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| foxnews.com /ISTOCK |
People with psoriasis develop thick, red, scaly patches on the skin, which are often itchy or sore.
Experts believe the disease is caused by an abnormal immune system attack on the body’s own cells. Some studies have suggested that smokers are more vulnerable to psoriasis, possibly because the habit can affect immune activity. But most have studied people at only one time-point, which makes it hard to be sure the smoking came before the psoriasis.
So for the new study, researchers used data from three large, long-running studies of U.S. health professionals. Of nearly 186,000 men and women followed for 12 to 20 years, 2,410 developed psoriasis during that time. And the risk was greater among both current smokers and former smokers.
People who were current smokers at the study’s start were almost twice as likely as lifelong non-smokers to develop psoriasis. And past smokers had a 39 percent higher risk than non-smokers.
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, do not prove that smoking, itself, causes psoriasis in some people.
But it is clear that the smoking came before the psoriasis, said senior researcher Dr. Abrar A. Qureshi, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Past studies have found links between psoriasis and both obesity and heavy drinking. But after accounting for those factors, the smoking-psoriasis link remained, Qureshi told Reuters Health.
"I think if there’s one message, it’s that for now, smoking seems to be a risk factor for new-onset psoriasis," Qureshi said.
Other studies have pointed to some reasons that smoking could contribute to psoriasis -- mainly its effects on immune system activity and inflammation. Smokers, for instance, tend to have higher levels of "autoantibodies" -- immune defenses that are mistakenly aimed at the body’s own cells.
About 7.5 million Americans have psoriasis, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation.
Type 1 psoriasis arises in teenagers and young adults, and it’s strongly related to family history of the disease. In contrast, type 2 psoriasis arises later in life, and it tends to be milder and less related to heredity.
The men and women in the current study were middle-aged to older. So it’s likely they had type 2 psoriasis, Qureshi’s team says.
As for people who already have psoriasis, the current findings don’t speak directly to whether quitting will help them, according to Qureshi.
But there are already plenty of reasons for any smoker to quit, he said.
In particular, people with psoriasis have been shown to have an increased risk of heart disease. Since smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease, Qureshi said, quitting seems especially important for people with psoriasis.
"Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability, to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications," Cisco said on Wednesday.
Cisco launched its apppeal in the EU's General Court in concert with Italian fixed-line and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone provider Messagenet SpA, a Skype rival.
Microsoft (MS) said it was confident the decision would stand up on appeal.
"The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions," a spokesman said.
The Luxembourg-based General Court generally backs the Commission in antitrust cases, but it has on occasion overturned decisions.
Nevertheless, challenging the Commission's decisions in EU courts is risky, with the last successful appeal dating back to 2002.
"It is a huge uphill battle; there has only been one successful appeal by a third party against a merger cleared by the EU Commission, but if the companies can raise good arguments, it may stand a chance," said an antitrust lawyer who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the case.
The court, known then as the Court of First Instance, annulled in 2006 the Commission's clearance of the 2004 merger between the Sony Music and BMG record labels after a challenge by Impala, an independent group of music producers. However, Europe's highest court subsequently overturned the ruling.
Cisco said it has asked for the court to speed up the process, which would still run to about a year.
Cisco, whose core business is routers and switches that manage the Internet, is betting on future growth in video, which Chief Executive John Chambers has said will be the future of communication.
Cisco argued that Microsoft's plan to integrate Skype exclusively into its Lync Enterprise Communications Platform could lock-in businesses that want to reach Skype's 700 million account holders to a Microsoft-only platform.
"Imagine how difficult collaboration would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others," Cisco said.
According to Cisco, interoperability between devices and systems is key to speeding up innovation, creating economic value and increasing choice for users.
The video communications market is also very lucrative, with double-digit growth expected to continue through 2015, according to Infonetics research.
Microsoft gained EU approval in October last year to buy Skype for $8.5 billion in its largest-ever acquisition.
Investors initially questioned the wisdom of Microsoft's acquisition, especially its high price tag, but have been warming up to the decision, thinking Microsoft would be making a smart move buying advanced communications technology it could put into its products, along with acquiring a ready base of users.
Skype, which appointed ex-Cisco manager Tony Bates as its chief executive officer in 2010, popularized the VoIP method of using a computer as a telephone. It is the clear leader in the market, with 145 million users who sign in at least once a month.
