Donie's Ireland news Monday

China to send its first woman into space

   
Either Captain Wang Yaping (l) or Major Liu Yang will join the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft docking mission.

Two fighter pilots battle it out for honour of joining manned mission to Tiangong-1 space lab

One of two female fighter pilots will become the first Chinese woman inspace later this month, after the two 
were shortlisted for a place in the three-person team that will blast off in the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft, the state news agency Xinhua said.

Chinese media described Major Liu Yang, from Henan, as a "hero pilot" who achieved a successful emergency landing after a dramatic birdstrike incident spattered the windshield of her plane with blood.

Meanwhile, her rival, Captain Wang Yaping, from Shandong, is said to have flown rescue missions during the Sichuan earthquake and piloted a cloud-seeding plane to help clear the skies of rain for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

"They are selected as members of the first batch of female astronauts inChina because of their excellent flight skills and psychological quality," said Xinhua.

This month's mission is regarded as an important stage in China's ambitious space programme. 
"The Shenzhou-9 will perform our country's first manned space docking mission with the orbiting 
Tiangong-1 space lab module," Zhou Jianping, chief designer of the manned space program, told state media.

"It means China's spacecraft will become a genuine manned shuttle tool between space and Earth. It can send human beings to space stations or space labs. This will be a significant step in China's manned space flight history."

China will be the eighth country to see one of its female citizens go into space, and only the third to put one there itself. Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union became the first woman to go into space in 1963.

Both the women shortlisted are in their 30s and have one child: Chinese authorities have decreed that only mothers can train as astronauts, apparently because of their concern that spaceflight might affect women's fertility. 
Earlier this year, the deputy editor-in-chief of an official magazine said women astronauts should also have no scars – which might open and bleed in space – nor body odour.

"They even must not have decayed teeth because any small flaw might cause great trouble or a disaster in space," said Pan Zhihao of Space International, published by the China Academy of Space Technology.

But he also told China Daily that female astronauts tend to be more "keen and sensitive with better communication skills than their male counterparts".

The lack of sleep may cause obesity by affecting the brain’s ability to choose the healthy food options

 

In those who had less sleep, the reward centres of the brain were more active when shown pictures of unhealthy food compared to those who had more sleep.

PEOPLE more attracted to eating unhealthy food after not getting enough sleep, new research has suggested.

Two new studies that scanned the brains of people who have been sleep deprived have revealed their brains react differently when presented with choices of healthy and unhealthy food compared to those who have had adequate sleep.

The research showed that key areas of the brain related to reward were activated while activity in regions that control behaviour were inhibited.

The findings may help to explain the link between sleep

DEPRIVATION AND OBESITY.

Dr Marie-Pierre St-Onge, from Columbia University in New York who led one of the studies, said: “The results suggest that, under restricted sleep, individuals will find unhealthy foods highly salient and rewarding, which may lead to greater consumption of those foods.”

In her study 25 men and women of normal weight were asked to look at images of healthy and unhealthy food while in an fMRI scanner after five nights where their sleep was either restricted to just four hours or they were allowed to get up to nine hours.

In those who had less sleep, the reward centres of the brain were more active when shown pictures of unhealthy food compared to those who had more sleep.

When they were shown pictures of healthy food this area of the brain did not activate.

Dr St-Onge, who is presenting the research at the annual conference of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society, added: “This may suggest greater propensity to succumb to unhealthy foods when one is sleep restricted.

“Indeed, food intake data from this same study showed participants ate more overall and consumed more fat after a period of sleep restriction compared to regular sleep.”

The second study, also being presented at the conference, looked at 23 healthy adults after a normal nights sleep and a night where their sleep had been restricted.

After each night, the participants were asked to rate how much they wanted food items shown to them while inside a fMRI scanner.

Stephanie Greer, who conducted the work at the sleep and neuroimaging laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, said sleep deprivation impaired the activity in the frontal lobe of the participants brains – an area critical for behaviour control and making choices.

She said they failed to see any activity in areas of the brain associated with reward in this study.

She said: “It seems to be about he regions higher up in the brain, specifically within the frontal lobe, failing to integrate all the different signals that help us normally make wise choices about the food we eat.”

She added that if people cannot make the right choices about what food to eat after suffering from poor sleep, it may explain why other studies have found a lack of sleep is risk factor for obesity.

The smart bed that makes itself up in 30 seconds

   

For those of us who find it hard enough to peel ourselves off the mattress every morning, let alone make our bed, Spanish furniture maker OHEA has come up with the ultimate in self-indulgence, a smart bed that will apparently make itself in 50 seconds, mechanically.

According to the company, its smart bed is equipped with a mechanical device that enables it to automatically straighten out its bedding once one gets up.

The device, it claims, will mechanically straighten out the bed's bottom sheet, duvet, plus the pillowcases. Meanwhile, the bottom sheet will stay straight because it will attach with Velcro to the mattress cover.

OHEA said the bed's duvet has lateral cords that allow it to be pulled across the bed.

Those who decide to splash out on the bed can opt to set it to manual or automatic mode. With manual, when one presses the go button on the remote control, the bed's mechanism will begin to make it.

