China seizes 30,000 tons of chicken feet tainted by hydrogen peroxide

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հավի տոտիկներIn the latest stomach-churning food scandal to hit China, authorities have seized over 30,000 tons of chicken feet contaminated with hydrogen peroxide, according to state media.

Thirty eight people have been arrested on charges of producing the tainted items, while 11 suspects remain at large.

The chemical, which causes vomiting and other stomach problems if consumed, may have been used to give the chicken feet a whiter, cleaner appearance.

A report by official news agency Xinhua said the tainted items were first discovered in Yongjia County in Zhejiang, eastern China. A subsequent investigation revealed hydrogen peroxide was being used in nine factories in Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, and Guangdong, affecting several well-known brands of chicken feet sold in stores.

Chicken feet are popular in China, where they are often available as a packaged snack. However, this is not the first time the item has found itself at the center of a safety scare.

In July 2013, police confiscated 20 tons of badly expired chicken feet from a frozen meat warehouse — some of the feet were reportedly 46 years old.

 

Why smiling won’t help if you are feeling miserable: Experts advise letting unhappiness lift before attempting grin to stop brain linking happy act to sadness

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Next time you think about cheering somebody up when they are upset, perhaps it might be best to just leave them alone.

Trying to make somebody smile when they are miserable could actually make them feel worse, a study has found.

smile

If you force a friend to grin when they are in a bad mood then their brain starts to associate it with sadness instead of joy.

And next time they smile it could bring back miserable memories instead of lifting the bad mood.

It was carried out by Anirban Mukhopadhyay, an associate professor of marketing at Hong Kong University Science and Technology, who said you should wait until your unhappiness lifts before attempting a grin.

The study results showed that if you are faking a smile then it won’t cheer you up and that you are just using it to ‘mask’ your inner sadness.

It’s official – green tea CAN make you clever: Drink improves memory and could help treat dementia

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Կանաչ թեյ

 

Green tea has always been hailed as the healthiest hot drink of choice, but new research has found it can also be good for your mind.

Scientists claim green tea enhances several cognitive functions, in particular our working memory.

The new findings suggest that green tea could be used to treat dementia and other psychiatric disorders.

The new research, from the University of Basel, found that green tea extract increases the brain’s effective connectivity.

The findings suggest green tea could be used to help treat memory loss caused by psychiatric disorders or as part of recovery.

 

 Անկախ

Shift workers beware: Sleep loss may cause brain damage, new research says

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sleep-loss

 

Are you a truck driver or shift worker planning to catch up on some sleep this weekend?

Cramming in extra hours of shut-eye may not make up for those lost pulling all-nighters, new research indicates.

The damage may already be done — brain damage, that is, said neuroscientist Sigrid Veasey from the University of Pennsylvania.

The widely held idea that you can pay back a sizeable “sleep debt” with long naps later on seems to be a myth, she said in a study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Long-term sleep deprivation saps the brain of power even after days of recovery sleep, Veasey said. And that could be a sign of lasting brain injury.

The discovery that long-term sleep loss can result in a loss of brain cells is a first, Veasey said.

They hope their research will result in medicines that will help people working odd hours cope with the consequences of irregular sleep.

 

 Անկախ

Want people to be nicer to you? STOP wearing deodorant: Bad body odour makes others more generous and supportive

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Մարմնի տհաճ հոտ

 

Sharing a desk or spending time with someone who smells is usually best avoided, yet it could make you more compassionate.

Research has found that bad body odour is commonly associated with vulnerability, which triggers feelings of concern in others.

This means people tend to increase their level of co-operation when dealing with someone who smells bad because they feel sorry for them.

Lead author Jeroen Camps and colleagues, from the university KU Leuven in Belgium, said: ‘Scents are omnipresent in our daily world and they are of great importance as represented by the use of perfumes or fragrances in the work environment.’
‘Even though it has been argued that bad scents invoke negative judgments, we argued and demonstrated that a bad body odour elicits feelings of pity in others and increases prosocial behaviour.’

This can include underarm sweat, smelly feet, bad breath or other foul-smelling odours.

The research, published online in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, involved several experiments.

 

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Junk food and fizzy drinks cause children to be TWICE as unhappy as their healthier counterparts

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անառողջ սնունդ

 

Fast food and fizzy drinks could be causing widespread depression among in children.

A study of 10 to 15-year-olds found that children who played sports and ate healthy foods were twice as likely to be happy.

Gender and age were key factors, with older children largely the least satisfied and girls more likely to eat healthy food.

Teenagers were more prone to eating fatty foods and takeaways, and were less happy than their younger peers.

During the study, happiness was graded through 20 questions including how well the children got on with their peers, whether they were kind and shared with others, and if they got restless or angry.

‘In terms of eating junk food moderation is the key – we’re not telling anyone they can’t eat these foods, just that they shouldn’t be consumed all the time’ said Dr Cara Booker, from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University.

