from marrying and in the United States it is criminialized in twenty-five states. Yet it is authorised in California and majority eastern US states. Marriage in in in in in in in between cousins is authorised in Britain and Europe all nations, Lady Deech notes, that assimilate the risks in heredity.

In England and Wales, incest passionate retort in in in in in in in between a man and his mother, daughter, sister, half-sister or grandaughter, or in in in in in in in between a lady over sixteen and her father, son, brother, half-brother or grandfather is taboo in law and punishable by up to 7 years in jail or, with a lady elderly underneath 13, by up to hold up imprisonment.

The prohibitions branch in piece from concerns about the healing risks. The tangible turn of risk in matrimony in in in in in in in between cousins is doubtful but, Lady Deech says, majority systematic analysts determine that there will be twice as most ill young kids (4 per cent) as in others who are not related. Depending on ones viewpoint . . . this is an excusable or unsuitable outcome.

The genocide rate in late conceiving physically and early decline of babies innate to relatives who are cousins is 3 times that in the ubiquitous population.

hair wig

Palm oil from the Mersey that will gangling the jungle

Danny Fortson & , : {}

PALM OIL greases the wheels of complicated life. Its in your margarine, your chocolate bar, your washing powder, may be your car.

Vast pleasant plantations have sprung up to feed the ardour for the versatile part but they have led to prevalent deforestation and medium drop in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

However, a British association will open a refinery in Liverpool subsequent month that it says will yield a third of Britains annual expenditure from tolerable sources. United Biscuits, the builder of Jaffa Cakes and Hula Hoops, has sealed up to take palm oil from the refinery, as has Jordans, the cereal maker.

Nick Thompson, arch senior manager of New Britain Palm Oil, the FTSE 250 organisation at the back of the project, expects pick companies to follow. He said: This cuts an additional couple out of the sequence where we would differently not have carry out of the product. We can right away pledge it at each step in the chain.

Being means to slap a sustainably sourced pinned token on product wrapping is important. Palm oil has turn a minefield for companies. In 2008 dual sites owned by Unilever, the consumer-goods giant, were besieged by protesters ready to go as orangutans, one of the some-more perceivable victims of the palm-oil boom. Last year Cadbury affianced to stop adding it to the Dairy Milk bars in New Zealand after consumer protests. Supermarkets such as Waitrose and Sainsbury have affianced to move to 100% tolerable sources.

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a cross-industry organisation together with growers, retailers and campaigners, is the judge of sustainability. It has a minute set of criteria trimming from internal land make use of and rubbish diagnosis to family with the community. Ultimately, suppliers have to be means to infer that at each step from the camp to the end-product their responsibly grown and processed oil has not been churned with batches that are not.

Thats expensive. Sustainable batches can cost 50% some-more due to the combined logistics and doing involved. Take-up has been slow: less than 5% of the universe supply is approved as sustainable.

Alan Chaytor, senior manager executive at New Britain, said: There is patently going to be a loiter prior to palm oil in all the forms can move this way. The food companies havent only set themselves stretching targets. Food giants such as Tesco and Nestl, for example, have pronounced they will modify to tolerable sources but not prior to 2015.

New Britains plant at Port Sunlight will be fed by the firms plantations in Papua New Guinea. With the new plants genius of 150,000 tonnes a year Britain consumes 500,000 annually the association pronounced it has the economies of scale to concede it sell the oil for the same cost as the non-certified alternative.

Challenges remain, however. Last week it paid $175m for an 80% interest in 3 hulk plantations in Papua New Guinea owned by Cargill. The American agribusiness hulk sole out, only five years after shopping them, among determined critique from debate groups over the activities in Papua New Guinea and pick countries. The plantations New Britain paid for are not RSPO-certified and the association pronounced it will keep the outlay apart from the rest of the operations until they are.

hair wig

Egg trainer locked up for "free range" rascal UK headlines

The box raises questions for the food industry. Photograph: Linda Nylind

A Midlands office worker was locked up for 3 years currently after revelation creation a happening by fraudulently flitting off battery plantation eggs as free range or organic.

Around 100m mislabelled eggs sole by Keith Owen finished up on the shelves of supermarkets together with Sainsbury"s and Tesco. That the rascal was means to lift on for dual years whilst he done a £3m distinction raises questions for the food industry about the provenance of goods.

Owen, 44, from Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire, ran Heart of England Eggs Unlimited, that granted eggs to vital make-up companies that in spin granted them to supermarkets and not as big retailers.