The European Commission has said it did not see any competition concerns arising from the deal because there were numerous players in the market, including Google Inc.
The US Federal Trade Commission cleared the deal in June. (Reuters)
Other studies have linked air pollution levels to hospital admissions and deaths from cardiovascular disease. But making that link for heart attacks has been controversial, since the research has been mixed.
In Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Hazrije Mustafic from the Paris Cardiovascular Research Center and his team in France, the U.S. and Montenegro reviewed studies on air pollutants and heart attack risk.
The breathing of pollutants from traffic such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and tiny soot-like particles for up to a week boosted heart attack risk by one to three per cent in the following week.
The size of the link was relatively small when compared to risk factors such as smoking and high blood pressure, the researchers said.
Since nearly everyone in cities is exposed to the pollutants, "an improvement in air quality could have a significant effect on public health," the study's authors concluded.
As for how the pollutants could cause harm, the researchers pointed to inflammation, which is associated with heart attacks.
Source: Geo.tv
PARIS: A probe designed to delve into the "Big Bang" that created the cosmos has uncovered an enigmatic fog of microwave radiation in the centre of our galaxy, European astronomers reported on Monday.Planck, a billion-dollar European space telescope launched in May 2009, found "a mysterious haze of microwaves that presently defies explanation" during a scan of the centre of the Milky Way, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
It could be a form of energy called synchrotron emission, which occurs when electrons zip through magnetic fields after being accelerated by the blast of an exploding star, or supernova.
But the newly discovered emission is something of a mystery, as its signature lingers far longer compared with other synchrotron sources spotted in the Milky Way.
Several explanations have been offered, ranging from higher rates of supernovae in the galactic centre to the annihilation of so-called dark matter particles, ESA said in a press release.
Planck, deployed in orbit 1.5 million kilometres (937,000 miles) from Earth, is designed to pick up tiny variations in temperature in microwave energy released after the Big Bang that created the universe some 14 billion years ago.
Scientists looking at the data have to filter out a haze of microwave emissions that obscure the precious telltale, known as Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation.
The new results are being presented this week at a conference in Bologna, Italy, which is looking at the intermediate results from the mission.
Planck has also located concentrations of carbon monoxide among the clouds of cold gas in the Milky Way and other galaxies that are a reservoir for making stars. (AFP)
KARACHI: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) adds another feather in its cap by carrying two passengers in its flight from Lahore to Karachi in toilet due to non-availability of seats, Geo News reported Tuesday.The captain of the national flag carriers' flight PK 303 accommodated two passengers in the plane's toilet, as all the seats in the plane were occupied and there was no more seat left for them.
Through introduction of its amazing new service for its valued passengers, PIA really does justice to its slogan 'Great people to fly with)'.
A British man is believed to have given birth, causing an ethical controversy.The ‘male mother’ started life as a woman but underwent a sex change. He is thought to have had the baby last year, while living as a man.
Medical experts said that if the womb is not removed in sex change surgery, there is nothing to stop a woman who becomes a man from having a child.
But others said that the welfare of the baby is paramount and queried how the child will deal with even the simplest of issues, such as whether to call the man ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’.
Only a handful of ‘male mothers’ have given birth worldwide and this is believed to be the first case in Britain.
Details were revealed by Joanna Darrell of the Beaumont Society, which provides support to those have changed sex or would like to do so, a process also known as gender reassignment.
She said the man, in his thirties, inquired about the practicalities of having a baby after the surgery. Read Full Story at Daily Mail uk
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Angelina Jolie's new movie — a love story set against the genocide of Bosnia's war — will be shown in Sarajevo for the first time on Tuesday, but it already has touched off anger left over from the conflict.
Muslim Bosniaks have said they expect "In the Land of Blood and Honey" to focus on their plight during the brutal 1992-1995 war. But the distributor in the Serb part of Bosnia said he won't show it there because it portrays Serbs as the villains and they wouldn't put up with that.The screening — which Jolie plans to attend — will show a fictional movie about a romance that develops between a Bosnian Serb man and a Bosnian Muslim woman, and what happens when he becomes an army officer and she is held in a military prison camp where atrocities such as rape occur.