 Անկախ

 

Strange Lung Ailment Revealed: A Giant Ball of Fungus

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aspergilloma-lung-fungusA man who suffered from a bloody cough that persisted for more than a year was surprised to find that the cause was a giant ball of fungus growing in his lung, according to a recent report of his case.

The man, a farmworker in Italy, may have contracted a fungal infection, called aspergilloma, while working in the fields. For a year, he struggled with not only the cough but also fever and weight loss. His symptoms hadn’t improved despite several courses of antibiotics, according to the report published Oct. 24 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

Aspergilloma, a fungal infection that mainly infects the lungs, is relatively uncommon, and this particular clump of fungus was extremely large, at nearly 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) wide.

The Vaccine Hoax is Over. Documents from UK reveal 30 Years of Coverup

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պատվաստանյութAndrew Baker ( FFN),– Freedom of Information Act in the UK filed by a doctor there has revealed 30 years of secret official documents showing that government experts have 1. Known the vaccines don’t work 2. Known they cause the diseases they are supposed to prevent 3. Known they are a hazard to children 4. Colluded to lie to the public 5. Worked to prevent safety studies Those are the same vaccines that are mandated to children in the US. Educated parents can either get their children out of harm’s way or continue living inside one of the largest most evil lies in history, that vaccines – full of heavy metals, viral diseases, mycoplasma, fecal material, DNA fragments from other species, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 (a sterilizing agent) – are a miracle of modern medicine. Freedom of Information Act filed in the US with the CDC by a doctor with an autistic son, seeking information on what the CDC knows about the dangers of vaccines, had by law to be responded to in 20 days. Nearly 7 years later, the doctor went to court and the CDC argued it does not have to turn over documents. A judge ordered the CDC to turn over the documents on September 30th, 2011. On October 26, 2011, a Denver Post editorial expressed shock that the Obama administration, after promising to be especially transparent, was proposing changes to the Freedom of Information Act that would allow it to go beyond declaring some documents secret and to actually allow government agencies (such as the CDC) to declare some document “non-existent.” Simultaneous to this on-going massive CDC cover up involving its primary “health” not recommendation but MANDATE for American children, the CDC is in deep trouble over its decades of covering up the damaging effects of fluoride and affecting the lives of all Americans, especially children and the immune compromised. Lawsuits are being prepared.  Children are ingesting 3-4 times more fluoride by body weight as adults and “[t]he sheer number of potentially harmed citizens — persons with dental fluorosis, kidney patients tipped into needing dialysis, diabetics, thyroid patients, etc — numbers in the millions.” The CDC is obviously acting against the health of the American people. But the threat to the lives of the American people posed by the CDC’s behavior does not stop there. It participated in designed pandemic laws that are on the books in every state in the US, which arrange for the government to use military to force unknown, untested vaccines, drugs, chemicals, and “medical” treatments on the entire country if it declares a pandemic emergency. The CDC’s credibility in declaring such a pandemic emergency is non-existent, again based on Freedom of Information Act. For in 2009, after the CDC had declared the H1N1 “pandemic,” the CDC refused to respond to Freedom of Information Act filed by CBS News and the CDC also attempted to block their investigation.  What the CDC was hiding was its part in one of the largest medical scandals in history, putting out wildly exaggerated data on what it claimed were H1N1 cases, and by doing so, created the false impression of a “pandemic” in the US. The CDC was also covering up e financial scandal to rival the bailout since the vaccines for the false pandemic cost the US billions. And worse, the CDC put pregnant women first in line for an untested vaccine with a sterilizing agent, polysorbate 80, in it. Thanks to the CDC,  “the number of vaccine-related “fetal demise” reports increased by 2,440 percent in 2009 compared to previous years, which is even more shocking than the miscarriage statistic [700% increase]. The exposure of the vaccine hoax is running neck and neck with the much older hoax of a deadly 1918-19 flu. It was aspirin  that killed people in 1918-19, not a pandemic flu. It was the greatest industrial catastrophe in human history with 20-50 million people dying but it was blamed on a flu. The beginning of the drug industry began with that success (and Monsanto was part of it). The flu myth was used by George Bush to threaten the world with “another pandemic flu that could kill millions” – a terror tactic to get pandemic laws on the books in every state and worldwide. Then the CDC used hoax of the pandemic hoax to create terror over H1N1 and to push deadly vaccines on the public, killing thousands of unborn children and others.  (CDC will not release the data and continues to push the same vaccine.) But pandemic laws arranging for unknown vaccines to be forced on the entire country are still in place with HHS creating a vaccine mixture that should never be used on anyone and all liability for vaccines having been removed. Meanwhile, a Canadian study has just proven that the flu vaccine containing the H1N1 vaccine which kills babies in utero, actually increases the risk of serious pandemic flu. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we know that vaccines are not a miracle of modern medicine.  Any medical or government authority which insists vaccines prevent diseases is either ignorant of government documents (and endless studies) revealing the exact opposite or of the CDC’s attempts to hide the truth about vaccines from the public, or means harm to the public.

nsnbc international

     

Angelina and breast cancer copycat surge: Doctor warns patients are requesting double mastectomies even if they don’t need one

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Professor Kefah Mokel

 

Women inspired by Angelina Jolie are demanding breast removal surgery – even if they don’t need it – a leading doctor has warned.