Or else one can go down the automatic route. In this instance, the mechanism will kick into action three seconds after a person gets up to automatically make the bed.

The company has not revealed how much the smart bed will cost, however.

Check out this video clip of the bed in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hrWEenI_ozM

The Euro currency gains as markets greet a Spanish deal

   

Many Spanish banks were badly hit when a property investment bubble burst but the euro has made gains against the dollar and the yen as markets react to the Eurozone deal aimed at shoring up Spain’s troubled banks.

In early Asian trading on Monday the euro bought $1.2647 and 100.73 yen, up from $1.2514 and 99.49 yen in New York on Friday.

The Nikkei index at the Tokyo Stock Exchange rose 1.7% in early trading.

On Saturday, Eurozone ministers agreed to lend Madrid up to 100bn euros ($125bn; £80bn) to help its banks.

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy hailed the decision as a victory for the single currency.

Correspondents say markets are reacting positively as the loan was larger than expected and has helped remove uncertainty over the crisis.

It could also buy time for EU policymakers to work with other weak economies threatening the future of the 17-nation bloc, analysts say.

Recession

Spain’s weakest banks were left with billions of euros worth of bad loans following the collapse of a property boom and the recession that followed.

The exact amount that Spain will receive will be decided after the completion of two audits of its banks, due within a few days.

On Sunday, Mr Rajoy said that the rescue would speed up the flow of credit loans to families, to small and medium enterprises and to self-employed workers.

He said the real winner was “the credibility of the euro”.

But he warned that the near future looked bleak, pointing out that the economy – in its second recession in three years – was still expected to shrink by 1.7% this year.

Greece’s election next weekend could result in it being bounced out of the euro

“This year is going to be a bad one,” he said.

The loan to Spain was welcomed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the US and Japan.

EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said the deal was a clear signal to the markets that the euro area was ready to take decisive action to calm markets and contain contagion.

Spain is the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy – twice the size combined of those of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the countries bailed out so far.

However, tensions over the euro remain high with another election to be held in Greece next weekend.

If voters elect a government that refuses to abide by the terms of the country’s bailout deal, Athens faces a possible exit from the bloc.

There are fears that a Greek exit could trigger a run on the banks – not only there but in other eurozone countries.

Greece has been in recession for five years, crippled by huge debts, high unemployment and labour unrest.

Ex footballer’s hair transplant to go live on the Internet

    

Wayne Rooney Manchester united & England star with his before and after his successful hair transplant. Michael Gray above left has said he hopes the hair transplant will boost his confidence

Ex-England footballer Michael Gray is to undergo the first UK hair transplant of its kind to be streamed live on the internet.

Gray, known as Micky, and now a pundit on Talksport, will take part in a real-time question and answer session as well as Tweeting through his surgery in an effort to provide more information and answer questions about transplants.

The procedure is thought to be the first of its kind to be streamed live in the UK and will be performed by Dr Bessam Farjo, an authority on hair loss and hair transplant surgery, who will also answer questions as he carries out the surgery.

Gray, 37, who played for premiership teams including Sunderland, Blackburn Rovers and Sheffield Wednesday during his career, noticed he was receding when he was about 32. And after seeing other celebrities undergo the procedure, he said he decided to go under the knife.

“I think it’s more acceptable now and that was one of the reasons that I wanted to go through with it,” he said. “Cosmetic surgery now is an everyday occurrence. People might be out there and may be worried about the operation and if I’m going to get it done then why not let people see it. There’s a lot of people out there who are worried about it. Here they can see it from start to finish.”

He said the transplant would help improve his confidence.

“I’m working in the media at the moment and doing quite a lot of the TV and when I watch myself back I’m conscious about the way I look, so from the confidence side of things I’m hoping that will beat that.

“People refer to the harrowing experience a woman must go through when losing her hair, however it can be equally upsetting for men, who can suffer from a severe loss of self-esteem. I hope the live broadcast will help us to educate people about hair transplant surgery and open up discussions around the solutions available to those experiencing hair loss.”

The transplant will involve taking 3,500-4,000 hairs from the back and sides of his head and “re-planting” them into his receding hairline, said Dr Farjo.

The surgery, which starts at 10am on Monday, will be streamed live to viewers across the internet to livesurgery.farjo.net and questions can be tweeted to @BessamFarjo or @mickygray33 using the hashtag #LiveTransplant.

Aggressive pre-diabetes approach needed 

‘Say study researchers'

    

An “early and aggressive” approach to people on the cusp of developing Type 2 diabetes is justified to reduce cases of the disease, a study suggests.

People with “pre-diabetes” have higher than normal blood sugar which has not yet reached diabetic levels.

A US study, published in the Lancet, showed restoring normal sugar levels more than halved the numbers going on to Type 2 diabetes.

Experts said the findings were clinically important.

It is thought that seven million people have pre-diabetes in the UK and 79 million in the US. They are at heightened risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart attack and stroke. Many are undiagnosed.

Some measures, such as weight loss and more exercise, can reverse pre-diabetes. The study, by the US Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group, tried to determine how effective the treatment was at preventing Type 2 diabetes.

It followed 1,990 people with pre-diabetes. Some were being treated through drugs or lifestyle change, others were not.