He pleaded guilty at Worcester climax justice to 3 charges of fake accounting, relating to altering his annals to costume the actuality he was shopping in eggs laid by caged hens and offered them on for a distinction after relabelling or "misdescribing" them in paperwork.

Prosecutors pronounced Owen had "dishonestly and evenly upheld off millions of battery plantation eggs as free range/organic eggs".

Amanda Pinto QC said: "The victims of Keith Owen"s fake accounting were not usually the approach commercial operation of Heart of England, but additionally the public, as well as the bona fide egg producers.

"The idealisation customer, a part of of the open shopping these eggs, would have perceived defective eggs – infrequently even eggs not fit for sale to the open – or eggs constructed by hens kept but the difficult gratification schemes from that they were pronounced to benefit."

Owen"s barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, referred to his customer was far from the usually one formulating what he described as "mischief" in the egg industry.

"It"s not the box that all those who Mr Owen granted eggs were endangered to safeguard that the provenance of the eggs was as described," he said, adding it would be "inappropriate" to elaborate.

At the time of Owen"s fraud, in between 2004 and 2006, farmers could design to embrace a cost of around 90p per dozen for organic eggs, 70p for free range and 35p for enclosure eggs. As a "middleman" wholesaler, Owen would routinely have a couple of pence distinction per dozen, but by flitting off enclosure eggs as free range he could have an additional 35p distinction for each twelve eggs he sold.

The justice listened that Owen not usually paid for in poor battery hen eggs, he additionally paid for in outrageous quantities of supposed "industrial eggs". These do not encounter the peculiarity mandate for sale to the public, and instead are meant to be used usually in processed foods.

The rascal came to light in 2004 when allegations began present in the egg industry that there were vastly some-more British free range and organic eggs being sole in shops than could ever presumably be laid in UK farms. At the same time, investigators from the Egg Marketing Inspectorate beheld during slight checks that eggs entrance from Heart of England were not at all what they supposed to be.

Because all eggs see the same to the exposed eye, the law requires that each egg is hammered with a singular series indicating where the egg was laid and in what conditions. Paperwork contingency attend with eggs ecstatic by the supply sequence to prove their start and type.

When inspectors checked a preference of Owen"s allegedly free range eggs utilizing ultraviolet light, the shells gimlet revealing handle outlines – a certain pointer that they had been laid not on a bed of straw or even Astroturf, as tillage regulations stipulate, but in a steel cage.

There were additionally complaints from truck drivers who arrived at Owen"s farms to dump off consignments of caged eggs and afterwards to collect up free range or organic eggs. A series of drivers reported to their traffic kinship that they were done to wait for hours to collect up their deliveries and suspected that the same eggs they had delivered were being relabelled and afterwards sole behind to them the same day.

All of Owen"s vital contracts were to supply British eggs temperament the British Lion hallmark. But investigators from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs detected that he was continually shopping eggs from the continent and flitting them off as home-grown.

He used an additional of his companies, Owens Eggs, to costume the accounting fraud. Owens Eggs was a bona fide commercial operation offered organic eggs laid in a barn, on the same site as the Heart of England egg-packing business. Owen attempted to facade the rascal by offered organic eggs from Owens Eggs to Heart of England at an intensely arrogant cost – £10-£40 per dozen at a time when alternative producers were offered a dozen for no some-more than £1.

Owen concluded underneath a lien sequence to obey £3m of the distinction he done from offered the misdescribed eggs, and will not be authorised to be a association executive for 7 years.

The gun-toting boys from Brazil who order Rios Corner of Fear

Dom Phillips in São Paulo & , : {}

A child stairs resolutely in to the night trade and waves a gun to move the cars to a halt, clearing a trail for a motorcycle that screeches in to the intersection. Riding pillion is an additional boy, brandishing a machinegun.

Later dual teenagers, additionally roving pillion on motorbikes, peep their guns at alternative motorists; nearby, a child can be seen receiving target with a purloin versed with a telescopic sight. Other youths ramble the travel smoking crack.

For residents, the connection in between the bustling Dom Helder Câmara and dos Democráticos, in North Rio de Janeiro, has turn well known as the Corner of Fear and video footage of every day hold up there has repelled a republic already informed with guns and violence.

The ultimate images, prisoner by clandestine reporters from the Rio publication Extra, have unprotected the citys rapist girl enlightenment in a demeanour that echoes the journalistic review featured in the movie City of God.

Related LinksRio slums to be hermetic off by 10ft wallsFighting possibility for those perplexing to shun hold up of crime

The age of the criminals one pistol-toting child is twelve is viewable means for alarm, but so is the ostensible parole with that they act.

