Knowledge Update

​New York, Oct 26 (IANS) Increased exposure to air pollution may cause damage and inflammation to blood vessels among young and healthy adults and thus raise the risk of cardiovascular disease and other related deaths, say researchers, including one of Indian-origin.

The study revealed how air pollution actually affects the blood vessels to increase the risk of disease, which was previously unknown.

The researchers found that periodic exposure to fine particulate matter was associated with several abnormal changes in the blood that are markers for cardiovascular disease.

As air pollution rose, they found small, micro-particles indicating cell injury and death significantly increased in number, levels of proteins that inhibit blood vessel growth increased, and proteins that signify blood-vessel inflammation also showed significant increases.

"Although we have known for some time that air pollution can trigger heart attacks or strokes in susceptible, high-risk individuals, the finding that it could also affect even seemingly healthy individuals suggests that increased levels of air pollution are of concern to all of us, not just the sick or the elderly," said Aruni Bhatnagar, Professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, US.

"These findings suggest that living in a polluted environment could promote the development of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke more pervasively and at an earlier stage than previously thought," Bhatnagar added.

Healthcare providers should consider the cardiovascular effects of air pollution on all patients, not just those who are ill or elderly, the researchers suggested.

For the study, investigators analysed the component of air pollution known as fine particulate matter (PM2.5) -- the tiny pieces of solid or liquid pollution emitted from motor vehicles, factories, power plants, fires, and smoking in 72 healthy, non-smoking, adults.

The results were published in the journal Circulation Research.

​New York, Oct 21 (IANS) Parents may please take note that it is just not all right to hand your child a smartphone to calm him/her down at home even if it helps keep peace in the house, according to the new guidelines released by the American Academy of Pediatrics on Friday.

Although there are specific instances when using digital media as a soothing tool is helpful, such as on airplanes or during medical procedures, parents should avoid using media as the only way to calm down children, the authors noted.

Using devices as a common soothing strategy may limit children's ability to regulate their own emotions, said one of the lead authors of the statement Jenny Radesky from University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in the US.

"Digital media has become an inevitable part of childhood for many infants, toddlers and preschoolers, but research is limited on how this affects their development," Radesky noted.

"What we do know is that early childhood is a time of rapid brain development, when children need time to play, sleep, learn to handle emotions, and build relationships. Research still suggests that excessive media use can get in the way of these important activities. Our statement highlights ways families and pediatricians can help manage a healthy balance," Radesky noted.

For children aged two to five years, media should be limited to one hour a day, the statement said, and it should involve high-quality programming or something parents and kids can view or engage with together.

With the exception of video-chatting, digital media should also be avoided in children younger than 18 months old, the authors noted.

Too much time using digital media in the wrong way is linked to children's quality of sleep, child development and physical health, according to the guidelines.

​New York, Oct 20 (IANS) Facebook on Thursday introduced new features to allow you to order food, request an appointment with a local spa, get a quote and even book movie tickets with your friends' recommendations as you travel to a new place.

Now if you are in the US, write a Facebook post looking for advice on local places or services and you will have the option to turn on "Recommendations" for that post.

If you turn on the feature, your friends can comment on your post with suggestions, and you'll see all of them mapped out and saved in one place.

You can also go to your "Recommendations" bookmark on Facebook to ask a new question or help your friends.

"We're starting to introduce a variety of new features that help you ... to discover new things in the world around you, decide what to do or where to go, and connect with local businesses in easier and faster ways," Facebook said in a blog post.

Users can now order food from restaurants directly from Facebook pages. Simply click "Start Order" on any restaurant's Facebook page that uses Delivery.com or Slice.

"For local businesses..., such as spas and salons, you can now request a time via the business' Facebook page and view their entire slate of services and offerings. They'll then get back to you on Messenger to confirm your appointment," the post read.

Some local business Pages will now have a "Get Quote" button at the top that lets users easily and quickly request a quote from the business.

"You can buy movie tickets straight from Facebook pages via Fandango. In partnership with Ticketmaster and Eventbrite," the post read.

"We're also making it possible for people to get tickets to other events -- free or paid -- directly from the event page on Facebook," it further read.

To make exploring events better, Facebook has revamped the "Events" bookmark on Facebook.

You can catch up on the latest events activity from friends and hosts and browse event recommendations based on what's popular with friends or events you've connected with in the past.

The features will start to roll out in the US in the coming weeks.

​New York, Oct 11 (IANS) Being angry, emotionally upset or engaging in heavy physical exertion may significantly increase risk of a heart attack, warns a large international study.

