May 10, 2008

Health
 

Non-invasive revascularisation: a new hope for heart patients

Heart patients who have undergone bypass surgery and angioplasty without much success can now benefit from a non-invasive treatment for angina and heart failure at a fraction of cost incurred on the surgical procedures. The process is called Enhanced External Counterpulsation, or EECP.

The FDA-approved treatment improves blood circulation in the heart typically used in patients suffering from angina. The outpatient procedure also is seen as an alternative to bypass surgery for patients suffering from congestive heart failure or coronary artery disease, Consultant cardiologist at Aga Khan University Hospital, Dr Nageeb Basir explained to a media workshop recently.

Dr Basir, alongwith Dr Bashir Hanif Medical Director, Tabba Heart Institute, were addressing a workshop on ‘Non-invasive cardiac revascularisation to treat angina and heart failure.’ The speakers elaborated that patients who had undergone EECP therapy follow a normal life pattern free of angina, shortness of breath, fatigue or a decreased ability to exercise and engage in activities of daily living.

“EECP therapy is a very beneficial treatment for patients with difficult to treat heart disease,” said Dr Basir. “Typically 80 to 85 per cent of patients completing a course of therapy experience prompt and significant relief of their symptoms, and improvement in their activity levels. For the greater majority of patients the benefits persist for more than two years.”

EECP therapy utilises three sets of blood pressure-like cuffs wrapped around the legs and buttocks that inflate and deflate with the patient’s heartbeat, increasing blood flow and oxygen to the heart and other organs. This increases blood flow, eliminating the symptoms of ischemia and decreases the need for anti-anginal medications in most patients.

Japanese old treatment of cure reviving

Reiki, the Japanese art of curing raised in Japan in the mid 11th century is reviving again. This is a fast growing complementary and alternative medicine technique used by approximately one million practitioners worldwide. Recently, Graduate Family Nurse Practitioner programme started Reiki training to the nurses and evaluated how nurses who gave Reiki therapy perceived the benefit of this therapy on their clients and on themselves concurrently as providers of the therapy. As an adjunct, the study’s purpose was to enhance the understanding and credibility of nurse/Reiki practitioners.

Reiki is advocated by its practitioners as a precise method for connecting universal life energy with the body’s innate process of healing through hands-on techniques. Reiki practitioners claim that Reiki reduces a variety of physical problems and improves psycho spiritual well-being.

Using Krieger’s protocol for haemoglobin studies within the context of therapeutic touch, 48 adults participating in first degree Reiki training were tested. The findings revealed a statistically significant change in the haemoglobin and hematocrit levels of the participants at the P = .01 level. A comparable control group, which was not experiencing the training, demonstrated no change within an identical time frame.

The philosophy of this art of cure assumes that human health depends on the level and harmonious flow of the vital energy, called ‘ki’. Therefore the main aim of this practice is to remove all energetic blockades in individual’s body. To determine whether Reiki, a process of transmission of healing energy, can significantly reduce micro vascular leakage caused by exposure to excessive noise using an animal model.

Transmitted by attunements from healer to healer, Reiki techniques have been demystified by Diane Stein. All Reiki treatments were given in a sound proof windowless room. Participants described a liminal state of awareness in which sensate and symbolic phenomena were experienced in a paradoxical way. Liminality was apparent in participants’ orientation to time, place, environment, and self paradox also was seen in participants’ symbolic experiences of internal feelings, cognitive experience, and external experience of relationship to the Reiki master.

The purpose of this study was to test the standardisation procedures developed by research team for placebo Reiki, before going ahead and conducting the planned full-scale randomised and placebo-controlled Reiki efficacy study.

The belief in Reiki is that only practitioners that are initiated could give Reiki, thus making it possible to have a placebo arm in efficacy studies. The findings of the study indicate that the developed standardisation procedures were successful because none of the final participants (four breast cancer patients and four observers) could differentiate between the identity of placebo and Reiki practitioners. The qualitative comments expressed by the participants further confirmed the quantitative data. It was concluded that it is safe to conduct the planned randomised three-arm Reiki efficacy clinical trial.—APP

High-fat diet helps control fits in children

A special high-fat diet helps to control fits in children with epilepsy, the UK trial suggests. The number of seizures fell by a third in children on the ‘ketogenic’ diet, where previously they had suffered fits every day despite medication, BBC news reported.

The diet alters the body’s metabolism by mimicking the effects of starvation, the researchers reported in the Lancet Neurology. The researchers called for the diet to be more widely available on the NHS. It is the first trial comparing the diet with routine care, even though it has been around since the 1920s.

Children are given a tailored diet very high in fat, low in carbohydrate and with controlled amounts of protein. It is not exactly clear how it works but it seems that ketones, produced from the breakdown of fat, help to alleviate seizures.

A total of 145 children aged between two and 16 who had failed to respond to treatment with at least two anti-epileptic drugs took part in the study. Half started the diet immediately and half waited for three months. The number of seizures in the children on the diet fell to two-thirds of what they had been, but remained unchanged in those who had not yet started the diet, the researchers reported.

However, there were some side-effects including constipation, vomiting, lack of energy and hunger. Professor Helen Cross, study leader and consultant in neurology at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, said the diet had been around for a long time but had fallen out of favour because it was thought to be too difficult to stick to.