It showed patients who reduced their blood sugar levels to normal, even briefly, were 56% less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes during the six years of the study.

Lead author Dr Leigh Perreault, from the University of Colorado, said: “This analysis draws attention to the significant long-term reduction in diabetes risk when someone with pre-diabetes returns to normal glucose regulation, supporting a shift in the standard of care to early and aggressive glucose-lowering treatment in patients at highest risk.”

Dr Natalia Yakubovich, from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, said the “findings clearly suggest” that restoring normal blood sugar levels was “of clinical relevance”.

She added: “Identification of regression to normal glucose regulation could be an important way to stratify people into those at higher and lower risk of progression to diabetes.

“Such stratification could therefore identify individuals for whom additional treatment might be needed to prevent diabetes or to slow down disease progression.”

Type 1 Diabetes (Insulin dependent) 

on the Increase Among Youth

  

A new analysis showing a 23% jump in Type 1 diabetes among American youth is giving fresh impetus to researchers looking at whether environmental factors or behavior can influence the onset of the autoimmune disease.

Among the theories is the possibility that faster growth and weight gain early in life could exacerbate genetic factors and bring on the disease.

The study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, was reported this weekend at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association. The analysis was among the first to put numbers on the nationwide prevalence of the disease, which can lead to kidney, nerve and cardiovascular damage.

“There is now an urgent need for effective ways of preventing the disease in youth,” said Giuseppina Imperatore, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC.

Type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes, causes the body to lose ability to produce insulin, which controls the level of sugar in the blood. Type 2 diabetes is linked to the high prevalence of obesity in youth and is characterized by insulin resistance or the inability to produce sufficient levels of insulin. Type 1 diabetics are insulin dependent while Type 2 diabetics in many cases can manage the disease with changes to diet and exercise.

The growth in Type 1 stumps researchers who haven’t been able to identify what triggers the autoimmune response or explain why an increasing number of people are afflicted. About 80% of Type 1 diabetics don’t have a close relative with the disease.

“We don’t know yet what is triggering diabetes or why it is increasing,” said Dana Dabelea, professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at the University of Colorado, Denver.

A leading theory known as the accelerator hypothesis suggests that greater weight gain and growth early in life puts stress on insulin-producing cells in the pancreas that sets off the autoimmune attack.

Another explanation is the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which is also linked to the rise of asthma and food allergies. Children in a modern society contend with fewer parasitic, viral and bacterial illnesses than previous generations, so the underchallenged immune system begins reacting to other stimuli in ways that are harmful.

Some theories explaining the rise of Type 1 are being challenged. A study released at the meeting deals a blow to the theory that links vitamin-D deficiency to diabetes. In a study of 72 people over a year, researchers tried to assess whether large doses of vitamin-D supplements might stymie the development of diabetes. The study found the supplements had no effect.

Rosemarie Hooker, whose 10-year-old son, William, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in November, took him to diabetes centers around the East Coast hoping to find an explanation. “How are there no answers?” asked Ms. Hooker, 40, a mother of three from Ridgefield, Conn. “It’s so frustrating.”

The study used data from 20,000 children and youth under 20 at hospitals and health centers in five states over an eight-year period ended in 2009. The CDC estimates 18.8 million Americans have been diagnosed with either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, and an additional seven million undiagnosed, generating $116 billion in direct medical costs. Of those, between 5% and 10% are thought to have Type 1 diabetes.

The study found a 21% jump in Type 2 diabetes over the period. In one bright spot, however, it found a slowing of growth in the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes among African-American and American Indian youth, the two ethnic groups where the disease first emerged among young people, according to Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, a professor at the University of North Carolina.

Two men arrested in Co Mayo over dissident activity & discovery of explosives

   

Two men were being held in Castlebar Garda station last night following a raid in a house in Mayo on Saturday.

Gardaí found explosives and component parts for bomb-making in the house in Clogher, Claremorris.

The two men, one in his late 20s and the other in his 30s, were arrested at the scene and detained in Castlebar station under section 30 of the Offences against the State Act.

An Army team attended the scene and the house was sealed off for the purposes of technical and forensic examination.

The raid was part of an investigation into dissident republican activity in the west of Ireland.

A Garda spokesman said last night that the Mayo investigation was ongoing.

Deutsche Bank figures show the high level of vacant property in Co Donegal

  

A new report has highlighted the high level of vacan property in Donegal and concludes  that Ireland has so many empty houses that it would take up to 43 years to fill them all.

Deutsche Bank figures suggest that there are 289,451 empty houses in Ireland, including almost 60,000 vacant holiday homes.

This represents a vacancy rate of 15 per cent.

A Deutsche Bank map shows, the empty properties are highly concentrated around the Atlantic coast with Kerry and Donegal particularly badly afflicted.

In these areas, it is felt the amount of empty homes will have a major impact on future property prices.

Deutsche Bank says  200,000 houses would need to be demolished in order for the housing supply to fall to three years of current population growth.”

In April 2010, Nama boss Brendan McDonagh told the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee that the state agency would consider bulldozing properties in certain circumstances, but that this would not be the “first option”.