About 5,000 people are expected at the debut in Sarajevo, and the movie also will be shown in theaters in the Bosniak-Croat part of the country.But the sole film distributor in the Serb-run part of Bosnia said Serbs don't want to see it.
For that reason, Vladimir Ljevar told The Associated Press, "In the Land of Blood and Honey" will not be shown in Bosnian Serb movie theaters.
"There is simply no interest for this movie here, so I can't sell any tickets," he said. "The fact that the Serbs are the bad guys in it is the reason why there is no interest. The film is lousy. I watched it. It has had bad reviews. It is unprofitable."
Thousands of women were raped during Bosnia's war, which also included the notorious Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and the 44-month siege of the capital, Sarajevo. Most of the rape victims were Muslim Bosniak women, often the target of mass rape used as a weapon of terror.
Many of the victims were raped repeatedly. Some were brought back to their homes and dumped in front of their husbands. Other women were violated in their husbands' presence as part of a shock campaign.
So a group of Muslim Bosniaks who now have returned to their homes in the Serb part of the country say they are interested in seeing Jolie's movie and plan to organize private screenings once they make a deal with some other distributor from the region.
Zinaida Mahmuljin of the northwestern town of Kozarac said people there are willing to pay for the screening equipment and show it in the local town's community center.
"There is interest here among the returnees," she said, denying Ljevar's claims about the movie. "What are we here? Thin air?"
Together with others in Kozarac, Mahmuljin plans to screen the movie next week.
More than 27,000 people lived there before the war, but the population is now down to about 8,000, she said. The notorious Serb prison camps Omarska and Keraterm are not far from Kozarac, and many townspeople were prisoners there during the war, she said.
Murder, torture, rape and other abuses were common at the two camps during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague has convicted several Bosnian Serbs of persecution and cruel treatment of Muslim Bosniaks.
So many people died in those camps that it is hard to find any Muslim family in Kozarac that did not lose someone there, Mahmuljin said. Her father was killed in Omarska and her mother survived torture there.
"But we need to move forward, and we won't do that if we don't talk about what happened," she said.
"During the Second World War, Serbs of this area were the victims and that was swept under the carpet," she said referring to the many Serbs who died in the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia," Mahmuljin said. "In this war, the Bosniaks were the victims. It is time we all sit down and talk about it."
Source: Yahoo / Associated Press
NEW YORK: Security researchers said they found a vulnerability in the Google Inc mobile payments platform which is currently available in phones sold by Sprint Nextel Corp.Mobile payment services that allow consumers to pay by waving their phone at a check-out terminal, instead of using a credit card, have long been available in Japan and some other countries but are only just emerging in the United States.
Isis, a venture of Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile USA, is expected to launch an offering to compete with Google but has yet to announce a launch date.
The alleged vulnerability in the Google Wallet was identified by Joshua Rubin, a senior engineer with zvelo, a closely held security firm in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
Rubin developed an app dubbed Wallet Cracker that he says can break the four-digit PIN required to launch the Google Wallet app. He demonstrated how it works in a video on his blog (bit.ly/zgO2L6)
Rubin said that he had disclosed his findings to Google and that the company "was able to confirm the issue and agreed to work quickly to resolve it."
Google spokesman Jay Nancarrow in an emailed statement said "We are working to resolve the issue," even as he took issue with the study that prompted the allegations.
"The zvelo study was conducted on their own phone, on which they disabled the security mechanisms that protect Google Wallet by 'rooting' the device," Nancarrow said.
Google, he added, recommends that people not install Google Wallet on "rooted" devices and that they should set up a screen lock as an additional layer of security.
Sprint representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Google's Wallet partners also include Citigroup Inc and payment network MasterCard.
Emily Collins, a Citi spokeswoman, said no Citi cardholder information is stored in the Google Wallet nor are cardholders liable for unauthorized transactions.
Jimmy Shah, a security researcher for security software specialist McAfee, said on Friday that the vulnerability did not appear to be a very easy one to exploit.
But he said it was theoretically possible if a hacker was able to physically steal a user's phone.
Shah said that a hacker would need time to install the Cracker app and to install another piece of malware to disable the phone's security system before being able to run the Cracker app to retrieve the PIN number.
The hacker would also still need the phone itself in order to be able to make payments using the stolen Google Wallet.