After Miss Jolie, 38, who is in a high-risk cancer category, announced this year she had had a double mastectomy, a surge of women in the UK have sought to follow suit.

A quarter of women who develop cancer in one breast are now asking for both to be removed, according to figures from the London Breast Institute.

But Professor Kefah Mokbel of the London Breast Institute has said surgery would be pointless for women who are not in the same category as Jolie.

Professor Mokbel warned patients can suffer psychological harm after having radical surgery.

 

Angelina Jolie 1

A Nobel prize-winning scientist Tuesday played down “shock-horror scenarios” that a newvirus strain will emerge with the potential to kill millions of people.

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A Nobel prize-winningPeter Doherty, who jointly won the Nobel prize in 1996 for his work on how the immune system combats virus-infected cells, said the worst-case scenario was a new virus with a high mortality rate that was also highly infectious.
The Australian said the world experienced such a pandemic in 1918, when an influenza variant killed an estimated 50 million people, more than twice the number who died in World War I.
Doherty said it was possible such an outbreak could occur again but it was unlikely to have such devastating consequences.
“A lot of the (1918) deaths were undoubtedly due to secondary bacterial infection and, of course, we have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infection now,” he said at a lecture at Otago University’s Wellington campus.
“In the pandemic world we all look to these shock-horror scenarios — it makes good television, there’s a lot of books about these terrible infections that are going to kill us all off.

New bird flu strain: 5 things to know

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130426151758-02-bird-flu-0426-horizontal-gallery(CNN) — The H7N9 strain responsible for the bird flu outbreak in China is unlike any that has previously been seen in this type of virus.

So far, 110 cases have been reported, including one in Taiwan, and 23 people have died. Here are some things to know about this virus:

No evidence of human-to-human transmission to date

So far, authorities said, there is no evidence that this virus can pass from person to person. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen later.

“If limited person-to-person transmission is demonstrated in the future, this really will not be surprising,” Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general for health, security and the environment, told a news conference Wednesday in Beijing.

Virologist: Bird flu ’cause for concern’

WHO: Bird flu outbreak especially lethal

Poultry markets closed over bird flu

New bird flu spreads outside China

WHO: H7N9 virus ‘one of the most lethal so far’

It’s dangerous and deadly to humans

The virus appears to be transmitted more easily from poultry to humans than H5N1, Fukuda said, referring to the strain responsible for the outbreak between 2004 and 2007, which claimed 332 lives.

“This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses that we have seen so far,” he said.

The H7N9 strain was never known to infect people until March. Before then, it was only found in birds.

If the virus does start to spread easily between people, it could trigger a pandemic.

“This is a serious public health situation and it’s possible that a pandemic could start if this virus were to change to spread easily between people,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website. “CDC is preparing for that possibility.”

New bird flu well-adapted to infect people

There’s still a lot of unknowns

It’s not clear why this virus strain is infecting humans now, and the source of the infection is unknown.

Scientists have analyzed the genes of the H7N9 viruses and found that they show signs indicating they can adapt to grow in mammals. It appears they can bind to mammalian cells and grow at temperatures near mammals’ normal body temperatures, which is lower than that of birds, WHO said.

There is no vaccine available, but WHO said efforts are underway in other countries after Chinese officials said international help would be needed. The CDC said researchers there are working on a vaccine candidate virus.

Cooking poultry can kill the virus before you eat it

In normal cooking temperatures — so all parts of the meat reach at least 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius) with no “pink” — the virus would be inactivated, including in poultry and game birds.

Generally, eating raw meat is discouraged anyway, as doing so can lead to a variety of foodborne illnesses.

You should not, however, eat diseased animals or animals known to have died from diseases.

No travel restrictions; low U.S. risk

The CDC is not advising against traveling to China, but travelers who go there should refrain from touching birds and other animals and wash their hands often.

There is currently no incidence of the virus in the United States, but the most likely scenario for it to get there would be through a person traveling from China.

The risk to persons in the United States is low, the CDC said.

There are no tests available at pharmacies or doctors’ offices to distinguish this flu quickly from any other flu virus, the CDC said. However, there is a sophisticated test to detect the H7N9 virus in particular, which takes at least four hours.

“Anyone with fever, coughing or shortness of breath within 10 days of traveling to China should see a doctor and tell the doctor about the recent travel to China,” the CDC said on its website.