Tag Archives: cause

Not English but mother tongue helps marriages to last longer: Study

Posted on by
Reply

Amid rising number of intercultural marriages, more and more couples use English as the lingua franca but speaking in common native language helped many marriages to last longer, said a new study.

Kaisa Pietikainen from the University of Helsinki, who has studied the interactions of these so-called ELF couples in her doctoral dissertation, says:”It’s often thought that when the partners learn to speak each other’s native languages, they will pick either language as their shared language. But when one is used to speaking a certain language to one another, it becomes difficult to change.”

Usually couples have an open attitude toward language-mixing. Features from other languages become such an integrated part of their ‘couple tongue’ that after a while, they may not even notice when they switch languages, she says.

ELF couples identify mainly as English-speaking couples, but they are also aware of the presence of other languages in their interactions.

“The previously held idea that a lingua franca can’t become a language of identification or that one can’t use it to express feelings doesn’t hold true when it comes to ELF couples.”

Ensuring understanding with creative means Pietikaiinen says that misunderstandings are not very common in ELF couples’ conversation. The couples invest in practices that support understanding, for example, they paraphrase difficult words and check whether the partner has understood them. ELF couples even utilise onomatopoetic expressions and drawing as an aid for achieving mutual understanding.

Silence matters in conflicts

Silence in ELF couples’ conflict interactions does not only mean that the partners disagree or that one is offended by what the other one has said or done. It can also be used to avoid giving self-incriminating answers, or in resisting the partner’s attempt to defuse the conflict with the use of humour.

“These observations have, however, nothing to do with the fact that the partners use non-native English between them. I’m sure these kinds of silences are very familiar for every long-term relationship,” Pietikaiinen adds.

Birth Control Pills Increase Risk of Breast Cancer: New Study

Posted on by
Reply

Contraceptive pills have become popular now but the impact will lead to higher risk of breast cancer later in life, warn scientists.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that some commonly prescribed birth control pills can quadruple the levels of synthetic estrogen and progesterone hormones, which increase the risk of breast cancers. The treatment of breast cancer is mainly focused on hormone therapy.

The blood tests on women who use birth control pills contained much higher levels of hormones compared to those who did not and the results showed that 4 out of 7 formulations tested were found to quadruple the levels of progestin, a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone.

Another test showed 40% higher exposure to ethinyl estradiol, synthetic estrogen, another major cause for breast cancer.

Study’s lead author Beverly Strassmann said that there is an urgent need for pharma companies to redesign the birth control pills so they do not cause breast cancer among women. Their research showed that one percent of breast cancer cases are caused by the use of oral contraceptive pills.

“Not enough has changed over the generations of these drugs and given how many people take hormonal birth control worldwide – millions – the pharmaceutical industry shouldn’t rest on its laurels,” she said.

In a previous study, birth control pills were found to have caused a small but significant increase in the risk of the most common type of stroke. The study published in the journal MedLink Neurology in 2015 showed that “the risk seems higher and, in most cases, oral contraceptive use should be discouraged.”

Marisa McGinley, Sarkis Morales-Vidal, and Jose Biller of Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine studied about 100 million women worldwide who used oral contraceptives. Birth control pills increase the risk 1.9 times, to 8.5 strokes per 100,000 women, which means one out of 24,000 women would experience the stroke.

Early versions of the pill contained doses of synthetic estrogen as high as 150 micrograms, though they have come down to 20 to 35 micrograms now and not more than 50 micrograms. In the United States, there are about 40 brands of oral contraceptives and 21 brands of emergency contraceptive pills.

India Still Ranks 131 in Human Development Index: UN Report

Posted on by
Reply

The UN ‘Human Development Report 2016′, released on Tuesday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), placed India at 131 rank out of 188 countries in the global index.

The low rank for India shows how our liberalization has failed to uplift the condition of one third of the population. On health front, the overall life expectancy at birth grew by more than 10 years from the 1990 level, but on women’s empowerment, it remains the most basic challenge to deal with.

Since development is a multidimensional achievement, merely creating wealth in the country will not trickle down to a widespread wealth among the poeple. Basic conditions of housing, water, education, health and justice should be focused equaly to gain a better rank in the Human development Index and India is far away from achieving it.

As Selim Jahan, lead author of the report, said, “In order to advance, we need to examine more closely not just what has been achieved, but also who has been excluded and why.”

The index takes into account the period under both BJP, Congress and again BJP rule at the Centre from 1990 to 2015, in fact one-and-a-half year Modi’s rule as well. So, no political party can pass the buck on the other but retrospect the implications of such a low ranking, which has the potential to unleash both social unrest and political uprising in the future unless addressed immediately.

“Leaving no one behind needs to become the way we operate as a global community. In order to overcome the barriers that hamper both human development and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, inclusiveness must guide policy choices,” said Swedish PM Stefan Löfven.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said, “The world has come a long way in rolling back extreme poverty, in improving access to education, health and sanitation, and in expanding possibilities for women and girls. But those gains are a prelude to the next, possibly tougher challenge, to ensure the benefits of global progress reach everyone.”

Selim Jahan said there is a systemic discrimination against women, indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, among others. The report notes that disadvantages disproportionately affect some groups.

Researchers Reveal Mechanism that Impairs Blood Flow with Aging

Posted on by
Reply

The Physiological Society’s Journal of Physiology recently published a study led by Erika Boerman, identifying an age-related cause of arterial dysfunction.

 

 

With the world’s elderly population expected to double by 2050, understanding cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of death worldwide, is often highlighted and now University of Missouri researchers have identified an age-related cause of arterial dysfunction, a finding that could lead to future treatments.

“Aging affects everyone and causes changes throughout our bodies,” said Erika Boerman, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Medical Pharmacology and Physiology at the MU School of Medicine and lead author of the study. “We found that older arteries had a significantly lower number of sensory nerves in the tissues surrounding them and they were less sensitive to an important neurotransmitter responsible for dilation.”

Boerman’s study focused on mesenteric arteries ― a type of artery that supplies blood to the small intestines ― of mice that were 4 months and 24 months old. These ages correspond to humans in their early 20s and mid-60s, respectively. Without stimulation, the diameter of the blood vessels of both younger and older mice was approximately the same. However, when stimulated to induce dilation, differences between the age groups became apparent.

“The younger arteries dilated as expected,” Boerman said. “However, when we performed the same stimulation to the arteries of older mice, the vessels did not dilate. When we examined the presence of sensory nerves, we noted a 30 percent decrease in the amount surrounding the older arteries compared to the younger arteries.”

Additionally, the researchers found that even when purposefully exposing older mesenteric arteries to defined amounts of the neurotransmitter calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP, the arteries’ ability to dilate was greatly reduced.

“Poor neurotransmitter function and a reduced presence of sensory nerves surrounding older vessels lead to age-related dysfunction of mesenteric arteries,” Boerman said. “The importance of this discovery is that if we can identify why this happens to mesenteric arteries, it may be possible to prevent the same thing from happening to other blood vessels throughout the body.”

More research is needed to understand why aging affects sensory nerve distribution and neurotransmitter performance. However, identifying this new mechanism of vascular dysfunction opens the door for future studies that could eventually lead to the treatment of health issues such as stroke and cardiovascular disease.

The study was published in The Physiological Society’s Journal of Physiology.