"It's a nice theoretical attack but it's not a very simple attack," Shah told Reuters.
McAfee is owned by chipmaker Intel Corp. (Reuters)
MOSCOW: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received a drink fit for dinosaurs on Friday when he was presented with a sample of ancient water from a sub-glacial Antarctic lake pierced by Russian scientists.Russian scientists said this week they had drilled through Antarctica's frozen crust to the vast Lake Vostok, which has lain untouched for at least 14 million years hiding what scientists believe may be unknown organisms and clues to life on other planets.
"Well, did you drink the water?" Putin asked Russia's Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev after being presented with a vial of water which the government said was from the Vostok borehole.
Trutnev, looking flustered, assured Putin that he had not tried a drop of the water.
"Well it would have been interesting you know: dinosaurs drank it and Trutnev, a member of the Russian government, too," Putin said with a smile.
Trutnev stifled a chortle and said he did not want to be dinosaur.
Sealed deep under the ice, Lake Vostok is one of the world's last unexplored frontiers. Scientists suspect its depths may provide a glimpse of the planet before the ice age. (Reuters)
"The Vow," starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, took in $41.7 million at US and Canadian theaters from Friday through Sunday in the biggest domestic opening so far this year, according to studio estimates.
Twenty international markets added $9.7 million, bringing the global total to $51.4 million.
Action movie "Safe House" featuring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds took second place with an estimated $39.3 million domestically plus $10.2 million from 25 international markets. The worldwide total stood at $49.5 million.
The studios had projected domestic openings in the $20million range for each of the top two finishers.
To the surprise of industry executives, four movies topped $20 million each. That lifted the domestic weekend total for all films 29.3percent higher than the same weekend last year, according to the box office division of Hollywood.com.
"The Vow" was inspired by the real-life story of a husband who must win over his wife a second time after a car crash erases her memory of him. The movie was released this weekend to draw in couples ahead of Valentine's Day, said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for distributor Sony Pictures. The film cost about $30 million to make.
"We grossed what it cost to make the film in the first two days. It's really a fantastic result," Bruer said.
"Safe House" had a higher budget of around $85 million that was financed by privately held Relativity Media and distributor Universal Pictures.
The movie features Washington as a rogue CIA agent who shows up at the US Embassy in South Africa. Reynolds plays a rookie operative who must bring him in. "People are back in the movie going mode" and audiences liked Washington in an "action antagonist role," said Nikki Rocco, president of distribution for Universal Pictures.
In third place, family film "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson brought in $27.6million, well ahead of studio projections of around $15 million.
The movie has brought in $74.7 million from international markets after opening in late January, bringing the global haul to $102.3 million. The 3D follow-up to 2008's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" cost $79 million to make.
The movie tells the story of a man leading his stepson, a helicopter pilot and his daughter on a rescue mission set on an unusual island. "We dominated the family business," said Dan Fellman, head of domestic distribution for Warner Bros.
'STAR WARS' STRIKES AGAIN
Families also turned out for a 3D remake of 1999's "Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace," which took fourth place domestically with $23.0 million. Distributor 20th Century Fox had hoped the film that tells the story of a young Anakin Skywalker, the boy who becomes Darth Vader, would bring in $20million or more.
Sales in international markets hit $20.5 million, bringing the movie's weekend total to $43.5 million around the globe.
Last weekend's domestic winner, thriller "Chronicle" about three boys with superpowers, slipped to fifth place with $12.3million.
The movie division of Sony Corp released "The Vow." "Safe House" was released by Universal Pictures, a division of Comcast Corp. News Corp unit 20thCentury Fox distributed "Star Wars" and "Chronicle." Time Warner Inc unit Warner Bros. released "Journey 2." (Reuters)
“The box itself was fairly unspectacular, it looked like a big jewellery box, with lots of little drawers inside,” she said.
“So I pulled open one of the drawers and there were some coins in it. And I pulled a couple more open, and there were more coins – lots of different ones, different sizes and different metals.” Keep Reading
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| healthnews.com |
A new study recently published in the American Sociological Review found that working moms spend 9 more hours multitasking weekly than do working dads. These women spend about 48.3 hours per week handling multiple tasks at once, while for men, the total hours spent getting various things done is just 38.9 hours. In an interview, study co-author Barbara Schneider, a professor of sociology at Michigan State University, noted, “When you look at men and women in similar kinds of work situations they look very similar. But when they come home it is very clear that women are shouldering much more of the responsibilities of housework and childcare.”