The video footage has supposing a glance in to the citys black market that frequency touches Rios wealthier citizens.

Local newspapers frequency show at initial palm the assault that permeates the citys slums (favelas). Since the heartless woe and attempted murder of the publisher Tim Lopes who was held filming personally in the Vila Cruzeiro favela in 2002 Brazilian reporters have been demure to take their cameras in to dive areas. Any reports that are filed lend towards to come from correspondents articulate from inside armoured cars, or are images display the issue of a shooting.

What is intolerable is this together power, the actuality that they are really young, pronounced Andr Cabral De Almeida Cardoso, 41, a teacher. They are so contemptuous about it.

Valera dos Santos, 34, a lassie who lives in a favela in São Paulo, said: My God, Ive never seen cinema similar to this. Its absurd, theyre only boys.

The reporters who prisoner the images were additionally taken aback. Even meaningful the being of what could happen, you are still repelled by the glorious that these weapons paint in the arms of minors, pronounced Fernando Torres, 27, one of a organisation of 3 who outlayed 4 nights clandestine at the Corner of Fear.

These images are desolate, pronounced Lucy Petroucic, 56, a translator. These boys have turn small Taleban who think they have zero to lose.

Within hours, military arrested one of a organisation of bandits shown in the video and betrothed that changes were on the way. Luiz Fernando Pezão, Rios Deputy Governor, told reporters that a new military bottom would open circuitously in May.

Lalit Modi tough pulpy to ease fears over IPLs safety

Rhys Blakely, in Mumbai, and John Westerby & , : {}

Lalit Modi scrambled to give an declaration yesterday that the games wealthiest contest would be protected to fool around in, shrugging off a notice from an purported al-Qaeda representative that sporting events hold in the sub-continent would be attacked.

Modi, the authority of the Indian Premier League (IPL), insisted that there would be no repeat of last year, when the contest was changed to South Africa given of security concerns in the arise of the belligerent attacks in Mumbai in Nov 2008 and the conflict on the Sri Lanka organisation in Lahore that claimed eight lives 4 months later.

I cant see any reason given we should move it at this point in time, Modi said. The media is reacting to each border organisation observant security is a problem.

Simon Childs, of New Zealand, became the initial player yesterday to lift out of the hockey World Cup, that starts in Delhi on Sunday, given of a apprehension hazard that additionally promises to expel a shade over the Commonwealth Games in the city in October.

Related LinksFlintoff "convinces" Lee to retire from Test cricketIndia offers competition security oath after threatICC and ECB contingency see pointy over Royals tie-up

Last week, Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Indian Home Minister, sought to encourage athletes that India was protected to revisit after a Pakistani-based belligerent organisation warned foreigners not to attend 3 sporting events the hockey World Cup, the IPL and the Commonwealth Games.

The hazard was reported to have come from Ilyas Kashmiri, an purported al-Qaeda user who heads the 313 Brigade, a belligerent group.

We advise the ubiquitous village not to send their people to the 2010 hockey World Cup, IPL and Commonwealth Games, it read. Nor should their people revisit India if they do, they will be obliged for the consequences.

Modis comments followed the warding off of Australian players to dedicate to the IPL on the behind of a disturbing inform by Reg Dickason, the rarely regarded English security expert, that was commissioned by players associations from Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa.

Dickason had lifted critical concerns, according to Paul Marsh, the arch senior manager of the Australian Cricketers Association. Specifically, these concerns describe to the reported approach hazard opposite the eventuality and the standing and doing of the IPLs security plan, he said.

India has been on high rapt given a explosve exploded in a caf renouned with tourists in the horse opera city of Pune this month, murdering fifteen people.

However, security sources in Mumbai pronounced last night that the Government feels, for the time being at least, that it has the incident in hand. The timing of the India ubiquitous elections last year meant that the top turn of security could not be promised, forcing by the switch to South Africa for the second version of the IPL. But there is no such overlie this time.

Alastair Cook, the England captain for the benefaction debate to Bangladesh, certified yesterday that either to go to the IPL was expected to fool around on the minds of Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Eoin Morgan. Graham Napier, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Owais Shah, Michael Lumb and Ravi Bopara are the alternative English-based players with IPL contracts.

I can think behind to the time when we were determining about going behind to India or not [in the weeks after the Mumbai attacks] and it was a really difficult preference to select either or not to go, Cook said.

This is a somewhat opposite incident given it is really away based. But it will be a difficult call.