The researchers found an association (more than twice the risk) between anger or emotional upset and the onset of heart attack symptoms within one hour.

The same was true for heavy physical exertion during the hour before their first heart attack, according to the study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation.

However, the association was stronger (more than triple the risk) in those patients who recalled being angry or emotionally upset while also engaging in heavy physical exertion.

"Previous studies have explored these heart attack triggers; however, they had fewer participants or were completed in one country, and data are limited from many parts of the world," said study lead author Andrew Smyth from Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Canada.

"This is the first study to represent so many regions of the world, including the majority of the world's major ethnic groups," Smyth said.

For the study, the researchers analysed data from 12,461 patients (average age 58) participating in INTERHEART, a study consisting of patients with first-ever heart attacks across 52 countries.

The researchers said that extreme emotional and physical triggers can raise blood pressure and heart rate, changing the flow of blood through blood vessels and reducing blood supply to the heart.

"This is particularly important in blood vessels already narrowed by plaque, which could block the flow of blood leading to a heart attack," Smyth said.

"Regular physical activity has many health benefits, including the prevention of heart disease, so we want that to continue," he said.

"However, we would recommend that a person who is angry or upset who wants to exercise to blow off steam not go beyond their normal routine to extremes of activity," Smyth noted.

​New York, Oct 18 (IANS) If you wish to stay sharp in later years of life, better watch your weight now. Researchers have found that a higher body mass index, or BMI, can negatively impact cognitive functioning in older adults.

Higher BMI may lead to increased inflammation which can negatively impact brain function and cognition, the researchers explained.

"The higher your BMI, the more your inflammation goes up," said lead author of the study Kyle Bourassa from University of Arizona in the US.

The researchers analysed data from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, which includes over 12 years' worth of information on the health, well-being and social and economic circumstances of the English population age 50 and older.

Using two separate samples from the study -- one of about 9,000 people and one of about 12,500 -- researchers looked at ageing adults over a six-year period.

They had information on study participants' BMI, inflammation and cognition, and the study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, found the same outcome in both samples.

"The higher participants' body mass at the first time point in the study, the greater the change in their CRP levels over the next four years," Bourassa said.

CRP stands for C-reactive protein, which is a marker in the blood of systemic inflammation in your body.

"Change in CRP over four years then predicted change in cognition six years after the start of the study. The body mass of these people predicted their cognitive decline through their levels of systemic inflammation," Bourassa explained.

​London, Oct 16 (IANS) Individuals who prefer to watch "bad" or "trashy" movies, typically known as the low-budget films, are smarter, a study has found.

"Trash films" were described as cheaply or poorly made films that feature embarrassing or disturbing content. These low-budget films do not correspond to the mainstream standards and taste.

The study explored how trash films' characteristics support positive use of the label, the researchers said.

The study focuses on how something can be identified as cheap and worthless "trash" and still be embraced and (re)evaluated as providing positive enjoyment, Keyvan Sarkhosh, Film scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, was quoted as saying to natureworldnews.com.

The findings showed that people tend to watch such trashy films because they provide humour as well as entertainment.

On the other hand, the same group was also found to appreciate art films.

The enjoyment of watching trash films was found related to an ironic viewing stance.

Viewers attribute to trash films with not just amusing/entertaining qualities, but also a positive, transgressive deviance from the cinematic mainstream, and their appreciation of these films is coupled with marked preferences for art cinema, Sarkhosh said.

For the study, Sarkhosh conducted an online survey and included 372 participants -- composed of university students and people whose online presence on Facebook and on trashy film-related forums are felt.

The study showed that an 84 per cent of the fans of trash films had university degrees, which means they were primarily well-educated and were described as "omnivorous" audience.

"Such viewers are interested in a broad spectrum of art and media across the traditional boundaries of high and popular culture," Sarkhosh noted.

The study was published in journal Poetics.

​New York, Oct 15 (IANS) Now you need not be guilty of indulging in dark chocolates, as compounds found in cocoa may be good for your heart, a study has found.

The findings showed that consumption of flavanol-rich cocoa products was associated with improvements in specific circulating biomarkers of cardiometabolic health.

"We found that cocoa flavanol intake may reduce dyslipidemia (elevated triglycerides), insulin resistance and systemic inflammation, which are all major subclinical risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases," said Simin Liu, Professor at Brown University in Rhode Islands, US.

There were small-to-modest but statistically significant improvements among those who ate flavanol-rich cocoa product versus those who did not.

The greatest effects were seen among trial volunteers who ate between 200 and 600 mg of flavanols a day (based on their cocoa consumption).