Schneider and her colleague, Shira Offer, an assistant professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, analyzed data on 368 mothers and 241 fathers who took part in the 500 Family Study, which focused on how U.S. families balance work and family life.
The research is based on responses from dual-income families, considered by the researchers to represent the most time-pressured sector of the nation’s population. These couples generally possess college degrees, have professional occupations, report higher earnings, and work longer hours than middle-class families in other nationally representative samples.
The findings of the study revealed that for working mothers, 52.7 percent of multitasking performed involved housework, while for working fathers, only 42.2 percent was spend on household chores. In addition, the study showed that mothers spent 35.5 percent of time performing multiple tasks involving childcare, while for fathers the numbers came to 27.9 percent. Moreover, the study showed that various tasks performed by women at the same time while at home prove to be more labor intensive than those performed by men.
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| Photo by Reuters |
But Monster.com, the career search website, hopes to change that with BeKnown, a professional networking app that allows users to build their professional identities within the Facebook.
“People are spending so much of their time on Facebook and at the same time companies are trying to find creative and productive tools to connect with potential talent,” said Tom Chevalier, global product manager for Monster Worldwide.
With BeKnown jobs are displayed based on a user’s work experience and network connections.
When the app identifies a potential job the user can state their interest, which is relayed to the employer using information from the profile.
Within the app users can earn badges, or visual emblems, based on their work experiences, accomplishments and strengths from the site or from colleagues to serve as aids for recruiters to highlight their accomplishments.
“You can have your connections giving you a skill endorsement, which is really a stamp of approval,” said Chevalier.
Launched in June, the app has been updated to introduce college pages for users to network with past alumni and to find jobs that have been posted by them.
“Users want to congregate around the affinity they have for their schools, and they want to form relationships amongst students and alumni,” said Chevalier.
When a job is posted in BeKnown it is automatically posted on the page of the college that the job poster attended.
“Users will see that job opportunity and can start to have a conversation with those people in a professional way,” he said.
Chevalier said that it’s important that BeKnown maintain an explicit divide between a user’s social and professional lives by keeping the two networks entirely separate.
“That’s really important, both for users’ expectations of social networking versus what they might want to do as professionals, but also to establish boundaries that people can feel comfortable with,” he explained.
The updated app also lists jobs directly on a company’s Facebook pages.
Similar apps for Facebook include BranchOut, which was released last year.
BeKnown has been configured to work with iPhone and Android.(Reuters)
Early diagnosis can prevent the long-term complication of diabetes, said leading Diabetelogists at 3-day Second International Conference on Diabetes that kicked off on Dec 10, at DMC Campus, Karachi.
The 2nd International Conference on Diabetes 2011 has been organized by Dow University of Health Sciences in collaboration with Diabetic Association of Pakistan. The Conference aims to showcase a use blend of academic research, seminar, hand-on- training and free papers and poster session. Leading Physicians and Diabetologists from Pakistan and abroad attended the Conference.
The inaugural ceremony of the conference was held at a local hotel in Karachi in which International Diabetes Federation President-Elect Sir Michael Hirst was the Chief Guest.(PPI)
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| Photo: chinagate.cn |
However, China’s lakes have been confronted with severe challenges due to climate change resulting from human activity, the declaration said.
“Every year, about 20 natural lakes dishearteningly disappear,” the declaration said, noting that human activity has created serious consequences for the lakes.
“Water quality is deteriorating, sediment is accumulating, wetlands are shrinking in size and aquatic organisms are dying out. Consequently, the lakes’ capacity for flood control and drought relief have been affected,” the declaration said.
The declaration said the lakes will not be able to adapt themselves to the damage caused by human activity.
China’s Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei pledged at the forum to increase government input into lake protection.
More than 800 experts and officials attended the forum, which was held from Dec. 10 to 11.(APP)
Referee Joe Cooper took two points from Khan during the bout for shoving Peterson and they proved to be the margin of his defeat.
One judge saw Khan a 114-111 winner while the other two judged Peterson the victor by scores of 113-112, giving him the triumph. (AFP)