“The parents say the first two weeks are quite difficult, but then it becomes much easier because you can make foods in bulk and it especially helps if you can see the benefits from it,” she said.

A spokesperson for Epilepsy Action said, “We recognise that the ketogenic diet is not without its side-effects, and that the risks and benefits should be considered before prescribing, as with drug treatment.” The results would hopefully encourage wider inclusion of the diet in the management of children with drug-resistant epilepsy. —PPI
 

Technology
 

Microsoft’s heroes in Pakistan

Microsoft’s launched Win-dows Server® 2008, Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 in Pakistan last week at Bahria University, Karachi Campus. Earlier, Microsoft had announced at its partner conference on July 10 last year, that it will launch Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 together in a single launch in February 2008, in Los Angeles. Besides launching a set of updated products the company’s IT user base was also introduced, calling users the ‘heart and soul’ of the industry; the glowing rhetoric fit the theme of Microsoft’s launch event, dubbed Heroes Happen {here} in homage to IT workers everywhere.

The launch emphasised more on the use of these software to enhance one’s careers and skills. This is the most significant Windows Server release seen. It is embedded with HyperV — an application which enables one to run multiple operating system on a single machine and which will be offered free with the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008. A demo was also shown by Sumair Sheikh —MicroSoft Students Partner for Bahria University and MicroSoft | Heroes Launch Leader on how to migrate VM files to the currently running server. SQL Server 2008 on the other hand is designed to reduce cost for managing all types of data.

It is expected that more customers will buy the 64-bit versions of the products in part because of wider availability of 64-bit x 86 server hardware and the trend toward server virtualisation and consolidation. The launch hoped to see the release of Windows Small Business Server in third quarter and Windows Storage Server 2008 in the end of this year. — Moiz Kazmi

Smaller, more efficient chips in piping

Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists, BBC reported.

These new mechanics are named ‘memristors’ by scientists at Hewlett-Packard. The team wrote in the journal Nature that these devices were proposed 40 years ago but are made-up now.

“Now that we have this type of device we have a broader palette with which to paint our circuits,” Professor Stan Williams, one of the team, told the BBC last year.

In 1971, memristors were first proposed by Professor Leon Chua, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the ‘fourth’ basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors and inductors.

Interestingly, these devices are named as memristors because they have the ability to ‘remember’ the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the power has been switched off.

These incredible devices could allow researchers to build new kinds of computer memory that would not require powering up. Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off.

But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs to start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge.

“If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off,” Professor Williams told Reuters.

The scientists have already shown that by putting two memristors together — a configuration called a crossbar latch, could do the job of a transistor. Moreover, these devices can also be made much smaller than a conventional transistor.

As a result, the new devices could play a key part in the future of the electronics industry, BBC reported.
 

Environment
 

World can reach climate change deal in 2009

The world can reach a significant new climate change pact by the end of 2009 if current talks keep up their momentum, the head of the United Nations climate panel said. The UN began negotiations on a sweeping new pact in March after governments agreed last year to work out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.

“If this momentum continues you will get an agreement that is not too full of compromises,” said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, during a seminar at the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Madrid.

Without a deal to cap greenhouse gas emissions around 2015, then halve them by 2050, the world will face ever more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas, according to the UN panel. The UN hopes to go beyond Kyoto by getting all countries to agree to curbs on emissions of greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. Only 37 rich nations were bound to cut emissions under Kyoto. The US, one of the world’s biggest polluters, refused to join the agreement. The next talks, to be held in Germany in June, will address funding technology to mitigate climate change - a key demand from developing countries who say rich countries should foot much of the bill.

The UN calculates that global warming will cause a 30 per cent decline in crop yields in central and south Asia by 2050 and decrease freshwater availability for over a billion people. Faced with such threats, China is switching over to renewable energy sources which are expected to provide more than 30 per cent of its power needs by 2050, according to the UN. —Reuters

Tropical insects risk extinction

The US scientists have said that many tropical insects are expected to be extinct by the end of this century unless they adapt to the rising global temperatures, BBC reported.

The researchers from the University of Washington said insects in the tropics were much more sensitive to temperature changes as compared to insects elsewhere.

In contrast, higher latitudes could experience an insect population boom. Moreover, the changes in insect numbers could also have secondary effects on plant pollination and food supplies.

In the research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the US scientists studied how temperature changes between 1950 and 2000 had affected 38 species of insects.

In contrast to warm-blooded animals, cold-blooded organisms cannot regulate their body temperatures by growing a coat of fur or shedding it when it gets warm. Instead, they are restricted to seek shade when it is hot or sun themselves when it is cool.

It is predicted that such species would struggle to survive in the 5.4C rise in tropical temperatures that is expected by 2100.

“In the tropics, many species appear to be living at or near their thermal optimum, a temperature that lets them thrive,” said Joshua Tewksbury of the University of Washington.

“But once the temperature gets above the thermal optimum, fitness levels most likely decline quickly and there may not be much they can do about it,” he added.

Although some species might be able to migrate uphill and towards higher latitudes, or evolve to cope with the warmer climate, others might eventually die out, the scientists said.