They had significant declines in blood glucose and insulin, as well as another indicator of insulin resistance called HOMA-IR.

Further, they also saw an increase in HDL, or "good," cholesterol.

Participants who consumed higher doses saw some of the insulin resistance benefits and a drop in triglycerides, but not a significant increase in HDL.

For the study, the team conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of cocoa consumption and included 1,139 volunteers in these trials.

The results appear in the Journal of Nutrition

​London, Oct 6 (IANS) Intake of nitrates, typically found in spinach, can boost sports performance particularly at high altitudes with low oxygen conditions, a study has found.

Nitrate, commonly found in green leafy vegetables like spinach, is important for the functioning of the human body, especially during exercise.

The study showed that nitrate supplementation in conjunction with sprint interval training (SIT) -- short, high intensity exercise -- in low oxygen conditions could enhance sport performance.

For the study, a research team from the University of Leuven in Belgium examined 27 moderately trained participants. They were given nitrate supplements ahead of SIT, which took the form of short but intense cycling sessions three times a week.

Further, to assess differences in performance in different conditions, they included workouts in normal oxygen conditions and in hypoxia conditions, which are low oxygen levels such as those found in high altitudes.

After five weeks, the muscle fibre composition changed with the enhanced nitrate intake when training in low oxygen conditions.

"This is probably the first study to demonstrate that a simple nutritional supplementation strategy, i.e. oral nitrate intake, can impact on training-induced changes in muscle fibre composition," said Peter Hespel, Professor at the University of Leuven.

Athletes participating in sports competitions require energy production in conditions with limited amounts of oxygen.

In these conditions, performing intense workouts requires high input of fast-oxidative muscle fibres to sustain the power.

Enhancing these muscle fibre types through nutritional intake could very well boost the performance, the study said.

"It would now be interesting to investigate whether addition of nitrate-rich vegetables to the normal daily sports diet of athletes could facilitate training-induced muscle fibre type transitions and maybe in the long term also exercise performance," Hespel said.

The observations were published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology.

​New York, Oct 5 (IANS) People who spend more than three hours a day on Facebook have more relaxed privacy attitudes and are more likely to share personal information than those who spend less time on the social networking site, new research has found.

Heavy social network users who read friends' updates and share information about themselves become used to the act of posting their information as they read daily about their friends and the world, spurring them to post more about themselves -- and to share more during off-line encounters, the study said.

"People sometimes don't realise the powerful socialising role of social media," said Mina Tsay-Vogel, Assistant Professor at Boston University in the US.

"Yes, we are maintaining relationships with others, and we might all get to know the most current news and what people are doing, and it's very satiating," Tsay-Vogel said.

"But we might not realise that it's also affecting how we're seeing information disclosure in the real world, and how it's also impacting us to then disclose our own personal information. Not only in the virtual world, but in the off-line world," she noted.

The study, published in the journal New Media and Society, analysed five years' worth of surveys from 2,789 students (18-to-25-year-old) in the US.

Researchers surveyed students in introductory communications courses between 2010 and 2015, asking them about their Facebook habits and their attitudes toward privacy and government regulation in order to discern patterns in their behaviour and attitudes about sharing information on Facebook.

This multiyear look at the same age group gave researchers more insights into users' attitudes than a one-time snapshot, Tsay-Vogel said.

The data showed that heavier users of Facebook, defined as being on a social network for more than the sample average of 3.17 hours a day, had more relaxed privacy attitudes and were more likely to share personal information, Tsay-Vogel said.

​London, Oct 2 (IANS) Holidays are not just for relaxing but can also help to improve your health and should be prescribed for sick people, says a study.

According to the study, being in an environment that stimulates curiosity could turbo-charge the immune system, quoted the Daily Mail.

For the study, the researchers took mice which were given a two-week stay in a large cage packed with toys and the exciting environment appeared to boost their white blood cells, which fight off infections.

"This effect is remarkable because we haven't given them any drugs, all we've done is change their housing conditions," said Fulvio D'Acquisto, Professor at Queen Mary University, London.

"You could say that we've just put them in their equivalent of a holiday resort for two weeks and let them enjoy their new surroundings," D'Acquisto added.

White blood cells are key to auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

The researcher suggested that prescribing a holiday could help the sick recover more quickly -- and even give worn-out office workers a new lease of life.

"We could boost the effects of standard drug treatments that deal with the mechanics of infection, by also offering something environmental that improves a patient's more general well-being. That might be a promising approach for treating chronic diseases," D'Acquisto said.

The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.